Venus' atmosphere traps heat from the sun as an extreme version of the greenhouse effect that warms Earth. The temperature on Venus are hot enough to melt lead.
Venus also possesses several surface features that are unlike anything on Earth. For example, Venus has coronae, or crowns — ring-like structures that range from roughly 95 to 1,300 miles wide. Scientists believe these formed when hot material beneath the planet's crust rose, warping the planet's surface. Venus also has tesserae, or tiles — raised areas in which many ridges and valleys have formed in different directions.
ESA's next Venus orbiter was announced on June 12, 2021. ESA hopes to launch EnVision to Venus in the early 2030s.The United States, Soviet Union, European Space Agency and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency have deployed many spacecraft to Venus — more than 20 so far. NASA'scame within 21,600 miles of Venus in 1962, making it the first planet to be observed by a passing spacecraft.
But a breakthrough scientific discovery in 2020 suddenly had scientists discussing whether or not it was possible that life could somehow exist in the present-day hellish atmospheres of Venus. Terraforming any planet is sure to bring up ethical questions about how to protect any life that might be there, along with how to preserve any information that life left behind.
Were it not for this greenhouse effect, even with Venus' location closer to the sun by about 25% relative to our Earth , its surface and atmosphere may have been more Earth-like in the past, with climate models suggesting that it could have been more clement, i.e., 50–80 degrees C rather than 440-460 degrees C .
There are key differences between modern Earth and Venus. First, Venus receives about twice the energy from the sun as Earth so it will naturally be hotter. Its present atmosphere is dominantly CO2 and 90 times thicker than Earth's atmosphere, rather than Earth's unique N2-O2 atmosphere modified by our planet's biosphere, which is an important difference that reflects its possible history post-formation.
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