- <i>"Several upcoming missions, including NASA’s DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging)"</i><p>DAVINCI is actually cancelled in the latest budget request. For obvious reasons, the NASA press office (the OP) won't talk about this. But 50% of NASA's science funding is gone.<p><a href="https://spacenews.com/white-house-proposal-would-slash-nasa-science-budget-and-cancel-major-missions/" rel="nofollow">https://spacenews.com/white-house-proposal-would-slash-nasa-...</a>
> Scientists expected the outermost layer of Venus’ crust would grow thicker and thicker over time<p>I recall watching this NOVA episode in 1995 where scientists had no idea whether the lithosphere is thick or thin. Seek to 36 minutes: <a href="https://archive.org/details/VenusUnveiled/NOVA.S22E10.Venus.Unveiled.1995.DVDRip.DD2.0.x264-astro.mp4" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/VenusUnveiled/NOVA.S22E10.Venus....</a>
I'm blown away at the number of huge volcanos and relative lack of craters. If that's right, Venus must recycle its surface relatively often.
Venus is a damned shame. Had planetary evolution gone just slightly differently, the solar system could have had two habitable water planets. Mars, owing to its size, was never going to cut it, but Venus might have.
I wonder if Venus could be terraformed via a sun shield placed in orbit around it. How big would it have to be to reverse the runaway greenhouse effect?