Idunn Mons as the landing site of the Venera-D mission: scientific relevance and possible operational tests on Mount Etna

Along with the recently selected NASA DAVINCI [1] and VERITAS [2] missions, and with the ESA EnVision mission [3], the Roscosmos Venera-D mission [4, 5] opens the new decade of Venus exploration. Among these missions, the Venera-D is the only one to be equipped with a lander which could drill the surface of Venus and analyze its chemical composition. For this reason, it is crucial to select a future landing site based on its scientific relevance, as well as on safety constraints. We propose here Idunn Mons (Fig. 1a), a major large volcano of Imdr Regio, as the landing site for the Venera-D mission. We also indicate Mount Etna in Italy (Fig. 1b) as a suitable test site on Earth for drilling tests and in-situ elemental and mineralogical analyses [6, 7].