NATURE - Budget pressures at NASA, specifically arising from the increasing costs of several planetary science mission programmes, have rendered the Venus orbiter VERITAS as collateral damage. Currently on subsistence funding, mission scientists worry about the impact of ongoing delays on Venus exploration.
Perpetually shrouded by dense, toxic clouds and sizzling with temperatures hot enough to melt lead, Venus is as hostile as you can possibly imagine (Fig. 1). That’s also why it has enchanted scientists for over 60 years.
Many wonder why our planetary sibling, perhaps once lush with water for billions of years, turned hellish while life on Earth bloomed and burgeoned. The planet next door is a warning sign, a sobering lesson that not every distant Earth-sized orb is kind toward life. Yet, we know little about it.
“It’s kind of outrageous,” says Stephen Kane, a planetary astrophysicist at University of California, Riverside. “If we can’t understand the nearest Earth-sized planet, which is the third brightest object in the sky, then what hope do we have for a planet we can’t see that’s 100 light years away?”