Our neighboring planet has more activity than we thought before this finding.
Very few remember one of the most interesting NASA missions in the 90s, called Magellan. Thanks to the work of a probe of the same name, the human being had the opportunity to get close to a nearby planet, so much so that you can observe Venus without a telescope from Earth. And now, 30 years later, it seems that some of the data obtained at that time has returned to show us a active volcano on its surface.
Venus was not dead, nor was she partying
Recently, an article published in the digital magazine Science has shown us how Venus is still very much alive. robert herrick is he responsible scientist of the investigation and who has returned to put Venus in the current panorama. This professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks it states that:
NASA’s selection on the VERITAS mission inspired me to look for recent volcanic activity in the Magellan data. I didn’t expect to be successful, but after 200 hours of manually comparing images from different Magellanic orbits, I saw two images of the same region taken 8 months apart and showing indicators of geological changes caused by an eruption.
For the first time, scientists have observed direct geological evidence of an active volcano on Venus. 🌋
The @UAFGI and JPL team made the discovery after scouring archival radar images taken by @POT‘s Magellan mission more than 30 years ago. https://t.co/CTYYBFzAJl pic.twitter.com/v4vlx0aMiM
— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) March 15, 2023
The robert’s researchIn addition, it grants you a special relevance at following NASA missions to Venusamong which is the VERITAS mission, an acronym for Spectroscopy, Surveying, InSAR, the science of Radio and Emissivity on Venus. The department responsible for this mission will be the well-known Jet Propulsion Laboratory, famous for being the terrestrial link with the Perseverance rover located on Mars, and will be in charge of send an orbiter to Venuscapable of studying both the surface and the core of the planet and find out one of its greatest mysteries: how is it that being a rocky planet the size of Earth, it has become a volcanic world of toxic atmosphere.
The robert’s observation took place in a area known as Atla Regiowhere two of the largest volcanoes on Venus meet, Ozza Mons and Ma’at Mons, who stars in the article. It seems that one of the chimneys of the volcano appeared different in photographs taken between February and October 1991. Whereas at the beginning of the year the chimney seemed to have a circular shape, by the end of 1991 it had doubled in size and its shape had completely changed. We will have to continue the track of Venus, since this planet will be very important in the next decades of space exploration.
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