Why is Venus not like Earth? New space mission aims to discover

(CNN) — A satellite designed to study Venus from top to bottom and a trio of spacecraft that navigate by gravitational waves are the two latest missions pursued by the European Space Agency.

The agency previously selected the missions, but the official adoption process means contractors will be chosen so construction can begin to bring the mission designs to life.

ESA will partner with NASA for both missions, which will launch from the European Spaceport in French Guiana in the 2030s.

“These pioneering missions will take us to the next level in two exceptionally exciting areas of space science and will put European researchers at the forefront of these fields,” ESA Science Director Carol Mundell said in a statement.

A new journey to Venus

The Envision Venus rover will study that planet in unprecedented detail, from the inner core to the top of its atmosphere, to help astronomers understand why this hot, toxic world didn’t form like Earth. Venus is similar in size and distance from the Sun to Earth, and some researchers believe the planet may have once had a climate similar to Earth.

But “Twin Earth” is now an inhospitable world, with surface temperatures capable of melting lead and intense, crushing pressure resulting from the runaway greenhouse effect.

An artist’s impression shows Envision after the spacecraft reached Venus orbit. ESA/VR2Planets/Damia Bouik

Scientists hope the mission will answer important questions about Venus, including how the world evolved over time and whether it ever had oceans, how geologically active it is and why the uncontrolled greenhouse effect began.

Envision is expected to launch in 2031 and will be the first mission to collect data on how Venus’ atmosphere, surface and interior interact. The mission is based on ESA’s first spacecraft, Venus Express, sent to map the planet’s atmosphere, which orbited Venus from 2005 to 2014.

After a 15-month trip to Venus, Envision will spend 15 more months orbiting the planet and flying through its atmosphere.

The satellite will have two deployable solar panels and a set of instruments that can observe Venus’s surface and atmosphere, as well as probe beneath the planet’s dense, dark clouds with radar and radio wavelengths.

It is one of several missions in development to study Venus, including NASA’s Davinci and Veritas missions that will launch in the next decade.

Unraveling the history of the universe

When massive celestial objects like black holes collide, they send waves called gravitational waves that spread throughout the universe and reveal information about its history.

These waves were detected by ground-based observatories, but the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, or LISA, will be the first space observatory to study the cosmic phenomenon. Ground-based observatories are limited in detection by size and sensitivity, so they can only capture high-frequency gravitational waves.

But a space observatory could be much larger, and LISA would be able to detect waves ranging from tiny to giant, as well as low-frequency waves emitted by supermassive black holes merging at the centers of giant galaxies.

The illustration shows the laser triangle configuration of the LISA mission, which uses three spacecraft to detect gravitational waves coming from two black holes. He

The LISA mission consists of three spacecraft that will fly 2.5 million kilometers (about 1.6 million miles) apart in a triangle shape. Free-floating gold cubes inside each spacecraft will be used to detect gravitational waves.

The mission was born out of the success of LISA Pathfinder, which ESA launched in 2015 to demonstrate the technology on which the LISA mission will rely to search for cosmic waves in the universe.

The golden cubes inside each spacecraft will help the LISA mission detect gravitational waves. He

The new mission will look for evidence of black hole mergers throughout the universe, study the formation of thousands of pairs of stars called binary systems, look inside dense star clusters within galaxies and try to measure the speed at which black holes are expanding across the universe. Expands. And LISA will be used to study the history of the universe by detecting the first black holes that formed after the Big Bang.

Together, the three spacecraft will fly past Earth as it orbits the Sun, about 50 million kilometers from our planet. The agency expects the mission to last for four years, with the possibility of extension.