Why NASA is setting its sights on Venus again...

[DGUtley]

Why NASA is setting its sights on Venus again...
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Elon Musk’s gaudy Tesla tribute to the stars and his company’s proposed Doge-1 mission may be at the center of space exploration’s meme orbit, but Venus is quickly becoming a new center of space exploration’s scientific efforts. Two new projects—that promise to do a lot more than shoot a Roadster into space—are on NASA’s horizon.
On June 2, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced the next two mission selections for the space agency’s Discovery Program, which uses relatively small (compared with, say, broader New Horizons or flagship programs) missions to “unlock the mysteries of our solar system.” The selection process for this round started in 2019, when NASA put out a Discovery Announcement of Opportunity that solicited mission ideas for a new round of Discovery Program funding. The four highly competitive finalists announced in February 2020 included two missions planned for the solar system’s hottest planet, Venus; one for Neptune’s icy moon Triton; and one to the volcanic Jovian moon Io. Of the four finalists, a maximum of two were to receive funding. And both, it turned out, would be to Venus.

The two chosen missions are DAVINCI+ (a mission to understand the atmospheric evolution of Venus) and VERITAS (a mission to better map the Venusian surface and subsurface), now both aiming for launch between 2028 and 2030. Together, they’ll be the first NASA spacecraft sent to the second planet in our solar system in nearly 40 years.

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https://slate.com/technology/2021/06...tm_source=digg


https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard...nus-atmosphere




https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/verita...ruths-of-venus

[Peter1469]

Maybe this is why the Venus missions won:

Astronomers may have found a signature of life on Venus