Gleaming naked-eye apparition, Venus has captivated civilization since antiquity, garnering epithets of divine power and beauty-- Chac-Ek (“Great Star”) in Mayan, Jin-xing (“Golden Planet”) in Chinese, Phosphoros (“Lightbringer”) in Greek. The telescope revealed Venus as a cloud-swaddled realm, inviting speculation of a tropical alien Eden. In truth, Venus harbors a sprawling hellscape-- hotter than molten lead, lashed by sulfuric acid rain, beneath a crushing atmosphere ninety times denser than Earth’s. This knowledge derives from an extensive history of interplanetary exploration.
It started with the Soviet Union’s Venera space program in the 1960s. Over three decades, the Soviets achieved several Venusian precedents-- atmospheric descent and soft landing, surface sampling and audiovisual recording, and global radar mapping. The United States also initiated descent and orbiter missions, Pioneer Venus and Mariner, to parallel the Soviets. Though Cold War antagonists, the two superpowers occasionally collaborated, corroborating one another’s findings. By the time of their last missions, Venera-Galleya and Magellan, both nations had significantly advanced mankind’s understanding of the Venusian environment.
A while later, Europe and Japan inaugurated their own orbiter expeditions-- Venus Express in 2005, and Akatsuki in 2010. Venus Express scouted polar vortices in the southern hemisphere, metallic snow on mountaintops, and bolts of lightning. Akatsuki spotted vast gravity waves and atmospheric super-rotation; it remains the sole operational probe. But not for much longer.
A flurry of missions is slated for next decade, starting with VERITAS, DAVINCI, and VAMP. These US probes will search for evidence of past water oceans and possible aerial microbes. Europe will join the fray with EnVision, a complementary orbiter that will investigate evidence of active volcanism. Building on Soviet exploratory tradition, Russia will launch Venera-D, an orbiter/lander mission to further study Venusian weather, topography, and geochemistry.
More immediately, India will inaugurate Shukrayaan-1 next year, an orbiter/descent mission to probe the Venusian subsurface and ionosphere. A private sector first, MIT’s Rocket Lab will launch its Photon descent probe later this spring. It will analyze the atmosphere for biochemical markers.
Some obstacles lie ahead. Originally, VAMP and Venera-D were intended to voyage together. However, the Russian space agency Roscosmos later dismissed the idea, responding to US denouncement of the war in Ukraine. Recently, NASA froze funding for VERITAS, obliquely citing personnel staffing concerns. Space exploration is not immune to political and economic forces.
So far, Venusian exploration has been unmanned. But NASA may change that in the 2040s, with its HAVOC proposal to establish crewed aerostats in the cooler upper atmosphere-- a critical steppingstone to future colonization.
Despite its nightmare semblance, Venus still captivates the imagination— and will for a long time to come.
You’ve been listening to Western Slopes Skies, produced by the Black Canyon Astronomical Society and KVNF Community Radio. This feature was written and voiced by Michael T. Williams.
