Tag: Venus

NASA DAVINCI Mission’s Many ‘Firsts’ to Unlock Venus’ Hidden Secrets

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5 Min Read NASA DAVINCI Mission’s Many ‘Firsts’ to Unlock Venus’ Hidden Secrets The surface of Venus is an inferno with temperatures hot enough to melt lead. This image is a composite of data from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft and Pioneer Venus Orbiter. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA’s DAVINCI — Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging — mission embodies the spirit of innovation and exploration that its namesake, Leonardo da Vinci, was famous for. Scheduled to launch in the early 2030s, DAVINCI will explore Venus with both a spacecraft…

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Venus’ ‘missing’ giant impact craters may be hiding in plain sight

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Impact features on Venus may have been staring us in the face all along That’s the message from a team of planetary scientists, who have explained Venus‘ apparent dearth of large craters by discovering that impacts could have produced the mysterious “tesserae” formations on the Venusian surface. Tesserae are large — sometimes continent-size — expanses of terrain that have been deformed and covered with wrinkle ridges, which make the landforms look like sheets of corrugated iron. They are formed by lava welling up to the surface, where it cools and…

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Scientists find surprising clue about Venus’ past in its atmosphere

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Scientists have observed something unexpected in Venus’ atmosphere — an increase in the level of deuterium relative to hydrogen. Okay, sure, that doesn’t sound like the most exciting statement. However, the consequences of this discovery could actually upend our current understanding of the amber world. As it turns out, it would affect our assumption that Venus is a perpetually barren, inhospitable planet. Here’s how. “Venus is often called Earth’s twin due to its similar size,” said Hiroki Karyu, a researcher at Tohoku University and one of the study’s scientists, in…

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Ongoing Venus Volcanic Activity Discovered With NASA’s Magellan Data

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6 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) This computer-generated 3D model of Venus’ surface shows the volcano Sif Mons, which is exhibiting signs of ongoing activity. Using data from NASA’s Magellan mission, Italian researchers detected evidence of an eruption while the spacecraft orbited the planet in the early 1990s. NASA/JPL-Caltech An analysis of data from Magellan’s radar finds two volcanoes erupted in the early 1990s. This adds to the 2023 discovery of a different active volcano in Magellan data. Direct geological evidence of recent volcanic activity…

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Life as we know it could exist on Venus, new experiment reveals

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If Venus hosts lifeforms in its toxic clouds, they likely won’t be deprived of amino acids, one of the essential building blocks of life (as we know it). At least, that’s what scientists say is the result of a new lab experiment. Despite being Earth’s “twin,” Venus sizzles at temperatures reaching hundreds of degrees and is blanketed by clouds made of corrosive sulfuric acid, a colorless, carcinogenic liquid that dissolves metals, erodes our teeth and irritates our eyes, noses and throats. As such, the rocky planet isn’t considered to be…

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Zoozve — the strange ‘moon’ of Venus that earned its name by accident

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About a year ago, Latif Nasser was having a pretty ordinary evening. The day was done, the sun had set, and he was standing in front of his two-year-old son’s crib, tucking him in. It was the same room he’d visited tons of times before, performing the same duties, looking at the same wall decorated with the same solar system poster he’d seen from the same … wait. What was that? For the first time, Nasser did a double take of the artfully illustrated poster. And, for the first time,…

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Photographer snaps extremely rare ‘green flash’ coming from Venus

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Venus briefly flashed a shimmering green light in the night sky above Sweden, new footage reveals. The rarely seen phenomenon is almost identical to the ethereal green flashes that are occasionally seen around the sun during sunrises and sunsets.  Photographer Peter Rosén captured the colorful flash coming from one of our closest planetary neighbors while he was watching Venus rise above the horizon in Stockholm in the early hours of Jan. 8, Spaceweather.com reported.  The bright flash, which lasted for around a second, was an “unexpected bonus” that added to…

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Crescent Moon Over NASA’s Kennedy Space Center

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NASA / Joel Kowsky The crescent moon, along with Jupiter (top right of Moon) and Venus (below Moon) appeared over the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida Feb. 22, 2023, as preparations continued for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission. NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren “Woody” Hoburg, UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev launched to the International Space Station March 2, 2023. The NASA Headquarters photographers chose this photo as one of the best images from 2023. See the rest on Flickr. Image…

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If Venus had Earth-like plate tectonics in its distant past, did it have life too?

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New research has revealed Venus may have had Earth-like plate tectonics billions of years ago. The finding opens up the possibility that the second planet from the sun, aka a scorching world, also once harbored life.  With temperatures reaching levels high enough to melt lead, the hottest planet in our solar system seems an unlikely host for life as we know it — even the simplest kind. But, according to this new research, Venus was very different in its deep past. The goal of this work, according to the researchers,…

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