While everyone seems to be racing to get all over Mars, NASA is planning 2 new missions to Venus. In its first look at our closest planetary neighbour in more than 30 years, the US space agency yesterday said the DAVINCI+ and VERITAS missions will be launched between 2028 and 2030 to understand how it became an “inferno-like world”. Last year the planet made headlines when scientists found a gas called phosphine that pointed to the possibility of life there, and that pushed it up the priority list. DAVINCI+ will measure the composition of Venus’ dense atmosphere to understand how it evolved. And VERITAS will map the Venusian surface to know why/how it’s so different to Earth. “These missions will tell us about the planet from the clouds in its sky though the volcanoes on its surface all the way down to its very core,” said NASA’s Discovery Program Scientist Tom Wagner. Mars was so yesterday…

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