CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA on Wednesday announced plans to launch a pair of missions to Venus to better understand how Earth’s neighbor became an "inferno-like world," when it may have once been closer to our own climate.Venus, the solar system’s hottest plant, may have been "the first habitable world in the solar system, complete with an ocean and Earth-like climate," the space agency said in a news release.NASA said it was awarding $500 million per mission for development — which will be the agency's first in decades.
The missions are expected to launch sometime around 2028 to 2030.One of the missions, called DAVINCI+, will measure Venus’ thick atmosphere to understand how it formed and evolved and determine whether the planet ever had.