1 00:00:10,143 --> 00:00:12,512 Venus is our sister planet. 2 00:00:12,512 --> 00:00:16,249 She's literally at sometimes during the year the closest thing to earth 3 00:00:16,349 --> 00:00:18,451 other than our natural satellite, the moon. 4 00:00:18,451 --> 00:00:22,355 And so she has a story to tell us of almost another earth, but different. 5 00:00:22,355 --> 00:00:26,593 And that divergent story of how she has such a massive atmosphere. 6 00:00:26,593 --> 00:00:29,896 And our planet is such a perfect place for people, is one 7 00:00:29,896 --> 00:00:31,464 we want to understand and tell. 8 00:00:31,464 --> 00:00:35,168 So when we see her in the night sky and often sometimes in the morning sky, 9 00:00:35,402 --> 00:00:40,240 we're mesmerized by what we don't know about this world so close to home. 10 00:00:40,540 --> 00:00:41,841 Is she like us? 11 00:00:41,841 --> 00:00:44,844 How did she grow up to be so different? 12 00:00:49,649 --> 00:00:52,819 We think Venus may have harbored liquid water oceans, 13 00:00:53,219 --> 00:00:56,956 perhaps for billions of years, or if not oceans, steamy atmospheres. 14 00:00:56,956 --> 00:01:00,160 Those stories of a world that should have been a lot like Earth. 15 00:01:00,627 --> 00:01:02,762 Connect us in space and time. 16 00:01:02,762 --> 00:01:05,765 Venus gives us a vantage point on what we don't want 17 00:01:05,765 --> 00:01:08,768 Earth to be and may tell the secrets of where Earth is going. 18 00:01:08,868 --> 00:01:12,338 So we're stunned by what she could tell us and can't wait to get back 19 00:01:18,978 --> 00:01:20,680 NASA now has plans 20 00:01:20,680 --> 00:01:24,451 to send two missions to Venus and an instrument on another one 21 00:01:24,684 --> 00:01:27,720 to open our eyes to this world in this 21st 22 00:01:27,720 --> 00:01:30,890 century space age. New instruments, new capabilities. 23 00:01:31,124 --> 00:01:33,493 One of those missions will take the plunge 24 00:01:33,493 --> 00:01:36,896 into the atmosphere, bringing the chemistry lab to the samples 25 00:01:37,097 --> 00:01:40,533 to make measurements of the caliber we've been making on the surface of Mars. 26 00:01:40,700 --> 00:01:44,637 But for the Venus atmosphere, others will globally map this beautiful planet 27 00:01:44,904 --> 00:01:49,709 so we can compare Venus to Earth and use Venus as a clue to how we understand 28 00:01:49,909 --> 00:01:52,912 potential Venus like exoplanets. 29 00:01:57,350 --> 00:01:58,485 So our first mission back 30 00:01:58,485 --> 00:02:02,489 to Venus, the first one Back to Venus is big atmosphere, literally - 31 00:02:02,489 --> 00:02:06,559 an ocean of air is named for Leonardo da Vinci called DAVINCI. 32 00:02:06,860 --> 00:02:10,430 And this mission, while flying by Venus, will also set up 33 00:02:10,430 --> 00:02:14,400 two to allow a space vehicle that looks like a giant 34 00:02:15,768 --> 00:02:17,237 spherical submarine 35 00:02:17,237 --> 00:02:18,638 to descend through the atmosphere 36 00:02:18,638 --> 00:02:21,641 and make measurements all the way from the top of the clouds to the surface, 37 00:02:21,975 --> 00:02:25,945 collecting the secrets of whether Venus had oceans, the history of the atmosphere, 38 00:02:25,945 --> 00:02:29,382 its kinetics dynamics, whether there were volcanoes 39 00:02:29,382 --> 00:02:32,452 active recently, and then imaging all the way to the surface 40 00:02:32,719 --> 00:02:36,222 over a giant mountain range system, not unlike those here on Earth. 41 00:02:36,589 --> 00:02:39,792 Almost as big as the mountain ranges you find in places like Australia. 42 00:02:45,899 --> 00:02:47,500 So our sister Planet Venus 43 00:02:47,500 --> 00:02:51,638 has the largest atmosphere that is the ocean of air 44 00:02:51,638 --> 00:02:55,341 that's around it of of any of those around the rocky planets. 45 00:02:55,642 --> 00:02:58,645 That's Earth, Mars, Mercury, Venus and our moon. 46 00:02:58,811 --> 00:03:01,114 So this big ocean of air is the biggest. 47 00:03:01,114 --> 00:03:03,783 It's a thousand times bigger than that of our earth. 48 00:03:03,783 --> 00:03:06,753 And in it is a story that awaits to be told. 49 00:03:06,986 --> 00:03:09,289 And so going to that atmosphere ourselves, 50 00:03:09,289 --> 00:03:12,792 bringing the instruments of the 21st century that have worked at Mars 51 00:03:12,792 --> 00:03:15,828 and at the Saturn's moon Titan, that work in the Earth's atmosphere 52 00:03:16,062 --> 00:03:21,768 to study the Venus atmosphere up close and in person and personally will be epic. 53 00:03:21,768 --> 00:03:25,471 And then looking under the massive cloud deck at the shape of the mountains 54 00:03:25,471 --> 00:03:29,442 and what they're made of as we descend closer to the surface, as we would say 55 00:03:29,442 --> 00:03:32,946 in a helicopter on Earth, we can do all that with this first mission 56 00:03:33,112 --> 00:03:36,549 and open our eyes to the Venus that we have not really yet 57 00:03:36,749 --> 00:03:37,850 gotten to know very well. 58 00:03:43,823 --> 00:03:46,859 Our engineering team on this first mission known as DAVINCI, 59 00:03:47,160 --> 00:03:50,463 are basically sealing out the environment of this Venus atmosphere 60 00:03:50,697 --> 00:03:54,067 from the top of the clouds where it's cold and the winds are swirling 61 00:03:54,300 --> 00:03:58,271 to the deep atmosphere where it's super hot, hotter than the back of a pizza oven. 62 00:03:58,538 --> 00:04:02,008 And pressure is equivalent to being almost a kilometer deep in the ocean. 