The best maps we have of Venus were made by Magellan, a space probe that flew in the 1990s.  In the summer of 2021, NASA approved a new mapping mission that will produce radically improved maps of the topography, radar reflectivity, and gravity field, and the first ever global map of surface rock type.  Sue Smrekar, the mission Principal Investigator, explains why this will revolutionize our understanding of Venus and perhaps also throw light on the early history of Earth when processes analogous to those happening on Venus today may have occurred.

Sue Smrekar is a geophysicist who has played key scientific and managerial roles in multiple planetary exploration missions, include Magellan and the InSight robot lander on Mars.