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The amazing resume of past exploration to the planet known as "Earth's Twin" is impressive to say the least. The planet was virtually under constant surveillance for the majority of the period between 1967 and 1994; an impressive twenty-seven year run; before the nations of the world pulled back funding and monitoring of the planet went quiet. With the arrival of Venus Express in 2005 interest in the planet was renewed and now the future of the exploration of Venus is a bright one as multiple national space agencies are proposing or developing long-term exploratory missions to the planet that received so much attention at the beginning of the Space Age.

The top two players in the early exploration of Venus, the Soviet Union and the United States are now different countries then they were in the sixties with the Soviet Union even utilizing a different name; but both are strapped for money in an age of multi-million dollar bankruptcies and government bailouts that have left their space programs scrounging for money from everyone they can find. Even with the apparent global economic recession the Russian government issued a decree; number 635 to be exact; on October 22, 2005 which approved the Federal Space Program's budget for 2006-2015.

This decree included funding for the Venera-D project, which is envisioned to be a long-duration surface mission which could function on Venus as long as 30 days. The technological and monetary hurdles to such a project are astounding but the Federal Space Agency in Russia has assured the world that they are dedicated to such a mission and feel that the Russians should not have forgotten about Venus for so long.

The United States and NASA, on the other hand have yet to commit money to a return trip to the goddess-named planet but instead have just proposed a mission for the future. Strapped for time and money due to a hard-hitting recession and regime change that has seen many changes to the inner-workings of the entire country, the American space agency has had to find ways to conserve money during a time period where the Space Shuttle will be retired and the Constellation Program will be developed to replace it. With all that said there is a proposal on the table; a fairly ambitious one; to engineer a return-mission to Venus known as the Venus In-Situ Explorer.

This mission is envisioned as a balloon mission that would study atmospheric composition in detail and descend briefly to the surface to acquire soil samples for further

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