Can Venus Help Save Earth From ‘Going Jeffrey Dahmer’? NASA’s Going to Find Out
NASA is finally going to Venus. And the missions—two missions, actually—could shine a light on a planet that, despite being Earth’s closest neighbor, has been cloaked in clouds and mystery for a generation.
The space agency on Wednesday announced not one but two missions to Venus, the second planet from the Sun and, at no more than 150 million miles distant, the closest planet to Earth. Mars, the fourth rock from the sun, is 212 million miles from Earth at its closest.
“We know a lot about Mars and even Jupiter and Saturn,” John Logsdon, a former NASA adviser and ex-director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, told The Daily Beast. “Venus is our nearest neighbor and is largely unexplored.”