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Determine Venus’s Interior Water Budget

Determine the total water content (water budget) of Venus’s interior and assess whether the interior is dry by deriving constraints that reconcile atmospheric measurements with tectonic model interpretations.

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Background

The report emphasizes that despite decades of exploration, fundamental properties of Venus’s interior remain poorly constrained. Establishing the interior water budget is central to understanding Venus’s geologic and thermal evolution, mantle rheology, potential for past habitability, and contrasts with Earth’s hydrous mantle.

Atmospheric measurements and tectonic models have been interpreted to imply a dry interior, but this inference lacks direct confirmation. Resolving the interior water content would inform models of mantle convection, volcanism, and crustal formation, and calibrate comparisons to terrestrial exoplanets.

References

The water budget of Venus’ interior is also unknown, even though measurements of the atmosphere and the results of tectonic models have been generally interpreted to mean a dry interior for Venus.

— A New Strategy for the Exploration of Venus (2412.06830 - Workgroup, 6 Dec 2024) in Overview of Venus’s interior (early section), paragraph beginning “We similarly lack important chemical data for the planet’s interior…”