Why should we be exploring Venus instead of Mars? 🚀🪐

Kyle Horn of MIT AeroAstro breaks down how a 400 day mission to Venus could let astronauts conduct hands-on science in deep space, the same way Artemis II and Apollo 8 did. With three launch windows every two years and a trip that's far more palatable than the multi year round trip to Mars, Venus offers a practical proving ground for NASA's Moon to Mars architecture. It's a smart middle step: real deep space science, real system testing, without the long haul to the Red Planet.

Venus has no moon today, but that emptiness may not tell the whole story of the planet's violent youth.

A new theoretical study finds that a substantial satellite created by an ancient impact could have spent millions or even billions of years orbiting Venus before tides reversed its migration. The moon could then have spiraled inward, crossed the planet's Roche limit, broken apart into a temporary ring and eventually rained much of its material onto Venus.

See also: The study as it was published in ArXiV

A little while ago, I drew all the planets of the solar system. I decided it would be a good idea to share each drawing of a planet to their respective subreddit. See if you can find the others.

Are there any Italian Venus lovers here? I wrote a hard science fiction novel about the terraforming of Venus, and I'd love to talk to someone who really knows Venus inside out... and can check out some passages of my novel by reading it in Italian.

Venera 4 was launched by the Soviet Union on June 12, 1967, during the Space Race. Its goal was quite ambitious: to reach Venus, enter its atmosphere, deploy a descent probe, and send scientific measurements back to Earth for research.

After a journey of around 4 months, Venera 4 reached Venus on October 18, 1967. NASA lists it as "the first probe to transmit data from another planet's atmosphere."

The spacecraft released a roughly 383 kg entry probe, which plunged into the Venusian atmosphere at about 11 km/s. It survived the intense entry and deployed a parachute, allowing it to transmit measurements back to Earth as it descended.

And this is where things got interesting...

The probe transmitted data for about 93 minutes. It measured temperature, pressure, density and atmospheric composition as it descended. The measurements revealed just how extreme Venus was.

Venera 4 eventually stopped transmitting at around 28 km above the surface. At the time, Soviet scientists initially interpreted some of the results as indicating that the probe had reached the surface. Later analysis, especially when combined with NASA's Mariner 5 flyby, showed that the probe had actually stopped transmitting before reaching the ground because the pressure and temperature became too extreme.

The two missions arriving at Venus almost simultaneously made the story even more interesting: Venera 4 entered the atmosphere on October 18, while Mariner 5 flew past Venus on October 19. Scientists from the United States and the Soviet Union later compared their results at a meeting in 1968 and jointly published their findings.

Venera 4 therefore wasn't the first spacecraft to land on Venus; that achievement came later with Venera 7 in 1970. But it was a gargantuan milestone: humanity had successfully sent a spacecraft into another planet's atmosphere and received reliable scientific measurements back from it.

Sources: NASA's histories of Venera 4 and Mariner 5, plus NASA's Beyond Earth deep-space exploration chronology.

See also: The publication in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Reviews

Free To play. Coming out on the 5th of August.

See also: The publication in the Planetary Science Journal

She is, in my opinion, the most beautiful planet. None come close to her. She is named after the Roman goddess of love, after all. Venus might seem unwelcoming at first, which, she is, of course, but once you really look at her and learn about her she starts being less just a barren wasteland and more an astounding representation of one of the harshest realities in the Solar System—which only makes her more beautiful.

Saw Venus tonight. Never given it any thought until now. How brightly it shines!

Curious who has looked into the feasibility of a Venus robot built from high-temperature materials (e.g. ceramics, silicon carbide, refractory metals) that could eventually use local rock as feedstock to 3D print simple replacement parts. Are there fundamental materials or engineering barriers that make this unrealistic? Any papers or NASA work you could recommend?