​​​​Team S.T.A.R.​

     Our team is designing a payload to travel to Venus to study the effects of solar winds on the planet. Knowing how the solar winds effect Venus' atmosphere, NASA would be able to understand how the solar winds led to the gradual loss of hydrogen, oxygen, and water on the planet. 

     The solar winds form a bow shock around Venus. The lack of a detectable magnetic field makes the bow shock lie just a few 1000 km above the surface, but it is held off by the planet’s ionosphere, which is a region of the atmosphere from about 85 km to 600 km. This leads to intense interactions between the solar winds and the atmosphere which leads to the previously stated loss of hydrogen, oxygen, and water. Scientist currently believe that the total amount of water loss on Venus could have been as much as the amount of water that is on Earth, or what little water vapor that is present was supplied by comets or volcanism.