About Venus

If you could stand on the surface of Venus one thing would be the same as on Earth – you’d weigh the same, as Venus is almost the same size and mass as the Earth. But that’s the only similarity, because in reality our sister planet Venus is without a doubt the most inhospitable planet in the whole Solar System.

Venus
Venus, photographed on 2 January 2025 by Martin Lewis from St Albans, UK

That beautiful white view, looking as unblemished as a field of fresh snow, actually shows the top of a very dense layer of sulphuric acid clouds. At the surface, the atmospheric pressure is a crushing 90 times that on the surface of the Earth, equivalent to being about 900 metres deep in an ocean. The atmosphere below the clouds is carbon dioxide and there’s no free oxygen in the atmosphere, so breathing would be impossible even if you were higher up. To cap it all, the temperature at the surface is around 460° C.

So you would be simultaneously corroded, crushed, stifled and roasted, and the light would be dim and orange. On the whole, you’d be better off in (add your own least favourite place here!).

It’s not surprising that the only space probes that have been designed to land on Venus – all sent by the former Soviet Union – lasted no more that about 90 minutes before succumbing to the harsh conditions. Below are two versions of one of the few colour photos taken of the surface of Venus. The left one shows the view as you’d see it in the dim orange light, but the right one shows the true colour if the prevailing light were not orange.

Radar maps

Because Venus has such thick clouds, we can never see the surface visually from Earth. But in 1978, NASA sent a Pioneer spacecraft into orbit around Venus, equipped with a radar system that was able to measure the surface heights across the planet. It was able to map the surface, and scientists named the features they saw.

Radar map of Venus based on information from the Pioneer Venus spacecraft which began orbiting the planet in December 1978. Photo: NASA

Then in 1990 NASA sent a spacecraft called Magellan to Venus, which sent back more detailed radar views. These have been converted into images that show the surface features, and they give a clear indication that Venus is covered with volcanoes. The photos released exaggerated the height of the features by 20 times, and showed no atmosphere.

A radar image of part of the western Eistla region of Venus, taken by the Magellan spacecraft. Venus’s atmosphere prevents direct photographs of the surface from orbit. The volcano on the horizon at right is Gula Mons; that on the left is Sif Mons. Photo: JPL
Part of the same view but with atmosphere added photographically and the vertical relief corrected. The volcano shown is Gula Mons. Credit JPL/Robin Scagell

Given the difficulty of exploring Venus, it’s not surprising that the main interest in human interplanetary travel has not been on Venus, but on Mars.

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