Memo to Elon Musk: You were paying attention to the wrong planet all along. Venus, not Mars, is where it’s at.
That much was confirmed Wednesday, when NASA announced the two winners out of dozens of entries in its $300 million planetary probe contest. VERITAS and DAVINCI+ were chosen as the agency’s next two Discovery missions — and both have our mysterious sister planet in their sights.
The growing community of Venus exploration boosters inside and outside NASA, which I wrote about last year, had hoped at least one of these missions would be anointed — but dared not dream it would be both. Some planetary scientists have been waiting for this day for decades. Leading luminaries promptly lost their shit. Read more…
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