VERITAS Venus Mission: Testing Key Technology in Iceland (Photos)

NASA's VERITAS Venus mission, currently on hold, has been using field campaigns in Iceland to test technologies and techniques for exploring the planet's surface. The mission's science team collected samples of rocks and surfaces near an active volcano in Iceland to study volcanic areas as analogs for Venus. The team also used lidar scanners and airborne radar images to gather data for refining algorithms onboard VERITAS. The mission, which was supposed to provide fundamental information about Venus, has been delayed, but NASA is developing another Venus mission called DAVINCI, scheduled to launch in 2029.