NASA embarks on a crewed conceptual mission called Venus, the high-altitude Venus operational concept



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The upper atmosphere of Venus is as close to Earth as we are going to enter the solar system, and NASA hopes to send crewed HAVOC missions in the future to explore the higher regions of the planet.

NASA is currently working on a crewed concept mission on the Venus planet, called the High Altitude Operational Concept and Venus (HAVOC), but that may not be exactly what you think at first.

When the writers wrote about Venus in the early twentieth century, they often described it as a lush tropical paradise of the kind that might be suitable for a summer vacation. In 1950, the Hayden Planetarium of the American Natural History Museum is even away from taking reservations for lucky people who were interested in visiting the planet as space tourists, according to Popular science.

However, nowadays, no one has their eyes fixed on Venus, and scientists know that it is a severe master whose surface temperature reaches 460 ° C (860 ° F), which would make you melt faster provided that. if you were on Mercury. However, NASA does not plan to land on the planet, but wants to explore its dense atmosphere.

To this end, their HAVOC project will begin with small missions that will likely lead to longer missions, although NASA has not yet announced a date for Venus. If you're wondering if we have the technology to send us to Venus to learn more about its current atmosphere, you can rest easy, because the answer to this question is a firm yes. In fact, with good airships, NASA should be able to fly over the upper atmosphere of Venus for a while.

As shocking as it may seem, the upper atmosphere of Venus is as close as we will be able to find an area as similar to the Earth in the solar system, at least as far as the planets of the Milky Way. In areas of the planet's atmosphere between 50 and 60 km, the temperature and pressure are very similar to the areas found in the Earth's lower atmosphere. And with the pressure of Venus at 55 km, which is half of what you would find at sea level on Earth, astronauts would not even need to wear a protective suit. Nor would they have to worry about isolating themselves because the temperatures would be only between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius.

With NASA's HAVOC project, the planned spacecraft would be propelled by the wind and could contain gas mixtures such as nitrogen and oxygen that would make the ship floating. Although the radars of the American mission Magellan have already mapped the surface of Venus, only a few areas of the planet's surface have been visited, all by Soviet probes. It is these probes of the 1970s that provided us with the only images of the surface of Venus.

Because we still know relatively little about Venus, it is hoped that with NASA's future HAVOC plans, scientists will one day understand a lot more about this enigmatic planet by probing its upper atmosphere through missions with crew.

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