OREANDA-NEWS. October 9, 2008. According to Oleg Korabliov, Deputy Director, Russian Space Research Insitute, funding of the Venus research project will begin in 2010, and the vehicle is to fly to Venus in 2016. "This project has been already included into the Federal Space Program. Analysis and assesment stage will last for 1 more year", he says.

Answering the question about involvement of the foreign partners, Mr. Korabliov said that the project would have the format similar to its European analog called Eva."The plan was for Europe to produce Venus satellite and aerostate ballon; Russia should have delivered landing probe. Unfortunately, the project failed, but most part of the initiative group is still here, and our European colleagues may join us. Currently we are speaking only about pure national project, some items of which may be delivered by Europe in the future", he states.

The main goal of the experiment is to get some data about origin of the Solar system. Studying Venus can help, since this planet is the neighbour of the Earth, however there are a lot of differencies between the two. Searching for the reason for that is the primary objective of the mission. 97% of the Venus atmosphere is CO2, temperature on the surface is about 500 deg.C, pressure is higher than 10 Bar. Venus` mass, size and solar illumination conditions are very similar to the Earth`s conditions, however there are significant differencies in the climate of the two planets.