english essay on venus

All About Venus

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Even though Venus isn't the closest planet to the Sun, it is still the hottest. It has a thick atmosphere full of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and clouds made of sulfuric acid. The gas traps heat and keeps Venus toasty warm. In fact, it's so hot on Venus, metals like lead would be puddles of melted liquid.

Explore Venus! Click and drag to rotate Venus. Scroll or pinch to zoom in and out. Credit: NASA Visualization Technology Applications and Development (VTAD)

Venus looks like a very active planet. It has mountains and volcanoes. Venus is similar in size to Earth. Earth is just a little bit bigger.

Venus is unusual because it spins the opposite direction of Earth and most other planets. And its rotation is very slow. It takes about 243 Earth days to spin around just once. Because it's so close to the Sun, a year goes by fast. It takes 225 Earth days for Venus to go all the way around the Sun. That means that a day on Venus is a little longer than a year on Venus.

Since the day and year lengths are similar, one day on Venus is not like a day on Earth. Here, the Sun rises and sets once each day. But on Venus, the Sun rises every 117 Earth days. That means the Sun rises two times during each year on Venus, even though it is still the same day on Venus! And because Venus rotates backwards, the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east.

Just like Mercury, Venus doesn't have any moons.

Structure and Surface

• Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system.
• Venus is a terrestrial planet. It is small and rocky.
• Venus has a thick atmosphere. It traps heat and makes Venus very hot.
• Venus has an active surface, including volcanoes!
• Venus spins the opposite direction of Earth and most other planets.

Time on Venus

• A day on Venus lasts 243 Earth days.
• A year on Venus lasts 225 Earth days.

Venus's Neighbors

• Venus does not have any moons.
• Venus is the second planet from the Sun. That means Mercury and Earth are Venus's neighboring planets.

Quick History

• Venus has been known since ancient times because it can be seen easily without a telescope.
• Venus has been visited by several spacecraft: Mariner 2, Mariner 5, Mariner 10, Pioneer Venus 1, Pioneer Venus 2, and an orbiter called Magellan.

What does Venus look like?

Here you can see the clouds covering Venus.

This is a combination of images taken by the Magellan spacecraft. The colors have been altered so you can see all the differences in Venus's surface. Magellan used radar to get information about the surface of Venus, which we can't normally see because of the thick, cloudy atmosphere.

A crater on the surface of Venus. It's 45 miles (72 km) wide.

For more information visit:

Planet Venus Overview

Explore the Solar System

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It's a cloud-swaddled planet named for a love goddess, often called Earth’s twin. But pull up a bit closer, and Venus turns hellish. Our nearest planetary neighbor, the second planet from the Sun, has a surface hot enough to melt lead. The atmosphere is so thick that, from the surface, the Sun is just a smear of light.

In some ways it is more an opposite of Earth than a twin: Venus spins backward, has a day longer than its year, and lacks any semblance of seasons. It might once have been a habitable ocean world, like Earth, but that was at least a billion years ago. A runaway greenhouse effect turned all surface water into vapor, which then leaked slowly into space. The present-day surface of volcanic rock is blasted by high temperatures and pressures. Asked if the surface of Venus is likely to be life-bearing today, we can give a quick answer: a hard “no.”

Further, Venus may hold lessons about what it takes for life to get its start ­– on Earth, in our solar system, or across the galaxy. The ingredients are all there, or at least, they used to be. By studying why our neighbor world went in such a different direction with regard to habitability, we could find out what could make other worlds right. And while it might sound absurd, we can’t rule out life on Venus entirely. Temperature, air pressure, and chemistry are much more congenial up high, in those thick, yellow clouds.

The ancient Romans could easily see seven bright objects in the sky: the Sun, the Moon, and the five brightest planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). They named the objects after their most important gods. Venus, the third brightest object after the Sun and Moon, was named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. It’s the only planet named after a female god.

Potential for Life

Thirty miles up (about 50 kilometers), temperatures range from 86 to 158 Fahrenheit (30 to 70 Celsius), a range that, even at its higher-end, could accommodate Earthly life, such as “extremophile” microbes. And atmospheric pressure at that height is similar to what we find on Earth’s surface.

At the tops of Venus’ clouds, whipped around the planet by winds measured as high as 224 miles (360 kilometers) per hour, we find another transformation. Persistent, dark streaks appear. Scientists are so far unable to explain why these streaks remain stubbornly intact, even amid hurricane-force winds. They also have the odd habit of absorbing ultraviolet radiation.

The most likely explanations focus on fine particles, ice crystals, or even a chemical compound called iron chloride. Although it's much less likely, another possibility considered by scientists who study astrobiology is that these streaks could be made up of microbial life, Venus-style. Astrobiologists note that ring-shaped linkages of sulfur atoms, known to exist in Venus’ atmosphere, could provide microbes with a kind of coating that would protect them from sulfuric acid. These handy chemical cloaks would also absorb potentially damaging ultraviolet light and re-radiate it as visible light.

Some of the Russian Venera probes did, indeed, detect particles in Venus’ lower atmosphere about a micron in length – roughly the same size as a bacterium on Earth.

None of these findings provide compelling evidence for the existence of life in Venus’ clouds. But the questions they raise, along with Venus’ vanished ocean, its violently volcanic surface, and its hellish history, make a compelling case for a return to our temperamental sister planet. There is much, it would seem, that she can teach us.

Size and Distance

Our nearness to Venus is a matter of perspective. The planet is nearly as big around as Earth – 7,521 miles (12,104 kilometers) across, versus 7,926 miles (12,756 kilometers) for Earth. From Earth, Venus is the brightest object in the night sky after our own Moon. The ancients, therefore, gave it great importance in their cultures, even thinking it was two objects: a morning star and an evening star. That’s where the trick of perspective comes in.

Because Venus’ orbit is closer to the Sun than ours, the two of them – from our viewpoint – never stray far from each other. The ancient Egyptians and Greeks saw Venus in two guises: first in one orbital position (seen in the morning), then another (your “evening” Venus), just at different times of the year.

At its nearest to Earth, Venus is some 38 million miles (about 61 million kilometers) distant. But most of the time the two planets are farther apart; Mercury, the innermost planet, actually spends more time in Earth’s proximity than Venus.

One more trick of perspective: how Venus looks through binoculars or a telescope. Keep watch over many months, and you’ll notice that Venus has phases, just like our Moon – full, half, quarter, etc. The complete cycle, however, new to full, takes 584 days, while our Moon takes just a month. And it was this perspective, the phases of Venus first observed by Galileo through his telescope, that provided the key scientific proof for the Copernican heliocentric nature of the Solar System.

Orbit and Rotation

Spending a day on Venus would be quite a disorienting experience – that is, if your ship or suit could protect you from temperatures in the range of 900 degrees Fahrenheit (475 Celsius). For one thing, your “day” would be 243 Earth days long – longer even than a Venus year (one trip around the Sun), which takes only 225 Earth days. For another, because of the planet's extremely slow rotation, sunrise to sunset would take 117 Earth days. And by the way, the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east, because Venus spins backward compared to Earth.

While you’re waiting, don’t expect any seasonal relief from the unrelenting temperatures. On Earth, with its spin axis tilted by about 23 degrees, we experience summer when our part of the planet (our hemisphere) receives the Sun’s rays more directly – a result of that tilt. In winter, the tilt means the rays are less direct. No such luck on Venus: Its very slight tilt is only three degrees, which is too little to produce noticeable seasons.

Venus has no moons.

Venus has no rings.

A critical question for scientists who search for life among the stars: How do habitable planets get their start? The close similarities of early Venus and Earth, and their very different fates, provide a kind of test case for scientists who study planet formation. Similar size, similar interior structure, both harboring oceans in their younger days. Yet one is now an inferno, while the other is the only known world – so far – to play host to abundant life. The factors that set these planets on almost opposite paths began, most likely, in the swirling disk of gas and dust from which they were born. Somehow, 4.6 billion years ago that disk around our Sun accreted, cooled, and settled into the planets we know today. Several might well have moved in closer, or farther out, as the solar system formed. Better knowledge of the formation history of Venus could help us better understand Earth’s – and those of rocky planets around other stars.

If we could slice Venus and Earth in half, pole to pole, and place them side by side, they would look remarkably similar. Each planet has an iron core enveloped by a hot-rock mantle; the thinnest of skins forms a rocky, exterior crust. On both planets, this thin skin changes form and sometimes erupts into volcanoes in response to the ebb and flow of heat and pressure deep beneath.

Other possible similarities will require further investigation – and perhaps another visit to a planet that has hosted many Earth probes, both in orbit and (briefly) on the surface. On Earth, the slow movement of continents over thousands and millions of years reshapes the surface, a process known as “plate tectonics.” Something similar might have happened on Venus early in its history. Today a key element of this process could be operating: subduction, or the sliding of one continental “plate” beneath another, which can also trigger volcanoes. Subduction is believed to be the first step in creating plate tectonics.

NASA’s Magellan spacecraft, which ended a five-year mission to Venus in 1994, mapped the broiling surface using radar. Magellan saw a land of extreme volcanism. The orbiter saw a relatively young surface, one recently reshaped (in geologic terms), and chains of towering mountains.

The broiling surface of Venus has been a topic of heated discussion among planetary scientists. The traditional picture includes a catastrophic, planetwide resurfacing between 350 and 750 million years ago. In other words, Venus appears to have completely erased most traces of its early surface. The causes: volcanic and tectonic forces, which could include surface buckling and massive eruptions. But newer estimates made with help from computer models paint a different portrait. While the same forces would be at work, resurfacing would be piecemeal over an extended time. The average age of surface features could be as young as 150 million years, with some older surfaces mixed in.

Venus is a landscape of valleys and high mountains dotted with thousands of volcanoes. Its surface features – most named for both real and mythical women – include Ishtar Terra, a rocky, highland area around the size of Australia near the north pole, and an even larger, South-America-sized region called Aphrodite Terra that stretches across the equator. One mountain reaches 36,000 feet (11 kilometers), higher than Mt. Everest. Notably, except for Earth, Venus has by far the fewest impact craters of any rocky planet, revealing a young surface.

On your tour of Venus, during the 117 days you’re waiting for sunset, you might stop by a volcanic crater, Sacajawea, named for Lewis and Clark’s Native American guide. Or stroll through a deep canyon, Diana, named for the Roman goddess of the hunt.

Other notable features of the Venus landscape include:

“Pancake” domes with flat tops and steep sides, as wide as 38 miles (62 kilometers), likely formed by the extrusion of highly viscous lava.

“Tick” domes, odd volcanoes with radiating spurs that, from above, make them look like their blood-feeding namesake.

Tesserae, terrain with intricate patterns of ridges and grooves that suggest the scorching temperatures make rock behave in some ways more like peanut butter beneath a thin and strong chocolate layer on Venus.

The Soviet Union landed 10 probes on the surface of Venus, but even among the few that functioned after landing, the successes were short-lived – the longest survivor lasted two hours; the shortest, 23 minutes. Photos snapped before the landers fried show a barren, dim, and rocky landscape, and a sky that is likely some shade of sulfur yellow.

Venus’ atmosphere is one of extremes. With the hottest surface in the solar system, apart from the Sun itself, Venus is hotter even than the innermost planet, charbroiled Mercury. To outlive the short-lived Venera probes, your rambling sojourn on Venus would presumably include unimaginably strong insulation as temperatures push toward 900 degrees Fahrenheit (482 Celsius). You would need an extremely thick, pressurized outer shell to avoid being crushed by the weight of the atmosphere – which would press down on you as if you were 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) deep in the ocean.

The atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide – the same gas driving the greenhouse effect on Venus and Earth – with clouds composed of sulfuric acid. And at the surface, the hot, high-pressure carbon dioxide behaves in a corrosive fashion. But a stranger transformation begins as you rise higher. Temperature and pressure begin to ease.

Magnetosphere

Even though Venus is similar in size to Earth and has a similar-sized iron core, the planet does not have its own internally generated magnetic field. Instead, Venus has what is known as an induced magnetic field. This weak magnetic field is created by the interaction of the Sun's magnetic field and the planet's outer atmosphere. Ultraviolet light from the Sun excites gases in Venus' outermost atmosphere; these electrically excited gases are called ions, and thus this region is called the ionosphere (Earth has an ionosphere as well). The solar wind – a million-mile-per-hour gale of electrically charged particles streaming continuously from the Sun – carries with it the Sun's magnetic field. When the Sun's magnetic field interacts with the electrically excited ionosphere of Venus, it creates or induces, a magnetic field there. This induced magnetic field envelops the planet and is shaped like an extended teardrop, or the tail of a comet, as the solar wind blows past Venus and outward into the solar system.

