Lunar scientists are pretty lucky. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is currently in orbit around the Moon, nabbing awesome data, and over the decades, we’ve had many missions in orbit around this super nearby world. 

Venus, however, is not that lucky, and researchers will go to great extremes to sneak a look whenever they can with whatever they can. This means that Venus is a favorite destination for spacecraft that need a gravitational assist. While mission planners can steal a bit of momentum from Venus – an amount so small it is basically unaffected while the tiny spacecraft can get a nice dose of velocity – scientists can use Venus as a place to test the mission instruments and get information we otherwise would never have.

Both the Solar Orbiter, which, as the name suggests, studies the Sun, and the BepiColombo mission to Mercury are going to fly past Venus this week on August 9 and 10. Solar Orbiter is using Venus to sling itself into a polar orbit and BepiColombo is working to drop its orbit closer to the Sun, while trying to stay out of the Sun. Neither mission is set up to get particularly pretty images of Venus, but data is data, and beggars can’t always be choosers. I can’t wait to see what we learn and hope to bring you some of the low-resolution images we expect toward the end of next week.

More Information

ESA press release