The trip to Venus would take less travel time, and the planet boasts better radiation protection and a more amenable pressure. Although Mars gets the lion’s share of attention for future human missions, scientists - such as NASA’s Geoffrey Landis - have pointed to the Venusian atmosphere as a candidate for floating colonies. This is a crucial finding for the future of space exploration, the researchers argue.
The scientists are not entirely sure why the electric wind is so strong on Venus, but they believe it could be the close proximity to the sun. “You and all your ion friends will be dragged off kicking and screaming into space by an invisible hand, and nothing can save you.” NASA/GSFC/CIL/USRA/Brian Monroe “If you were unfortunate enough to be an oxygen ion in the upper atmosphere of Venus then you have won a terrible, terrible lottery,” Collinson said. At about 10 volts, the Vesuvian electric wind is at least five times stronger than Earth’s. Venus’s field was also difficult to measure, as Collinson and his colleagues point out in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, but that is because Venus is a five-month spaceflight away. “We never dreamt an electric wind could be so powerful that it can suck oxygen right out of an atmosphere into space.” (This electric wind is no gentle spring breeze, but a charged stream similar to solar wind.) NASA/GSFC/CIL/USRA/Brian MonroeĮarth, too, has an electric field in the atmosphere, though it is weaker and therefore tough to measure. “It’s amazing, shocking,” NASA’s Glyn Collinson, an expert in atmospheric electric fields and an author of the new study, said in a statement. The true culprit, they say, is Venus’s super-strong electric wind. Article contentīut, according to new research from an international team of scientists, the sun is only indirectly a factor. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
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