NASA Photojournal - Venus

National Space Science Data Center - Venus

National Space Science Data Center Photo Gallery - Venus

Venus facts: Everything you need to know about the 2nd planet from the sun

Venus is the hottest and brightest planet in the solar system.

Planet Venus FAQs

Planet venus color, size and temperature.

• Venus' orbit

Venus' atmosphere

• Venus exploration
• Life on Venus

Terraforming Venus

Venus expert q&a, additional resources.

Venus, the second planet from the sun, is the hottest and brightest planet in the solar system. 

The scorching terrestrial (rocky) type planet is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty and is the only solar system planet named after a female when following the International Astronomical Union designation of names that the astronomy community uses as a convention. (Other cultures have different names for celestial locations.) 

Venus may have been named after the most beautiful deity of the Roman (and Greek) pantheons because it shone the brightest among the five planets known to ancient astronomers. In ancient Greek city-states, however, Venus was called Aphrodite.

Length of day: 243 Earth days

Length of year: 225 Earth days

Distance from sun: 67 million miles (108 million kilometers)

Number of moons: 0

Surface temperature: 900° F (480° C)

Diameter: 7,520 miles (12,100 km)

Atmospheric composition: 96% carbon dioxide, 3% nitrogen.

In ancient times, planet Venus was often thought to be two different stars , the evening star and the morning star — that is, the ones that first appeared at sunset and sunrise. In Christian Latin, they were respectively known as Vesper and Lucifer. (In Christian times, Lucifer, or "light-bringer," became known as the name of Satan before his fall.)

However, further observations of Venus in the space age show a very hellish environment. This makes Venus a very difficult planet to observe from up close because spacecraft do not survive long on its surface. 

Related: What is a 'morning star,' and what is an 'evening star'?  

How hot is planet Venus?

Temperatures on Venus reach 880 degrees Fahrenheit (471 degrees Celsius), which is more than hot enough to melt lead. 

What is planet Venus made of?

Venus is made up of a central iron core and a rocky mantle, similar in composition to Earth. But Venus' hellish atmosphere is made up of mainly carbon dioxide (96%) and nitrogen (3.5%) with trace amounts of carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, water vapour, argon, and helium making up the other 0.5%. 

Venus is highly visible from Earth due to its reflective clouds. In the sky, Venus appears as a brilliant white object that is one of the brightest natural things in the night sky . Its maximum magnitude, or apparent brightness, is close to -5 , according to NASA. (By comparison, the moon is roughly -14, The lower an object's magnitude, the brighter it appears to the eye.)

Up close, NASA says the color of Venus is "rusty" , but not the kind of deep red rust one would find on the planet Mars . Rather, pictures NASA and others have sent back from Venus suggest a world with tinges of red, brown and yellow. Cornell University suggests that color comes from the number of volcanic rocks dotting the surface, as Venus is a highly active world.

The "real" color of Venus, however, is impossible to see from orbit due to the sulfuric acid clouds surrounding the planet. Pictures of Venus are thus only visible if an orbiting satellite has the ability to peer through the thick clouds. For a human explorer to see the surface, they would need to descend and to survive the oven-like temperatures and high pressures present down there. That harsh environment likely means that for now, we'll be using robotic explorers to look at Venus for us.

The orbit of Venus lies along the ecliptic , which is the same pathway that the other planets, the sun and the moon also take in our solar system. That's no coincidence, as the ecliptic represents the "plane" or the orientation of our solar system, which all goes back to how our solar system came to be. In practice, Venus being so close to other worlds means that conjunctions, or close encounters between celestial worlds, are quite common in Earth's sky. Several times a year you will see Venus lining up with the moon, and more rarely, with other planets.

Venus and Earth are often called twins because they are similar in size, mass, density, composition and gravity . Venus is only a little bit smaller than our home planet, with a mass of about 80% of Earth's. 

Venus is not a gas planet, but a rocky planet. The interior of Venus is made of a metallic iron core that's roughly 2,400 miles (6,000 km) wide. Venus' molten rocky mantle is roughly 1,200 miles (3,000 km) thick. Venus' crust is mostly basalt and is estimated to be 6 to 12 miles (10 to 20 km) thick, on average.

Why Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system is rather complicated. Although Venus is not the planet closest to the sun , its dense atmosphere traps heat in a runaway version of the greenhouse effect that we see firsthand on Earth with global warming.  As a result, temperatures on Venus reach 880 degrees Fahrenheit (471 degrees Celsius), which is more than hot enough to melt lead. Spacecraft have survived only a few hours after landing on the planet before being destroyed.

With scorching temperatures, Venus also has a hellish atmosphere , that consists mainly of carbon dioxide with clouds of sulfuric acid and only trace amounts of water. The atmosphere of Venus is heavier than that of any other planet, leading to a surface pressure that's over 90 times that of Earth — similar to the pressure that exists 3,300 feet (1,000 meters) deep in the ocean.  

Venus' surface is extremely dry. During the planet's evolution, ultraviolet rays from the sun evaporated water quickly, keeping Venus in a prolonged molten state . There is no liquid water on its surface today because the scorching heat created by its ozone-filled atmosphere would cause water to immediately boil away.

Roughly two-thirds of the Venusian surface is covered by flat, smooth plains that are marred by thousands of volcanoes, some of which are still active today , ranging from about 0.5 to 150 miles (0.8 to 240 km) wide, with lava flows carving long, winding canals that are up to more than 3,000 miles (5,000 km) in length.

Six mountainous regions make up about one-third of the Venusian surface. One mountain range, called Maxwell, is about 540 miles (870 km) long and reaches up to some 7 miles (11.3 km) high, making it the highest feature on the planet.

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 (155 to 2100 km) 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.

Venus has no known moons, which makes it nearly unique in our solar system. The only other designated planet without moons is Mercury , which is quite close to the sun. Scientists aren't yet sure why some planets have moons and some do not, but what they can say is that each planet has a unique and complex history and that may in part contribute to how moons formed, or didn't form.

What is Venus' orbit like?

Venus takes 243 Earth days to rotate on its axis, which is by far the slowest of any of the major planets. In fact, its day is longer than its year, and that may be due to the thick atmosphere of Venus serving as a big brake on the planet's rotation. And, because of this sluggish spin, its metal core cannot generate a magnetic field similar to Earth's. The magnetic field of Venus is 0.000015 times that of Earth's magnetic field .

According to NASA:

Average distance from the sun: 67 million miles (108 million km). 

Perihelion (closest approach to the sun): 66,785,000 miles (107,480,000 km). 

Aphelion (farthest distance from the sun): 67,692,000 miles (108,941,000 km).  

If viewed from above, Venus rotates on its axis in a direction that's the opposite of most planets'. That means on Venus, the sun would appear to rise in the west and set in the east. On Earth, the sun appears to rise in the east and set in the west.

The Venusian year — the time it takes to orbit the sun — is about 225 Earth days long. Normally, that would mean that days on Venus would be longer than years. However, because of Venus' curious retrograde rotation, the time from one sunrise to the next is only about 117 Earth days long. The last time we saw Venus transit in front of the sun was in 2012, and the next time will be in 2117. 

The very top layer of Venus' clouds zips around the planet every four Earth days, propelled by hurricane-force winds traveling roughly 224 mph (360 kph). This superrotation of the planet's atmosphere, some 60 times faster than Venus itself rotates, might be one of Venus' biggest mysteries. 

The clouds also carry signs of meteorological events known as gravity waves , caused when winds blow over geological features, causing rises and falls in the layers of air. The winds at the planet's surface are much slower, estimated to be just a few miles per hour.

Unusual stripes in the upper clouds of Venus are dubbed "blue absorbers" or "ultraviolet absorbers" because they strongly absorb light in the blue and ultraviolet wavelengths. These are soaking up a huge amount of energy — nearly half of the total solar energy the planet absorbs. As such, they seem to play a major role in keeping Venus as hellish as it is. Their exact composition remains uncertain; Some scientists suggest it could even be life , although many things would need to be ruled out before that conclusion is accepted. 

Related: The 10 Weirdest Facts About Venus

The Venus Express spacecraft, a European Space Agency mission that operated between 2005 and 2014, found evidence of lightning on the planet, which formed within clouds of sulfuric acid, unlike Earth's lightning, which forms in clouds of water. Venus' lightning is unique in the solar system. It is of particular interest to scientists because it's possible that electrical discharges from lightning could help form the molecules needed to jumpstart life, which is what some scientists believe happened on Earth. 

Exploring Venus

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's Mariner 2 came within 21,600 miles (34,760 km) of Venus in 1962, making it the first planet to be observed by a passing spacecraft. The Soviet Union's Venera 7 was the first spacecraft to land on another planet, having landed on Venus in December 1970. Venera 9 returned the first photographs of the Venusian surface. The first Venusian orbiter, NASA's Magellan, generated maps of 98% of the planet's surface, showing features as small as 330 feet (100 meters) across.

The European Space Agency's Venus Express spent eight years in orbit around Venus with a large variety of instruments and confirmed the presence of lightning there. In August 2014, as the satellite began wrapping up its mission, controllers engaged in a month-long maneuver that plunged the spacecraft into the outer layers of the planet's atmosphere. Venus Express survived the daring journey , then moved into a higher orbit, where it spent several months. By December 2014, the spacecraft ran out of propellant and eventually burned up in Venus' atmosphere.

Related: Venera timeline: The Soviet Union's Venus missions in pictures

Japan's Akatsuki mission launched to Venus in 2010, but the spacecraft's main engine died during a pivotal orbit-insertion burn, sending the craft hurtling into space. Using smaller thrusters, the Japanese team successfully performed a burn to correct the spacecraft's course. A subsequent burn in November 2015 put Akatsuki into orbit around the planet. In 2017, Akatsuki spotted another huge "gravity wave" in Venus' atmosphere . The spacecraft still orbits Venus to this day, studying the planet's weather patterns and searching for active volcanoes.

As of at least late 2019, NASA and the Russian Academy of Sciences' Space Research Institute have discussed collaborating on the Venera-D mission , which would include an orbiter, a lander and perhaps a solar-powered airship.

"We're at the pen-and-paper stage where we're considering what science questions …we want this mission to answer and what components of a mission would best answer those questions," Tracy Gregg, a planetary geologist at the University at Buffalo, told Space.com in 2018. "The earliest possible launch date we'd be looking at is 2026, and who knows if we could meet that."

NASA has more recently funded several extremely early-stage mission concepts that could look at Venus in the coming decades, under the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program. This includes a "steampunk" rover that would use old-school levers instead of electronics (which would fry in Venus' atmosphere) and a balloon that would check out Venus from low altitudes . Separately, some NASA researchers have been investigating the possibility of using airships to explore the more temperate regions of Venus' atmosphere.

In 2021, NASA announced two new missions to Venus that will launch by 2030.

The agency announced on June 2, 2021, that they will be sending missions DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, chosen from a shortlist of four spacecraft, for the next round of Discovery missions to Venus. 

DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble Gases, Chemistry and Imaging) will dive through the planet's atmosphere, studying how it changes over time. VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography and Spectroscopy) will map the planet's surface from its orbit using radar. 

On June 12, 2021, ESA announced its next Venus orbiter – EnVision . "A new era in the exploration of our closest, yet wildly different, Solar System neighbour awaits us," Günther Hasinger, ESA's director of science, said in a statement. "Together with the newly announced NASA-led Venus missions, we will have an extremely comprehensive science program at this enigmatic planet well into the next decade." ESA hopes to launch the mission to Venus in the early 2030s.

Private space explorers are also eyeing Venus. Rocket Lab announced in 2020 that it plans to ferry a spacecraft to Venus to deploy a probe within the atmosphere. The spacecraft, according to a 2022 paper , has a 2-pound (1 kg) instrument on board and is designed to survive five minutes in the clouds of Venus in a more temperate, Earth-like zone roughly 30 to 37 miles (48 to 60 kilometers) above the surface. It's all part of a greater search for life on Venus, which got a kick-start that year from an intriguing new study.

