Johns Hopkins University (JHU) continues to pad its space community résumé with their interactive map, “The map of the observable Universe”, that takes viewers on a 13.7-billion-year-old tour of the cosmos from the present to the moments after the Big Bang. While JHU is responsible for creating the site, additional contributions were made by NASA, the European Space Agency, the National Science Foundation, and the Sloan Foundation.
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Venus is the second planet in the solar system and is one of the four telluric planets along with Earth, Mars and Mercury. It therefore occupies a special place in our system, and it is precisely for this reason that the world's space agencies have dedicated several missions to it in recent decades. Scientists have now been able to take real pictures of Venus for the first time! Subscribe for more! ? Credit: NASA, ESA, ESO, SpaceX, Wikipedia, Shutterstock, ... #TheSimplySpaceEN
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We continue our look at colonizing the solar system by visiting Venus, and exploring both the options for vast floating habitats in the upper atmosphere as well as full terraforming of the planet. To pickup a copy of Ringworlds, our Book of the Month, use my link and get a free audio book with a 30 day trial! Sign up to my weekly email newsletter: Support us at:Support us at: Follow us on Tumblr: More stories at Follow us on Twitter: @universetoday Like us on Facebook: Instagram - : Cover Art by Jakub Grygier Graphics Team: Edward Nardella Jarred Eagley Justin Dixon Katie Byrne Kris Holland of Mafic Stufios: Misho Yordanov Pierre Demet Sergio Botero: Stefan Blandin Script Editing: Andy Popescu Connor Hogan Edward Nardella Eustratius Graham Gregory Leal Jefferson Eagley Luca de Rosa Mark Warburton Michael Gusevsky Mitch Armstrong MolbOrg Naomi Kern Philip Baldock Sigmund Kopperud Tiffany Penner Music: Markus Junnikkala, "Hail the Victorious Dead" Dan McLeod, "Vacuum" AJ Prasad, "Staring Through" Caption author (Arabic) anon-iraq Caption author (Korean) D Shin
False color radar topographical map of Venus provided by Magellan. Credit: Magellan Team/JPL/NASA
Venus was once considered a twin to Earth, as it’s roughly the same size and is relatively close to our planet.
But once astronomers looked at it seriously in the past half-century or so, a lot of contrasts emerged. The biggest one —
Venus is actually a hothouse planet with a runaway greenhouse effect, making it inhospitable to life as we know it.
Venus imaged by the Magellan spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL
As the morning star, the evening star, and the brightest natural object in the sky (after the Moon),
human beings have been aware of Venus since time immemorial. Even though it would be many thousands of years
before it was recognized as being a planet, its has been a part of human culture since the beginning of recorded history.
Venus in real colors. Image credit: Mattias Malmer / NASA.
Published on Feb 23, 2014
This animation is a brief tour of the global terrain of the planet Venus as revealed by radar onboard the Magellan spacecraft.
The height of the terrain is color-coded, with blues and greens representing low altitudes and reds representing high altitudes.
Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio.
The clouds are an altered version of an image by David Seal, courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.
More:
3-D perspective of the Venusian volcano, Maat Mons generated from radar data from NASA’s Magellan mission.
Published on Jun 5, 2012 As we are almost halfway through the Venus Transit, here is a look at Venus through the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory AIA instrument.
This is in 171 angstrom wavelength. This channel is especially good at showing coronal loops - the arcs extending off of the Sun where plasma moves along magnetic field lines.
The brightest spots seen here are locations where the magnetic field near the surface is exceptionally strong.
Credit: NASA SDO Category Education License Standard YouTube License
This movie is produced from the IR2 2.26-µm images, acquired on 29 March 2016 at a distance of 0.36 million km.
Original 4 images were acquired with 4-hour intervals from 16:03 JST (07:03 UT). In 4 hours, the super-rotating clouds move by ~10 degrees. Such images are numerically derotated to produce
intermediate images so that the resultant motion becomes smoother.
Deformation, appearance and disapperance of clouds are obvious in this movie.
Venus' Southern Swirling Clouds
Visualisation of Venus Express performing the aerobraking manoeuvre, during which the spacecraft orbited Venus
at an altitude of around 130 kilometres from 18 June to 11 July 2014. In the month before,
the altitude was gradually reduced from around 200 to 130 kilometres.
Image credit: © ESA–C. Carreau.
Density profiles of Venus’ polar atmosphere. Figure credit: courtesy of I. Müller-Wodarg (Imperial College London, UK).
Mapping the density waves in Venus’ lower thermosphere. Figure credit: ESA/Venus Express/VExADE/Müller-Wodarg et al., 2016.
Published on Jun 10, 2012 Venus as observed by the European Space Agency's Venus Express spacecraft during orbit 1640.
