CONVERGE: a Venus lander–orbiter mission concept for in-situ geophysical and atmospheric measurements

CONVERGE (COordinated Network for Venus Exploration and Research with Ground Experiments) is a European mission concept that combines an orbiter, a short-lived lander, and a longer-lived passive seismic node to obtain new in-situ measurements from the surface of Venus. The mission targets a geologically young region such as Imdr Regio, one of the proposed “young volcanic rises,” to investigate recent interior activity, surface evolution, and atmosphere–surface interactions. The lander would perform mineralogical (XRD/XRF) and elemental analyses, atmospheric profiling during descent, and passive seismic monitoring on the surface. Even with a limited lifetime, these measurements would provide critical ground truth for radar, spectroscopy, and atmospheric retrievals from missions such as DAVINCI, VERITAS, EnVision, Venera-D, and the Venus Orbiter Mission, and would inform models of rocky exoplanets observed by PLATO, ARIEL, and NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory.