Good afternoon. Hope you’ve had a great week so far. Here’s wishing you great stargazing (or UFO-hunting) weather for the weekend ahead.

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Rotten to the Core

Earth has an evil twin.

Venus, our home planet’s neighbor, is remarkably similar in size, density, and composition. Where Earth is temperate and habitable, though, Venus is covered in dense, sulfuric clouds and an atmosphere that reaches such high temperatures and pressures that it has nearly instantly destroyed every spacecraft we’ve tried to land there.

The mystery of how Venus and Earth evolved in such different ways has long been a mystery to planetary scientists. In a paper published this week in Nature Astronomy, a team of scientists led by the Southwest Research Institute proposed that high-intensity impacts early in Venus’ history set off a chain reaction of volcanic activity that continues to today.

“Venus internal conditions are not well known, and before considering the role of energetic impacts, geodynamical models required special conditions to achieve the massive volcanism we see at Venus,” Jun Korenaga, a co-author from Yale University, said in a release. “Once you input energetic impact scenarios into the model, it easily comes up with the extensive and extended volcanism without really tweaking the parameters.”

Brand new: The researchers set out to understand why Venus has such a fresh face (i.e., a young surface age). The planet’s heavy volcanism is the most obvious explanation for the newness of its surface: Fresh and ongoing lava flows frequently cover up older layers of rock. Venus has some 80,000 volcanoes across its surface, so that checks out.

What was still a mystery, though, was why Venus’ core remains so hot and active.

Starting the chain: The researchers found that if, early in its life, Venus was struck by very fast-moving objects, that could have created enough heat to melt the material beneath the planet’s surface and kickstarted the formation of its superheated core.

“Higher impact velocities melt more silicate, melting as much as 82% of Venus’ mantle,” said Raluca Rufu, a Sagan Fellow and SwRI co-author. “This produces a mixed mantle of molten materials redistributed globally and a superheated core.”

As for why Venus could have been exposed to higher-velocity impacts than Earth, the researchers have a few explanations. Venus is closer to the Sun and moves more quickly in its orbit, which could increase the energy released in collisions.

Understanding Venus: Despite the planet’s frequent proximity to Earth, interest in studying it waned once attempt after attempt at landing on the surface ended in destruction. In recent years, though, surprising and intriguing observations of Venus’ atmosphere—like, for example, a potential phosphine sighting—have rekindled interest in its study.

• NASA has two Venus missions, VERITAS and DAVINCI, destined for Venus in the coming decade.

• ESA is planning its own, called EnVision.

• On the commercial side, Rocket Lab announced last year that it’s planning to launch its own Venus probe, currently slated for launch in 2025.

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The Payload team is excited to host a webinar on "Automation vs. Manual Action in Satellites." In this conversation, we will discuss satellite companies and how they are dealing with automation vs. manual tasks within their operations.

Other News from the Cosmos

• DART dislodged 37 boulders when it impacted Dimorphos and freed them from the asteroid’s gravitational influence.

• Rocket Lab’s decision to delay its Venus mission to 2025 was pure business, the company said.

• A microquasar was observed emitting radio oscillations for the first time.

• Clumps of dust around the young star V960 Mon may eventually become a planet, and scientists are watching to see how it happens.

• Nine countries in Europe are coming together to build a European Solar Telescope.

• JWST spotted water vapor in a rocky planet-forming region around the planetary system PDS 70, 370 light-years away.

Rachael's Recs

👓 Sharper vision: It’s hard to build a space telescope. JWST, for example, took 20 years and upwards of $10B to construct, needed incredibly high-precision mirrors and instruments that could not be serviced after launch, and after all that, it still needed to fold up to fit inside a single rocket fairing. In an article for the Conversation, astronomer Daniel Apai writes about a project he’s working on that uses lighter, thinner lenses across several spacecraft to create a bigger, more powerful space telescope than anything we’ve built yet.

🏈 Playing catch: Out in the Utah desert west of Salt Lake City, a handful of researchers has been practicing to receive a package from the cosmos. OSIRIS-REx, the US’ first asteroid sample return mission, is currently on its way back to Earth with its cache in tow. For Scientific American, reporter Leonard David mapped out the mission from the beginning to end.

The View from Space

JWST’s done it again. Here, the space telescope has snapped an image of two stars in the midst of their formation. The system, called Herbig-Haro 46/47, is only a few thousand years old, and has millions of years to go before the two swirls of gas become fully-fledged young stars.