Most of the things we do here, we're never going to get to see again.

It's emotional to take something you spent years of your life on and put it on a rocket and probably never see it again.

It ups the pressure on getting that sequence of events right.

We've got one hour of descent time and one shot to do this.

So we have to make sure that we're resilient to things like if our computer hangs up and has to get reset partway down.

If we lose communications with the satellite,

we've got all sorts of things that we need to make sure that we cover as contingencies

because there's no going back and trying again.

This is NASA's curious universe.

Our universe is a wild and wonderful place.

I'm your host, Patty Boyd, and in this podcast, NASA is your tour guide.

Our home planet, Earth, is so hospitable for us, for living things, and for the structures and tools we create. But outside of Earth, that's not necessarily the case.

When we plan missions to send science off the Earth, we have to prepare for inhospitable circumstances,

whether it's a deep space probe like the far-out

Voyager spacecrafts, an experiment on the International Space Station, or a vehicle headed to another

planet, we need to send the right tools to do the job. But how do we know what to make our

spacecraft out of? And how do we decide where to start?

Today we're going to talk to a scientist and an engineer on one of NASA's newest projects,

the Da Vinci Mission, to broaden our understanding of our planetary neighbor, Venus.

How exactly do we design and build spacecraft to make these harrowing trips through dangerous and exciting environments?

You know what is so great about mission work?

If you love thinking about multiple things at a time, this is the job for you.

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