While Mars is the intended target for humanity’s first crewed mission to another planet, a group of experts is now advocating for Earth’s sister planet Venus to get that accolade.
However, the planet is practically burning up. It is hot enough to melt lead, is home to clouds of sulphuric acid a chemical capable of causing severe skin burns, and has a crushing atmospheric pressure.
Why then, do these experts want to forego Mars and visit Venus?
As per a report by the Guardian quoting research presented at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Paris last week, there are actually plus points to this.
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Firstly, Venus is nearer. While a roundtrip to Mars is estimated to take around three years, to and fro Venus would only take one year.
Second, while walking on the planet’s surface is a distant dream, and an unlivable experience, a flyby can potentially provide might offer the essential experience of a lengthy deep-space mission as a prelude to reaching Mars.
One of the supporters of the Venus flyby, Dr Noam Izenberg of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, claimed that Venus “gets a bad rap because it’s got such a difficult surface environment.”
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“Moon to Mars is the current NASA paradigm,” he said adding that they’re attempting to justify Venus as an additional objective along that route. He says that a Venus flyby makes sense as performing a slingshot or gravity assist around Earth’s sister planet, could shorten the journey time and fuel needed to reach the red planet despite the fact that Venus is in the “wrong” direction.
However, not everyone is sold on the idea.
“It’s really not a nice place to go. It’s a hellish environment and the thermal challenges for a human mission would be quite considerable,” says Prof. Andrew Coates of UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory.
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He claimed that although Venus was rightfully the focus of scientific inquiry, “a human flyby really wouldn’t add very much.”
Since the discovery of hundreds of exoplanets scientific curiosity about Venus has grown as the finding raises the question of how many of these planets may be habitable. Now, scientists want to know how and why Venus, a planet so similar to our own in size, mass, and distance from the sun, ended up with hellish surface conditions.
(With inputs from agencies)
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