Active volcanoes on planet Venus

ROME (EFE).— Italian scientists have confirmed for the first time the existence of volcanic activity on Venus and the presence of lava flows, they announced yesterday with the publication of their study, with data from the period between 1990 and 1994.

The report, published in the journal “Nature Astronomy” and funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), “shows for the first time the existence of active volcanism on Venus by identifying new lava flows” during that period.

This was made possible by a new analysis of radar data obtained between 1990 and 1994 by the “Magellan Mission,” a probe launched by NASA—named after the Portuguese explorer—to study the second closest planet to the Sun.

A recent report had observed the deformation of a volcanic crater on Venus, “potentially still active.”

The study’s authors, Davide Sulcanese and Giuseppe Mitri from the University of Chieti-Pescara and Marco Mastrogiuseppe from La Sapienza in Rome, examined images from the Magellan Mission of the same area of ​​Venus.

They thus discovered “new lava flows on the western side of the imposing Sif Mons volcano and on a volcanic plain called Niobe Planitia.”

“The clear variation in the radar response across the surface has allowed us to confirm not only that some volcanoes on Venus have been active in geologically recent times, but also that these volcanoes are still active,” Sulcanese said.

However, the scientist stressed the need to delve deeper into the issue given that these analyses are “limited both temporally and spatially”, that is, limited to a certain area of ​​the planet.

The authors of the article considered it “fundamental” to study the evolution of Venus, a planet that presents radically different conditions to Earth, with a dense atmosphere of carbon dioxide and an average temperature of over 460 degrees Celsius.

To this end, they advocate future missions such as “VERITAS” from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and “EnVission” from the European Space Agency (ESA), which will explore the surface of this planet in detail using advanced radar technologies.

“The new high-resolution radar instruments will allow us to significantly expand our knowledge of the volcanic activity on Venus by refining the analytical techniques we have already successfully employed in this study,” Mastrogiuseppe said.

Suzanne Smrekar, one of the JPL directors and principal investigator of the VERITAS mission, explained in a statement that these discoveries “provide compelling evidence of the type of regions that will need to be analyzed” when the planet returns.

“Our probe will have a series of mechanisms to identify changes on the surface with much more complete data and a higher resolution than the ‘Magellan Mission’,” he added.

And he concluded: “This evidence of its activity, based on low-resolution data from Magellan, increases the potential to revolutionize our understanding of this enigmatic world” (Venus and Earth are considered twin planets, similar in size and origin, but it is unknown why they evolved differently).

Italy will collaborate in the “VERITAS” mission by developing and building a transponder to ensure communications and by carrying out a radio experiment to determine the internal structure of Venus; a radio frequency radar that will scan its surface and the antenna with which it will transmit the data collected.