The floor of Venus is lead-meltingly sizzling, and its ambiance is crushing (with pressures some 100 instances larger than that on Earth) and toxic. Though 10 Soviet Venera probes have achieved comfortable landings there, the longest time a Venus lander has communicated again to Earth was solely 110 minutes (Venera 12 in 1978). So Venus is hard! But launch home windows to our sister world – which orbits our sun only one step inward from Earth – open each 19 months. And scientists need to research Venus from orbit. They need to study what lies hidden below its blanket of clouds. The subsequent NASA mission to Venus will likely be VERITAS – a Venus orbiter – resulting from launch inside the coming decade.
It’ll look at Venus’ floor from above the planet’s sulfuric acid clouds. It would even be capable to discover out extra about Venus’ inside. However how can scientists put together to review a planet as hostile and as largely unknown as Venus?
A technique – in August 2023 – concerned a trip to Iceland. The VERITAS principal investigator, Suzanne Smrekar of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement on September 19, 2023:
Iceland is a volcanic nation that sits atop a sizzling plume. Venus is a volcanic planet with plentiful geological proof for lively plumes. Its geological similarities make Iceland a superb place to review Venus on Earth, serving to the science workforce put together for Venus.
Iceland as an analog for future VERITAS mission to Venus
VERITAS means fact in Latin. The title VERITAS for this mission to Venus additionally stands for Venus Emissivity, Radio science, InSAR, Topography, And Spectroscopy.
And we all know that Venus – whose dimension and density make it a form of “twin” to Earth – is a world of volcanoes. Radar research of Venus, from Earth and from orbit, have revealed tens of thousands of known volcanoes, huge and small, on the planet’s floor.
However are Venus’ volcanoes lively? Lately, there’s been rising proof that at the very least some Venus volcanoes certainly are nonetheless lively. And that risk makes Venus an thrilling goal for exploration!
So, to organize, scientists needed to review one other place identified for its volcanic exercise. Iceland is without doubt one of the closest Earth analogs to Venus, said VERITAS scientists, with its lively volcanoes and tough terrain much like what we’ve glimpsed on our sister world.
General, the analysis workforce spent two weeks in Iceland for his or her area marketing campaign. The workforce included 19 scientists from the U.S., Germany, Italy and Iceland.
VERITAS mission scientists in Iceland
Learning Iceland’s volcanic deposits
Iceland has many volcanic options, which can be utilized as terrestrial analogs for volcanism on Venus. The analysis workforce studied the Askja volcanic deposits and the Holuhraun lava field within the Icelandic Highlands for the primary half of the sector marketing campaign. This area comprises current lava flows.
For the second half of the sector marketing campaign, the researchers centered on the Fagradalsfjall region on the Reykjanes Peninsula of southwestern Iceland. Each areas are volcanically lively and their rocky landscapes resemble these of Venus. How do we all know? The reality is, we’ve seen solely a only a few closeup views of Venus’ floor to date, from the Soviet Venera landers in 1975 and 1982.
However these photos are sufficient, together with radar photos from orbiting spacecraft, to supply some concept of what Venus’ floor is like.
Radar information from the sky
Learning the volcanic options on the bottom in Iceland was solely a part of the sector marketing campaign. As well as, the German Aerospace Middle (DLR) gathered radar information from plane flying overhead. Daniel Nunes, VERITAS deputy venture scientist at JPL and Iceland marketing campaign planning lead, stated:
The JPL-led science workforce was engaged on the bottom whereas our DLR companions flew overhead to assemble aerial radar photos of the areas we had been learning. The radar brightness of the floor pertains to the properties of that floor, together with texture, roughness and water content material. We collected info within the area to ground-truth the radar information that we’ll use to tell the science that VERITAS will do at Venus.
The researchers used synthetic aperture radar onboard a Dornier 228-212 plane flying about 20,000 ft (6,000 meters) in altitude. The radar collected information in each S-band (wavelength of about 12 centimeters, or 4.7 inches) and X-band (wavelength about 3 centimeters, or 1.2 inches). NASA’s earlier Magellan mission to Venus within the Nineteen Nineties used S-band. VERITAS, nevertheless, will use the shorter X-band wavelength.
Each bands are helpful for the research in Iceland. The researchers can use them to refine the pc algorithms that VERITAS will use. This fashion, VERITAS will be capable to spot any adjustments on the floor which will have occurred because the Magellan mission. That is particularly essential for detecting adjustments associated to volcanic exercise.
A library of floor volcanic textures
One other main aim of the sector marketing campaign was to create a pattern library. This is able to include samples of varied volcanic floor textures in Iceland. Later, by evaluating them to future information from VERITAS, scientists will be capable to higher perceive what sorts of volcanic processes occurred or are occurring on Venus. Smrekar stated:
The completely different floor traits and options seen on Venus relate to volcanic processes, which relate again to the inside of Venus. This information goes to be helpful to VERITAS to assist us higher perceive Venus. It should additionally assist the European Area Company’s EnVision mission, which can research Venus’ floor with S-band radar, and the neighborhood at giant that desires to know radar observations of volcanic planetary surfaces.
As well as, scientists with DLR additionally collected compositional info for the lava flows with a digital camera that emulates the Venus Emissivity Mapper (VEM) instrument. These information will assist the spectral library being created on the Planetary Spectroscopy Laboratory in Berlin, Germany.
A workforce effort
The present research in Iceland present helpful scientific coaching for the upcoming VERITAS mission. And certainly, the sector marketing campaign was a workforce effort, as Nunes famous:
It was an awesome dynamic. We pushed laborious and helped one another out. From borrowing gear to driving to the research websites and shopping for provides, everybody hustled to make it occur.
The VERITAS mission
NASA first proposed the VERITAS mission again in 2020 as a part of the Discovery Program. VERITAS will peer by way of the dense clouds of Venus with radar and a near-infrared spectrometer to create 3-D world maps of the planet and analyze what the floor consists of (we do know already that many of the floor is volcanic basalt). By measuring Venus’ gravitational area, VERITAS may additionally decide the construction of the planet’s inside. The VERITAS mission will present probably the most detailed evaluation of Venus ever obtained by an orbiting spacecraft.
It should research Venus’ geology and the similarities it might must that of the early Earth. The planet’s heat crust is regarded as analog to that of Earth just a few billion years in the past, when tectonic plates had been simply beginning to kind. Did the identical factor occur on Venus?
There was rising proof for current volcanism on Venus. VERITAS will be capable to search for hotspots from lively eruptions utilizing its spectrometer, and the radar may detect lively faulting, which might be proof for present tectonic activity. The spectrometer may additionally detect rocks that had been shaped from sizzling magma, earlier than the chemical composition of the rocks had been altered by the corrosive ambiance. Understanding how geologically lively Venus nonetheless is, or isn’t, would additionally assist scientists work out how a lot water is within the inside of the planet.
Backside line: A global workforce of scientists not too long ago studied volcanic exercise on Iceland. The info will likely be used to assist put together for the long run VERITAS mission to Venus.
Read more: Active volcanoes on Venus found in Magellan data
