Skip to main content

NASA video shows you what it’s like to plunge through Venus’ atmosphere

NASA is planning its first robotic explorers to Venus in over 30 years, with the announcement this summer of the DAVINCI+ and VERITAS missions. Now, NASA has shown what one of those missions will be facing with the release of a video visualization of the DAVINCI probe plunging through the Venusian atmosphere.

The DAVINCI Mission to Venus

Set to launch in 2029, DAVINCI will investigate the origin and development of Venus and why it diverged from Earth. It will begin its mission with two gravity assist flybys of the planet, during which it will study the tops of Venus’s thick clouds and look at the heat which emanates from the side of the planet facing away from the sun.

A visualization of the atmosphere and surface of Venus, where the DAVINCI probe will be sent to explore. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

With two flybys completed, the craft will release its atmospheric descent probe which will drop through the atmosphere, collecting data and taking pictures as it goes. The atmosphere of Venus is an inhospitable place, with high temperatures, crushing pressures, and clouds of sulfuric acid to contend with, so the probe will measure all of these factors plus others like winds and atmospheric composition. Learning more about the composition of the atmosphere can help researchers learn about Venus’s history, and perhaps even find evidence of ancient water.

As the probe approaches the surface it will capture images of a region called the Alpha Regio tessera, snapping pictures of the rock formations to find out what they are made of and whether water once flowed across the planet’s surface. All of this may be able to tell us whether Venus was ever habitable.

“Venus is a ‘Rosetta stone’ for reading the record books of climate change, the evolution of habitability, and what happens when a planet loses a long period of surface oceans,” said James Garvin, principal investigator for DAVINCI+ at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, when the mission was first announced. “But Venus is ‘hard’ since every clue is hidden behind the curtain of a massive opaque atmosphere with inhospitable conditions for surface exploration, so we have to be clever and bring our best ‘tools of science’ to Venus in innovative ways with missions like DAVINCI+.

“That is why we named our mission ‘DAVINCI+’ after Leonardo da Vinci’s inspired and visionary Renaissance thinking that went beyond science to connect to engineering, technology, and even art.”

Editors' Recommendations

Georgina Torbet
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Virgin Galactic video shows what’s in store for first commercial passengers
virgin galactic sets date for final test of rocket plane vss unity flight

Virgin Galactic is just hours away from launching its first-ever commercial flight to the edge of space.

Thursday's mission comes after years of testing that included a string of setbacks, the most significant of which involved the tragic death of test pilot Michael Alsbury in a crash in 2014.

Read more
The art and science of aerobraking: The key to exploring Venus
Rendering of a a spacecraft slowing down in the Venus atmosphere.

The decade of Venus is almost upon us. With three upcoming Venus missions planned from NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), we’re on the cusp of learning more about our neighboring planet than ever before.

But we won’t only be learning about planetary science. This time we’ll also be learning how to control a spacecraft in an alien atmosphere, thanks to two missions — ESA’s EnVision and NASA’s VERITAS — which are set to use a new technique called aerobraking to get their spacecraft into the right orbit for them to do their science.

Read more
NASA readies for its second all-private mission to ISS
Axiom Space's Ax-2 crew.

NASA, in partnership with Axiom Space and SpaceX, is making final preparations for the second all-private mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

The four Ax-2 crewmembers will travel to the station aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule launched by a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Read more