Is there life on Venus?

While destinations in our solar system like the moons Enceladus or Titan or even planet Mars are currently the go-to spots to search for signs of extraterrestrial life. 

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. 

Now, scientists think that it is most likely that, billions of years ago, Venus could have been habitable and fairly similar to current-day Earth. But since then, it has undergone a drastic greenhouse effect that has resulted in Venus' current iteration with scorching surface temperatures and an atmosphere that many describe as "hellish." 

However, in 2020, scientists revealed the discovery of a strange chemical in the planet's clouds that some think could be a sign of life: phosphine. 

Phosphine is a chemical compound that has been seen on Earth as well as on Jupiter and Saturn . Scientists think that, on Venus, it could appear as it does on Earth, for very short amounts of time in the planet's atmosphere. 

But what does this phosphine discovery have to do with the search for life? 

Well, while phosphine exists in strange ways such as rat poison, it has also been spotted alongside groups of certain microorganisms and some scientists think that, on Earth, the compound is produced by microbes as they decay chemically. 

This has caused some to suspect that, if microbes could create phosphine, then perhaps microbes might be responsible for the phosphine in Venus' atmosphere. Since the discovery, there have been follow-up analyses that have made some doubt whether or not the compound is created by microbes, but scientists are continuing to investigate, especially with new missions planned for the planet.

Further, scientists searched for evidence of microbe waste (or poop) in a 2022 study and found no evidence of any activity . There were no spectral "fingerprints" suggesting active life within the atmosphere, which makes the premise of life hard to prove absent more compelling evidence, the authors said.

Science fiction is replete with scenarios where astronauts terraform a planet to make it more Earth-like. How this could happen and whether it is feasible are matters of tremendous uncertainty. Most often, scientists and science fiction fans talk about terraforming Mars because the Red Planet is a little more habitable to humans than Venus (what with the lack of massive active eruptions, as a start.)

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. (Venus is not hospitable to life as we know it, but one can never be too sure.)

Assuming we do want to go ahead with terraforming Venus, working on this would require an ocean and some sort of weathering process, a proposal from 2020 suggests. With enough water (assuming we could access tremendous amounts of the stuff) it might be possible to remove dust from the air and to get the atmospheric carbon dioxide to condense onto the surface. One possible way of making this happen could be to throw immense numbers of icy objects, like comets , into the atmosphere of Venus; how to get that to happen is another question, of course.

A 1991 proposal from British scientist Paul Birch has an alternative method: to somehow send out trillions of tons of hydrogen from gas giant planets like Jupiter. (The hydrogen, he said, would turn atmospheric carbon dioxide into water, with a big side of granite.) Venus would also need to be cooled down from the scorching sun using some kind of  sun shade, which has the side effect of collecting solar energy for potential human or robotic use. 

We asked Jim Garvin (Principal Investigator on NASA's DAVINCI mission to Venus), Stephanie Getty (DAVINCI Deputy Principal Investigator) and Giada Arney (DAVINCI Deputy Principal Investigator) a few frequently asked questions about the planet. 

Why is Venus the hottest planet?

Venus' current environment is the result of a "greenhouse effect" that has allowed its massive CO2 atmosphere to intake the heat of the sun and retain that heat over time like a greenhouse for flowers here on Earth. 

Were it not for this greenhouse effect, even with Venus' location closer to the sun by about 25% relative to our Earth (which means Venus receives twice as much energy from the sun as 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 (122–176 F) rather than 440-460 degrees C (824–860 F). 

How Venus developed this greenhouse effect so prominently is a key question about our sister planet. It is possible that sustained volcanism on a planet that lost its surface oceans of liquid water allowed for more heat energy from active eruptions to also heat the atmosphere from below, influencing the thick deck of clouds that serves today to keep the heat deep in Venus's atmosphere. On Earth, carbon dioxide outgassed by volcanoes is recycled back into the planet's interior on geological timescales through plate tectonics; on Venus, with no plate tectonics, carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere as a robust greenhouse gas. 

What color is Venus?

From orbiting spacecraft such as the Venus Express (ESA) and Akatsuki ( JAXA ), the visible "color" of Venus' atmosphere is very bland without the rich colors that one can see for example at Jupiter. 

Venus' atmosphere presents a globally encircling cloud deck tens of km in thickness, made of chemicals that reflect and absorb the illumination form the sun. Due to these sulfuric acid clouds, Venus is effectively white or possibly a very pale yellow to our eyes. These clouds are also very bright, reflecting approximately 70% of the solar energy that hits them back to space. 

The chemistry of the upper atmosphere with its clouds controls what our eyes would see if we were seeing Venus, and the false-color views of the beautiful planet that are often shown reflect the ultraviolet (not visible to human eyes) variations that include a mystery absorber. There is much to learn about the UV, visible, near-infrared and beyond character of the upper atmosphere of Venus, and NASA's DAVINCI mission will carry a new class of "hyperspectral" camera to measure it at very high spectral resolution for the first time from flybys.

Why is Venus sometimes referred to as Earth's twin?

Venus and Earth are very similar in size, bulk density, location relative to our sun (parent star), and that makes us "planetary twins" in one sense. Such similarities are important because Venus did not evolve to be Earth-like for reasons that remain a key question in planetary science. It is possible that Venus was more like Earth in the past, with habitable surface temperatures and oceans of water perhaps up to 300m (984ft) deep (Earth's mean ocean depths are 2700m/8850ft), but over time, the histories of these planets were driven apart. 

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. 

Venus has a very thick and globally-encircling, cloud deck with the mid-level clouds being made of sulfuric acid droplets (aerosols) and other not yet well-measured gases. Venus is also a slow rotator relative to Earth and in effect, its solar day is longer than the time it takes (one Venus year) to go around the sun, and it even rotates backward relative to the other planets.  This makes it a very unique planet to compare to our Earth with its 24-hour day and 365.25-day year. 

Thus, Venus may be an ideal example of a terrestrial-sized planet that lost its "habitability" over time for various reasons which three upcoming missions will address, each in different ways, in the early to mid-2030s.

DAVINCI will plunge through Venus' atmosphere. What is it designed to look for?

NASA's DAVINCI mission is designed to answer long-standing questions about how Venus's atmosphere evolved and whether there remain chemical signatures of past oceans or even indicators of the role of water in shaping some of the highland regions on Venus, which make up about 8% of the planet's surface area. 

DAVINCI will conduct special flyby remote-sensing observations designed to measure the chemistry and motions of the upper cloud deck, as well as mapping the regional-scale compositional differences between highlands known as tesserae (such as Alpha and Ovda Regio) and the dominant rolling plains that are believed to be basaltic like the lavas that erupt in Hawaii and Iceland. 

DAVINCI also includes a 3.5-foot-diameter deep atmosphere probe, which is a flying chemistry/imaging/environment laboratory that will "take the plunge" into the Venusian atmosphere, and during its hour-long descent from the top of the clouds to the surface in a mountainous region bigger than Texas (Alpha Regio), it will make definitive measurements of noble gases, trace gases, the ratio of heavy to light hydrogen in water vapor and the role of sulfur in trace gases all the way to the foreboding near-surface, while measuring the environmental conditions every 15–50 m. These measurements will help us understand the current state of Venus, its possible past water, and how the planet formed and evolved. 

DAVINCI will also conduct the first-ever descent imaging experiment using a near-infrared camera designed to distinguish rock types from beneath the clouds at scales as fine as ~10m while also measuring topography and landscape geomorphology. Many of DAVINCI's measurements have never been made in any planetary atmosphere before and these new data will inform scientists who build predictive models of how planets with big atmospheres change over time in response to volcanism, large-body impacts, and other effects (e.g., the loss of oceans). 

DAVINCI is intended to fill in gaps that the science community has documented since the mid-1980s while paving the way for understanding how to compare exoplanets that appear to be Venus-like to the "real" Venus. Its measurements and outcomes will inform the history of Venus as a planet with a large atmosphere for decades, and permit other orbiter missions to conduct critical next-generation mapping of the planet's crust and shallow interior. 

In the context of our overall understanding of Venus and its history, how important is it that we understand its atmosphere better?

Venus is noteworthy because of its large atmosphere atop a planetary surface obscured by a thick deck of clouds. As of today (2023), we have very limited knowledge of the chemistry and environments of this atmosphere, especially below the clouds, nor do we understand the critical noble (inert) gases which are "chemical fingerprints" of the history of planetary processes, like "fossils". 

We need to understand Venus to know how our own planet's destiny may unfold over long periods of time and to understand the history of Venus alongside Earth and Mars. While the large, hot, and enigmatic Venusian atmosphere may seem bizarre and even irrelevant, it is Mother Nature's laboratory for us to explore with 21st-century tools (as we have on DAVINCI's deep atmosphere probe) to learn about the details of how another planetary atmosphere–climate–ocean system may have worked. 

We only know our own, and Mars' is too rarified to have been as significant as that of Venus. Thus, Venus is key to understanding how different evolutionary pathways operate for planets of similar sizes and roughly the same distance from the sun. This is an important aspect of what we need to know about Venus as we search for Venus-like exoplanets over the coming decades thanks to observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope .

Put your Venus knowledge to the test with this short Venus quiz. 

Read more about the possibility of life on Venus in this article from The Conversation . Discover every picture from Venus' surface with the Planetary Society . Explore a range of similarities and differences between Earth and Venus with ESA . 

Bibliography

O'Callaghan, Jonathan. " Life on Venus? Scientists hunt for the truth ." Nature 586.7828 (2020): 182-183.

Basilevsky, Alexander T., and James W. Head. " The surface of Venus. " Reports on Progress in Physics 66.10 (2003): 1699.

Kane, Stephen R., et al. " Venus as a laboratory for exoplanetary science. " Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets 124.8 (2019): 2015-2028.

Venus: NASA overview Solar System Exploration.

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Venus, explained

From its scorching temperatures to its oddball rotation, there's a lot to learn about the second planet from the sun.

The first spacecraft to set mechanical feet on another planet landed on Venus. In the 1960s and '70s, the former Soviet Union's Venera probes plunged through the planet's punishing atmosphere, with a handful even sending back data from its rocky surface. In December 1970, for instance, the Venera 8 lander transmitted atmospheric data for more than 50 minutes after its turbulent touchdown. These early missions provided an important lesson: Venus is like a massive pressure cooker.

Although the planet is the second closest planet to the sun, it's by far the hottest of the eight worlds in our solar system. Its thick atmosphere is mostly made of carbon dioxide with clouds of sulfuric acid, which traps the sun's heat and creates a runaway greenhouse effect .

Thanks to this atmospheric blanket, temperatures on Venus' surface can soar over 880 degrees Fahrenheit—hot enough to melt lead. The surface pressure is around 90 times that on Earth, which would feel like standing under about a half a mile of water. Wintertime doesn't even provide a reprieve from the heat. With an axial tilt of three degrees , Venus has just one season: hot.

Orbital oddball

The only planet named after a female figure, Venus is a celestial oddball. Though its rocks are shades of grey, its atmosphere imparts an eerie orange glow to the landscape. Together with Mercury, it's one of the few planets in our solar system without a moon. And like Uranus, it turns on its axis in the opposite direction to the rest of our celestial family. Due to this retrograde rotation, if you were to stand on Venus' surface, the sun would rise in the West and set in the East.

But don't count on catching many Venusian sunsets; the planet turns stunningly slow. A single day there takes 243 Earth days—longer than a Venusian year, which lasts 225 Earth days. And because the planet rotates in the opposite direction as its orbit, 117 Earth days pass between each sunrise and sunset.

Hellish Earth twin

Despite the strange and scorching conditions, Venus shares a surprising number of features with Earth. Measuring 7,520 miles across, Venus is roughly the same diameter as our home planet. It also has a similar structure, sporting a rocky surface and an iron core, although the planet doesn't rotate fast enough to generate an Earth-like magnetic field.

Thousands of volcanoes dot Venus' surface, some of which may still be active . Volcanic rock from cooled lava covers most of its surface—the oldest of which dates back some 500 million years. Many mountains also rise into Venusian skies. Its largest, dubbed Maxwell Montes, stands 36,000 feet tall.

