LPI | Science

#Go4Venus

Lead: Allan Treiman

As prelude to the armada of spacecraft that will target Venus in the next decade, the LPI’s Venus Science Initiative aims to consolidate our understanding of the veiled planet, explore new hypotheses with data in hand, and encourage innovative ways that the coming spacecraft data can be applied. Venus’ origin and history remain enigmatic – current data are not adequate to answer many fundamental problems, like whether Venus ever had oceans and/or habitable environments. The high temperature of Venus’ surface allows rapid reactions between it and the atmosphere, implying system-level feedbacks among its atmosphere, surface, and interior. Further, Venus may serve as our best local example of hot terrestrial exoplanets, permitting stronger understanding of other solar systems and their formation processes. In this Initiative of four conferences, we will address these and other questions about Venus and provide a forum for scientific anticipation of coming spacecraft data.

Four Conferences in the Initiative