“Unlocking Venus: How Magellan Data Reveals Stunning Insights into Tectonic Processes” – NASASpaceFlight.com

NASA’s Magellan mission sent shockwaves through our understanding of Venus over 30 years ago, and recent studies are reigniting that interest. Researchers have reexamined data collected by Magellan to gain new insights into Venus’ geologic features, particularly formations known as coronae. These large, rounded structures speak volumes about the planet’s tectonic activity. By combining gravity and topography data, scientists are piecing together how Venus’s surface changes over time.

Though Venus and Earth are often dubbed “twin planets” due to their similar sizes and composition, they couldn’t be more different. Earth’s surface continually renews itself through plate tectonics, while Venus lacks tectonic plates entirely. Still, geological processes like volcanism keep Venus active, as seen in recent observations.

Gael Cascioli from the University of Maryland explained that coronae might hold answers to Venus’s history. “While coronae don’t exist on Earth today, they could have formed when our planet was young,” he said. By analyzing gravity and topographic data, researchers can now explore the forces shaping Venus’s surface.

Many coronae are created when hot material from below pushes up into the crust. They can range in size from around 60 km to a massive 2,500 km across. This variety helps scientists understand Venus’s geological past. The study explored how these plumes interact with the lithosphere in various ways, including two scenarios—one that recycles crust material and another that pushes surrounding material into the mantle.

The researchers modeled interactions between the plume and lithosphere and analyzed 75 coronae. They found that 52 of these are actively interacting, indicating ongoing geological processes.

Anna Gülcher from the University of Bern noted the significance of these findings: “Now we can understand that multiple active processes are driving the formation of coronae. This may have been true for early Earth as well.”

This study covered only a small portion of the 740 known coronae on Venus due to the limitations of Magellan’s data. Specifically, it could only assess coronae larger than its data resolution. But even this limited research has been invaluable. Magellan, launched in 1989, mapped Venus using radar to peer through its thick atmosphere until its mission ended in 1994.

Excitingly, future missions like NASA’s VERITAS and the European Space Agency’s EnVision aim to build upon this groundwork. VERITAS alone is expected to study 427 coronae, with the capability to finely resolve 12. This will vastly improve our understanding of Venus, providing more detailed gravity maps and allowing scientists to explore geological processes with greater clarity.

Suzanne Smrekar from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory emphasized the potential impact of these future missions: “With VERITAS, we expect a resolution boost by at least two to four times, which could change our understanding of Venus’s geology and early Earth.”

Such developments underline how far we’ve come in planetary science and how we continue to uncover secrets about our neighboring planets.

For further detail on this study, you can read the full findings published in Science Advances.

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Geology,Magellan,Venus,Venusian,VERITAS