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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Venus Express _ Vulcanism On Venus

Posted by: nprev Oct 21 2016, 11:18 PM

Interesting article combining data from several missions (including VEX & Magellan) that shows tentative evidence for a recent lava flow.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/more-evidence-for-volcanoes-on-venus/


Posted by: JRehling Oct 22 2016, 03:27 PM

Very exciting stuff. Either of the Venus-themed Discovery mission candidates could make discoveries that augment this, with VERITAS mapping, surely, many lava flows and DAVINCI measuring atmospheric composition to the extent that the latest belches of volcanic gas would be part of the mix. DAVINCI will also perform descent imaging of one location although they propose landing on the oldest terrain on the planet, a tessera region, not the newest.

If the pair of Venus missions is chosen, we'd suddenly get a nice leap in our understanding of Venus, almost like a Venus version of the Viking missions. Having two missions selected has been mentioned as a possibility, and the synergy between the two missions is undeniable, whereas any other pair of missions would be essentially unrelated. (Three of the proposals target asteroids, but not the same asteroids.)

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