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Oklahoma may not have a lot in common with the planet Venus, but NASA scientists say Oklahoma is the perfect state to help it study the second planet from the sun.
NASA recently tapped Oklahoma State University to help it test its solar balloons.
The space agency wants to study Venus in the same way that it's doing with Mars. However, unlike Mars, NASA can't land a rover on Venus.
“We always had this vision that it would be some kind of lush garden, but it’s just this disastrous hellscape where its 800 degrees on the surface," Director of OSU's Unmanned Research Institute Jamey Jacob told KFOR.
Instead, NASA is testing out balloons with sensors that will float above the planet's surface while collecting data, including information about quakes on Venus.
That's where Oklahoma and its frequent small earthquakes come in.
“The earthquake, when it shakes the ground, it acts like a giant speaker. It produces that low-frequency sound,” Dr. Brain Elbing, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at OSU, told Fox 23.
“The goal here is that we are going to fly a bunch of balloons with these sensors on them. We are trying to get natural earthquakes so it is going to be a long campaign where we are flying and waiting for earthquakes. If we can detect a weak earthquake here, it will be easy on Venus. Looking at the propagated sound that gets in the atmosphere, we can get a good look at the structure on Venus.”
OSU launched two of the silver solar balloons in Stillwater over the weekend, and more will likely go up in the future.