There is a saying in Britain, (as recounted by the BBC correspondent below), 'you wait ages for a bus and three come along at once', so it is with our nearest planet, Venus.
As Scott Manley details, after a long break NASA are sending two probes to Venus, the first dedicated ones since 1989;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_zLezYh1VQ
Now ESA are to launch one, in a similar timeframe and designed to complement the NASA ones, (ESA also did the Venus Express mission in the 2000's).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57416589
Though NASA's Mariner 2 flyby in the early 60's dispelled any lingering ideas about a tropical Venus, kudos to the Soviet program and their many attempts to land in this hellish place, culminating in the first images from the surface of another planet in 1975.
(They had a lot of issues with the lens caps, usually not coming off, in one case it melted on the lens, in the BBC's 1999 series 'The Planets' one veteran of these missions recounted how in this case a scientist at first wondered if the probe had landed in a dark sticky material, an engineer guessing what had happened said 'yes, the shit').
Moderators: richierich, ua900, PanAm_DC10, hOMSaR
Re: Buses To Venus
NASA will cooperate with ESA on their EnVision orbiter by providing a high-resolution synthetic aperture radar. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/then-there ... us-mission
It's great that Venus is getting some attention. Mars and Venus are both quite similar to Earth, yet Mars is cold with a thin atmosphere, while Venus is hot with a very dense atmosphere.
The only thing that makes me a bit sad is how long the development timeframe for all three missions is. NASA is planning a launch around 2028 - 2030, while ESA is targeting a launch in 2031. Well, at least the Japanese probe Akatsuki is currently there to provide some observations. https://akatsuki.isas.jaxa.jp/en/
It's great that Venus is getting some attention. Mars and Venus are both quite similar to Earth, yet Mars is cold with a thin atmosphere, while Venus is hot with a very dense atmosphere.
The only thing that makes me a bit sad is how long the development timeframe for all three missions is. NASA is planning a launch around 2028 - 2030, while ESA is targeting a launch in 2031. Well, at least the Japanese probe Akatsuki is currently there to provide some observations. https://akatsuki.isas.jaxa.jp/en/
Re: Buses To Venus
Rocket Lab are still planning a private mission to Venus in 2023. Beck is a Venus fanatic. Said in a recent interview he still had board approval for the mission.
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