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DAVINCI+ on Wikipedia
NASA’s New DAVINCI+ mission to Venus
Jun 3, 2021
NASA has selected the DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble-gases, Chemistry and Imaging +) mission as part of its Discovery program, and it will be the first spacecraft to enter the Venus atmosphere since NASA’s Pioneer Venus in 1978 and USSR’s Vega in 1985.
Named for visionary Renaissance artist and scientist, Leonardo da Vinci, the DAVINCI+ mission will bring 21st-century technologies to the world next door. DAVINCI+ may reveal whether Earth’s sister planet looked more like Earth’s twin planet in a distant, possibly hospitable past with oceans and continents.
The mission combines a spacecraft, developed by Lockheed-Martin, and a descent probe, developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The spacecraft will map the cloud motions and surface composition of mountainous regions, including the Australia-sized Ishtar Terra. The descent probe will take a daring hour-long plunge through the massive and largely unexplored atmosphere to the surface, making detailed measurements of the atmosphere and surface the whole way down. These measurements include atmospheric samples and images that will allow scientists to deduce the planet’s history, its possible watery past, and trace gases as fingerprints of the planet’s inner workings. The probe will descend over Alpha Regio, an intriguing highland terrain known as a “tessera” standing nearly 10,000 feet tall above the surrounding plains, which might be a remnant of an ancient continent. All of these measurements will help connect Earth’s next door neighbor to similar planets orbiting other stars that may be observed with the James Webb Space Telescope.
The DAVINCI+ team spans NASA centers (Goddard Space Flight Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Langley Research Center, Ames Research Center), aerospace partners (Lockheed Martin), and Universities (University of Michigan) to deliver ground-breaking science during the late 2020’s and early 2030’s with a launch in 2029, flybys of Venus in 2030, probe-based measurements in June 2031. The information sent back to Earth will rewrite the textbooks and inspire the next generation of planetary scientists. The NASA Goddard led team includes Principal Investigator Jim Garvin and Deputy Principal Investigators Stephanie Getty and Giada Arney, as well as Project Manager Ken Schwer, lead Systems Engineer Michael Sekerak, and many others at Goddard, Lockheed Martin, and at other institutions. The team is excited to return NASA to Venus to address our sister planet’s long-standing mysteries!
The DAVINCI mission to Venus
Nov 9, 2021
Launching in 2029, NASA’s Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry and Imaging (DAVINCI) mission will bring a rich suite of instruments to Venus to address long standing questions about Earth’s sister planet. Some scientists think Venus may once have been more Earth-like in the past, with oceans and pleasant surface temperatures -- DAVINCI data will help us determine if this intriguing possibility is true. Clues to Venus’ mysterious past may be hidden in atmospheric gases or in surface rocks formed in association with ancient water in the planet’s mountainous highlands. During two flybys, the DAVINCI carrier, relay, and imaging spacecraft will collect data on the planet’s day side of unknown compounds that absorb ultraviolet light in the Venus upper atmosphere with an instrument called the Compact Ultraviolet to Visible Imaging Spectrometer (CUVIS); on the planet’s night side, the Venus Imaging System for Observational Reconnaissance (VISOR) will sense heat from Venus’ surface emerging from beneath the clouds to help us better understand the composition of diverse geological highlands regions across Venus. VISOR will also study clouds on the Venus day side in the ultraviolet, producing cloud motion movies.
Venus has a scorching surface hotter than your home oven, and a complex atmosphere 90 times thicker than Earth’s made mostly of carbon dioxide and with sulfuric acid clouds. Two years after launch, the DAVINCI descent sphere will by dropped by the carrier spacecraft into this extreme environment to provide new direct measurements of the Venus atmosphere, and to reveal a bird’s eye view of the surface below the clouds. The descent location, the Alpha Regio “tessera,” is a mountainous highland region whose rocks may hold clues to the planet’s mysterious past. The titanium sphere is designed to withstand the harsh conditions of the Venus environment while protecting the instruments nestled inside. The Venus Tunable Laser Spectrometer (VTLS) will measure key gases that offer clues to the planet’s past, including compounds that may hint at the possible history of past water. The Venus Mass Spectrometer (VMS) will study the atmosphere in detail, including noble gases and trace gases from 67 km to the near surface. The Venus Atmospheric Structure Investigation (VASI) will measure pressure, temperature, and winds throughout the descent. Peering through a transparent sapphire window at the bottom of the descent sphere, the Venus Descent Imager (VenDI) will map the 3-D topography and composition of Alpha Regio, with topographic resolution at up to sub-meter scales. Lastly, a student collaboration experiment called the Venus Oxygen Fugacity experiment (VfOx) will be mounted to the probe to measure oxygen in the deep atmosphere. Together, this set of data will help rewrite the textbooks on Venus and may even help us better understand Venus-like planets in other solar systems.
DAVINCI is a partnership between NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Lockheed Martin in Denver, Colorado, with instruments from NASA Goddard, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Malin Space Science Systems, and key supporting hardware from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and the University of Michigan.
NASA prepares to explore Venus with DAVINCI
Mar 1, 2023
Inspired by the Renaissance vision of Leonardo da Vinci, NASA is presently preparing its scientific return to Venus’ atmosphere and surface with a mission known as the “Deep Atmosphere of Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging” (DAVINCI).
The DAVINCI mission will “take the plunge” into Venus’ enigmatic history using an instrumented deep atmosphere probe spacecraft that will carry five instruments for measuring the chemistry and environments throughout the clouds and to the surface, while also conducting the first descent imaging of a mountain system on Venus known as Alpha Regio, which may represent an ancient continent. In addition, the DAVINCI mission includes two science flybys of Venus during which it will search for clues to mystery molecules in the upper cloud deck while also measuring the rock types in some of Venus highland regions.
All of these new and unique measurements will make the ‘exoplanet next door’ into a key place for understanding Earth and Venus sized exoplanets that may have similar histories to our sister planet. DAVINCI will pave the way for a series of missions by NASA and ESA in the 2030’s by opening the frontier as it searches for clues to whether Venus harbored oceans and how its atmosphere-climate system evolved over billions of years. DAVINCI’s science will address questions about habitability and how it could be “lost” as rocky planets evolve over time. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight center leads the DAVINCI Mission as the PI institution.
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