The processes driving the formation of this network of formations is unusual, however. Venus doesn't appear to harbor a churning seismic engine like that on Earth, which drives our bumper-car network of tectonic plates. Yet the planet does appear to have a spidery network of breaks in its surface, hinting at an entirely new type of plate tectonics .

Scientists suspect that for up to two billion years after it formed, the planet may have even been habitable—harboring liquid oceans on its surface. Fascination with what drove that transition from happy to hellish has led many scientists to campaign for more robotic visits to Venus.

Light bringer

Venus' dense cloud cover has benefits for us Earthlings. It reflects the sun's rays, making the planet the brightest in the night sky. It's often called the morning star or evening star because its bright, steady glow persists either around sunrise or sunset. Ancient peoples spotted these dazzling points in the sky and believed them to be two different objects, one that glows in the morning and another that glows in the evening.

Similar to Mercury, Venus can occasionally be seen making a lazy trip across the sun's face, known as a transit. But while Mercury zips across the sun every 13 to 14 years, Venus transits are much more rare. The planet's orbit is almost a perfect circle but is slightly tipped relative to Earth's path around our star. This means it's incredibly hard for the sun, Venus, and Earth to align in the right way.

The last time a transit of Venus happened was in 2012 , and it won't happen again until 2117.

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Named after the ancient Roman goddess of beauty, Venus is known for its exceptional brightness. Find out about the volcanoes that dot Venus's surface, the storms that rage in its atmosphere, and the surprising feature that makes Venus outshine every planet or star in the night sky.

Earth Science, Astronomy

Transcript (English)

- [Narrator] Named after the ancient Roman goddess of beauty, Venus is known for its exceptional brightness in the night sky. But behind this facade is a world of storms and infernos unlike anywhere else in the solar system.

Venus, the second planet from the Sun, is very similar to Earth from a distance, but up close, it's a very different world. Venus is about the same size as Earth, just slightly smaller. Its structure is also nearly identical with an iron core, a hot mantle, and a rocky crust. The crust of Venus, however, is dotted with thousands of volcanoes, including Maxwell Montes, a volcano almost as tall as Mount Everest.

Venus also has a thick, layered atmosphere. It's full of clouds that rain sulfuric acid and whip around the planet at speeds up to 224 miles per hour, faster than some category five hurricanes. The atmosphere is so thick that it creates a surface pressure similar to what it would be about half a mile deep in the earth's oceans. This pressure is heavy enough that a human standing on Venus's surface would be crushed. The atmosphere is made of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, which create an extreme case of global warming. They trap the sun's heat causing surface temperatures to rise over 880 degrees Fahrenheit, making Venus the hottest planet in the solar system.

Venus is so inhospitable, neither humans nor spacecraft are able to survive the planet's surface, but some scientists speculate that Venus wasn't always so unwelcoming. From roughly 2.9 billion to 715 million years ago, global temperatures on Venus may have been just a few degrees cooler than Earth's are today, and scientists theorize that the surface may have contained shallow oceans that could have held enough water to support life.

Today, life may still exist in Venus's atmosphere. About 30 miles up in Venus's clouds, where the temperature and surface pressure are similar to those on the surface of earth, scientists have observed strange dark streaks that appear to be absorbing ultraviolet radiation, a phenomenon that could be evidence of microbial life.

Life may struggle to survive in the atmosphere of Venus, but it is this unforgiving environment that's made Venus an icon of beauty. It reflects 70% of all the sunlight that reaches the planet, which is why Venus shines more brightly than any other planet or star in the night sky. While more than 40 unmanned spacecraft have visited this infernal world, Venus so illuminated in the darkness of space, still has much to reveal.

Transcripción (Español)

- [Narradora] Nombrado en honor a la antigua diosa romana de la belleza, Venus es conocido por su brillo excepcional en el cielo nocturno. Pero detrás de esta fachada está un mundo de tormentas e infiernos como en ningún otro lugar del sistema solar.

Venus, el segundo planeta desde el Sol, es muy similar a la Tierra desde la distancia, pero de cerca, es un mundo muy diferente. Venus tiene aproximadamente el mismo tamaño que la Tierra, solo que un poco más pequeño. Su estructura también es casi idéntica con un núcleo de hierro, un manto caliente y una corteza rocosa. Sin embargo, la corteza de Venus está salpicada de miles de volcanes que incluyen a Maxwell Montes, un volcán casi tan alto como el Monte Everest.

Venus también tiene una atmósfera espesa y estratificada. Está llena de nubes que hacen llover ácido sulfúrico y azotan alrededor del planeta a velocidades de hasta 224 millas por hora, más rápido que algunos huracanes de categoría cinco. La atmósfera es tan densa que crea una presión superficial similar a la que habría a medio kilómetro de profundidad en los océanos de la Tierra. Esta presión es lo suficientemente pesada que un humano parado en la superficie de Venus sería aplastado. La atmósfera está compuesta de gases de efecto invernadero, principalmente dióxido de carbono, que crean un caso extremo de calentamiento global. Atrapan el calor del sol que causan que las temperaturas superficiales aumenten a más de 471 grados centígrados y hacen que Venus sea el planeta más caliente del sistema solar.

Venus es tan inhóspito que ni los humanos ni las naves espaciales pueden sobrevivir en la superficie del planeta, pero algunos científicos especulan que Venus no siempre fue tan hostil. Desde hace aproximadamente 2.9 mil millones hasta 715 millones de años, las temperaturas globales en Venus podrían haber sido solo unos grados más frías que las de la Tierra hoy en día, y los científicos teorizan que la superficie podría haber contenido océanos poco profundos que podrían haber tenido suficiente agua para sustentar vida.

Hoy día, la vida aún puede existir en la atmósfera de Venus. A unos 48 kilómetros en las nubes de Venus, donde la temperatura y la presión superficial son similares a las de la superficie de la tierra, los científicos han observado extrañas rayas oscuras que parecen absorber radiación ultravioleta, un fenómeno que podría ser evidencia de vida microbiana.

La vida puede luchar por sobrevivir en la atmósfera de Venus, pero es este entorno implacable lo que ha hecho de Venus un ícono de belleza. Refleja el 70 % de toda la luz solar que llega al planeta, por esta razón Venus brilla más intensamente que cualquier otro planeta o estrella en el cielo nocturno. Mientras que más de 40 naves espaciales no tripuladas han visitado este mundo infernal, Venus tan iluminado en la oscuridad del espacio, aún tiene mucho que revelar.

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Essay on Venus

Students are often asked to write an essay on Venus in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Venus

Introduction to venus.

Venus is the second planet from the sun in our solar system. It’s similar to Earth in size and mass, which is why it’s often called Earth’s “sister planet”.

Venus is the brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon due to its thick cloud cover that reflects and scatters sunlight.

Surface and Atmosphere

Venus has a hostile environment with surface temperatures reaching 471°C and an atmosphere filled with carbon dioxide and clouds of sulfuric acid.

Exploration

Despite its extreme conditions, Venus has been visited by numerous spacecrafts, providing us with valuable data about this intriguing planet.

Also check:

• 10 Lines on Venus
• Paragraph on Venus

250 Words Essay on Venus

Introduction.

Venus, the second planet from the Sun in our solar system, has long been a subject of intrigue. Named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty, Venus shines brightly in our night sky, often referred to as the “Evening Star” or “Morning Star”.

Physical Characteristics

Venus is similar in size to Earth, making it our closest planetary sibling. However, its atmospheric conditions are drastically different. Venus boasts a dense atmosphere primarily composed of carbon dioxide, with clouds of sulfuric acid. This leads to a severe greenhouse effect, making it the hottest planet in the solar system.

The harsh conditions on Venus have made exploration challenging. Despite this, several missions have been undertaken, notably by NASA and the Soviet space program. The Soviet Venera probes in the 1970s and 1980s provided the first direct data on Venus’s surface and atmosphere, while NASA’s Magellan mission in the 1990s mapped the planet’s surface in detail.

Life on Venus

The extreme conditions on Venus make it unlikely to host life as we know it. However, recent studies have indicated the presence of phosphine gas in Venus’s atmosphere, a potential biosignature. This has rekindled interest in the planet and the possibilities of extraterrestrial life.

Venus, while inhospitable, remains a fascinating object of study. Its similarities and differences to Earth provide valuable insights into planetary formation, climate processes, and the potential for life elsewhere in the universe. As our understanding of Venus continues to grow, so too does our appreciation for this celestial neighbor.

500 Words Essay on Venus

Venus, the second planet from the Sun in our solar system, has long intrigued scientists and astronomers with its thick, toxic atmosphere and extreme surface temperatures. Named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty, Venus offers a stark contrast to the serene and life-supporting conditions on Earth.

Venus is similar to Earth in size and mass, earning it the nickname “Earth’s Twin.” However, the similarities end there. Venus’ atmosphere is composed mostly of carbon dioxide, with clouds of sulfuric acid, making it uninhabitable for known life forms. The planet’s surface temperature averages around 467 degrees Celsius, hotter than the surface of Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun. This extreme heat is due to the ‘greenhouse effect’, where the planet’s atmosphere traps solar radiation.

Geographical Features

The Venusian landscape is a geologist’s enigma. It is relatively young, geologically speaking, with an estimated age of 500 to 700 million years. The surface is mostly flat, punctuated by large shield volcanoes, extensive lava flows, and a few mountainous regions. Venus also lacks tectonic plate activity, unlike Earth, which further adds to its geological mystery.

Venusian Atmosphere

The atmosphere of Venus is one of its most distinctive features. It is incredibly dense and contains a minimal amount of water vapor. The atmospheric pressure at the surface of Venus is 92 times greater than Earth’s, equivalent to the pressure found 900 meters deep in Earth’s oceans. The thick atmosphere also creates a strong greenhouse effect, trapping heat and making Venus the hottest planet in our solar system.

Exploration of Venus

The harsh conditions on Venus have posed significant challenges to space exploration. The first successful mission was the Soviet Venera 7 in 1970, which successfully landed on the planet and transmitted data back to Earth. Since then, numerous missions, primarily by NASA and the European Space Agency, have sought to understand Venus better. However, the planet’s extreme conditions have often led to the premature end of these missions.

Venus serves as a stark reminder of the potential consequences of runaway greenhouse effects. Its inhospitable conditions, while fascinating to scientists, underscore the delicate balance that makes life on Earth possible. As we continue to explore Venus, we gain not only a better understanding of our neighboring planet but also valuable insights into the processes that govern our own planet’s climate and geology. The study of Venus, therefore, holds profound implications for our understanding of planetary science and the quest for extraterrestrial life.

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Science | February 14, 2024

The Six Most Amazing Discoveries We’ve Made by Exploring Venus

Our sister planet’s cloudy exterior gave it an aura of mystery—until humanity developed the technology to probe past the veil

One of the main arguments for studying other planets is for what they can tell us about Earth. Did or do they harbor life? What clues can they offer about our planet’s past? If scientists want to investigate an Earth-like planet, one convenient opportunity is Venus.

“Venus is the exoplanet next door,” says Suzanne Smrekar, a NASA planetary scientist and a principal investigator of the upcoming NASA mission to Venus, VERITAS, which will launch around 2031 to study the planet from surface to core.

The similar size and planetary composition of Venus and Earth make them twin planets. Like Earth, Venus is actively evolving. But up close, both planets are nothing alike. While Earth teems with life, our neighbor seems determined to quash it. These divergent stories make Venus all the more fascinating to scientists.

In the next decade, the United States, Europe, China and India will launch a flurry of spacecrafts to the planet. If successful, they’ll join the ranks of the more than 40 robotic m issions that humanity has lobbed toward our neighbor. While scientists still have much to discover about Venus, these past missions have been key for overturning centuries of wild misunderstandings that early astronomers made from peering through their ground telescopes. Here are some of the major discoveries so far about the second planet from the sun, Earth’s closest sibling.

1. Contrary to its name, Venus is a hellish place

Venus is named after the Roman goddess of love and fertility, and before the space age, the perception of the planet was driven by science fiction. Authors conjured up lush landscapes populated with dinosaurs, jungles, swamps and oceans . But the first Venus flybys in the 1960s ended such imaginings.

In 1975, the Soviet Union’s Venera 9 lander captured the first images of another planet’s surface when it touched down on Venus. What the lander saw and sensed was a hostile planet : a rocky, barren terrain with a crushing atmospheric pressure 90 times that of Earth and a scorching temperature of 887 degrees Fahrenheit. This world was inhospitable to life.

