2024-10-18 08:45:00
NASA’s DAVINCI space mission, scheduled to launch in the early 2030s, aims to investigate whether Venus ever had continents and oceans of water like Earth, as well as perhaps other conditions necessary for existence .
Venus, a rocky planet like Earth and only slightly smaller in size and mass, is only slightly closer to the Sun than Earth (about 70% of the distance between us and the Sun). If we took the current state of the Earth as a reference, then Venus, due to its proximity to the Sun, would be only slightly warmer than our world and most likely a good part of it would be habitable.
But, unfortunately, a colossal and unstoppable greenhouse effect has taken over this twin of the Earth, vaporized its seas and every other body of water, raised the temperature beyond what life can tolerate and has transformed into the hell it is today.
Now, the temperatures on its surface are so high that, for example, lead cannot exist in a solid state. The charred landscape is darkened by clouds of sulfuric acid. The thick atmosphere composed mostly of carbon dioxide has more than 90 times the pressure of Earth’s atmosphere, causing its “air” near the surface to behave more like a water-like fluid than a gas.
Many experts believe that before this monstrous greenhouse effect occurred, Venus could have been very similar to Earth and potentially suitable for life, perhaps for more than a billion years.
DAVINCI, consisting of a flyby vehicle and a descent probe, will focus on a mountainous region called Alpha Regio, a possible ancient continent.
Alfa Regio is one of the most suggestive points of Venus. Its terrain is similar in appearance to mountainous areas on Earth. DAVINCI will be the first mission to explore this terrain in detail and map its topography.
Although a few spacecraft passed through Venus’ atmosphere between 1970 and 1985, the DAVINCI probe will, if all goes well, be the first to thoroughly photograph this intriguing terrain, imaged from beneath Venus’ thick, opaque clouds .
The challenge is not easy. And not just because no spacecraft have passed through Venus’ atmosphere in decades and because that atmosphere tends to crush or melt its space visitors. One of the challenges is that little is known about the terrain on which the ship will land. Another is how to get sharp images in such a dense atmosphere.
To mitigate the problem of data scarcity on the ground, scientists leading the DAVINCI mission began by using modern data analysis techniques to analyze data from missions to Venus dating back decades. Its goal is to achieve an arrival on our neighboring planet by knowing the terrain in as much detail as possible. That way, scientists will be able to make the most of the probe’s descent time to gather new information that will help answer long-standing questions about Venus’ evolutionary trajectory and why it diverged dramatically from Earth’s.
Between 1990 and 1994, NASA’s Magellan space probe, orbiting Venus, obtained radar and altimetry images of the surface, thus mapping the topography of Alfa Regio. Recently, the DAVINCI mission team looked for more details in these maps, so scientists applied new techniques to analyze data from Magellan’s radar altimeter. They then integrated this data with radar images taken three times from the former Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and used computer vision models to sift through the data and fill information gaps at new scales (less than 1 kilometer).
As a result, scientists increased the resolution of the Alpha Regio maps tenfold.
New and more detailed version of a map of the Alpha Regio region of Venus. To create the map, the DAVINCI science team reanalyzed, more efficiently, radar altimeter data obtained by NASA’s Magallanes space probe in the early 1990s, integrating it with other radar data collected on three occasions by ‘Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Finally, it used computer vision models to examine graphical information and fill information gaps. The colors on the map represent topography, with dark blue identifying low elevations and brown identifying high elevations. The red ellipse marks the area where the DAVINCI descent probe will descend as it collects data from the environment on its way to the surface. (Image: Jim Garvin/NASA’s Godard Space Flight Center)
The DAVINCI probe will begin photographing Alfa Regio, with the highest resolution so far, once it descends below the planet’s clouds, starting from around 40 kilometers altitude. But even there, gases in the atmosphere scatter light, just as they do at ground level, so these images will appear blurry.
DAVINCI scientists are working on a solution. Scientists recently reanalyzed data from old images of Venus using a new artificial intelligence technique that can sharpen the images and use them to perform calculations to create three-dimensional topographic maps. Ultimately, this technique will help the mission team optimize DAVINCI images and maps of the Alpha Regio mountains. The improved images will provide scientists with the most detailed view of Venus’ surface ever obtained (just under 1 meter per pixel). And perhaps this will allow us to identify ravines of fluvial origin, river beds and even rocks, for the first time in the history of exploration of Venus. (Fountain: NCYT by Amazings)
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