Scientists see direct evidence of active volcanism on Venus for the first time

Scientists, for the first time, have observed direct geological evidence of recent volcanic activity on Venus, our closest planetary neighbour. The discovery was made after a meticulous examination of radar images of the Earth's twin captured by NASA's Magellan mission in the 1990s.

NASA's upcoming VERITAS mission will study Venus from crust to core and gather data to reveal how the paths of the rocky planet and Earth diverged. Short for Venus Emissivity, Radio science, InSAR, Topography, And Spectroscopy, VERITAS will be the first NASA spacecraft to explore Venus in more than three decades.

Robert Herrick, a research professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and member of the VERITAS science team, who led the search of the archival data, found the geological changes in Atla Regio, a vast highland region near Venus' equator that hosts two of the planet's largest volcanoes - Ozza Mons and Maat Mons.

Herrick discovered a volcanic vent associated with Maat Mons that changed significantly between February and October 1991 while scrutinizing Magellan radar images.

He teamed up with Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Scott Hensley, the project scientist for VERITAS and a specialist in analyzing radar data like Magellan's, to create computer models of the vent in various configurations and test different geological-event scenarios, such as landslides. From those models, they concluded that only an eruption could have caused the change.

"I didn't really expect to be successful, but after about 200 hours of manually comparing the images of different Magellan orbits, I saw two images of the same region taken eight months apart exhibiting telltale geological changes caused by an eruption," Herrick said in a statement.

Their findings are described in a new study published in the journal Science.

For the first time, scientists have observed direct geological evidence of an active volcano on Venus. 🌋The @UAFGI and JPL team made the discovery after scouring archival radar images taken by @NASA's Magellan mission more than 30 years ago. https://t.co/CTYYBFzAJl pic.twitter.com/v4vlx0aMiM

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) March 15, 2023