52: New NASA Missions DAVINCI and VERITAS Set to Decipher Venus's Atmosphere and History. Dr. David Grinspoon (Planetary Science Institute) and David Livingston (The Space Show) describe the upcoming NASA missions to Venus: DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Inve

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 5 November 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

New NASA Missions DAVINCI and VERITAS Set to Decipher Venus's Atmosphere and History. Dr. David Grinspoon (Planetary Science Institute) and David Livingston (The Space Show) describe the upcoming NASA missions to Venus: DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) and VERITAS. DAVINCI will be the first entry probe with modern instruments since 1979, descending through the atmosphere to sample gases and measure temperature and pressure, also capturing descent photographs. A core scientific goal is obtaining a precise measurement of the deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio and noble gas abundances to better reconstruct the history of water loss and the atmosphere. VERITAS, an orbiter, will use radar and infrared mapping to look for signs of active volcanism and geological evidence of ancient shorelines on the surface. These missions aim to collect detailed data that will allow scientists to walk backward through time and understand how Venus transitioned into its current extremely hot state.

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0:35.1	This is CBSI in the world. This is Hotel Mars episode. and continuing with David Livingston, Dr. Livingston of the space show, my colleague and co-pilot.
0:44.2	And in the Hotel Mars edition, the subset is Hotel Venus, which is new discovery, because NASA is outbound for Venus soon enough.
0:53.5	And the man to help us understand these new probes
0:57.0	is David Grinspoon, who introduced me to the clouds of Venus many, well, decades. He's right. It's
1:03.5	decades now. If you last long enough, you get to be the center of attention, and right now,
1:09.1	there's a habitability of the cloudss of Venus conference coming up soon enough.
1:13.7	But before that, we need to discuss first the mission, Da Vinci that David Grinspoon is participating in.
1:22.0	David, what is the mission statement and what do you hope to achieve?
1:27.4	So, DaVinci will be the first time that we've sent 21st century instruments into the
1:34.8	atmosphere of Venus, directly in the atmosphere, not observing it from orbit or from a telescope,
1:39.8	but actually entering the atmosphere, sampling it, taking it into our instruments, and really teasing
1:46.6	apart what that atmosphere is made out of. The last time we had an entry probe into Venus was in
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