Can you just tell us a bit about the mission?
What are we going to be looking at at Venus?
So we're going back to Venus into the atmosphere.
We're taking the plunge for the first time in what will have been 50 years.
What kind of information is DAVINCI going to be collecting
as it descends down through the toxic atmosphere of Venus to the surface?
There may be a relic, a ghostlike fingerprint of ancient continents
on Venus, when Venus had oceans perhaps as extensive as Earth’s.
And so DAVINCI's job in descending over Alpha is to make chemical measurements,
to talk about the history of water, but also to look at what the rocks
in this beautiful region are like under the clouds.
It's hard to see the rocks
through the lens of a big, thick cloud deck. DAVINCI goes under the clouds
all the way down to the surface, coming in over Alpha Regio,
those mountains in Alpha Regio extend 10,000 feet high.
So we want to go there, bring our eyes and cameras and spectrometers
to see what this place is telling us about the history of
Venus.