Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, And Spectroscopy

VERITAS studies the surface and interior of Venus with a powerful new generation of scientific tools – the first NASA mission to return there since the 1990s. The mission was selected for flight in 2021 as part of NASA's Discovery program. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is responsible for mission management, operations, and navigation.

How did Venus become a sulfurous inferno, while our home planet, Earth, evolved to become the only known abode for life? Of all known planets, moons, and newly discovered exoplanets, Venus is the most Earth-like in terms of size, overall composition, and energy from its star.

Although not currently habitable, Venus lies within the Sun’s "Goldilocks zone," and may have been habitable before Earth was. What caused Venus to evolve into its present hostile state – devoid of the ocean, magnetic field, and plate tectonics that have enabled Earth to become so hospitable for life in the long-term?

VERITAS addresses these compelling questions by determining how Earth’s twin diverged, enabling breakthroughs in our understanding of terrestrial planet evolution and habitability in our own solar system and beyond. It will be followed by NASA's DAVINCI mission and ESA's EnVision mission, leading the way into a period of intense focus on Earth's next-door neighbor planet.

VERITAS will return richly detailed radar maps of Venus' surface, vastly improving the resolution of maps made by the Magellan mission in the 1990s. From these data, scientists will make the first global, high-resolution maps of radar imagery and topography and the first maps of regions where geologic processes are actively deforming the surface in the present day.

VERITAS will also produce the first maps of surface rock composition and constrain surface weathering by peering through the planet's dense atmosphere using spectral windows in the infrared portion of the EM spectrum. VERITAS will search for the thermal signatures of active volcanism and the chemical signatures of recent volcanism.

Science Goals

• What processes shape rocky planet evolution?
• What geological processes are currently active on Venus?
• Is there evidence of past or present water on Venus?

Venus Science Objectives

The following questions convey the main science objectives the VERITAS team will pursue with the mission:

• What are the composition and origin of the major geologic terrains on Venus?
• Is volcanism there steady or catastrophic in nature?
• What are the major tectonic processes that shape Venus? Is subduction currently active?
• What are the size and state of the core? How viscous is the mantle?
• Does Venus’ surface have active deformation and volcanism? Are there signatures of recent volcanism?
• Are Venus’ plateaus like Earth’s continents?
• Is there water deep in the interior of Venus, and does it reach the atmosphere via volcanism?

International contributions

• The Italian Space Agency (ASI) provides the spacecraft's integrated deep space transponders, high-gain antenna, and star trackers.
• The German Aerospace Center (DLR) provides the VEM instrument, along with algorithms to support VISAR ground- and onboard-data processing.
• The French Space Agency (CNES) provides two flight-model Ka-band traveling-wave tube amplifiers (TWTAs) and a repair kit for the spacecraft telecommunications subsystem.