Venus is Earth’s “sister planet” with a different surface, 96.5% carbon dioxide atmosphere, and a surface temperature of 462°C. It appears as the brightest object in the night sky and is named after the Roman goddess of love. Several missions have been sent to Venus, confirming its extreme heat and lack of life. The US Magellan spacecraft mapped its surface, revealing numerous volcanic features but no active volcanoes.
Venus, called Earth’s “sister planet” because of its similar size, has a surface that doesn’t look like ours. Venus’s atmosphere is 96.5% carbon dioxide, with 3.5% nitrogen making up the remainder. The surface temperature is 462°C (863°F), well above that of a typical broiler oven, and the surface pressure is 90 atmospheres, roughly equivalent to the pressure under a kilometer of water on the surface. Earth. The cloud tops regularly experience winds of 300 km/h (186 mph). Its surface consists of incandescent basalt plains and plenty of evidence of past and present volcanism, although no eruptions have been directly observed.
To the unaided eye, Venus appears milky white, its relatively high albedo, or reflectance, and proximity to Earth and the Sun make it the brightest object in the night sky except for the Moon. This has earned it the name “Morning Star” or “Evening Star”, as it becomes brightest near sunrise or sunset.
Mankind has been familiar with Venus since prehistoric times, and references to it can be found in our most ancient texts, from the Babylonian cuneiform. She is named after the Roman goddess of love, her designation contrasting strongly with that of Mars, named after the Roman god of war. It is the only planet in the solar system named after a female figure.
On December 14, 1962, the first successful interplanetary mission, Mariner 2, sent by NASA, passed by Venus and was able to measure the surface temperature, confirming its extreme heat and discarding the idea of any life there. During the 1960s, the Soviets sent several Venera probes to the surface, which captured images of the surface and measured the contents of the atmosphere before quickly succumbing to the high pressure. Only a few submarines are even capable of operating at these pressures, although bathyscaphes – specially designed divers – can, opening up the possible possibility of a long-term stay on the Venusian surface, like rovers on Mars.
In the late 1990s, the US Magellan spacecraft achieved orbit around Venus, extensively mapping its surface using radar, providing images of a quality similar to visible-light photographs of other planets. Numerous volcanic surface features have been found, but no active volcanoes. Like other rocky planets, Venus has plateaus, valleys, plains, and its own unique characteristics, including star-like fracture patterns called novae.
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