Upcoming missions to Venus will teach us a lot about our 'exoplanet next door.' The same missions will also shed light on exoplanets.
Venus’ inhospitable nature means we struggle to explore it. We know way more about other worlds in our Solar System—Mars, for example—because they’re more amenable to observation by orbiters. And in Mars’ case, visitation by multiple landers and rovers has revealed a lot about that planet’s history. So even though we’ve sent orbiters—and—to Venus, our lack of understanding means that, in some ways, it’s more like an exoplanet than another planet in our Solar System.
“Here, we examine how our knowledge of present-day Venus can inform terrestrial exoplanetary science and how exoplanetary science can inform our study of Venus,” the authors explain in their introduction. “In a superficial way, the contrasts in knowledge appear stark.” But are they? Scientists know a few things about ancient Venus. It received about 40% more solar radiation 4.2 billion years ago compared to present-day Earth. On the face of it, that would preclude any habitability.showed that Venus could’ve had temperate conditions despite higher solar radiation if it had 100% cloud cover. With that much cloud, the albedo would’ve been high enough to reflect much of the Sun’s radiation.
Other studies on slowly rotating exoplanets close to their stars used different GCMs and showed similar results. These results shaped how we think of Venus. Previous thinking showed that Venus may have had a relatively brief habitable period before becoming inhospitable. But if slowly rotating exoplanets with thick cloud cover maintained long-term habitability even when receiving abundant solar insolation, maybe Venus did, too.
How long did magma ocean phases last, and how does that affect atmosphere development and evolution? How does it affect the types of clouds that form? Since the exoplanets we find in Venus Zones have different ages, observations can help answer these questions by building a sort of evolutionary timeline for slowly rotating planets close to their stars. This will strengthen our GCMs and their results for both Venus and exoplanets.
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