Artist’s Impression of the Venus Rover

Some scientists believe that the climate of Venus used to resemble Earth’s current climate. Instead of a blanket of sulfuric acid clouds, it too may have had puffy white clouds of water vapor and an atmosphere that may have been hospitable to life. Today, Venus’s atmosphere is composed primarily of carbon dioxide, which has made the planet a giant greenhouse. Many probes and flybys have been sent to Venus by humans over the last 50 years or so, and the ambient pressure and temperature of Venus’s surface are so intense that they’ve destroyed all probes that have landed there shortly after their arrival. The only photos we have of the surface of Venus show a barren, hostile wasteland that couldn’t possibly support life in its current state.

A substantial majority of climate scientists believe that the Earth’s climate is changing. In order to understand what those changes could mean for the planet, many different research agencies, including NASA, are conducting an extensive range of experiments in order to try to understand the implications of climate change. Scientists have speculated that, since the shift in the Earth’s atmosphere is characterized by rising levels of carbon dioxide, our atmosphere may someday resemble that of Venus – too hot and too toxic.

Enter environmental chambers. NASA scientists’ renewed interest in studying Venus has brought into focus the need for workspaces where the climatic conditions of Venus can be emulated. NASA has constructed at least one environmental chamber that can be used to simulate the cold vacuum of space as well as the crushing inferno of Venus, and they’re using that chamber to test a rover that’s currently in production. Once they’ve made a machine that can withstand the high temperatures and pressures of Venus’s atmosphere, they plan to send it on a discovery mission to the surface of the planet. Environmental testing chambers may be one of the links to our discovery of how we can curb climate change.