Mount Etna as a terrestrial laboratory to investigate recent volcanic activity on Venus by future missions: A comparison with Idunn Mons, Venus

The recently selected missions to Venus have opened a new era for the exploration of this planet. These missions
will provide information about the chemistry of the atmosphere, the geomorphology, local-to-regional surface
composition, and the rheology of the interior. One key scientific question to be addressed by these future missions
is whether Venus remains volcanically active, and if so, how its volcanism is currently evolving. Hence, it is
fundamental to analyze appropriate terrestrial analog sites for the study of possibly active volcanism on Venus.
To this regard, we propose Mount Etna - one of the most active and monitored volcanoes on Earth - as a suitable
terrestrial laboratory for remote and in-situ investigations to be performed by future missions to Venus. Being
characterized by both effusive and explosive volcanic products, Mount Etna offers the opportunity to analyze
multiple eruptive styles, both monitoring active volcanism and identifying the possible occurrence of pyroclastic
activity on Venus. We directly compare Mount Etna with Idunn Mons, one of the most promising potentially
active volcanoes of Venus. Despite the two structures show a different topography, they also show some interesting
points of comparison, and in particular: a) comparable morpho-structural setting, since both volcanoes
interact with a rift zone, and b) morphologically similar volcanic fields around both Mount Etna and Idunn Mons.
Given its ease of access, we also propose Mount Etna as an analog site for laboratory spectroscopic studies to
identify the signatures of unaltered volcanic deposits on Venus.