Venus may be easy to spot in the nightsky, being nicknamed the "evening star," but it's not so easy to examine. There have been attempts to land spacecrafts on the planet; however, none have survived more than a couple hours. There are many factors that contribute to the difficulty of exploring Venus, but that won't stop NASA from trying to get as much information that they can get. The author thinks that it would be beneficial to explore Venus, but is it really worth trying to explore the planet despite all of the difficulties?

What factors exactly make the exploration of Venus so difficult? Although Venus may once have been "the most Earth-like planet in our solar system," it no longer appears to be that way. According to the article, the atmosphere is almost 97 percent carbon dioxide, and the clouds contain highly corrosive sulfuric acid. Also, the average temperature is over 800 degrees Fahrenheit. These conditions are nothing like ones that are found on Earth. This environment would crush a submarine and would liquify metals, as stated in paragraph 3. Along with the atmospheric difficulites, weather difficulties also present themselves. The article states that volcanoes, earthquakes, and lightning strikes would be a danger to anything looking to land on Venus's surface.

With all these difficulties, how was NASA planning on examining the planet? NASA wanted to study the planet from above. They want to send a vehicle to hover over Venus in order to avoid the ground conditions, as stated in paragraph 5. However, this would limit the amount of information NASA could collect about the ground conditions of the planet and would restrict them from bringing back any samples.

Overall, I don't think think it is worth trying to explore Venus with all these difficulties, and I don't think the author did a good job supporting the idea that it would be beneficial. If anything, I think the author explained why trying to explore Venus would be nothing but harmful. In the artcle, the author discusses the dangers of trying to explore Venus much more than the benefits we would gain. The author provides no imput as to why we should explore the planet other than the fact that curiosity is what lead people to wanting to explore it in the first place. If people took the time to explore everything they were curious about, nobody would have a life and imaginations would be pointless.