What makes venus a hostile world

The planet is encased in a layer of clouds that are up to 80 kilometres thick, made mostly of sulphuric acid and sulphur dioxide. The atmosphere combined with the extreme temperature and hurricane-force winds, moving at roughly kilometres per hour, make Venus inhospitable. Venus's atmosphere is dense and crushing. The pressure sustained on the planet is similar to what is experienced around one kilometre deep in Earth's oceans. The planet has fewer impact craters than other celestial bodies, implying that the surface is young - estimated between million and million years old.

Venus has the most volcanoes of any planet in the solar system, with thousands on its surface. Some researchers think resurfacing was caused by the entire planet being flooded with lava, whereas others suggest that it occurred over a prolonged period of volcanic activity. Venus is one of the five classical planets visible to the naked eye and the second brightest celestial object in the night sky - only the Moon outshines it.

It isn't known who first recorded Venus, but it's named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty, making it the only planet in our solar system to be named after a female figure. More than 40 spacecraft have visited Venus. The first was NASA's Mariner 2, which took basic measurements of the atmosphere - its launch and arrival happened in This gave scientists their first look under Venus's thick cloud layer.

Venus's harsh atmosphere means that spacecraft don't last long on its surface. Venera 13, a probe from the former Soviet Union's Venera programme , has so far lasted the longest by functioning for just over two hours after landing.

It provided some of the only photographs of the Venusian surface to date. The Russian space agency Roscosmos has proposed Venera-D, an orbiter and lander, being considered for launch in - although the mission is not yet confirmed. The ESA's satellite Venus Express, which launched from Kazakhstan in , was in operation for over eight years, far exceeding the initial planned life of around Earth days. This spacecraft orbited the planet, conducting a comprehensive study of the atmosphere until it exhausted its fuel supply in The probe flew past the planet in and failed to enter orbit.

An attempt at re-entry was scheduled for and succeeded - Akatasuki is still in operation and gathering data on Venus's atmosphere. Get email updates about our news, science, exhibitions, events, products, services and fundraising activities. You must be over the age of Privacy notice. Smart cookie preferences.

Both Smrekar and Garvin are hopeful that each of their missions will be selected, in part because they proposed similar missions in the last Discovery competition, and both were chosen for further study, along with three others. If one of the Venus missions is successful, it will launch in the mids. Even after that time frame, Venus might remain a hub for interplanetary activity.

ESA recently picked a Venus probe called EnVision, along with two other finalists, as a mission that could fly as soon as At that level of accuracy, scientists might be able to see the landers that the Soviet Union left behind. They could even pick out the type of rock that the landers are resting on. This is possible because astronomers in the early s found that certain wavelengths of light can pass through the CO 2 haze that hides the Venusian surface. Like basalt, granite forms when molten magma cools and hardens.

But unlike basalt, the recipe for granite typically requires copious amounts of water — which happens on Earth when water-rich oceanic crust subducts below another plate. So if Venus is found to be rich in granite, it probably once overflowed with liquid water. And that might be the best hint yet that the planet was formerly a pale blue dot vastly similar to Earth today — another clue in their diverging stories see 'Water mystery'.

Source: Darby Dyar. His experiment suggested that the two rock spectra look radically different from one another, and that future missions could make use of the windows. He and his colleagues built an instrument to use this trick to map any granite on the Venusian surface. To truly understand the surface, a number of scientists want to actually land a craft on our toxic twin — a feat that has not been achieved for 35 years.

But scientists hope to break that record, and have already designed technology that can last not just minutes, but months. Instead of using its bulk to absorb heat or countering the conditions with refrigeration, the lander would use simple electronics made of silicon carbide a hybrid of silicon and carbon commonly used in sandpaper and fake diamonds that can withstand the Venusian environment.

The team has already tested the circuits in a Venus simulation chamber — a tonne stainless-steel tank that can imitate the temperature, pressure and specific chemistry of the Venusian surface. He and the team were careful to design a lander that would be only as large as a toaster — making it both small and light enough that it can hitch a ride on a number of future missions. Despite its small size, LLISSE would be able to record temperature, pressure, wind speed, wind direction, the amount of solar energy at the surface and a few specific chemicals in the low atmosphere.

And it would do so for months, providing crucial input for models of the Venusian atmosphere. That is the current record for any weather data on Venus. Already, scientists at Roscosmos are eager to use this new technology. In a joint proposal with NASA, they are working on a mission known as Venera-Dolgozhivuschaya where the latter means long-lasting , or Venera-D for short.

Such a mission would comprise a menagerie of components — an orbiter, a lander and a long-lived station. The lander would include a number of advanced instruments but would last for only a few hours; the long-lived station would be simpler in design but continue taking measurements for months.

This year, the Venera-D team released a report that covered a number of potential additions, including a balloon that could explore the cloudy atmosphere. And that opens up the possibility of searching for life on Venus. And the laser team actually got money to develop some parts for the system. But the other programs failed to find funding. By that he means that right now there are more good ideas than money available to build them all. In the search for alien life, Venus and Earth would look equally promising from afar.

Both are roughly the same size and mass. No spacecraft have landed on the surface of Venus since It visited Venus from to It has been orbiting Venus since December It is But it turns out that the atmosphere is transparent to at least five wavelengths of light. That transparency could help identify different minerals.

And Venus Express proved it would work. Looking at the planet in one infrared In-frah-RED wavelength allowed astronomers to see hot spots. These might be signs of active volcanoes. An orbiter that used the other four wavelengths might learn even more, Dyar says.

To really understand the surface, scientists want to land a craft there. It would have to contend with the opaque atmosphere while looking for a safe place to touch down. Its resolution is too low to show rocks or slopes that might topple a lander, notes James Garvin. Called Structure from Motion, it could help a lander map its own touch-down site.

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