Noam Izenberg, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins University's applied physics laboratory, is making a case for sending a crewed mission to examine Venus en route to Mars . "Venus gets a bad rap because it's got such a difficult surface environment," said Izenberg in a report presented at the International Astronautical Congress in Paris last week. We're trying to make the case for Venus as an additional target on that pathway." The Guardian reports:Of course, there are those who push back against such an idea. It's a hellish environment and the thermal challenges for a human mission would be quite considerable," said Prof Andrew Coates, a space scientist at UCL's Mullard space science laboratory.He said Venus was rightly a focus of scientific exploration, but that "a human flyby really wouldn't add very much."

Source: The Guardian September 27, 2022 14:18 UTC