Hemispheric view of Venus produced by Magellan
Recently, NASA Planetary Scientist Gordon Chin spoke to Chris about Venus. I have compiled a fact sheet on Venus from what transpired between the two.
Venus is one of the first planets that was visited by spacecraft. Over thirty spacecrafts have attempted to go to Venus. About twenty-five of them have succeeded. Actual images taken by landers are available for the planet.
Balloons have been flown over the atmosphere of Venus to peep into its dense atmosphere.
Venus is a sister planet to Earth in the sense that it’s about the same size as Earth, almost identical in terms of its diameter. Also, it was formed at the same time as the Earth in the pre-solar nebula and also out of the same raw materials, yet the planet is so different from the Earth when it comes to its environment.
Venus spins on its axis in the opposite direction that the Earth does. It’s an unsolved mystery.
Venus rotates very slowly. One Venus day is 243 Earth days and it goes around the Sun in 225 days.
Venus has a global cloud cover. If we were to actually fly by Venus and look out of the spacecraft window we cannot see the surface anywhere.
The global cloud cover on Venus, is not made out of water vapor as on Earth but is sulfuric acid droplets.
Atmosphere of Venus is rotating 60 times faster than the planet itself. It’s called a super rotation. That’s another mystery.
Atmospheric pressure is about 90 times that of the Earth’s atmospheric pressure at the surface of Venus. Temperature there is 900° F, enough to melt lead.
Atmospheric pressure is about 90 times that of the Earth’s atmospheric pressure at the surface of Venus. Temperature there is 900° F, enough to melt lead.
No man-made lander has survived for more than about an hour on Venus. It’s been incredibly difficult to make landers operate in this incredibly dense pressure, very acidic atmosphere, and also try to get rid of the heat.
Visiting Venus is actually easier than going to Mars. Orbiting Venus can be used as a rehearsal for orbiting Mars with humans aboard. It’s probably easier to do that than trying to go to some near Earth asteroids which would take a long time. If it is timed right, it's possible to get to Venus in about 3 months.
Gordan has been proposing discovery missions to Venus for the past 10 years but was never chosen. Gordon thinks that it's easier and more important to explore Venus than spending on exo-planet discoveries or sending a mission to near-earth asteroids. A lot more can be learned through a Venus mission, how the atmosphere works, what is the photochemistry and dynamics of its atmosphere.
Venus has an atmosphere which is primarily 95% CO2. Because it’s so close to the Sun that CO2 could be broken down into CO in about 200 years. Why is the CO2 stabilized then and managed to remain intact? Is it stabilized by the same catalytic chemical processes that operate on the Earth to destroy ozone? We do not know for sure.
Gordon thinks that finding Earth size planets among the faraway planet systems, may be very difficult. Why ignore Venus when it is so close at hand. Doing research on Venus is such an important thing.
Venus has an atmosphere which is primarily 95% CO2. Because it’s so close to the Sun that CO2 could be broken down into CO in about 200 years. Why is the CO2 stabilized then and managed to remain intact? Is it stabilized by the same catalytic chemical processes that operate on the Earth to destroy ozone? We do not know for sure.
Gordon thinks that finding Earth size planets among the faraway planet systems, may be very difficult. Why ignore Venus when it is so close at hand. Doing research on Venus is such an important thing.
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