The talks about sending a joint probe to Earth's nearest neighbor, which were put on hold after the sanctions due to the Ukrainian crisis, have a real chance now to be resumed.

"The NASA delegation has been discussing the project as a joint one," Zeleny said last week.

He also added that the discussed project will be based on Russia's Venera-D spacecraft (Venera is Venus in Russian), where "D" stands for Dolgozhivuschaya (long-lasting) — the first Russian project in the post-Soviet period aimed to explore Venus.

NASA sees Venera-D as a strategic Venus mission sponsored by the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), with participation by NASA's Planetary Science Division – which is part of the Science Mission Directorate (SMD). The collaborative effort between U.S. and Russian space agencies would bring considerable cost savings.

The aim of the Venera-D is the investigation of the surface, atmosphere, and plasma environment of Venus to understand the formation and evolution of the planet and its atmosphere. It will also study the dynamics and nature of superrotation, radiative balance, and nature of the enormous greenhouse effect on the planet.