Why do we not investigate Venus since it is considerably closer to Earth than Mars? Which planet is closest to Earth? This is not Mars. Although Mars is a well-known planet, it does not hold the title of nearest planet. Venus is the planet that is closest to Earth in terms of distance, but Mercury is closer to Earth on average than Venus is.
How could this be? And since Venus is the planet nearest to Earth, why are there not more expeditions to investigate it? Even Elon Musk wants to send the first humans to Mars as soon as possible. This goal is getting closer and closer to being reached, and some space agencies, like NASA, already have programs that try to take the first steps toward settling Mars. Despite this, it is reasonable to ask why this fixation is with Mars and not Venus, which is far closer to Earth. Why did we claim that Mercury is the planet closest to Earth? Shouldn’t Mercury, Venus, and Earth be in order of distance from the Sun?
Mercury should then be considerably farther away than Venus, correct? Mercury spends more time close to the Earth than Venus, which spins more slowly and consequently spends less time away from the Earth, on average, due to its rapid rotation. In actuality, though, the situation is entirely different. In terms of actual space travel, Venus is closer to Earth than Mercury, as the distance between Earth and Venus is shorter than that between Earth and Mercury.
Therefore, stating that Venus is closer is not incorrect. To reach Mercury, spacecraft must accelerate using gravitational aid for years, whereas to reach Mars, we may take advantage of the approach gaps between Mars and Earth every 26 months and arrive in less than a year. Therefore, Mercury is further distant than Mars.
Which planet is the nearest to Earth?
For generations, it would have been unimaginable for Venus to be seen by the scientific community differently than it is today. In the 1600s, Venus was the main reason why astronomers and scientists from all over the world worked together to organize and study the secrets of the solar system. When people finally had spaceships that let them leave Earth, the first place they went was Venus. It was the first time we successfully met a planet outside of Earth, and it was also the first place where people put technology.
Venus and Earth are nearly identical. Size, density, gravity, and physical composition are identical. Both are in the habitable zone of our star and are relatively near to one another. And yet, at some point in the history of the solar system, Earth became a paradise for life as we know it, while Venus became a hostile, sweltering inferno where no life can exist. In movies like this one, where we talked about how much you would weigh on each planet in the solar system, we talked about how harsh Venus is. If a spaceship wanted to land on Venus’s surface, it would have to deal with the planet’s cloudy, acidic, and poisonous atmosphere, which eats away at metal and breaks down electronic parts.
Once on the surface, the average temperature would be 430°C, a temperature that would melt any spacesuit. All of this is made worse by the constant presence of thick clouds that block the Sun’s rays and make the sky orange with storms, lightning, and acid rain that turns everything it touches into a liquid. Do not forget that Venus has a permanent greenhouse effect, therefore extreme temperatures are constant and do not fluctuate by location. That means there is no winter on this planet, thus there is no way to escape the tremendous heat.
As if all of this weren’t enough, the air pressure on Venus is approximately 90 bars, which is similar to being sunk 1 kilometer below the surface of the ocean; as you can guess, no human or other living creature could survive in such extreme conditions, or so we believe. Birth-separated twins Several decades ago, the Kepler satellite observatory detected over 3,000 planets orbiting other stars, many of which orbit in zones where liquid water may exist on their surfaces.
Conveniently, Earth 2.0 exists adjacent to ours. It is Venus; studies on the atmosphere of the second-closest planet to the sun have revealed that there is a high probability that in the distant past of Venus, this planet was covered with water, similar to Earth. It is even possible that it had oceans and possibly also vast forests teeming with life. Obviously, there is currently no method to prove this. Nevertheless, by comprehending the history of Venus, we will have a deeper grasp of the history of Earth and the characteristics of possibly habitable exoplanets.
Also, while scientists and governments deal with climate change, they can examine Venus since something spectacular must have occurred for Venus’ atmosphere to have changed from a paradise-like Earth to the horror it is today. According to specialists such as Bob Grimm, director of the Department of Space Studies at the Southwest Research Institute, the Earth will not transform into Venus since our planet lacks the necessary carbon dioxide levels.
Nonetheless, Venus has much to teach us about how the Earth’s climate may change in the future, and a deeper knowledge of these processes will assist us to be better prepared for climate change in the coming years. With so much to discover on a nearby planet, one would question why NASA ceased exploring Venus.