In 1982, the first color images of Venus’ surface that came from the Venera 13 and 14 probes only confirmed its desolate landscapes. Scientists agree that no liquid water exists on the surface.

While the Venera missions turned fiction authors away from Venus, they threw open the doors to scientific interest. “They were always an incredible turning point,” says Stephen Kane, a planetary astrophysicist at the University of California, Riverside. “I think [the photographs are] one of the key milestones of our civilization.”

2. Venus is still geologically active

The low number of craters on Venus indicates that geologic processes may be recycling aged landscapes into pockets of fresh ground. From the crater density, scientists have calculated that Venus has a crustal surface as young as 150 million years. (While the oldest part of Earth’s continental crust dates back 4.4 billion years , the oldest oceanic crust on Earth was formed 340 million years ago.)

Additionally, Venus is covered with thousands of volcanoes. In the 1990s, the Magellan mission found that at least 85 percent of the surface was covered by lava flows. Moreover, its sulfur-rich atmosphere suggests that the planet’s volcanoes have long been erupting. But these were telltale clues, not conclusive proof. Scientists had never caught the volcanoes in the act—until a study published last year found new evidence among old images.

“One of the biggest recent discoveries for Venus is actually something that was hidden in plain sight in the Magellan data for the last 30-odd years,” says Noam Izenberg, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Revisiting old radar images, the new study matched two images of a fairy ring of volcanic vents that were taken eight months apart. In the later image , fresh lava had spewed to form a new plain. A neighboring vent seemed to have grown in size, as if it had partly blown up its crown. These were signs of a volcano that had gone off.

Venus has more than volcanic outbursts; the planet also sinks in places, like the chest of a recumbent giant exhaling. This process is called subduction, a phenomenon that also occurs on Earth, albeit by a different mechanism. Venus’ crust isn’t clearly fragmented like Earth’s to allow for plate tectonics. So, researchers think that its subduction process is triggered by a bout of volcanic upwelling followed by a longer-lasting sagging. The surviving clues of this breath-like movement are circular depressions in the ground called coronae , which the Magellan mission detected in the early 1990s.

One of VERITAS’s main goals is to confirm and study Venus’ art of subduction. Understanding the finer details could shed light on the early days of Earth itself, before plate tectonics kicked in on our planet, says Smrekar.

3. Nasty clouds populate its crushing atmosphere

Venus has a dense atmosphere. When the Venera 4 probe descended through that gassy sheath in the mid-1960s, it measured the composition to be primarily carbon dioxide. Scientists calculated that the air was so thick that it would have taken a probe almost an hour to freefall through the entire atmospheric layer before reaching the surface.

Sulfuric acid clouds circle the entire planet at a height of 25 to 37 miles above the surface . They contain tiny acidic aerosols that are about a hundred times thinner than human hair. Together the droplets resemble the air pollution in highly populated cities on Earth. “It’s like a haze that you find when you fly into, say, New Delhi or Beijing,” says Sanjay Limaye, a planetary scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

This cloud cover strongly reflects sunlight, making Venus appear as the third-brightest object in the sky after the sun and moon. Ancient civilizations saw the gleaming dot of Venus and thought it was a star. They called Venus—somewhat misleadingly—the Morning Star and the Evening Star. Venus’ opaque skies also prevented early astronomers from seeing the surface through their telescopes, which led to erroneous assumptions of the veiled planet until well into the 20th century.

The clouds aren’t placid but constantly on the move, whipping around the planet in two to four days. What drives their super-rotation is still a question that boggles scientists. Some researchers have suggested that the slight temperature difference between the sun-facing and sun-averted hemispheres of Venus propel the warmer clouds to migrate upward and toward the colder face of the planet.

4. Venus twirls in a different direction

Almost all planets in our solar system, Earth included, spin counterclockwise on their axes. Venus is the only oddball that pirouettes clockwise.

Scientists discovered Venus’ retrograde rotation after pelting the planet with ground-based, cloud-penetrating radar waves in the 1960s. What they found was the planet completes its rotation in 243 Earth days, 18 more than it takes to loop around the sun.

One hypothesis that could explain Venus’ enigmatic spin is that a planetary-sized object slammed into proto-Venus and reversed the whirl. Other scientists theorize that the combined effects of a soupy atmosphere and sloshing innards of early Venus slowed the original clockwise revolution, perhaps even to a halt. Gradually, the planet may have slipped into a more stable twirl that’s at odds with the rest of its peers in the solar system.

5. Liquid water may have once pooled on Venus

When descending through the atmosphere in 1978, the Pioneer Venus probes noted an abnormally high deuterium-to-hydrogen isotopic ratio. This find indicates that Venus may once have had liquid water, but all of it had evaporated off the surface and escaped from the planet over time.

From Pioneer’s data, scientists calculated that the planet once had enough water to form a globe-spanning ocean with an average depth of 30 feet .

The presence of liquid water once upon a time points to a balmy environment that could have been habitable. Computer models based on Magellan’s topographic scans have proposed that this hydrated landscape could have hung around as recently as 715 million years ago. In other words, Venus’ habitable climate could have persisted for billions of years before the planet dried up for good.

That’s potentially long enough for life to take root. “Life as we know it is extremely tenacious,” Limaye says. “If Venus had liquid water but somehow didn’t have life, that would be a bigger mystery.”

Perhaps Venus’ life-forms, if any, didn’t survive the later scorching climes—or they might have migrated into the clouds, where temperatures are more agreeable and droplets of water, albeit acidic, dot the skies. In recent years, scientists reported to have detected biosignatures on Venus, though these claims were heavily contested.

A private mission, the Venus Life Finder , is underway to study whether Venus’ clouds harbor organics, a tantalizing indicator of life or life-in-the-making. Having secured means of transport from the company Rocket Lab, the study could potentially launch sometime in late 2024 or early 2025 .

6. Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect

Venus’ transformation from a benign planet to a feverish one is due to a runaway greenhouse effect. The hypothesis was proposed by the American astronomer Carl Sagan during his graduate studies. Later, when Mariner 2 became the first spacecraft to skim past Venus in 1962, the torrid temperatures it measured confirmed the runaway greenhouse theory.

Researchers think that the ancient sun was 30 percent dimmer than it is today . As our star warmed, so did Venus. The Venusian surface became hot enough that carbonate rocks broke down and released carbon dioxide into the air, which triggered even more warming.

On Earth, natural geological processes sequester carbon dioxide underground. It dissolves in the ocean, precipitates onto the seafloor and slips beneath Earth’s crust thanks to the conveyor-belt action of plate tectonics. In contrast, Venus has neither ocean nor tectonic activity. Any carbon dioxide in its atmosphere accelerates warming and spurs even more carbon dioxide release from the rocks. Today, all that heat has boiled away the oceans and resulted in hellish surface temperatures high enough to melt lead.

Scientists say Earth may undergo the same sweltering scenario as our hot neighbor. “Will Earth Turn into Venus? It could,” Kane says. After all, the sun will continue to brighten. As Earth’s interior cools, plate tectonics may subside, switching off our world’s ability to balance atmospheric carbon. The runaway greenhouse effect may play out here millions of years from now, making Venus the looking glass into Earth’s future.

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Shi En Kim | | READ MORE

Shi En Kim is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance science journalist. Her work has appeared in  National Geographic ,  Scientific American , the  Atlantic ,  Popular Science  and others. In 2021, she interned at  Smithsonian  magazine as an AAAS Mass Media Fellow.

Venus: The Object for Research and Space Missions Essay

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Introduction

About venus, mission to study venus, mission specifications, mission lengths.

In all the diversity of the modern world, it is difficult to find something more unknown and fascinating than outer space. The solar system has naturally evolved over billions of years, resulting in a remarkably harmonious and seamless space system. Indeed, with the development of technology, interplanetary research, ground samples, and object atmospheres had become available to humankind, but even though astronomical science had advanced enormously over the past century, people still knew little about other planets. Naturally, the study of celestial bodies has practical value: it is conducted to explain the evolution of both the individual solar system and the galaxy. The increased interest in research could be justified not only by the scientific value of discoveries but also by the real possibility for humanity to have a backup in case of human-made or natural disasters on Earth. Already in 2020, there were several initiatives focusing on the problem of colonization.

From this point of view, Venus, the second celestial body of the solar system, which has several advantages for overpopulation, may be of great interest for observation. In the first place, Venus is quite close to Earth. Second, the planet’s size and mass are not very different from what is characteristic of our planet. However, perhaps only the size and mass of the planet unite Earth with Venus — because of its proximity to the Sun, an astronomical object has a burned-out atmosphere, almost entirely made up of carbon dioxide. This fact predetermines the human interest in special preparation for colonization of Venus: to explore and settle the first people, and it is necessary to create conditions for astronauts’ comfortable lives. In order to solve these goals, already today, there are promising national and private projects, in which many funds are invested for industry development. In other words, under certain conditions, Venus can be a good option for theoretical study and colonization. This essay is aimed at discussing Venus from the point of view of the object for research and space missions.

The brightest object in the sky, after the Sun and the Moon, is Venus. It is almost a twin planet to Earth, with similar size and gravitational characteristics. In particular, the planet has 95% of the Earth’s radius and 82% of its mass (Choi, 2020). At the same time, it must be recognized that Venus is very different from Earth in several other attributes such as chemical composition, temperature, and density. While the deep structure of our planet is being studied with the help of seismic wave fixers, Venus’ surface is extremely hot to have a functioning apparatus for analysis.

In general, Venus’s internal structure is similar to other planets of the Solar system: it consists of crust, mantle, and nucleus. The diameter of the nucleus, containing much iron and its compounds, exceeds 3800 kilometers. Similarly, the mantle’s solid structure has a thickness of about 2800 km, and the thickness of the crust is up to 20 km. It is surprising that for such core, the magnetic field of a planet is almost entirely absent (Beatty, 2017). Most likely, it is a result of the slow rotation of a celestial body around its axis. At the same time, in comparison with the Moon, Mars, or Mercury, on the surface of Venus, practically there are no craters formed by falling of small meteorites. Such an effect can be explained if to take into account the rather high density of Venus’s gas atmosphere: celestial bodies do not reach the planet’s surface, burning in layers of the atmosphere. Besides, the conducted researches allow us to assert that the surface of Venus is characterized by two parallel geological processes — tectonic deformations and volcanic activity (Ivanov & Head, 2018). Tectonic plates move along the molten mantle, which causes the formation of many volcanoes, mountains, and faults.

Venus had a chance of becoming a habitable planet. Mathewson (2016) estimates that the original Venus had a more favorable atmosphere and temperature than it does now. The modern chemistry of the layers of the atmosphere is almost entirely composed of carbon dioxide with sulfuric acid clouds. It is essential to understand that such gas structures prevent the free penetration of light rays, so the physical observation of Venus from Earth is very limited. On the other hand, being close to the Sun creates a unique situation on Venus — a thick atmosphere prevents gases from escaping outside, creating a severe greenhouse effect. Taking into account the historical geochemical evolution of the Earth, the study of Venus plays a decisive role. Thus, for the development of science and understanding of natural mechanisms of planetary formation, the study of Venus is significant because it will expand knowledge about the Earth’s past. Finally, as was the case with all space research, there was always hope for specialists to discover extraterrestrial life forms.

Contrary to all existing obstacles, modern technologies allow us to achieve outstanding results in the study of Venus. According to the list given by Williams (2020), since the beginning of space flights, more than 47 missions to study the second planet have been conducted. The accumulated empirical data were enough to develop a more optimal model for studying the planet’s surface. In particular, it is proposed to launch an uncrewed robotic vehicle from the Earth’s spaceport to collect and send data to the data processing center.

As shown in Figure 1, the flight from the Earth to Venus reaches 153 days on the average, that is why if the launch is calculated for January 2026, the spacecraft entering the atmosphere should be expected not earlier than summer 2026. It is assumed that the spacecraft will smoothly transmit video data to Earth as it enters thick layers. Given that the average minimum distance between the two objects is about 40,000,000 kilometers, at a radio signal speed of 300,000 kilometers per second, the video data will be transmitted after 2 minutes:

The device smoothly reduces speed so as not to reach a critical point in Venus’ hot atmosphere. On landing on the surface, it has a few hours before the hot climate destroys electronics: during this time, the machine collects as much data as possible to send it to the planet. Admittedly, this is a more advanced mission than the last Venus Express — the satellite was in near-planetary orbit and had been broadcasting radio signals for almost ten years. The current offer is unique in that it is planned to launch modules on the surface of Venus and keep them active for a long time.

