text: The author even talks about how humans have already sent numerous space craft to venus in paragraph two "Each previous mission was unmanned, and for good reason, since no spacecraft survived the landing for more than a few hours." and just a sentence after that it tells us "numerous factors contribute to Venus's reputation as a challanging planet for humans to study, despite its proxmity to us." so the author tells that us despite the issue of how dangerous it is to land there, it still tells us as readers that we are still studying it despite how much of a challange it is, and just because we are close to it doesn't make it any easier to study.