Colloquium: Exploring Venus’s atmosphere: current knowledge and future missions
A new era in the exploration of our neighboring planet is approaching in the coming decades, thanks to the selection of three missions: DAVINCI and VERITAS by NASA, and EnVision by ESA/NASA. Understanding how Venus and Earth started so similarly but became such different worlds remains one of the major open questions in planetary science. Studying Venus is therefore essential to understanding the links between planetary evolution and the habitability of terrestrial planets, including those beyond our Solar System.
EnVision is scheduled to launch in late 2035 and will be the first mission to investigate Venus simultaneously from its inner core to its upper atmosphere, characterizing the interactions between its upper and lower atmosphere, surface and subsurface, and deep interior.
This talk will focus on our current understanding of Venus’s atmosphere, based on both observations (e.g., from the Venus Express mission) and state-of-the-art 3D modeling. It will also highlight ongoing model developments aimed at assessing the temporal variations expected to be observed by EnVision in the mesosphere of Venus, in and above the cloud layers.