Learn about past missions to Venus — and why we’re going back; and how to extract DNA from strawberries in your kitchen. We're going back to Venus. Here are the missions to look forward to by Briana Brownell NASA Selects 2 Missions to Study “Lost Habitable” World of Venus. (2018). NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-2-missions-to-study-lost-habitable-world-of-venus ESA selects revolutionary Venus mission EnVision. (2021). Esa.int. https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/ESA_selects_revolutionary_Venus_mission_EnVision Castro, J. (2015, February 3). What Would It Be Like to Live on Venus? Space.com; Space. https://www.space.com/28357-how-to-live-on-venus.html Goettel, K. A.; Shields, J. A.; Decker, D. A. (16–20 March 1981). "Density constraints on the composition of Venus". Proceedings of the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Houston, TX: Pergamon Press. pp. 1507–1516. Bibcode:1982LPSC...12.1507G. Howell, E. (2019, March 25). Venera 13 and the Mission to Reach Venus. Space.com; Space. https://www.space.com/18551-venera-13.html Howell, E. (2020, September 18). Here’s every successful Venus mission humanity has ever launched. Space.com; Space. https://www.space.com/venus-mission-success-history You can extract DNA from strawberries in your kitchen by Cameron Duke RK Pendergrass. (2021, April 21). How to extract DNA from strawberries | Popular Science. Popular Science. https://www.popsci.com/story/diy/diy-science-project-strawberrry-dna/ Science Buddies. (2013, January 31). Squishy Science: Extract DNA from Smashed Strawberries. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/squishy-science-extract-dna-from-smashed-strawberries/ Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Learn about past missions to Venus — and why we’re going back; and how to extract DNA from strawberries in your kitchen.
We're going back to Venus. Here are the missions to look forward to by Briana Brownell
You can extract DNA from strawberries in your kitchen by Cameron Duke
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/missions-to-venus-and-how-to-extract-dna-from-strawberries
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about exciting new missions to Venus — and why we’re going in the first place; and how you can extract DNA from strawberries in your kitchen.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Pack your bags, we’re going to Venus! Yep, that’s right: NASA and ESA just announced new missions to our sister planet. And they’re hoping to solve some of the most interesting mysteries about the planet. Like: What if Venus was once habitable? Here are the missions to look forward to.
NASA’s first mission, DAVINCI+ [DaVinci Plus], will help us better understand the composition of Venus’s atmosphere, and how it might have changed through time. It will also look into whether Venus ever had liquid oceans. If Venus was once habitable, something could have caused a runaway heat wave that boiled oceans and made the planet inhospitable, like it is now. This mission will investigate what may have happened.
NASA’s second mission, VERITAS, will look at the surface of Venus and the physical processes that are taking place there. First, volcanoes: It will help us figure out whether Venus is still volcanically active, and whether volcanoes are releasing water into the atmosphere. Second, plate tectonics. On Earth, the movement of the tectonic plates is responsible for the formation of new landmasses and other geological events like earthquakes. VERITAS will create a detailed map of Venus’s surface and figure out what kinds of rocks make it up.
ESA’s mission, EnVision, will take a look at the planet’s surface and atmosphere too, but unlike the other two, it will also explore the mysteries underground. A sounder will look at underground layers and a radio science experiment is planned to reveal information about Venus’s internal structure and gravity field. These experiments will figure out whether the core of Venus is liquid, like Earth’s, or solid instead.
Venus’s super hot temperatures and opaque clouds have made it really tough to study, despite it being right next door.
Even so, it was the first planet that was visited with a spacecraft, Mariner 2 in 1962. Mariner 2 confirmed that Venus has a comparatively tiny magnetic field, and that it has another odd quality: it spins the opposite way as all the other planets in the solar system. That spin is so slow that one day on Venus is longer than a Venusian year.
Venus was also the first planet we ever landed a spacecraft on. That was in 1970, with Venera 7. Although the landing was only partially successful, Venera 7 still managed to take measurements of the composition of the atmosphere. That’s how we found out that the planet’s surface temperature was a toasty 475 degrees Celsuis, making liquid water on the surface an impossibility.
Many of the past missions to Venus have been flybys on our way to or from other planets. But these new missions are all about Venus. Scheduled to be launched in 2028-2030, scientists are looking forward to the new discoveries they are sure to bring about our sister world.
It’s summer, and summer is the best time for weird, messy projects. So since you probably can’t go to Venus, we thought we’d help you scratch your science itch by doing something a little different today: lead you through a hands-on science experiment! Don’t worry if you’re not somewhere you can get dirty — you’ll still learn some amazing things. That’s because we’re going to tell you how you can isolate DNA in your own kitchen. From a strawberry.
First, you’ll need a zip-top freezer bag, dish soap, salt, water, and rubbing alcohol. You’ll also need a coffee filter or cheesecloth, and two glasses: two regular sized drinking glasses and one smaller glass.
First, stick the bottle of alcohol in the freezer so it can get nice and cold. Next, take two or three strawberries and pull off the stems. Then toss them in the freezer bag.
Now we need to make our DNA extraction liquid. To do this, combine three tablespoons of water, a half-teaspoon of salt, and a tablespoon of dish soap in a cup and mix those together. If you’re not in the US, it’s 45 milliliters of water, 2 grams of salt, and 20 milliliters of dish soap. If your measurements aren’t super precise, don’t worry. It’ll still work.
Once you have the mixture, pour it in the strawberry bag, seal the bag, and gently squish the strawberries into a messy pulp with your fingers.
We are doing all this because to get to the DNA in a cell, we have to break the cells apart. As you squish the berries, you are popping the cells like tiny balloons. But the DNA is still protected by the nucleus. That’s where the dish detergent comes in. It dissolves the nucleus and frees the DNA. Finally, the salt sticks to the DNA and will help us separate it from the rest of the strawberry gunk. So far so good.
Now for the next step. Place the coffee filter or cheesecloth over a cup and pour the strawberry gunk through the filter so you’re left with only liquid. Then, pour the liquid into the smaller glass, filling it halfway.
Next, take the alcohol out of the freezer and carefully pour it down the side of the glass until you have a 1–2 finger deep layer of clear liquid on top of the strawberry water. You want to make sure the two stay separate.
Almost immediately, you should see a cloudy, white substance gathering in the alcohol layer. Once enough appears, use tweezers or chopsticks to gather it and take it out of the glass.
That goop you have? That’s DNA. Millions and millions of strands of DNA. While you can’t see a DNA molecule on its own, a bunch of them in one place are easily visible. And strawberries have a LOT of DNA. Human cells each have two copies of our DNA, but each strawberry cell has eight copies of its DNA. So there’s a lot to collect.
And there you have it, the instructions to make a strawberry, right in the palm of your hand. Reading it? Well… that’s for another day.
Let’s recap today’s takeaways
[ad lib optional]
ASHLEY: Today’s writers were Briana Brownell and Cameron Duke.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: Once you’re done extracting strawberry DNA, join us again tomorrow to extract some curiosity — and learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!