Venus is known as the “Earth’s Twin” because of the same size and mass. But unfortunately, its atmosphere is far from hospitable and somewhat of a hellscape.
The temperature on Venus is extremely hot, which is 482 Celsius and the surface pressure is 90 times of the earth.
Its runaway greenhouse effect trapped the solar radiation to the surface, increasing the temperature and pressure over time.
The team of researchers led by the University of California, Riverside conduct the study of Venus and its Venus-zone planet’s atmosphere.
Study of The Venus Zone Planets
The research team studies the venus zone planet or exo Venuses, which are exoplanets that lie within the Venus zone. Astronomers will use the exo venus atmosphere as an analog to study the venus extreme atmosphere.
The Planet could have maintained habitable surface conditions until one billion years ago.
Researchers still identifying what caused Venus to develop into a hellscape environment.
Venus and Earth hell atmosphere
Dr. Eddie Schwieterman, who is an Assistant Professor of Astrobiology at UC Riverside and co-author told that
“Oxygen is often considered a potential exoplanet biosignature because, on Earth today, it is almost entirely the result of photosynthetic life.
“However, one potential abiotic way of accumulating oxygen in a planetary atmosphere is through an extended runaway greenhouse. Water is brought to the upper atmosphere and split apart by UV photons from the star, which drives the escape of the light hydrogen and retention of the heavier oxygen from that H2O.”
The researchers used planetary and stellar data from the NASA Exoplanet archive to produce a catalog of 317 confirmed terrestrial exoplanets that orbit within the Venus zone.
Scientists did not take the exo venus planets that exist around the inner boundary of the Venus zone planets.
Because their atmosphere’s temperature is extreme.
Researchers then calculated the potential for follow-up studies, eight of which will be observed by the JWTT that’s includes GJ357 b, GJ 1132 b, TRAPPIST-1 b, TRAPPIST- 1c, TOI-776 b, TOI-776 c, LTT 1145 A b, and L 98-59 b.
Professor Dr. Stephen Kane of Planetary Astrophysics at UC Riverside “I would say that the most important targets are those that have multiple terrestrial planets within the Venus Zone.
“These systems allow us to carry out comparative planetology where the planets are the same age and likely have similar bulk abundances. Two examples of such systems are L 98-59 and TRAPPIST-1, both of which also allow us to investigate the effects of M dwarf activity on planetary atmosphere retention.”
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NASA and Other Space Agencies Next Mission to Venus
VERITAS Spacecraft
There are no recent missions going on to Venus. The last mission was the Magellan mission, which was in the 1990s.
But there are a few missions including NASA’s VERITAS and DAVINCI+, the Russian Federal Space Agency’s Venera-D, and the European Space Agency Envision.
These missions help scientists to provide them accurate data about venus’s atmosphere. It also helps them to study the exoVenus planet’s atmosphere, by improving the climate models of exoVenuses which could help scientist predict their climates.
Colby Ostberg, a Ph.D. student at UC Riverside said that “Exoplanet research provides a pathway to learning about Venus and its past, but the accuracy of models used to estimate the surface conditions of Venus-like exoplanets are entirely contingent on our knowledge of the Venus here in our solar system”
“The NASA discovery mission, VERITAS, will be going to Venus and will be an essential component to Venus and exoVenus research, and also to our understanding of the Earth. But in November 2022, its launch was delayed an additional 3 years, which will have a widespread impact on a variety of fields beyond just Venusian science. It is important that the scientific community shows support for VERITAS and promotes its importance in hopes that its delay is shortened.”
Unfortunately, NASA dropped the budget request for its VERITAS mission from a projected $56.7 million to just $1.5 million, it is sad for the team members.
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