NASA has set the goal of bring a manned mission to Mars by the late 2030s or early 2040 and Elon Musk predicts that in a matter of ten years we will land on the red planet.
But for Dr. Noam Izenberg of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, things don’t have to be exactly this way. In fact, he suggests that perhaps it would be smarter to look at another of our neighbors in the Solar System before aspiring to manned exploration of Mars: Venus.
Why Venus?
“Nasa’s current paradigm is to go from the Moon to Mars. We try to defend Venus as an additional target on that path,” says Izenberg. And he’s not the only one who thinks this way.
What are your arguments? First of all, the proximity. The distance varies depending on the orbits, but NASA estimates that it ranges between 38.2 and 261 million kilometers for Venus, while for Mars, the US space agency speaks of between 54.6 and 401.4 million kilometers.
This means that we could make a manned trip to Venus in less time: instead of the up to three years that a round-trip expedition to Mars would take, a mission to Venus would last about a year.
This experience would allow us to know the planet better, but also would provide us with valuable learning about manned missions and prolonged explorations.
Another advantage of incorporating Venus into the plan is that, although it may seem like a detour, would reduce the time and fuel needed to reach Marsthanks to the use of the planet’s own gravity.
The goal of the mission to Venus could be independent or part of a final mission to the red planet. Still, “you would learn how to work in deep space, without committing to a full mission to Mars,” adds Izenberg.
The advantages of exploring Venus have also been discussed at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC).
And then, why doesn’t Venus even appear in the comics?
“Venus has a bad reputation because its surface is very difficult”, laments Izenberg.
The idea is not for humans to land on Venus, a planet with hellish pressure and temperature conditions and clouds of sulfuric acid, but rather to fly over its surface and, if possible, deploy probes and rovers to inspect the volcanoes and analyze their characteristics.
The expert’s reflections on the attractive possibility of a mission to Venus have been reflected in the report “Meeting with the Goddess”, edited together with NASA chief economist Alexander Macdonald. There, the valuable information that we could obtain stands out:
“There is every reason to believe that Venus will be an endless wonderland, with fascinating and mysterious sights and formations.”
— Noam Izenberg
Greater knowledge of Venus could help us understand why a planet seemingly similar to Earth in size, mass and distance from the sun presents such inhospitable conditions for life, valuable information that could contribute to our understanding of exoplanets.