VERITAS: NASA's VERITAS, or Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy, will be the first NASA spacecraft to explore Venus since the 1990s.NASA announced two new missions, and ESA announced one: In June 2021, three new missions to Venus were announced. 9, 2022, NASA announced the spacecraft had captured its f irst visible light images of the surface of Venus from space during its February 2021 flyby.Īs Parker Solar Probe flew by Venus in February 2021, its WISPR instrument captured these images, strung into a video, showing the nightside surface of the planet. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has made multiple flybys of Venus. More recent Venus missions include ESA’s Venus Express (which orbited from 2006 until 2016) and Japan’s Akatsuki Venus Climate Orbiter (orbiting since 2016). An American probe, one of NASA's Pioneer Venus Multiprobes, survived for about an hour after impacting the surface in 1978. 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. and other space agencies have explored Venus, including NASA’s Magellan, which mapped the planet's surface with radar. Since then, numerous spacecraft from the U.S. Venus was the first planet to be explored by a spacecraft – NASA’s Mariner 2 successfully flew by and scanned the cloud-covered world on Dec. (It’s not the only planet in our solar system with such an oddball rotation – Uranus spins on its side.)

This means that, on Venus, the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east, opposite to what we experience on Earth. Venus has crushing air pressure at its surface – more than 90 times that of Earth – similar to the pressure you'd encounter a mile below the ocean on Earth.Īnother big difference from Earth – Venus rotates on its axis backward, compared to most of the other planets in the solar system.

Scientists think it’s possible some volcanoes are still active. The surface is a rusty color and it’s peppered with intensely crunched mountains and thousands of large volcanoes. Surface temperatures on Venus are about 900 degrees Fahrenheit (475 degrees Celsius) – hot enough to melt lead. It’s the hottest planet in our solar system, even though Mercury is closer to the Sun. Venus has a thick, toxic atmosphere filled with carbon dioxide and it’s perpetually shrouded in thick, yellowish clouds of sulfuric acid that trap heat, causing a runaway greenhouse effect.

Two worlds 3 on the way