Why are so few efforts made to study such a critical planet?
Money On the one hand, there is insufficient funding. NASA receives 0.5 percent of the U.S. federal budget for its space exploration projects and missions, of which only a small portion is allocated to planetary science.
Second, Mars, our other neighbor, is easier to explore than Venus for a variety of reasons. Mars is farther distant than Venus, but it also moves more slowly, making it possible for our spacecraft to catch up, albeit slowly. In contrast, Venus is closer to the sun, which means that it moves considerably quicker; as a result, our ships must attain extremely high speeds, which are only achievable with gravitational aid. Lead does not melt on Mars.
Currently, the rovers that were despatched to the planet Mars are still operational. Due to the fact that Mars is no longer so hostile to technology, their lifespans have increased from a few years to decades. It appears that it will be welcoming to humans when we visit. In contrast, any robotic expedition to the surface of Venus will be exceedingly brief and extremely perilous; in fact, the Venera 13 exploratory probe launched by the Soviet Union in 1981 set the record of two hours for the functioning of a spacecraft on the surface of Venus. It seems natural that NASA would not undertake a $1 million mission to collect data for two hours.
Mars also possesses a romantic charm that Venus will never possess. Humans will one day walk on Mars and possibly settle there in the coming years; this goal encourages us to continue researching and exploring the red planet, which may become our second home in the future; on the other hand, it is inconceivable that humans will ever set foot on Venus. Venus, Earth, and Mars are three highly similar planets, and all three are in the habitable zone; nevertheless, only Earth possesses the necessary conditions for life and liquid water. The study of both planets improves not just our understanding of their histories, but also our understanding of our own life.
The exploration engine
The human race’s obsession with proving that we are not alone in the cosmos, i.e., finding proof of extraterrestrial life, is one of the main reasons why space organizations around the world do not invest in researching Venus. The question of whether or not we are alone in the cosmos is irresistible to any space agency. For this reason, so many rovers have been dispatched to Mars: to determine habitability and, with the Mars 2020 rover, to identify habitable zones. This is why telescopes search for exoplanets in habitable zones, solar systems with perfect circumstances for liquid water, and possible extraterrestrial intelligence signals.
All of our combined efforts were directed toward the same objective: discovering anything, anything, that could give us hope that we are not alone in this huge world. One of the primary objectives of Mars missions has been to “find water” because where there is water, there may be life, at least carbon-based and oxygen-dependent life as we know it. Since only life on Earth is known to exist in the entire cosmos, we cannot search for other kinds of life. In this ongoing quest for life, space agencies have focused their attention on Mars and the moons of the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, particularly those ones with huge frozen water deposits. Europa (Jupiter’s moon) and Enceladus (Saturn’s moon) are frozen worlds with the potential for oceans beneath their vast ice sheets. This persistent search for extraterrestrial life makes research of Venus undesirable.
At the beginning of the solar system’s history, it was believed that Venus had an ocean on its surface. Scientists came to this conclusion because asteroids and comets brought water to Earth for the first time and also provided humanity with amino acids and their precursors, which are vital to life. If this occurred on Earth, it most certainly occurred on the other planets of the solar system, including Venus. Hence, life on Venus might have evolved during this time.
Earth has been habitable for around 3,900,000,000 years. Mars was habitable for around 500,000,000 years. Europa, the moon of Jupiter, could be habitable at this time. Due to the fact that Venus no longer contains the conditions necessary for life, it has not been the subject of nearly as many space exploration missions as other planets.
A fresh light for Venus admirers NASA just announced two additional trips to Venus, our closest solar system neighbor. The primary purpose of these new expeditions is to determine how a planet with similar features to Earth become a “hellish world.” The two missions were chosen as part of the ninth round of competitions for NASA’s Discovery program, which in 2019 issued a new request for proposals and, since 1992, has supported the development of over 20 space exploration missions and instruments that seek to comprehend the evolution of the solar system.
Both missions to Venus will get an initial development budget of $500 million each and will be launched between 2028 and 2030. The following missions were selected for Venus exploration:
DAVINCI+
The DAVINCI+ mission will examine the composition of Venus’ atmosphere to discover if the planet ever had an ocean and how it arose and evolved. The mission consists of a sphere that will descend into the planet’s thick atmosphere, measuring noble gases and other elements to determine why Venus’ atmosphere is a runaway greenhouse compared to Earth’s.
