Have you ever considered taking a day trip to the second rock from the sun?
You don't. It's really serious. Venus is a bad place to live.
It may have once been a life-supporting system, according to a NASA paper published in The Planetary Science Journal. It could show how our sister planet ended up dying.
The mission is called the Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging and will launch in 2029
The first US space flight to Venus since 1994 and the first US probe to retrieve chemical data from the planet's thick atmosphere are all part of the plan.
The international space community feels a renewed interest in the not-so-heavenly body over the past few years, and NASA believes that a comprehensive workup of Venus' present day chemical composition can help us understand our noxious neighbor's past
Described by NASA as a flying analytical chemistry laboratory, the DAVINCI craft will perform a few fly-bys before sending a heat shielded probe down to the planet's ultra-hot surface.
NASA hopes that DAVINCI's findings will help them determine if Venus ever had liquid water. According to the researchers, the planet's topography is suggestive of plate tectonics, which DAVINCI could provide evidence for.
Jim Garvin, DAVINCI principal investigator, told CNN that the data would show a picture of the Venus atmosphere and how it interacts with the mountains of Alpha Regio.
It's going to be hard. The DAVINCI instruments will face a lot of air pressure. The gadgets are expected to last about 18 minutes before they die.
Is it collapsing under stress? It's doable. Despite a short-lived surface life, scientists are hoping DAVINCI will peel back the curtain on Venus' puzzling history and fill in some questions about its place in the universe.
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