Based on collected material space, engineers make a decision about designing and constructing mini space probes, monitoring atmospheric and temperature changes on Venus surface: for future missions on colonization, it is necessary to know about natural regularities of the planet. Such probes should be assembled from materials resistant to high temperatures and acid rain of Venus. Their departure can be scheduled for autumn 2026, so the arrival of a group of devices should be expected in early 2027.

The general technical scheme for the proposed apparatus includes electronics isolated in a container, connected to an incredibly powerful air conditioning system, and probably powered by a radioactive engine with plutonium as fuel. Such technologies are seen as a working model for the promising Russian project, Venera-D. It is an interplanetary descent probe, whose scientific tasks are complex research of the atmosphere and soil composition, search for volcanic activity and study of atmospheric dissipation under the influence of solar wind. Venera-D, weighing 12 tons, should consist of a launching vehicle, an orbital module, a landing station, and an atmospheric probe, and the possibility of including additional sub-satellites is being considered. The modules have an estimated active lifetime of several hours, but small satellites may remain operational for months or even years due to the absence of some electronic elements or chemical composition — that is to say silicon carbide. For the proposed mission, Venera-D could be an excellent solution for delivering materials to the planet’s surface. However, the module itself does not have enough functionality, so in order to expand its capabilities, it is advisable to consider adding different devices and tools aboard Venera-D.

The instrumental part of the modules should include functional units that will allow for precise exploration of the unique landscape systems of Venus. Above all, these are cameras that provide a clear color image of the areas being observed. They can be MASTCAM cameras modified with MAHLI lenses. In addition, crewless vehicles can be used to transport rocks across the planet’s surface to observe their movement over time. Temperature tests of the planet can be carried out using VISAGE or VICI models — for this purpose, it will be necessary to equip space probes with laser guns and particle analyzers (Esposito et al., 2017). It is fair to admit that these technologies have not yet been finalized and require improvement. Chemical soil analysis is performed on-site, so unmanned space probes must be equipped with spectroscopic functionality such as APXS. Thus, according to Limaye et al. (2018), observations should be made in the near-infrared zone (1.7-2.4 µm), but it should be borne in mind that due to the geothermal characteristics of the planet, surface materials emit background radiation, which prevents the recording of the pure spectrum of data.

The drone is launched by delivering the module using a launch vehicle to outer space. The engines of the detachable modules are then switched on and delivered to Venus. It should be noted that the engine used in the proposed spacecraft is no different from that used in space flight practice, which is chemical fuel. In order to reduce the consumption of consumable fuel on the planet’s surface, the probes and modules are proposed to be equipped with solar panels to generate electricity. However, the difficulty of sunlight penetrating Venus must be borne in mind, so each vehicle is additionally equipped with nuclear fuel such as Plutonium (Lakdawalla, 2018). This practice is quite common among Mars and Lunar rovers.

There is a retrospective approach to determining the optimal time for active drone operation. Past successful module landing missions on the surface of Venus include “Venera-3,14” and “Vega-1,2,” where the spacecraft spent on the planet did not exceed several hours. From this point of view, the proposed mechanism must be temperature-resistant enough to last longer. At the same time, expert engineers should achieve maximum operating time with minimum losses. It is assumed that the first flight machine will fail in a few weeks, after which new modules will be launched based on the collected data. Consequently, if the program launches in 2026, it is expected that by 2029 all necessary data will be received. If technical equipment allows, robots will continue to study Venus’ surface, while data centers will start to study the material. By 2031, the project could be completed with the publication of findings and results.

Earlier it was noted that the cost of the Venus research program is about 1 billion US dollars. It should be admitted that the program is partly identical to Venera-D, where the implementation cost is $800-1000 million (Levchenko, 2019). Certainly, this is quite large, especially compared to the cost of past missions. For illustration, according to Howell (n.d.), Venus Express was worth about $110 million. At the same time, NASA continues to develop its promising projects and organizes a space flight to Venus for less than $500 million (Brown, 2020). In this case, the question arises about the feasibility of such grandiose funding for the proposed project. The answer is that the program is long-term and has a period of implementation from 2026 to 2031. During these five years, it will be necessary to regularly monitor expensive machines, analyze the data collected, and pay salaries to employees. Finally, it is a reasonably promising project, so it must have an excellent investment to demonstrate the expected results.

However, it is appropriate to talk about reasonable reductions in mission costs if this is acceptable. For example, in six years, technological progress could develop to the point where, for example, rocket fuel would become cheaper. In fact, already today, some private companies claim that the cost of fuel for interplanetary flights does not exceed $1 million (Wall, 2019). However, it is worth considering the option that improving technology will require more investment so that the total amount may increase.

To sum up, it should be noted that the proposed program will be a decisive measure in the development of the planets of the Earth group. Venus is the fundamental object of the system, the study of which will make it possible to understand the mechanisms of planets formation, geochemical, and biological evolution. The mission to land unmanned modules on the surface of Venus to collect data on atmospheric and surface dynamics was discussed as part of the document. The data are sent to Centers, where they are analyzed and used for the following missions. In parallel, several machines with heat-resistant electronics are used to collect data from different areas of Venus. Ultimately, this approach will help to answer the question of whether the colonization of the planet is possible.

Beatty, K. (2017). Why is Earth magnetized and Venus not? Sky & Telescope. Web.

Brown, D. W. (2020). NASA’s next low-cost planetary Science missions will visit Venus or the outer solar system . Scientific American. Web.

Choi, C. Q. (2020). Venus: The hot, hellish & volcanic planet . Space.Com. Web.

Esposito, L. W., Atkinson, D. H., & Baines, K. H. (Eds.) (2017). Proceedings of the European planetary science congress 2017 . Caltech/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Howell, E. (n.d.). Venus express: ESA’s 1st mission to Venus . Space.Com. Web.

How far away is Venus ? (2018). Love the Night Sky. Web.

Ivanov, M. A., & Head, J. W. (2018). The surface of Venus [PDF document]. Web.

Lakdawalla, E. (2018 ). The design and engineering of Curiosity: How the Mars Rover performs its job . Springer.

Levchenko, G. (2019). Joint Russia-U.S. project plans to land a spacecraft on Venus for the first time since 1985 . Meduza. Web.

Limaye, S. S., Mogul, R., Smith, D. J., Ansari, A. H., Słowik, G. P., & Vaishampayan, P. (2018). Venus’ spectral signatures and the potential for life in the clouds. Astrobiology, 18 (9), 1181-1198.

Mathewson, S. (2016). From hospitable to hellish: Venus may have supported life . Space.Com. Web.

Wall, M. (2019). SpaceX’s starship may fly for just $2 million per mission, Elon Musk says . Space.Com. Web.

Williams, D. R. (2020). Chronology of Venus exploration . NASA. Web.

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Bibliography

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The Venus Planet Essay Paragraph For Students

This “Essay on Venus” provides an in-depth look at the second planet from the sun. Learn about its thick atmosphere, extreme temperatures, and volcanic activity. Discover the history of Venus exploration and the ongoing efforts to study this mysterious planet.

Table of Contents

500 Words Essay on Venus

Venus is the second planet from the sun and is often referred to as Earth ‘s sister planet due to its similar size and proximity to our own planet. However, Venus is a vastly different world with a thick atmosphere that traps heat, creating surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead.

One of the most striking features of Venus is its thick atmosphere, which is primarily composed of carbon dioxide and nitrogen. This atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect, trapping heat and creating surface temperatures that can reach up to 864 degrees Fahrenheit. The thick atmosphere also causes Venus to have a thick cloud cover, which makes it difficult to study the surface.

Despite the harsh conditions on the surface of Venus, there is evidence of volcanic activity. The planet has several large light volcanoes, including the highest volcano in the solar system, called Maxwell Montes. Venus also has several large rift valleys and mountains, which suggest tectonic activity.

Exploration of Venus began in the 1960s with the launch of the first Venus probe, Venera 1. Since then, several missions have been sent to Venus, including the Soviet Venera and Vega missions, and NASA’s Magellan and Venus Express missions. These missions have provided valuable information about Venus’ atmosphere, surface, and interior.

Despite the ongoing efforts to study Venus, many mysteries remain. Scientists are still trying to understand the history of the planet, the cause of its extreme temperatures, and the potential for life on Venus.

10 lines on Venus Planet for students

• Venus is the second planet from the sun.
• It is sometimes called Earth’s sister planet because of its similar size and proximity.
• Venus has a thick atmosphere mostly composed of carbon dioxide and nitrogen.
• This atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect, leading to surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead.
• Venus has a thick cloud cover, making it difficult to study its surface.
• There is evidence of volcanic activity on Venus, including the highest volcano in the solar system. Venus also has several large rift valleys and mountains, indicating tectonic activity.
• Exploration of Venus began in the 1960s with the launch of the first Venus probe.
• Ongoing efforts have provided valuable information about Venus’ atmosphere, surface, and interior.
• However, many mysteries remain and scientists continue to study Venus in hopes of understanding its history and potential for life.

FAQ On Venus Essay

Q1. What is Venus’ atmosphere composed of?

A: Venus’ atmosphere is primarily composed of carbon dioxide and nitrogen.

Q:2 What is the surface temperature of Venus?

The surface temperature of Venus can reach up to 864 degrees Fahrenheit.

Q: 3 Is there evidence of volcanic activity on Venus?

Yes, there is evidence of volcanic activity on Venus, including several large volcanoes and rift valleys.

In conclusion, Venus is a fascinating planet that is vastly different from Earth. It has a thick atmosphere that causes extreme temperatures and a thick cloud cover. Despite the harsh conditions, there is evidence of volcanic activity and tectonic activity on the surface. Exploration of Venus began in the 1960s, and ongoing efforts have provided valuable information about the planet. However, many mysteries remain and scientists continue to study Venus in hopes of understanding its history, extreme temperatures, and potential for life.

Hello! Welcome to my Blog StudyParagraphs.co. My name is Angelina. I am a college professor. I love reading writing for kids students. This blog is full with valuable knowledge for all class students. Thank you for reading my articles.

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• Celestial Bodies

Venus is the second planet from the Sun and is the brightest planet in the solar system. It is sometimes referred to as the sister planet to Earth, because of the similar mass and size. The planet is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. In this article, we will be discussing the characteristics and a few astonishing facts of Venus.

Discovery of Venus

Venus is the brightest planet and is easily noticeable with unaided eyes. Ancient people likely knew about it. One of the earliest Babylonian astronomical documents speaks about Venus. Galileo Galilei was the first person to aim a telescope at Venus in 1600. The first aircraft to visit Venus was NASA’s Mariner 2 in 1962. Most recently, NASA’s Magellan visited Venus and mapped out the surface with the help of radar.

Physical Characteristics

Due to slow rotation on its axis, it takes 243 Earth days to complete one rotation. The orbit of the planet takes 225 Earth days making a year on Venus shorter than a day.

Read More: Earth’s Magnetic Field

Facts About Venus

• Billions of years ago, the climate of Venus may have been similar to that of Earth

Scientists assume that Venus once possessed water and oceans. However, due to the high concentration of greenhouse gases , this water may have evaporated, and now the surface terrain is too hot and hostile for living creatures to inhabit.

• Venus rotates in the opposite direction

Most planets rotate counter-clockwise on their axis while Venus, like Uranus, rotates clockwise. This is known as the retrograde reaction, most likely caused due to the collision of the planet with an asteroid or other objects.

• The atmospheric pressure of Venus is 92 times stronger than Earth’s

Any asteroids entering the planet will be crushed by the enormous pressure, which is why there are no surface craters on the planet.

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Venus is the second planet in our solar system close to the Sun. Venus can cast shadows and on rare occasion, visible to the attention in broad daylight. After the Moon, it is the second-brightest natural object in Earth’s night sky. Venus orbits the Sun every 224.7 Earth days. With a rotation period of 243 Earth days, it takes longer to rotate about its axis than the opposite planet within the solar system far and away. Venus doesn’t have any moons as our Earth has. This is the distinction it shares only with Mercury among the planets within the system.