63 00:04:02,008 --> 00:04:03,643 That's where big submarines go. 64 00:04:03,643 --> 00:04:06,646 We have to be able to transit all of those environments 65 00:04:06,713 --> 00:04:11,384 in about an hour in this space vehicle that protects priceless instruments 66 00:04:11,551 --> 00:04:14,754 so they can make measurements, collect samples, collect images, 67 00:04:14,954 --> 00:04:15,755 measure environments. 68 00:04:15,755 --> 00:04:17,390 And we have the tools now, 69 00:04:17,390 --> 00:04:22,161 thanks to the technology of the 21st century, to bring all that up 70 00:04:22,161 --> 00:04:25,632 close and in person to allow us to explore Venus in new ways, ways 71 00:04:25,865 --> 00:04:29,168 that are more advanced than we were able in the eighties, in the seventies. 72 00:04:34,674 --> 00:04:36,242 Getting to know Venus as the 73 00:04:36,242 --> 00:04:39,879 kind of exoplanet we may be able to detect and study in depth 74 00:04:40,246 --> 00:04:44,183 with NASA's new James Webb Space Telescope is a wonderful opportunity 75 00:04:44,384 --> 00:04:47,487 to have planetary ground truth on a world 76 00:04:47,487 --> 00:04:50,490 that has a big hot atmosphere close to a sun. 77 00:04:50,723 --> 00:04:53,660 Relative to those, those exoplanets will be discovering 78 00:04:53,660 --> 00:04:56,663 with James Webb that we're already looking at with that telescope. 79 00:04:56,696 --> 00:05:00,199 So by learning about Venus up close and her workings from the cloud tops 80 00:05:00,199 --> 00:05:03,936 down to the surface, we can understand what James Webb may discover 81 00:05:04,203 --> 00:05:07,974 as that great vehicle of exploration explores exoplanets 82 00:05:08,274 --> 00:05:11,844 that may be Venus like and perhaps more Venus like that Earth like, 83 00:05:12,145 --> 00:05:15,114 because Venuses will be easier to see with Webb. 84 00:05:19,485 --> 00:05:21,888 And so by getting to know Venus, the planet that grew 85 00:05:21,888 --> 00:05:26,059 a big atmosphere relative to the Mars, the planet has a paltry tiny one. 86 00:05:26,359 --> 00:05:27,593 We can sort of look at the 87 00:05:27,593 --> 00:05:30,897 at the bookends and see where we fit in and where we might be going. 88 00:05:31,397 --> 00:05:35,401 Venus may be a tale of an earth like planet that became, that lost 89 00:05:35,702 --> 00:05:40,840 its habitability, which is a fragile idea of how life can gain a foothold. 90 00:05:41,140 --> 00:05:44,410 So we want to understand that at Venus and look at Mars 91 00:05:44,410 --> 00:05:47,914 and the ancient records of possible life or not on that world. 92 00:05:48,114 --> 00:05:50,450 So these three planets are the best things. 93 00:05:50,450 --> 00:05:55,221 We have to get to know how our planet fits into this beautiful solar system 94 00:05:55,388 --> 00:05:57,757 and even beyond. So that's why Venus matters. 95 00:06:04,097 --> 00:06:06,099 what we've seen with the missions of the nineties, 96 00:06:06,099 --> 00:06:09,769 like the Magellan radar mapper, that Venus has a lot of volcanoes 97 00:06:10,036 --> 00:06:12,305 and that's how planets get rid of their heat. 98 00:06:12,305 --> 00:06:15,308 Earth does that a lot underwater through the mid-ocean ridges. 99 00:06:15,375 --> 00:06:17,510 Venus does that apparently almost everywhere. 100 00:06:17,510 --> 00:06:18,311 So we want to see 101 00:06:18,311 --> 00:06:22,181 whether any of those volcanoes are active, because in all honesty, they should be. 102 00:06:22,482 --> 00:06:24,083 That's the way planets work. 103 00:06:24,083 --> 00:06:28,488 So we want to test that idea using not only what we can see as Venus changes, 104 00:06:28,688 --> 00:06:31,958 but what the chemistry of what those volcanic eruptions could be like. 105 00:06:32,225 --> 00:06:35,895 If we can read those signatures through the kind of chemical measurements 106 00:06:35,895 --> 00:06:40,032 we can make by bringing the chemistry lab to Venus to see whether 107 00:06:40,032 --> 00:06:43,336 she's active today or was recently active, that will change everything. 108 00:06:43,503 --> 00:06:46,839 Having another volcanically active planet just next door. 109 00:06:47,073 --> 00:06:48,074 Just imagine that. 110 00:06:54,480 --> 00:06:55,281 So to learn more, 111 00:06:55,281 --> 00:06:58,651 we can go to websites like NASA.gov slash Venus. 112 00:06:59,118 --> 00:07:02,688 Alternately, you can go to Solar System, dot nasa.gov, slash Venus 113 00:07:03,089 --> 00:07:07,226 to see more about these missions NASA will be launching in the next ten years, 114 00:07:07,827 --> 00:07:11,531 bringing us all up close to Venus and making it a personal experience. 115 00:07:11,798 --> 00:07:14,834 Come with us. Let's discover Venus together.