A mission to Venus that was put on hold due to budget and staffing issues at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is finally back on track.
VERITAS, Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography and Spectroscopy are back in NASA’s budget and on track to launch in 2031, according to mission team members.The mission was originally scheduled to launch in 2027, but NASA’s plans to launch a spacecraft to Venus were Space agency cuts funding for VERITAS In the 2024 budget request.
This week’s release of NASA’s final budget saw a surprise return for VERITAS, providing the mission with enough funding to set a launch date. “The nightmare is over,” Darby Dyar, deputy principal investigator for the VERITAS mission, told Gizmodo in an email. “Honestly, it was unbelievable to hear… that we had a release date and a real budget. I was walking around last night asking people to pinch me to make sure I wasn’t dreaming!”
NASA’s previous mission to Venus, called Magellan, arrived at Venus in 1989 and concluded its scientific operations in 1994. NASA has not launched a spacecraft to one of Earth’s neighboring planets since, much to the dismay of the highly dedicated Venus stans. 2021, NASA opts for not one but two missions to the scorching planetone of which is VERITAS.
Soon after, the dream of Venus was dashed when an independent review board uncovered significant incidents. Institutional Issues at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.The Board of Directors was established to review Delay in Psyche’s mission A metal-rich asteroid, it missed its initial launch window of August 2022 but discovered a series of problems that went well beyond the scope of the mission. Therefore, NASA decided to suspend VERITAS.
NASA 2024 Budget Request The request for $1.5 million for VERITAS represents a significant decrease from the mission’s projected 2024 budget (estimated at $124 million). The move was seen as a soft cancellation of the Venus mission.
“It’s hard to keep morale up!” Dial said. “But at the same time, the team moved forward on a shoestring budget, planning and working hard to support our foreign partners, even running an on-the-ground event in Iceland last summer.”
NASA promised the VERITAS team that it would notify them before March whether to cancel the mission, and sure enough, NASA kept its promise. The space agency has been dealing with a series of budget issues, and this year’s budget of $24.875 billion is about $500 million less than what the space agency will receive in 2023 and about $23.1 less than it hopes to spend on various programs. One hundred million U.S. dollars. Plans for 2024.
Despite tight budgets, NASA keeps the Venus dream alive.The task may be canceled The scientific community unites to save VERITAS. The VERITAS orbiter is designed to create a global map of Venus, produce high-resolution radar images of the planet’s surface, and will be the first mission to map the composition of Venus’ rocks.
The return of VERITAS has been welcomed by NASA, and the news is sure to please the Venus hive.
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