Venus Express, for instance, has been seeking signs of active volcanism on the planet. "It's been looking for volcanically generated gases, volcanic plumes in the lower atmosphere," says Wilson, adding that the craft's findings have import beyond the present state of the cloudy, scorching planet. "We can start to understand the wider [question] of how Venus and Mars and the Earth evolved over their lifetimes. They were all created at the same time out of the same material, so how is it that these initially similar planets have evolved so differently?"

Unfortunately, sending another lander to Venus to build on the Venera tradition would be pricey. "The main concept that's been on the drawing table for a long-lived lander is you have to take an air conditioner to keep your electronics cool," Wilson says. "And you don't have all that much sunlight, so then you take a nuclear power source to run your cooler." A cheaper way to answer some big questions, he says, would be to deploy a balloon in Venus's clouds, as was done during the Vega missions of the 1980s. At the right altitude temperatures would be a balmy 20 degrees Celsius. "Not too hot, not too cold, and atmospheric pressure of half of one Earth atmosphere." A hypothetical astronaut, Wilson ventures, "could probably get away without even wearing a pressure suit. It's comfortable—except you're surrounded by poisonous sulfuric clouds."

Studying the surface from a perch in the clouds would be challenging, Wilson acknowledges, but a balloon mission could at least investigate how Venus's cloud chemistry works and taste the atmosphere to directly determine its composition. Perhaps by the next transit of Venus, in 2117, planetary scientists will have the answers to these questions and more.

6 Comments

1. 1. gooner 03:43 PM 6/8/12

   I wonder what would have been accomplished if the USSR and the US would have had a good relationship and had worked together at this time period on space exploration.

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2. 2. tharter in reply to gooner 04:37 PM 6/8/12

   Not much, they were all after one-upping each other!
   
   Hard to say really. Planetary science has been pretty darn amazing as it is. It is good to know more, but the universe isn't going away.

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3. 3. jtdwyer in reply to tharter 07:00 AM 6/9/12

   Right - it's unlikely either country would have invested much into space exploration if no PR benefit could be won... Might as well wonder about what Germany would have accomplished in space exploration if they had won WWII, since primarily subsets of top German scientists were critical to the success of both the U.S. & U.S.S.R. efforts (although the Nazis would have likely also lost interest).

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4. 4. djones44 04:26 PM 6/9/12

   Japan is sending missions to the Venusian atmosphere; their possible motive is to colonize Venus. Mars is a cold dead end, Venus can be a tropical, virgin paradise if it is gradually cooled down.

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5. 5. geojellyroll 06:42 PM 6/10/12

   USSR and USA co-operated?...not much if anything. The core science and technology infrastructure was in the development of metallurgy, rockets, propulsion systems, etc. to advance nuclear dominance...especially ICBM's, etc. The space accomplishments were immense but really just icing on the cake borrowing on a policy of Mutual Destruction.
   
   The International Space Station is what we got with 'co-operation'....over a hundred billion dollars to watch waving astronauts and to grow tomatoes in near Earth orbit.

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6. 6. Brahman35 in reply to djones44 01:09 AM 6/12/12

   smoke another one!

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