VERITAS
The second mission is VERITAS (Emissivity, Radioscience, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy of Venus). VERITAS will map the surface of Venus in order to evaluate the planet’s geological history and determine why it evolved so differently from Earth. VERITAS will orbit Venus to record the surface elevations of nearly the whole planet in order to produce 3D topographic reconstructions and determine whether processes such as plate tectonics and volcanism are still operating on Venus. These new missions will be responsible for uncovering the hitherto concealed secrets of Venus and providing us with information regarding the likelihood of finding bacteria-based life in its clouds.
FAQ
Why is Venus a female planet?
Venus is associated with women because of her role in ancient mythology and cultural iconography. Venus, the goddess of love, beauty, and fertility in Roman mythology, is frequently portrayed as a representation of sensuality and femininity. Because of this goddess’ remarkable light and beauty in the night sky, the planet Venus was named after her. Venus’s association with the goddess became ingrained in the concept of Venus as a female celestial body over time. In addition, a great deal of cultures have personified heavenly objects throughout history and given them gender attributes depending on cultural values and beliefs. Although there is no scientific basis for putting a gender to a planet, the persistent cultural and mythical connotations have led to the widespread perception of Venus as a female planet.
Why is Venus a beautiful planet?
Because of its remarkable beauty in the night sky, Venus is frequently referred to as a beautiful planet. It is ranked second only to the Moon in terms of brightness among objects visible from Earth due to its brilliance and radiance. Venus is clearly visible even during the daytime because it reflects a large percentage of the sunlight that it receives, which is why it shines so brightly. Through telescopes, one may watch its phases, which contribute to its beauty. Like the Moon, Venus swings through phases. It is a fascinating celestial show, changing from a thin crescent to a dazzling gibbous disk. Though Venus’s surface may appear lovely from afar, it is an uninhabitable and harsh place with high surface pressure, poisonous atmosphere, and searing temperatures, making it an attractive but difficult place to explore.
Why is Venus so special?
In our solar system, Venus is unique for a number of reasons. It is first and mainly known as Earth’s “sister planet” because of its resemblance to our planet in terms of size, composition, and vicinity. Venus is a crucial research topic for scientists who want to comprehend planetary evolution and the possibility of habitability in our solar system because of these similarities. Venus is unlike any other planet, though, because of its harsh and unfriendly environment. Its thick, oppressive atmosphere, which is mostly made of carbon dioxide, creates a runaway greenhouse effect that causes temperatures to skyrocket to approximately 900 degrees Fahrenheit (475 degrees Celsius), making it one of the hottest places in the solar system. Venus is therefore a unique laboratory for researching the dynamics of severe climates. Furthermore, Venus has retrograde rotation, which is characterized by its extraordinarily slow rotation and longer days than years. Because of these unique characteristics, Venus is a fascinating subject for scientific study and a useful benchmark for comprehending planetary dynamics and Earth’s own evolution.
What is Venus most famous for?
Venus is primarily known for being the “Evening Star” and the “Morning Star,” due to its exceptional brilliance and visibility. For millennia, humanity has been enthralled by its radiant presence in the night sky, which has earned it a unique position in cultural and mythological traditions worldwide. Moreover, Venus is a subject of scientific inquiry and investigation due to its well-known harsh and hostile environment. Its surface is among the hottest in our solar system, hot enough to melt lead, and its atmosphere is dense and toxic, mostly made of carbon dioxide. Venus is a celestial planet of enormous relevance in astronomical observations and scientific research because of its unique combination of harsh environmental features and dazzling visibility.
Why is Venus so mysterious?
Venus’s veiled and cryptic surface is the main reason it is mysterious. One of the hardest celestial bodies to examine is the planet because of its dense, whirling cloud cover, which blocks out direct views of the planet’s surface. The topography and geological aspects of the area beneath these clouds eluded experts for many years, leaving them perplexed as to what might be below. The discovery of Venus’s harsh and hostile environment, which included sweltering temperatures and oppressive air pressures, only served to heighten the mystery. Venus has a peculiar retrograde rotation, which means that it rotates in the opposite direction of most other planets, further perplexing astronomers. Venus is a source of excitement and intrigue in the field of planetary science due to a number of outstanding problems, including its geologic history, possible past presence of water, and the precise reasons of its runaway greenhouse effect.
