P029-05
DAVINCI+: Opening the History Book of Venus and Connecting Analog Exoplanets
Wednesday, 9 December 2020: 07:30
Virtual
Giada Nicole Arney1, James Brian Garvin2, Stephanie Getty2, Natasha Johnson3, Michael Amato2, David H Atkinson4, Sushil K Atreya5, William B Brinckerhoff6, Bruce A Campbell7, Valeria Cottini8, David Crisp9, Justin Filiberto10, Francois Forget11, Martha S Gilmore12, David H Grinspoon13, Amy Hofmann14, Noam Izenberg15, Stephen Kane16, Walter S. Kiefer17, Sebastien Lebonnois18, Ralph D Lorenz19, Paul R Mahaffy20, Charles Malespin2, Alexander Pavlov2, Michael A Ravine21, Kenneth Schwer22, Michael Sekerak22, Melissa G Trainer2, Christopher R Webster14 and Kevin J Zahnle23, (1)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Solar System Exploration Division, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (2)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (3)Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (4)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (5)University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, MI, United States, (6)NASA, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (7)Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC, United States, (8)University of Maryland College Park, College Park, United States, (9)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States, (10)Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, IL, United States, (11)Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique UPMC, Paris, France, (12)Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, United States, (13)Planetary Science Institute Washington - PSI, Washington, DC, United States, (14)NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (15)Johns Hopkins Univ, Laurel, MD, United States, (16)University of California Riverside, Department of Earth Sciences, Riverside, CA, United States, (17)Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, TX, United States, (18)CNRS, Paris Cedex 16, France, (19)JHU / APL, Laurel, MD, United States, (20)NASA Goddard SFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (21)Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, CA, United States, (22)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, United States, (23)NASA, Moffett Field, CA, United States
Abstract:
The Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble Gases, Chemistry, and Imaging Plus (DAVINCI+) is a proposed Discovery mission that would be the first U.S. spacecraft to enter the Venus atmosphere since 1978. DAVINCI+ will make detailed measurements of the Venus surface and atmosphere, revealing its current state and history and helping to place our sister planet into a larger cosmic context of exoplanets.
Venus and Exo-Venus Habitability: Recent analyses (Way et al. 2016; 2020) have suggested that Venus may have enjoyed a prolonged period of clement conditions. Intriguingly, the same processes that might have enabled early Venus habitability may also enable habitability on the ubiquitous hot, slowly rotating exoplanets that will be observed with the James Webb Space Telescope. DAVINCI+ will search for clues of early Venus habitability, providing insight into the conditions of young Venus and analog exoplanet climates.
The most important evidence of possible early habitability on Venus is its D/H ratio. The DAVINCI+ descent probe will directly measure D/H below ~70 km. Other isotopes, e.g. 4He, will further constrain atmospheric evolution timescales. Clues to early habitability may also be encoded in Venus’ tessera features, which may be older than the surrounding terrain and could show mineralogical clues of ancient water. DAVINCI+’s descent probe will observe the tessera Alpha Regio at meter-scales. Near-infrared images from orbit will provide global context for localized descent probe imaging and constrain global surface composition.
Connection to exoplanet observations: The Venusian environment is a natural laboratory to study the complex processes that operate on analog hot exoplanets. DAVINCI’s quantitative measurements of the Venus atmosphere will provide needed constraints for modeling exo-Venus atmospheres and predicting their spectral observables. Cloud-top UV imaging, including of the mysterious “unknown UV absorber”, will help to constrain the possible spectral appearance of exo-Venus analogs for possible direct imaging with future astrophysics flagships, which may be biased towards observing UV wavelengths for Venus-like planets due to coronagraph inner working angle constraints.
