Scientists have found some of the strongest evidence yet of volcanic activity on Venus. Since this planet is so close to Earth and originally had water on its surface, one of the big questions was why the landscape looks hellish if Earth is habitable. Learning more about its volcanic activity may help explain its evolution, and that of Earth.
Scientists have known that Venus is covered in volcanoes, but it has long been debated whether any of them are still active. By examining radar images of the planet’s surface collected by NASA’s Magellan spacecraft between 1992 and 1992, we found that at least one of them likely was. Mars’ largest volcano has changed shape between two of his images taken eight months apart, suggesting an eruption or magma flow beneath the crater. Scientists reported their discovery on March 15th. chemistry1 They were presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Woodlands, Texas on the same day.
It’s an “astonishing discovery,” says astronomer Darby Dyar of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Dyar, who is also a deputy principal investigator on his VERITAS mission to Venus, which is overseen by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., said the space research community is getting a sense of how Venus is doing. It’s one step closer to understanding how it works, he added. “The whole question of whether there is active volcanic activity on the surface of Venus is plagued by a paucity of data,” she adds.
hell planet
Gathering evidence that the planet is volcanically active has not been easy. Venus’ thick atmosphere (100 times the mass of Earth’s her) and high temperature (450ºC) make it difficult for rovers and other spacecraft to explore its surface. So far, the most reliable data scientists have collected comes from the Magellan spacecraft.
Robert Herrick, a geophysicist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Scott Hensley, a JPL radar scientist who is also part of the VERITAS team, analyzed full-resolution radar images captured by Magellan in areas of suspected volcanic activity. Did.
The challenge was for Magellan to image the planet in three different cycles over a 24-month mission. During each cycle, the radar was pointed at a different angle to the surface of Venus. To look for surface changes over time, scientists had to overlay images at different angles to find and line up topographical overlaps.
Herrick likens the problem to flying over the Grand Canyon in Arizona from multiple directions and trying to map its surface while looking at the canyon walls on the other side. “Trying to find the same thing in these images is a little more difficult,” he says.
Additional layers of complexity were added due to the lower resolution of the Magellan image. “The football field is where he sees the surface, which is one pixel,” he adds.
This worries Scott King, a geophysicist at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg who studies Venus. He questions whether the images are strong enough evidence to convince skeptics that Venus has volcanic activity. says.
Herrick and Hensley acknowledge this limitation of their data. However, they also say they are not aware of a comparable event on Earth that could have caused the observed changes without volcanic activity, but rule out the possibility that something else is the cause. I can not do it.
It’s not hard for King to believe that the planet has volcanic activity. But he hopes future missions to Venus, including VERITAS, will provide the data needed to convince everyone.
the lost planet
However, VERITAS is behind, so King may be waiting longer than he originally thought. NASA said he was due to start the mission in 2028, but to deal with the delay of Psyche, another mission to study metal-rich asteroids orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter, NASA had to reallocate funds. NASA currently has no funding plans for VERITAS for the next few years, and the mission is scheduled to begin by 2031, should funding recover.
Launching VERITAS after 2030 could cause problems for other missions, Dyar said. Ideally, topographical data collected by VERITAS will provide NASA’s DAVINCI and European Space Agency’s EnVision with information that will help them find better target areas they plan to explore. would have provided DAVINCI, scheduled to launch in 2029, aims to drop a probe into the Venusian atmosphere, and EnVision, scheduled to launch in the early 2030s, aims to acquire high-resolution radar images of the surface of Venus. increase.
Studying Venus not only helps researchers better understand how Earth works, but it could also help them learn more about the exoplanets outside our solar system. “We’re discovering hundreds and thousands of exoplanets,” says Dyer. And many of them appear to resemble Venus, she added.
Many space missions are targeting Mars these days, but overall, Venus looks a lot more Earth-like than Mars. Herrick hopes the new discovery will motivate people to look to Venus and launch her VERITAS on time. “Venus is just Earth’s brother,” he says.
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on March 15, 2023.
