NASA, ESA Send 3 Venus Missions to Test Ocean Past and Volcanic Greenhouse Theory
Updated
Updated · spacedaily.com · Jun 18
NASA, ESA Send 3 Venus Missions to Test Ocean Past and Volcanic Greenhouse Theory
3 articles · Updated · spacedaily.com · Jun 18
Summary
Three missions — NASA’s DAVINCI and VERITAS and ESA’s EnVision — are set to probe whether Venus once had liquid water or was always too hot for oceans.
Climate models from NASA researchers suggest Venus may have stayed temperate for up to 2 billion years, with slow rotation building reflective cloud cover that helped preserve shallow oceans.
A rival 2021 Nature study found early Venus may never have cooled enough for rain, with nightside clouds trapping heat instead of shielding the surface.
Volcanic resurfacing within the last several hundred million years is a leading explanation for how a once-milder Venus could have tipped into today’s runaway greenhouse, under CO2 pressure about 90 times Earth’s.
The missions will test that debate by reading atmospheric chemistry, deuterium levels and surface age — evidence that could settle Venus’s past habitability in the next decade.
Could upcoming missions reveal Venus, not Mars, was the solar system's second habitable world?
If life is found in Venus's clouds, could it actually be a long-lost cousin of Earth life?
Did a volcanic apocalypse turn a habitable Venus into a hellscape, offering a warning for Earth?
Bridging the Venus Data Gap: Challenges, Delays, and the Next Generation of Missions (2024–2031)
Overview
Venus exploration faces a critical turning point after the loss of JAXA's Akatsuki orbiter, which had provided eight years of continuous atmospheric monitoring before contact was lost in May 2024. This event left humanity without a dedicated spacecraft studying Venus, creating a major gap in data collection. At the same time, NASA's DAVINCI and VERITAS missions, which aim to fill this void, are struggling with persistent funding constraints and limited budgets. The combination of losing Akatsuki and financial challenges for upcoming missions highlights an urgent need for renewed investment and focus on Venus, or we risk missing vital insights into our neighboring planet.