Venus, by Parachute: DAVINCI Would Return the First Direct Surface Images Since 1982
Two NASA missions are on track to launch to Venus in the early 2030s, Ars Technica reports, and the first one now has a date. DAVINCI is scheduled for launch in December 2030, and it will send a parachute-assisted descent probe through the planet's atmosphere, returning the first direct images of the Venusian surface since 1982. Be precise about that claim: not the best images since, not the most detailed — the first direct ones at all in that stretch. The 1982 date is doing the heavy lifting in the story, because it marks how long the planet has gone without a close-up look at the ground. If the schedule holds, the next one arrives 48 years later.
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DAVINCI is only the opening move. NASA's second mission, VERITAS, is scheduled for a November 2032 launch to map the Venusian surface by radar from orbit, and the European Space Agency is building its own orbiter, Envision, also bound for Venus in 2032.
Those two kinds of measurement answer different questions. A radar orbiter produces a map built from returns; a descent probe puts a lens below the clouds. The second is the rarer commodity here, which is why the December 2030 date is the one to remember.