The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) began decades ago as an effort to pick up radio signals from distant civilizations. The effort was centered at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia and was by today's standards quite rudimentary. A much broader search for distant radio signals remains very much at the core of SETI …
The Surface of Venus Was Thought to Be Stagnant. But This May Not Be True
An oblique radar view of the largest "pack ice" block in the Venus lowlands identified by Byrne et al. (Paul Byrne, based on original NASA/JPL imagery). The two Earth-sized planets in our solar system have taken wildly different evolutionary routes. The surface of the Earth became a temperate utopia for a liquid water and a …
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And Then There Were Three: ESA Follows NASA in Selecting a Mission to Venus
Artist illustration of the EnVision orbiter at Venus (ESA/VR2Planets/DamiaBouic) It was quite a week for Venus scientists. Just seven days after NASA announced the selection of two Venus missions, DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, the European Space Agency (ESA) revealed that a third Venus mission had been chosen for the agency’s medium-class mission category. (See last week’s …
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Return to Hell: NASA Selects Two Missions to Venus to Explore the Pathway to Habitability
Artists’ renderings show the VERITAS spacecraft (left) and DAVINCI+ probe (right) as they arrive at Venus (Lockheed Martin). For NASA scientists, Venus missions must feel like buses. You wait thirty years for one, and then two come along at once. Last week, NASA selected two Venus missions for the space agency’s Discovery Program; solar system …
Many Worlds 