Veritas Mission Selected to explore Venus

Caleb Fassett (ST13) is a Co-I on the recently selected VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy; PI Sue Smrekar/JPL) mission, which is one of two new Discovery missions that will explore Venus.  Fassett will be using the new topography and radar imaging VERITAS obtains to understand Venus’s sparse impact crater record and geological history.  The mission as a whole will help understand why Venus evolved so differently than Earth, despite being similar-sized planets. VERITAS will produce an unprecedented topography dataset for Venus, as well as explore whether there are active volcanoes on its surface.  It will also use Venus’s infrared emission to map its surface rock types, which are largely unknown at present.

Venus
Venus
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