All eyes on Venus: What upcoming missions are planning

Venus, the second planet in the solar system, is Earth’s closest planetary neighbor and is similar to Earth in size and density.

However, unlike Mars, Venus is not explored much owing to its inhospitable conditions—thick sulphuric acid-laden clouds, a hotbed of greenhouse gases (due to the high level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere), and hellishly-hot surface temperatures of 465 degrees Celsius.

However, the yellow planet has rekindled the curiosity of the global spacefarers. A recent study that discovered traces of phosphine (a biosignature) in the Venusian clouds has further spurred the interest to explore Venus.

By the end of this decade, Venus will have several robotic visitors. Primarily, Isro, Nasa, and Roscosmos have confirmed their intentions to send their spacecraft to Venus. The missions will comprise orbiters, landers, and sample return crafts.

Isro’s Shukrayaaan

In 2017, Isro proposed its maiden venture to Venus to send an orbiter called Shukrayaan (in Sanskrit, Venus is called Shukra Graha, and ‘yaan’ means a craft or vehicle).

Isro proposes to park Shukrayaan in an inclined orbit of 500×60000 km around Venus to perform planetary observations. The 2,500 kg orbiter will circle the planet for four years, gathering valuable information about its surface and sub-surface stratigraphy (the study of strata or layers of a terrain). Isro will use its GSLV Mk II or Mk III rocket to launch Shukrayaan towards Venus around 2024 or 2026.

The Shukrayaan project will be an international collaborative effort. In November 2018, Isro opened its doors by releasing an announcement of opportunity to the global scientific community to present their proposals for novel space-based experiments on Venus.

According to recent media reports, the Indian space agency has shortlisted 20 payloads to go on Shukrayaan. These experiments will be joint efforts with France, Russia, Germany, and Sweden.

• VNA — Venusian Neutrals Analyzer will be built by the Swedish Institute of Space Physics. The payload will study how the sun’s charged particles interact with Venus’ exosphere and atmosphere;
• VIRAL — Venus Infrared Atmospheric Gas Linker will be built jointly by the French Space Agency and Russia’s Roscosmos to perform atmospheric studies in the infrared region.

Shukrayaan is slated to perform extensive experiments of the Venusian atmosphere, ionosphere, plasma, and Sun-Venus interaction.

Nasa’s probes

On June 2, 2020, Nasa confirmed its decision to send an orbiter and an atmospheric analyzer to Venus by 2030. Nasa’s last mission to the yellow planet, Magellan, ended in 1994. The planetary exploration comes under Nasa’s Discovery program, which aims to unlock the mysteries of our solar system.

• VERITAS: The Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy, is an analyzer probe. Its mission is to map Venus’ topography, study its geological history and determine what made the planet turn out into what it is today.
  VERITAS will map the entire planet’s elevations and then reconstruct the observations into 3D images. The probe will also check if Venus is still volcanically active with its infrared mapper and radar components contributed by Germany, Italy, and France. These instruments will detect the infrared emissions from the planet to determine the rock compositions on the planet—a never done before analysis.
• DAVINCI+:  The Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging will sample Venus’ atmosphere in greater depth. The results from the probe’s observations will help us understand how the planet’s atmosphere formed and evolved over millennia. Another agenda is to determine if Venus had oceans on its surface in the past.
  Moreover, DAVINCI+ will send us striking pictures of the planet’s unique geological feature called ‘tesserae’. Scientists believe that these tectonic plates hold the key to understanding how terrestrial planets such as Earth could have formed.

When the probe reaches Venus, it will deploy a sphere into the planet’s thick clouds. As the sphere plunges through Venus’ atmosphere, it will measure the noble gases and other elements. The observations will give us a clearer picture of what makes the planet hellishly hot and the contributing factors to the greenhouse effect.

Russia’s Venera projects

By far, Russia is the only country to have landed probes on Venus. During the 1960s till 1980s, their Venera missions soft-landed 10 probes on Venus, clicking images of the yellow planet, and conducted rudimentary experiments.

Not much science could be done as all these probes had a short life span (about 30 mins to 2 hours) before succumbing to the excruciating surface pressures. However, till today Venera 13’s images remain the widely used pictures that give us an idea of how Venus looks.

This time around, Russia is ambitious. It is set to launch an interplanetary station to Venus called Venus-D. The project is presently in its design stages.

According to Tass, a Russian news agency, Venus-D is a joint venture involving Roscosmos, the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) Space Research Institute, and Nasa.

Under this collaboration, several orbiters will travel to Venus and station around it. Then, landers with longer lifespans (of a few months) will be deployed to the surface. The landers will perform rigorous scientific experiments such as sample collection and return, akin to Nasa’s present Mars missions.

Reportedly, the first spacecraft under Venus-D will take off around 2029.

Apart from the collaborative ventures, Roscosmos has individual plans to explore Venus, the details of which are yet to be divulged.

Backed by advanced cutting-edge technology and the experience of planetary explorations of the past decade, we will be off to Venus again with a renewed vigor.

Who knows what lurks in the dense Venusian clouds or what hitherto unknown exotic chemistry our planetary sibling holds in its volcanic activity?

The Venus missions will give us the answers.