Scientific American - February 2019

February 2019, ScientificAmerican.com 63

the generation of scientists who launched Magellan is

growing old and retiring. A mission to Venus now

would allow researchers to pass the torch to a new

generation who can bring us closer to understanding

why our planetary sister evolved so differently from

Earth. Perhaps we may even discover what conditions

are necessary for the emergence of life.

How do the conditions on Venus, such as its tempera-
ture, affect this tectonic activity? And are some sur-
face features we see, such as the crinkles scientists call
tesserae, remnants of a past, wet epoch?
In 2019 NASA will solicit proposals for the next
group of its smallest class of space probes, called Dis-
covery missions. Another of us (Smrekar) and Dyar
are leading one proposed mission called VERITAS
(Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography,
and Spectroscopy), which would map the surface in
much greater detail than ever before. It would carry
several instruments, including an imaging camera
and spectrometer, to provide orders-of-magnitude-
level improvements in topography resolution and the
first-of-its-kind global composition map of the planet.
Other Venus mission proposals are also in the works,
and we should find out the final results in 2021.
Nearly 30 years after Magellan arrived at Venus,

MORE TO EXPLORE

Was Venus the First Habitable World of Our Solar System? M. J. Way et al. in Geophysical Research

Letters, Vol. 43, No. 16, pages 8376–8383; August 28, 2016.

Experimental and Obser vational Evidence for Plume-Induced Subduc tion on Venus. A. Davaille

in Nature Geoscience, Vol. 10, pages 349–355; May 2017.

FROM OUR ARCHIVES

Global Climate Change on Venus. Mark A. Bullock and David H. Grinspoon; March 1999.

 cientificamericanc m ma a ine  a

© 2019 Scientific American