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 (Figure 1a), a major large volcano of Imdr Regio,
as the landing site for the Venera-D mission. We also indicate Mount Etna in
Italy (Figure 1b) as a suitable test site on Earth for drilling tests and in-situ
elemental and mineralogical analyses [6,7].