Venus  Compared with Earth

Venus is a planet in our solar system and is usually called Earth’s “sister planet” due to their similar size, mass, proximity to the Sun, and bulk composition. Still, it is a lot different from Earth in many other respects. It has the densest atmosphere of the four terrestrial planets, consisting of quite 96% CO2. The atmospheric pressure of Venus is about 92 times the ocean level pressure of Earth . Venus has, by far, the most well-liked surface of any planet within the system, with a mean temperature of 737 K (464 °C; 867 °F), albeit Mercury is closer to the Sun.

Venus is covered or wrapped by an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of vitriol, which prevents its surface from being seen from space in light. It may have had water oceans within the past, but these would have vaporized because the temperature rose thanks to a runaway atmospheric phenomenon. Due to its proximity to Earth, Venus has been a major target for early interplanetary exploration. Beyond Earth, it is the first planet where a spacecraft had visited naming Mariner 2 in 1962. The primary one to be successfully landed in 1970 naming Venera 7.

Physical Characteristics

Venus is one among the four terrestrial planets within the system, meaning that it’s a rocky body like Earth. It is almost like Earth in size and mass, and is typically described as Earth’s “sister” or “twin”. The diameter of Venus is a bit small compared to Earth. Venus has a diameter of 12,103.6 km (7,520.8 mi) only 638.4 km (396.7 mi) shorter than Earth. Its mass is 81.5% of Earth’s mass.

The surface was mapped intimately by Magellan in 1990–91. The ground shows evidence of in-depth volcanism, and therefore the sulfur within the atmosphere may indicate that there are recent eruptions. About 80% of the Venusian surface is roofed by smooth, volcanic plains, consisting of 70% plains with wrinkle ridges and 10% smooth or lobate plains. There are two highland “continents” which occupies the rest of its area. Among them, one lies within the planet’s hemisphere and thus the opposite just south of the equator. The continent lies in the north is known as Ishtar Terra after Ishtar.

Maxwell Montes, the absolute best mountain on Venus, lies on Ishtar Terra. It has an extreme peak of 11 km above the Venusian average surface elevation. In addition to the impact craters, Venus has some unique surface features like mountains, and valleys commonly found on rocky planets. Among these are flat-topped volcanic features called “farra”, which look somewhat like pancakes and residential in size from 20 to 50 km (12 to 31 mi) across, and from 100 to 1,000 m (330 to three, 280 ft) high; radial, star-like fracture systems called “novae”.

Surface Geology

Much of the Venusian surface appears to possess been shaped by volcanic activity. Venus has several volcanoes among which 167 large volcanoes that are over 100 km (60 mi) across. The surface of Venus is expected to be 300–600 million years old. Researchers have found several lines of evidence of ongoing volcanic activity on Venus. Sulfur dioxide concentrations within the atmosphere dropped by an element of 10 between 1978 and 1986, jumped in 2006, and again declined 10-fold. In January 2020, astronomers reported evidence that means that Venus is currently volcanically active.

In 2008 and 2009, Venus Express provided the primary evidence for ongoing volcanism on planet Venus. Scientists have observed the four transient localized infrared hot spots within the rift zone Ganis Chasma, near the shield volcano Maat Mons. The actual temperatures aren’t known, because the dimensions of the recent spots couldn’t be measured, but are likely to possess been within the 800–1,100 K range, relative to a normal temperature of 740 K.

Internal Structure

There is a high percentage similarity in size and density between Venus and Earth. Scientists suggest they share an identical internal structure: a core, mantle, and crust. Like that of Earth, the Venusian core also contains partially liquid because the 2 planets are cooling at about an equivalent rate. The marginally smaller size of Venus means pressures are 24% lower in its deep interior than Earth’s. This leads to reduced heat loss from the earth, preventing it from cooling.

Atmosphere and Climate

Venus has a dense atmosphere composing of 96.5% CO2, 3.5% nitrogen, and traces of other gases including sulphur dioxide. When compared with Earth, Venuses atmospheric mass is 93 times that of Earth’s and surface pressure is about 92 times that of Earth’s. The density at the surface is 65 kg/m3, 6.5% that of water or 50 times as dense as Earth’s atmosphere at 293 K (20 °C; 68 °F) stumped level. The CO2-rich atmosphere generates the strongest atmospheric phenomenon within the system, creating surface temperatures of a minimum of 735 K. Thus Venus surface is hotter than Mercury as its maximum surface temperature is 700 K. Venus atmosphere contains an extreme percentage of primordial noble gases.

Magnetic Field and Core

In 1967, Venera 4 found Venus’ magnetic flux to be much weaker than that of Earth. This magnetic flux is induced by an interaction between the ionosphere and therefore the solar radiation, instead of by an indoor dynamo as within the Earth’s core. One possibility is that Venus has no solid inner core, or that its core isn’t cooling, in order that the whole liquid a part of the core is at approximately the same temperature. There is another theory that there is a possibility is that its core has already completely solidified.

Orbit and Rotation

The mean orbital distance of Venus from the Sun is about 0.72 AU or 108 million km and completes an orbit every 224.7 days. All the planets within the system orbit the Sun in an anticlockwise direction as viewed from above Earth’s the North Pole. Venus rotation is different as compared to other planets. It rotates clockwise in retrograde rotation once every 243 Earth days—the slowest rotation of any planet. Venus has no natural satellites. It has many trojan asteroids namely, the quasi-satellite 2002 VE68 and two other temporary trojans, 2001 CK32 and 2012 XE133.

Habitability

Speculation on the likelihood of life on Venus’s surface decreased significantly after the first 1960s when it became clear that the conditions are extreme compared to those on Earth. Venus’s heat and air pressure make water-based life as currently known unlikely. The air pressure and temperature fifty kilometres above the surface are almost like those at the surface.

FAQs about Venus

Q.1. Is there tectonic activity on Venus?

Answer- Venus does have tectonic activity: faults, folds, volcanoes, mountains, and rift valleys. But it doesn’t have any global tectonic movements like that on Earth. This might be due to the fact that it is hot and dry.

Q.2. Why is Venus yellow?

Answer- It is entirely wrapped with a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere and sulphuric acid clouds. Together these give it a light yellowish appearance.

Q.3. Are Venus volcanoes still active?

Answer- Even though there are over 1,600 major volcanoes on Venus, none are known to be erupting at present. But recent studies, in January 2020, suggests Venus is currently volcanically active.

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Home — Essay Samples — Science — Planet — Venus: A Window into the Inner Workings of Our Solar System

Venus: a Window into The Inner Workings of Our Solar System

• Categories: Planet Venus

About this sample

Words: 470 |

Published: Mar 1, 2019

Words: 470 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Works Cited

• Esposito, L. W. (1984). Venus: Atmospheric motion and circulation. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 12(1), 413-450.
• Grinspoon, D. H. (1997). Venus revealed: A new look below the clouds of our mysterious twin planet. Addison-Wesley.
• Limaye, S. S., & Suomi, V. E. (2008). Venus: Atmosphere. In Encyclopedia of the Solar System (2nd ed., pp. 459-474). Elsevier.
• Markiewicz, W. J., Petrova, E. V., & Shalygin, E. V. (2018). Geology of Venus: New data from Venus Express. In Comparative Climatology of Terrestrial Planets (pp. 211-229). University of Arizona Press.
• Piccioni, G., Drossart, P., & Encrenaz, T. (2010). Venus: Composition and surface features. In Venus and Mercury: And How to Observe Them (pp. 29-49). Springer.
• Seiff, A., Schofield, J. T., & Kliore, A. J. (1985). Structure of the atmosphere of Venus. In Venus (pp. 103-161). University of Arizona Press.
• Seiff, A., Schofield, J. T., & Taylor, F. W. (1997). Venus: Atmosphere. In Encyclopedia of Planetary Sciences (pp. 806-808). Chapman & Hall.

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10 lines on Venus Planet in English - Short essay on Venus Planet in English - Few lines on Venus Planet

Today, we are sharing short essay on Venus Planet in English . This article can help the students who are looking for information about Venus Planet in English . These 10 sentences about Venus Planet for class 2 is very simple and easy to understand. The level of this paragraph about Venus Planet is medium so any student can write on this topic. This short essay on Venus Planet is generally useful for class 1, class 2, and class 3 .

• The radius of Venus is 6052 km.
• The distance of the planet Venus from the Sun is 10.82 million kilometers.
• The temperature of Venus is 480°C.
• The planet Venus has no satellites.
• The mass of the planet Venus is .4.8675×10²³.
• The volume of the planet Venus is 9.2843×10²³m³.
• The escape velocity of Venus is 10.36km/s.
• Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system.
• On Venus, the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.
• The planet Venus is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty.
• Venus is the second planet that is closest to the Sun.
• Its size is similar to the size of the Earth and is close to the Earth.
• About 80% of the surface of Venus is covered with smooth and volcanic plains.
• The atmospheric pressure of Venus is 92 times that of Earth.
• Venus's atmosphere is made up of nitrogen and carbon dioxide.
• Its color is considered to be bright white and pink.
• The planet Venus is said to be the twin sister of Earth.
• The planet Venus takes 225 days to orbit the Sun.
• The average age of the planet Venus is said to be 100 million years.
• The clouds in Venus are made of sulfuric acid, which causes acid rain here.

• It takes 6 minutes for sunlight to reach Venus.
• One year of Venus is equal to 224.7 days on Earth.
• Venus can be seen from Earth without a telescope.
• There are more than 1600 active volcanoes on the planet Venus.
• The surface of Venus is so hot that a 16-inch pizza will be ready in 7 seconds.
• If your weight is 100 kg on Earth, then it will be 90 kg on Venus.
• In 1970, the Soviet Union successfully launched a spacecraft on the planet, Venus.
• Clouds found on Venus can generate electricity similar to those found on Earth.
• The highest mountain on the planet Venus is Max Well, whose height is 8.8 kilometers.
• The total area of ​​the planet Venus is 460,234 square kilometers.

F.A.Q ( Frequently Asked Questions )

• How long does it take for sunlight to reach Venus?
• What are clouds on Venus?
• How many times bigger or smaller is the planet Venus than Earth?
• What is the planet Venus called in English?

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World Environment Day 2024: Essay, Speech And Drawing Ideas for Students

World Environment Day 2024 Essay, Speech, and Drawing Ideas: Every year, people across the country celebrate World Environment Day. It's a perfect chance to raise awareness about environmental issues and their importance. The goal of this event is to inspire awareness and action for protecting the environment. World Environment Day is celebrated on June 5th each year and is organised by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

World Environment Day 2024: Theme

The theme for World Environment Day 2024 , according to the official website, focuses on land restoration, desertification, and drought resilience, under the slogan “Our land. Our future. We are #GenerationRestoration. ” The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will host the 2024 global celebrations.

World Environment Day 2024: Essay, Speech, and Drawing Ideas for Students

World Environment Day signifies a commitment to ending plastic use and preventing the depletion of natural resources. Celebrations take place worldwide, with schools and colleges organising events like debates and essay competitions. Here are some ideas for essays, speeches, and drawings for Environment Day 2024:

World Environment Day Speech for Student in English

Respected Sir,

Today, we come together to celebrate World Environment Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness and taking action to protect our precious planet. This year's theme, "Our land. Our future. We are #GenerationRestoration," highlights the urgent need for land restoration, desertification prevention, and drought resilience. As we gather here, let us remember that our actions today will shape the world for future generations.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, our host for this year, stands as a beacon of commitment to these vital environmental goals. Together, we can combat land degradation, restore ecosystems, and ensure a sustainable future for all. Let us pledge to adopt eco-friendly practices, support reforestation, and promote sustainable land management.

Each small step we take contributes to a healthier, greener planet. Let us be the generation that restores and cherishes our land, securing a bright and prosperous future for all.

10 Line speech for World Environment Day 2024

• World Environment Day 2024 is celebrated on June 5th, focusing on the theme “Our land. Our future.
• We are #GenerationRestoration.” This year’s campaign emphasises the importance of land restoration, combatting desertification, and enhancing drought resilience.
• The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia hosts the global celebrations, showcasing their commitment to environmental sustainability.
• World Environment Day serves as a reminder of our collective responsibility to protect and restore our planet.
• It encourages individuals, communities, and nations to take action towards a sustainable future.
• Simple actions like planting trees, reducing waste, and conserving water can make a significant impact.
• Together, we can restore degraded lands, support biodiversity, and mitigate the effects of climate change.
• Let us unite as #GenerationRestoration to secure a healthier planet for future generations.
• This World Environment Day, let's be the change we need.
• Plant a seed, conserve each drop, choose green every time.
• Together, we can heal the Earth, one action at a time.

