Why Is It So Hard To Get To Venus?
Even though Venus is the closest planet to Earth in terms of distance, the last time a space agency sent a space mission to Venus was more than 30 years ago.
Why do space agencies always seem to prioritize Mars over Venus?
Is sending space missions to Venus challenging, or is there another reason we sent a spacecraft to this planet for more than 30 years?
Why Mars before Venus?
When space agencies started to explore the solar system, they began with the celestial bodies closest to Earth, starting with the most prominent and brightest body of the night, the Moon.
A difficult challenge to overcome
Even though the Venera program and the Mariner probes managed to reach Venus in the 1960s, getting a probe to descend toward the planet and land took a lot of work.
So, to make a spacecraft capable of landing on Venus, we would have to send it piece by piece into low Earth orbit and assemble it in space, just as was done with the International Space Station.
Too close to the Sun
The other factor that makes it difficult for spacecraft to get very close to Venus is the proximity to the Sun, not just because of the heat but because of the acceleration.
Venus’s orbit is 28 percent closer to the Sun than Earth’s. For this reason, a spacecraft traveling toward Venus must travel more than 41 million kilometers into the Sun’s gravitational well, losing part of its potential energy that is transformed into kinetic energy.
New missions to Venus: Davinci+ and Veritas
Although Venus is no longer a planet where we look for life, it is still a fascinating planet that shares many similarities with our planet.
Currently, the discoveries and findings that have been made of the second closest planet to the Sun indicate that it is very likely that in the past, Venus was a much friendlier planet to life and even had large bodies of water like Earth.
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