Venus Missions Celebrate By Packing Their Own Melt-Proof Lunches
DAVINCI and VERITAS are back on track for the early 2030s, when their equipment will bravely encounter the planet’s famously hostile welcome.
WASHINGTON, NASA’s DAVINCI and VERITAS missions to Venus remain on course for launch in the early 2030s, after budget delays briefly spared millions of dollars in delicate robotics from a planet that behaves like a furious oven.
The missions will examine Venus from above and beneath its sulphuric clouds. The equipment has nevertheless asked whether “study” still covers an assignment involving crushing pressure, lead-liquefying heat, and an atmosphere apparently unwilling to return any therapist’s calls.
“We are delighted to be returning to Venus,” said Clive Morrowglass, senior coordinator of the Interplanetary Equipment Feelings Desk. “The instruments have been told they may be allowed one small scream each, provided it does not interfere with telemetry.”
“You are more than your melting point.”
Some paperwork has become emotional. According to an entirely unofficial office tucked into the launch documents, the spacecraft have formed the Association of Delicate Machines Entering Uninhabitable Places. It wants reinforced pockets, hazard pay paid in shiny stickers, and a promise that nobody will call its final descent “a learning experience” without first spending ten minutes in a household oven.
The union’s elected treasurer, a thermal probe named Mildred 7, said members did not object to science. They objected to a job description “written by someone who has never had a circuit board liquefy in public.” Mildred requested a tiny hard hat. Engineers declined because Venus would turn it into a decorative puddle almost at once.
That concern has shaped the new morale programme. Spacecraft are shown photographs of Earth, sent encouraging calendar invitations, and reminded that a short operational life still produces valuable data. In the programme office, a laminated poster says, “You are more than your melting point,” beneath a picture of a probe looking bravely at a volcano.
The planners have also considered Venus’s feelings. A diplomatic balloon would descend first with a gift basket containing cooling gel, a handwritten apology, and a certificate confirming that Venus is extremely impressive. If the planet accepts, DAVINCI and VERITAS will follow and melt anyway, though relations will have improved.
At press time, DAVINCI and VERITAS were still moving toward their early-2030s launch window. Meanwhile, the Association of Delicate Machines Entering Uninhabitable Places prepared a grievance against the phrase “mission success.” “We would prefer ‘mission survived long enough to become historically interesting,’” Mildred 7 said from inside a padded envelope.