Mission to VENUS to scan whether Earth’s ‘evil twin’ once hosted life is announced by ESA
THE EUROPEAN Space Agency has revealed it will be sending a probe called EnVision to study the planet Venus.
This announcement comes one week after Nasa revealed it will be sending its Veritas and Davinci+ probes towards the second planet from the Sun.
The trio will work together to make the most of the missions.
Launches could begin at the end of this decade.
EnVision is expected to arrive at Venus in 2034 or 2035.
Venus is often described as Earth's "evil twin" because it's rocky and a very similar size to Earth but also extremely hot and dry.
"It's geologically active, we think. And if that's the case we want to know why Venus didn't turn out like Earth?
"Or, perhaps, the even better question is: why didn't Earth develop like Venus? How come we got the habitable climate?"
EnVision will be focussed on the nature of Venus.
Nasa's missions will be making maps and looking for evidence of geological activity like volcanoes.
EnVision will study the composition of rock to try and work out if there was ever water on the planet.
It will focus on areas that are considered the equivalent of Earth's continents.
They're called "tesserae" and EnVision could work out whether they were ever separated by water.
Previous missions suggest there are hundreds of thousands of volcanoes on the planet but we don't know how many are still active today.
The budget for the mission is around €550million (£470million).
Venus – what you need to know
Here's what you need to know...
- Venus is nearly the same size as Earth with a diameter of 12,104 km compared to Earth's 12,742 km
- Venus is so hot that the surface temperature can reach 471 °C
- It rotates in the opposition direction to most planets, potentially due to an asteroid collision
- The first man-made aircraft landed on Venus in 1996
- Venus is the hottest planet in the Solar System
- It is the second brightest object in the sky at night
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