Venus | Universe Today

Hydroxyl, an important but difficult-to-detect molecule, has been found in the upper atmosphere of Venus by the Venus Express spacecraft. This is the first time this molecule has been detected on another planet, and even though it is thought to be an "atmospheric cleanser," knowing that it is part of Venus' thick, greenhouse-like atmosphere will help scientists better understand the environment on our next-door planet. “Venus Express has already shown us that Venus is much more Earth-like than once thought. The detection of hydroxyl brings it a step closer,” said one of the Principal Investigators of the VIRTIS experiment on the Venus Express, Giuseppe Piccioni.
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Venus is known as the Earth's twin, but a better name might be Earth's "evil twin" planet. Although Venus has a similar size and mass to Earth, it has a dramatically different surface and atmosphere. And one of the biggest differences is that fact that Earth has plate tectonics, and Venus doesn't. New research indicates that prolonged atmospheric heat might be able to shut down plate tectonics, and cause our planet's crust to be locked in place. Don't worry, this isn't something we'll have to worry about for a few hundred million years.
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The folks over at Ars Technica report that the Japanese Space Agency, JAXA, announced they are now accepting proposals for a microprobe that can hitch a ride with the Venus Climate Orbiter, Japan's upcoming robotic mission to Venus. They will provide a free ride to either a low-Earth orbit or on a trajectory toward Venus. There are just a few requirements that JAXA has specified:
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For every backyard astronomer, we know 4.5 billion years ago, both Venus and Earth were formed with nearly the same radius, mass, density and chemical composition. Venus is like Earth's evil twin, but why is the climate on both worlds so widely varied? Scientists analysing the data from the orbiting European Venus Express spacecraft are finally putting the pieces of the geological and climatological puzzle together as they take a closer look at Venusian evolution. Read more…

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ESA's Venus Express has been constantly watching the huge swirling vortex of clouds around Venus' southern pole. It's a strange weather feature, morphing and changing shape within just a few days. And scientists, as you can probably imagine, are puzzled about what's going on.
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It turns out that Venus and Mars aren't actually that different after all. Although Mars has very little atmosphere to speak of and Venus has a stifling, thick, poisonous one, they have one thing in common: the Sun. The solar wind constantly batters the Solar System's planets, stripping their atmospheres into space. Is it possible that Mars may once have had a thick atmosphere like Venus', but has long since leaked away?
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As if the cloudy planet couldn't get any more mysterious, Venus and its global weather patterns are baffling European Space Agency (ESA) scientists. The ESA Venus Express mission is continuing to unearth the details of what lies in and under its thick atmosphere, but Venus's dynamic global weather patterns are very quick to consume the whole planet, like nothing we experience on Earth…
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There's a real advantage to having a spacecraft orbit a planet for days, months and even years. You have lots and lots of time to really pull in the science. And now, almost 2 years into its visit at our evil twin planet, ESA's Venus Express has been able to map the planet's atmosphere at lower altitudes, searching for chemicals that will help scientists understand the planet's global climate and weather systems.
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Venus is a hostile world, with high temperatures, intense pressures, and an atmosphere with sulphuric acid. The Russian spacecraft sent to explore it succumbed in mere hours. Well, now it appears that Venus is even more dangerous than previously imagined, with lightning flashing in the atmosphere.
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In comparison to a mission to Venus, missions to Mars or the Moon are a cakewalk. With temperatures exceeding 450ºC (840ºF) and pressures over 92 times that of the surface of the Earth, landing a rover on the surface of Venus is quite a feat. This, however, is exactly what a research and development team at the NASA John Glenn Research Center hopes to accomplish.
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Last week we talked about Mercury, so this week our planetary parade proceeds to Venus. It's the brightest object in the sky, the hottest object in the solar system, and it's probably one of the most deadly places to go and visit. You might be amazed to know that spacecraft have actually reached the surface of Venus and taken pictures. Find out more about our Earth's evil twin planet.

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NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft made its second and final flyby with the planet Venus on June 5th, 2007. It captured images and data on the way in, and it did the same as it sped away from the cloudy inner planet. The imaging team working with Messenger have stitched together the outbound images into a video, 50 frames long.

