Venus: NASA has a new plan for the exploration of the planet

Mars is not our only space neighbor. And not even the closest: Venusin fact, in its orbit it reaches one minimum distance of just 38.2 million kilometers from our planet; much less than the almost 55 million that must be covered for a visit on the red planet. If the journey is shorter, and in fact exploratory missions have not been lacking in recent decades, the difficulty in the case of Venus is another: to survive the conditions extreme of the surface, capable of destroying a probe within hours, or minutes. Recently, however, NASA announced a project which could reverse the situation, paving the way for missions on the Venusian surface similar to those carried out on Mars. Let’s see what it is about and, with the occasion, let’s also retrace the stages reached so far in the exploration of Venus.

Venusian batteries

A machine operating on the surface of Venus has to deal with two main problems: the pressurewhich reaches almost 100 atmospheresand the temperaturewhich with an average of approx 464 degrees it is enough for dissolve lead. Precisely for this reason, to date the probes sent to the planet have managed to send data for no more than two hours, before succumbing to the extreme conditions of the surface. The main problem, in this case, is how to get energy: the very dense blanket of clouds that surrounds the planet makes it impossible to use panels solarand the batteries traditional they cannot survive those temperatures for long. NASA in the past has tried to circumvent the problem in many ways, going so far as to evaluate the ability to deliver energy from orbit wirelessly. But in the end, the solution may prove to be much simpler: simply build one drums able to work at almost 500 degrees of temperature.

That’s what the American company has in mind, if nothing else Advanced Thermal Batterieswhich in collaboration with the American space agency is working on the creation of a new type of battery designed to operate in the most extreme environments. The trick in this case lies in the materials used: the electrolyte on which the battery is based is in fact inert And solid at the temperatures we are used to here on Earth, and it becomes liquid and capable of producing energy only when exposed to the temperatures present on the surface of Venus. By optimizing their design, the engineers at Advanced Thermal Batteries they managed to create a battery capable of operating in Venusian temperatures for ben 118 days. A record on which NASA intends to base its next mission on the planet: that of landers Lisseor Long Lived In situ Solar System Explorer, which should reach Venus and remain active on the surface for at least two months, collecting data on the composition of the atmosphere and on the Venusian weather. The conditional, unfortunately, in this case is more than ever a must, given that the mission was born in collaboration with the Russian space agencyand that with the current international tensions it is not clear if and how the space collaborations between NASA and Roscosmos will proceed.

Past missions

The relative proximity of Venusand the profound similarities to our planet (size and composition are almost the same) have made it a objective priority since the dawn of space exploration. And as per tradition, during the Cold War the planet was the scene of challenges between the Americans and the Soviets. The first to reach Venus were the Americans, with the probe Mariner 2 who made a flyby of the planet in 1962revealing with his analyzes the almost total absence of a field magneticand the very high surface temperature.

In the 1967 it was then the turn of the sovietswhich after several failed missions in previous years, were the first to let their probes in in the atmosphere of Venusstudying its composition with the missions of the program Venera. And thus managing to land a landers on the surface, during the mission Venera 7, which marked both the first landing on another planet and the first transmission of data from another planet to Earth. With Venera 9therefore, also the first photo of the surface of Venus (and the first ever taken on another planet), obtained in 1975 thanks to a lander capable of surviving well 53 minutes in the harsh conditions of the Venusian atmosphere.