text: The first reason why the author said that the mission to Venus should be looked at is because astronomers are fascinated by Venus. They are fascinated because they believe that Venus is the closes thing to Earth, not only by distance but also because they are very similar. In paragraph 4 it is stated that "Venus was probably covered largely with oceans and could have supported various forms of life, just like Earth". So they want to discover and see if Venus still has the Earth like qualities to it.