Venus will shine brightly in weekend sky
This weekend is a great time to go outside and enjoy the views of our nearest planetary neighbor. Venus will be at its highest point in the night sky, giving us dazzling views of our sister planet.
Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system, even though Mercury is closer to the Sun. Surface temperatures on Venus are about 900 degrees Fahrenheit (475 degrees Celsius) – hot enough to melt lead. The surface is a rusty color, and it’s peppered with intensely crunched mountains and thousands of large volcanoes. Scientists think it’s possible some volcanoes are still active.
The heat and the crushing air pressure on Venus – more than 90 times that of Earth – have proven prohibative (so far) in allowing for exploration of the planet. A spacecraft – NASA’s Mariner 2 – first flew by and scanned the cloud-covered world on Dec. 14, 1962. Since then, numerous spacecraft from the U.S. and other space agencies have explored Venus, including NASA’s Magellan, which mapped the planet's surface with radar. Soviet spacecraft made the most successful landings on the surface of Venus to date, but they didn’t survive long due to the extreme heat and crushing pressure. An American probe, one of NASA's Pioneer Venus Multiprobes, survived for about an hour after impacting the surface in 1978.
NASA's upcoming DAVINCI mission will allow for further study. After exploring the top of Venus’s atmosphere and the composition of a mountainous region known as Alpha Regio, DAVINCI will drop a probe to the surface in 2031. Scientists hope it survives the drop to provide about 17 minutes worth of data.
Source: WRAL News
