Russia announces intention to independently explore Venus

There has been an excessive media coverage about the signs of life found in the atmosphere of Venus.

However, it is worth mentioning that Russia has thus announced that they want to explore Venus independently.

The head of the Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, told reporters that they would initiate a national project as "We believe that Venus is a Russian planet." according to TASS, a Russian news agency.

In a statement, Roscosmos noted that the first mission to explore Venus were carried out by Soviet Union. “The enormous gap between Soviet Union and its competitors in the investigation of Venus contributed to the fact that the US called Venus a Soviet planet."

The Russians claim to have extensive material that suggests some objects on the Venusian surface has changed places or could be alive, although those are hypotheses that yet to be confirmed.

The national project would be in addition to Russia's “Venera-D” project that the Russians are working on with US’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Early reports indicated that Russia planned to cut all international partners on its Venus exploration project after Roscosmos said they would limit "international cooperation" in the Venera-D Project.

But later, Russian media reported that Roscosmos would launch a separate "National independent project" to explore Venus.

Roscosmos said they would study the soil and atmosphere of the planet, as well as the “evolutionary processes on Venus, which allegedly suffered a climate catastrophe associated with the greenhouse effect.”

A week ago, Roscosmos announced that the United States had refused to buy a seat on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

NASA noted that they would like to send an astronaut to the international space station both on new manned spacecraft from SpaceX and on Russian spacecraft, but in barter format not to spend unnecessarily.

The only country in history that seems to have sent a probe into Venus' atmosphere is the former Soviet Union. As most of the characteristics of Venus' environment were unknown, they lacked the necessary precautions, resulting in more than 30 probes scrapped within hours.

Nevertheless, Russia has more information about Venus’ environment than any other country.