VERITAS (spacecraft)

VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography and Spectrosocpy) is a planned mission from NASA to study Venus.

Illustration of the VERITAS orbiting Venus

Proposal history

VERITAS was one of the many proposals submitted in 2015 to probably become the 13th mission of NASA's Discovery Program. On 4 January 2017, two other proposals, Lucy and Psyche, were selected as the 13th and 14th Discovery missions.

VERITAS was again proposed in 2019 and selected with DAVINCI+, as one of the next Discovery missions. VERITAS was originally planned to be launched in 2028-2030. But, work on the mission was delayed by three years.

VERITAS

Mission type	Venus orbiter
Operator	NASA
Start of mission
Launch date	June 2031 (planned)
Orbital parameters
Altitude	400 km
Period	1.6 hours
Discovery Program ← Psyche DAVINCI →

Mission

VERITAS will get data to help scientists to answer three questions about Venus

1. How has geology changed on Venus over time?
2. What geologic processes are currently working on it?
3. Has water been on Venus?

Understanding Venus's geology is interesting beacause of its similarities to Earth. Venus's age, size and composition is similar to Earth but the planet is too dangerous for life. The history will help answer questions about the formation of planets good for life.

Venus is the almost same size as Earth, but has a different climate and surface.

VERITAS will get data to answer these questions and map Venus's surface topography.

Instruments

VEM- Venus Emissivity Mapper

VISAR- Venus Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar

The spacecraft will also have the Deep Space Atomic Clock-2

Related pages

• DAVINCI, a Venus atmospheric probe, selected with VERITAS for the Discovery program.