The images were captured using MESSENGER's Wide Angle Camera. At the beginning of the sequence, the spacecraft was only 60,688 kilometers (37,710 miles) away from Venus, and at the end, it was 89,310 kilometers (55,495 miles) away. The first set of images were taken every 20 minutes, and then every 60 minutes at the end.
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NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft made its second flyby of Venus earlier in June, and scientists have now released the images. The photographs attached to this story actually show the pictures the spacecraft captured as it was traveling away from Venus, on its way to an encounter with Mercury in the future.
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NASA's MESSENGER and ESA's Venus Express spacecraft are going to be at Venus together on June 6, giving scientists an opportunity to see our "evil" twin planet from two vantage points.

Of course, Venus Express has been orbiting its namesake planet since April 11, 2006, but Messenger is passing through, enroute to Mercury. And that's not all. Several ground-based observatories will be joining in on the party as well, taking images and gathering data during the MESSENGER flyby.
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Looking down through Venus' thick cloud cover isn't easy work. That's why ESA's Venus Express was equipped with the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) instrument. It allows the spacecraft to see infrared spectral windows that appear in the planet's atmosphere. These allow heat radiated by the hot rocks on Venus' surface to reach space, and Venus Express' instruments. The VIRTIS team hopes to eventually use this technique to see mysterious hot spots on the surface of Venus that could be active volcanoes.
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Astronomers have known about a strange vortex at the south pole of Venus since the 1970s, when it was discovered by NASA's Pioneer Venus spacecraft. And recently, the Cassini spacecraft imaged a similar vortex at Saturn's southern pole. The two vortices are caused when an area of low pressure sits at the rotation pole of a planet. This causes air to spiral down from higher in the atmosphere, like water going down a drain. Any planet with an atmosphere, even the Earth, can form a vortex like this. Venus' vortex is unusual because it has two eyes that rotate around each other.
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While Venus is the same size as our Earth, its hellish surface environment makes it inhospitable to life. What went wrong with Venus? Now NASA is working on a new spacecraft called Vesper that could visit Venus, and try to get to the bottom of the question. Once launched, Vesper could begin orbiting Venus in March 2015. It would have a suite of instruments that would analyze the planet's atmosphere over the course of two years.
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NASA's MESSENGER made its closest approach to Venus today, coming within 2,990 kilometers (1,860 miles) of its surface. The spacecraft used this close encounter with Venus' gravity well to alter its trajectory as it travels towards its final destination: Mercury. This won't be its final encounter with our twin planet, though. MESSENGER will meet up with Venus again in June 2007. It'll finally make its first encounter with Mercury in January 2008, but won't be in a final orbit until 2011.
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Mars may get most of the news, but don't forget there's a spacecraft orbiting Venus too. New images released from ESA's Venus Express spacecraft show new details about our twin planet's atmosphere. These night-side infrared images reveal thermal radiation emanating from beneath the planet's thick obscuring cloud deck. The clouds themselves are stretched out because of high-speed winds in the atmosphere.
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ESA's Venus Express spacecraft concluded its in-orbit commissioning phase last week, and the agency has declared it ready to enter the operational phase of its science mission. All of its instruments are performing well, except for the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS), which has a malfunction. The mirror used to target the instrument is locked in the "close" position, preventing the instrument from being able to gather data.
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New images from ESA's Venus Express confirm that the cloud-covered planet has twin atmospheric vortexes at its southern pole. Previous missions to Venus saw stormy southern skies, but these images map out the shape of the double vortex in detail. High velocity winds take only 4 days to spin around Venus. This "super rotation" combines with the natural recycling of hot air to create this vortex structure. Scientists aren't exactly sure why it's creating a double vortex, though.
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Venus is our nearest planetary neighbour. Compared to the Earth, it's nearly identical in size and distance from the Sun. But that's where the similarities end. While we enjoy our comfortable temperature, pressure and atmosphere, Venus' environment is downright hostile to life. The European Space Agency's Venus Express blasted off for our "evil twin" planet today, and will hope to help answer the question: what went wrong? My guest today is Larry Esposito from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado. He's a member of the Venus Express science team.
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