Short World Environment Day Speech

Good morning, everyone .

Today, we celebrate World Environment Day, a crucial reminder of our responsibility to protect our planet. This year's theme, "Our land. Our future. We are #GenerationRestoration," highlights the urgent need for land restoration and combating desertification and drought. Our actions today will shape the world for future generations. Let’s commit to reducing our plastic use, conserving water, and supporting sustainable practices. By working together, we can heal our planet and ensure a healthier, greener future. Remember, every small step counts. Let’s be the change we wish to see in the world.

World Environment Day Essay (100 words)

World Environment Day (WED) is celebrated globally every year on the 5th of June. It aims to raise awareness about environmental issues and encourage positive actions for the planet. This day is organised by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), established by the UN General Assembly in 1972. It focuses on improving current environmental conditions and making the world a better place. Celebrated in over 100 countries, it inspires both public and political efforts to address environmental challenges. The goal is to motivate everyone to become active agents of sustainable and eco-friendly development worldwide.

World Environment Day Essay (150 words)

World Environment Day, established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1972, is celebrated every year on the 5th of June. This day was announced at the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment to address environmental issues. The United Nations designed it as a key tool for raising global awareness about pressing environmental problems. The main goal is to show people the true face of environmental issues and empower them to become active agents of eco-friendly development worldwide. It encourages people to change their attitudes towards the environment for a safer future. In Kerala, the State Council for Science, Technology and Environment organises state-level activities based on the annual theme. For example, in 2016, the theme was “Fight against the Illegal Trade in Wildlife”. This day promotes awareness and inspires actions to protect our environment.

World Environment Day Essay (200 words)

World Environment Day is celebrated globally on the 5th of June each year. Established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1972, this day aims to raise awareness about environmental issues and motivate people to take positive actions for the planet. The campaign began during the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment and is managed by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). On World Environment Day 2015, India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, planted a sapling at his official residence, highlighting the importance of the day.

Media and celebrities promote the objectives of this campaign, encouraging public participation and awareness. Goodwill ambassadors from UNEP send messages worldwide, urging action for World Environment Day. This campaign calls on people to join the celebration in large numbers, understand the real environmental conditions, and become active agents in combating climate change. We should all participate in this celebration and pledge to protect our environment for a better future.

World Environment Day Essay (250 words)

World Environment Day is an annual campaign celebrated on the 5th of June to inspire people worldwide to address negative environmental changes. Established in 1972 by the United Nations General Assembly, its first celebration was on the 5th of June 1973. Each year, the celebration is based on a specific theme declared by the United Nations, and various activities are organised to highlight environmental issues.

The campaign aims to encourage positive changes in the environment and ensure a safe future for our planet. It brings together people from different countries to discuss environmental topics and engage in activities like essay writing, speech recitation, art competitions, and more. The campaign promotes public action and political attention towards environmental protection.

Activities during World Environment Day celebrations include parades, cleanup activities, concerts, tree planting, and recycling initiatives. Although it is not a public holiday, schools and offices remain open, and everyone is encouraged to participate. The goal is to work together for positive actions that maintain the planet's beauty. We should remember the campaign's objectives throughout the year and act accordingly to preserve our environment.

World Environment Day Essay (300 words)

World Environment Day is celebrated annually on the 5th of June in almost 100 countries. It was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1972 and first celebrated in 1973. Each year, a different theme is declared by the United Nations to inspire positive actions for the environment.

The campaign is hosted by different cities each year, where international exhibitions take place for a week. The United Nations raises awareness about environmental issues through this campaign, which effectively encourages public action and political attention.

Various activities are organised during the celebrations, including essay writing, speech recitations, drama plays, street rallies, art and painting competitions, parades, debates, and more. These activities attract a large gathering of academics, environmentalists, scientists, politicians, and the general public, fostering new ideas about the environment.

In addition to the host city's celebrations, countries celebrate World Environment Day in their states, cities, schools, and colleges. Activities include parades, cleanup initiatives, concerts, recycling efforts, and tree planting. Although it is not a public holiday, everyone is encouraged to participate and take positive actions for the environment.

World Environment Day promotes the idea that we have only one planet to live on, and it is our responsibility to maintain its natural beauty. By participating in the campaign and taking actions such as planting trees, conserving water, reducing electricity use, and supporting wildlife, we can contribute to a healthier and more sustainable planet.

World Environment Day Essay (400 words)

World Environment Day is an annual campaign celebrated on the 5th of June to address environmental issues and implement effective plans for a safer, healthier future. Declared by the United Nations General Assembly in 1972 during the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, it is a significant day for spreading awareness and encouraging positive actions for the planet.

WED was established with various plans and objectives to address environmental problems and promote sustainable development. It is run by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and celebrated in over 100 countries. The campaign's goal is to change people's attitudes towards the environment and ensure a prosperous future for all nations.

The celebration is hosted by different cities each year, with a unique theme declared by the UNGA. Activities include tree planting, cultural events, drawing and painting competitions, quizzes, debates, lectures, essay writing, and more. Workshops on sustainable project management are also organised to encourage youths to address environmental and climate change issues.

In 2009, an environment fair was held in Chennai and Bangalore, featuring activities like painting competitions, e-waste management training, renewable energy devices, wildlife conservation, rainwater harvesting systems, debates on global warming, and awareness drives about the "go green" revolution. These activities promote eco-friendly infrastructure and energy efficiency to combat global warming and save natural resources.

World Environment Day brings people from all countries together to deal with climate change and improve forest management. It is an effective campaign that enhances political attention and public action. By participating in WED, we can contribute to a healthier planet and ensure a safer future for generations to come. Let us all pledge to take positive actions and work together to maintain the beauty of our planet.

World Environment Day 2024: FAQs

What is the theme of World Environment Day 2024?

The theme for World Environment Day 2024 is "Land Restoration, Desertification and Drought Resilience." The slogan is "Our Land, Our Future. We are #GenerationRestoration."

When is World Environment Day?

World Environment Day is always held on June 5th.

Who is hosting 2024 World Environment Day?

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will be hosting the 2024 World Environment Day global celebrations.

What can I do to get involved in World Environment Day?

There are many ways you can get involved in World Environment Day! You can find a practical guide with ideas for individuals, businesses, and governments on the World Environment Day website [World Environment Day Get Involved]. Some ideas include:

• Planting trees
• Reducing your consumption of resources
• Supporting sustainable businesses
• Getting involved in local restoration projects
• Raising awareness about environmental issues

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Guest Essay

Mexico’s Women Are Speaking. Will a Female President Listen?

By Cristina Rivera Garza

Ms. Rivera Garza’s book “Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice” is about one of the many women killed by femicide in Mexico.

My mother was born in 1943 in a country where she was not allowed to vote. The Mexican government did not grant women the right to vote in national elections — or the right to hold public office on a national level — until Oct. 17, 1953. Now, almost 71 years later, for the first time two women are leading the race to be Mexico’s next president: Claudia Sheinbaum, who is the front-runner, and Xóchitl Gálvez. It is no small feat for a country with a longstanding and complex relationship with machismo , and where every day some 10 women or girls are killed on average.

And yet this accomplishment has often felt like an afterthought during this historic election. Ms. Sheinbaum, a scientist running on the ticket of the ruling Morena party, and Ms. Gálvez, a businesswoman representing a mix of parties from the political establishment, have nodded at the achievements of feminism and its influence on Mexico’s public life. But they have been cautious about lingering too long on women’s issues in their campaigns, conspicuously tiptoeing around abortion and reproductive rights, seemingly out of deference to conservative voters. Neither candidate has put forth a strong agenda to serve the women who put them where they are today.

For as Mexico descended into its nightmare of generalized violence, from the U.S.-backed war on drugs to the government of Felipe Calderón and the administration of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, it has been women — their tireless work, infinite rage and deepening sorrow — who have provided a moral compass to this nation. Women’s mobilizations have grown stronger and louder in the face of government indifference and repression, mounting the only serious opposition against the status quo and making women’s issues and gender justice central to any discussion of our shared future.

To be fair, male candidates have not historically been required to present their agenda for women either. They are seldom even asked about it. But women constitute a little over half of the Mexican electorate; it is imperative that Ms. Sheinbaum and Ms. Gálvez discuss their views and positions on issues that will affect women’s bodies, security and everyday life — not because they are women, but because they are presidential candidates, striving to represent all of us in the highest political office in the country.

On June 2, a woman will almost certainly be given a mandate to govern all of us. She will preside over an electorate that is deeply concerned about insecurity and corruption. The security policy of the current administration — known as “Hugs Not Bullets” — has failed to meaningfully de-escalate the violence unleashed by America’s failed drug policy, a fact painfully brought home by the ever-growing number of disappearances and high rates of gender-related violence. A staggering number of victims’ collectives, made up mostly of the mothers, wives, sisters and daughters of the disappeared, travel the nation with little to no funding or institutional support, sometimes unearthing the remains of their loved ones.

The women in my family tell more than the story of suffrage in Mexico. We are also among the countless families seeking justice for their murdered daughters in a country where impunity and corruption regularly obstruct them, particularly in cases of femicide. One among the many pending cases in Mexico today is that of Liliana Rivera Garza , my younger sister, who was killed on July 16, 1990. The man who is presumed to have killed her has never been arrested, despite a warrant.

But this is only part of the picture. The next president of Mexico will also run a country that is home to a vocal and energized women’s movement. In Mexico, femicide is a distinct crime; a specialized prosecutor’s office for the crime of femicide was created in Mexico City in 2019, when Ms. Sheinbaum was mayor. While the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion in 2023. There is much work to be done — for economic justice, equal access to education, and labor rights, and against racism and homo- and transphobia. But this young generation of Mexican women has made genuine progress, helping find language that is precise, compassionate and forceful enough to dismantle the narratives that have forcibly silenced them and normalized gender violence for too long.

Their success is part of something bigger. Across Latin America, women have been at the forefront of the fight against military dictatorships in Chile (the arpillera movement, for example) and Argentina (the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo). Today, they are holding states responsible for violence and reclaiming public space to remind us that they — that all of us — have the right to live and thrive in safety. On Nov. 25, 2019, during a celebration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the Chilean feminist collective Las Tesis performed the protest song “Un violador en tu camino” (“A rapist in Your Path”), rallying thousands of us to chant against our governments. The next president of Mexico should be aware that the energy unleashed by these actions, which reverberate in Latin America and beyond, is here to stay.

It is these struggles and demands that have shaped the political arena in which Ms. Sheinbaum and Ms. Gálvez now stand. Will the first female president of Mexico be willing and able to honor such history, acknowledging that women’s equality and gender justice are not peripheral issues but crucial to the country’s future? Will she be ready to face the immense challenge of organized crime, both within and outside the government, to secure a violence-free life for all? Will she preserve and defend the safety of the journalists and activists who risk their lives as they hurl hard questions at power? Unlike former presidents, will she listen?

I believe women are complex human beings “with the full range of saintly and demonic behaviors this entails, including criminal ones,” as Margaret Atwood once wrote. And many female leaders — Margaret Thatcher and Corazón Aquino, to mention just two — demonstrated that a woman running the country does not necessarily translate into support for women. Like all presidents in the past, and in the future, the next leader of Mexico will be judged not by her gender but for the decisions and actions of her government.

My mother’s story is part of one Mexico — the one where women have worked together to lift two female candidates to this moment. My sister Liliana’s story warns of another Mexico, one where violence ends things before they get started. Two years before her death, Liliana exercised her right to vote, on July 6, 1988, and enthusiastically joined the crowds that congregated at the main square in Mexico City afterward. She was ready to defend our emerging democracy and oppose the pervasive electoral fraud that kept the Institutional Revolutionary Party in office at the time.

She, like the countless other victims of violence against women in Mexico, cannot vote this week. We can cast our vote only if we are alive.

Cristina Rivera Garza is the author of “Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice,” which won a Pulitzer Prize this year.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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