[slate]
Well they can look in the night sky and there are websites
that will describe the exact viewing geometrics that will allow them to see
this very special conjunction where our two nearest neighbor planets - our brother
planet Mars, named for the God of War and our sister planet Venus, the
Goddess of love, will both appear. And so you’ll be able to see that in the night
sky after dusk and the exact details are available
on various NASA websites. [slate]
[slate] Absolutely
Venus is hot now. And you know we’ve all said Mars is cool but
Venus is hotter. And right now NASA has selected two
Venus missions to explore our sister for the first time in decades.
One which will global map the surface with advanced radar
and inferred radiation to give us that global perspective of
a world like our own. And the other - our Davinci mission - will bring a spacecraft
for the first time developed by NASA into the atmosphere with a chemistry
lab and human-scale vision to see that planet
in a cross-section of its spectacular atmosphere where there is mysteries
literally abounding. And those two missions together will be the bookends
to make a new Venus appear, a lost frontier coming alive.
[slate]
In our solar system we have two neighborly planets. Mars where we’ve had intensive
efforts for the last 25 years and great progress. And Venus
our kind of forgotten sister. And so Venus
rather surprisingly offers greater clues to possible evolutionary
and pathways for big Earth-like planets like our own, both in
our solar system and beyond. We should be able to see
with our next generation space observatories like the James Webb Space Telescope
like the Nancy Roman, we should be able to sense
the planets like Venus with big atmospheres and rocky planetary surfaces
light years away. So getting to know to our own Venus next door
will help us make that link from our sister planet who perhaps
lost her habitable environment to those that are way beyond.
And that connection is important in this blooming era of astrophysics
and planetary exploration. So Venus really is special.
[slate]
So people can go to solarsystem.nasa.gov
on the web and they will see details of our next voyages
to Venus with Davinici and Veritas, and connections to past
missions like the Magellan mission of the 90s and all the way back to the 70s.
Venus is our new frontier and we are so excited to be going