The 58 images comprising the movie were obtained by the Venus Monitoring Camera instrument in ultraviolet light.
Published on Feb 23, 2013 A quick and dirty animation of images obtained by the Venus Express spacecraft. The images were obtained during orbit 1749
(one of the the so--called "VEX Terminator Observations").
by Elizabeth Howell on December 5, 2014
Artist’s concept of Venus Express. Credit: ESA
After more than eight years orbiting a hellish planet, Venus Express is showing its age.
The spacecraft made some risky maneuvers this summer, dipping down into the atmosphere as it nears the end of its mission.
Now, the European Space Agency reports it has mostly lost contact with the probe. The reason could be lack of fuel.
by ELIZABETH HOWELL on DECEMBER 16, 2014
Artist’s conception of Venus Express. Image credit: ESA
After surviving an eight-year mission and a daring plunge into part of the atmosphere of Venus,
a plucky spacecraft orbiting the hothouse planet is finished its mission, the European Space Agency declared.
Venus Express can no longer communicate consistently with Earth
Size comparison of Venus and Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL/Magellan
The internal structure of Venus – the crust (outer layer), the mantle (middle layer)
and the core (yellow inner layer). Credit: Wikipedia Commons
Artist’s impression of the surface of Venus Credit: ESA/AOES
August 27, 1962. Mariner 2 launches to Venus. Four months later, it becomes the first spacecraft
to return useful scientific information to Earth from the vicinity of another planet. Photo credit: NASA.
The Mariner 1 and 2 spacecrafts made their way to Venus. Mariner 2 was the first successful Venus Flyby on . Credit: NASA/JPL
The Mariner 10 spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL
Images of Venusian surface taken by the Venera 10 lander on October 25th, 1977. Credit: Russian Space Web/Donald Mitchell
Images of Venusian surface taken by the Venera 10 lander on October 25th, 1977. Credit: Russian Space Web/Donald Mitchell
Artist's impression of the Venus Express spacecraft in orbit around Venus. Credit: ESA
The atmospheric super-rotation at the upper clouds of Venus. While the super-rotation is present in both day and night sides of Venus, it seems more uniform in the day. Credits: JAXA, ESA, J. Peralta and R. Hueso.
Artist’s impression of the atmosphere of Venus, showing its lightning storms and a volcano in the distance. Credit and ©: European Space Agency/J. Whatmore
Examples of new types of cloud morphology discovered on the night side of Venus thanks to Venus Express (ESA) and the infrared telescope IRTF (NASA). Credits: ESA/NASA/J. Peralta and R. Hueso.
Examples of new types of cloud morphology discovered on the night side of Venus thanks to Venus Express (ESA) and the infrared telescope IRTF (NASA). Credits: ESA/NASA/J. Peralta and R. Hueso.
Artist’s impression of Venus Express performing aerobreaking maneuvers in the planet’s atmosphere in June and July 2014. Credit: ESA–C. Carreau
by MATT WILLIAMS on JANUARY 6, 2015
Artist’s impression of the Venus Climate Orbiter (aka. “Akatsuki”) by Akihiro Ikeshita. Image Credit: JAXA Back in 2010, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the The Venus Climate Orbiter “Akatsuki" with the intention of learning more about the planet’s weather and surface conditions. Unfortunately, due to engine trouble,the probe failed to make it into the planet’s orbit. Since that time, it has remained in a heliocentric orbit, some 134 million kilometers from Venus, conducting scientific studies on the solar wind. However, JAXA is going to make one more attempt to slip the probe into Venus’orbit before its fuel runs out. UPDATE DECEMBER 17, 2015 Japanese probe fires rockets to steer into orbit at Venus Posted on 7 December 2015 by Stephen Clark Five years after missing a shot to enter orbit at Venus, Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft completed a critical rocket burn early Monday, Dec 7, 2015 in a bid to salvage the research mission and become the only space probe operating around Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor. Four maneuvering thrusters were scheduled to ignite at 2351 GMT (6:51 p.m. EST) Sunday for approximately 20 minutes and 30 seconds to slow down the Akatsuki probe enough for Venus’ gravity to capture it into an elongated, high-altitude orbit.
Artist’s impression of the surface of Venus, showing its lightning storms and a volcano in the distance. Credit and ©: European Space Agency/J. Whatmore
by Elizabeth Howell on December 22, 2014
An artist concept of the view from an airship orbiting Venus. Credit: NASA Langley HAVOC team. Venus presents a special challenge to space explorers. Yes, there is a surface, but hellish temperatures and atmospheric pressure on the surface of Venus has a tendency to crush spacecraft fairly quickly. Short of building a submarine-rated surface explorer, maybe there’s a better way to look at the hothouse planet? A newly proposed NASA concept suggests using airships. Yes, airships with people in them.
Because of its proximity to Earth, and its similarity in size, mass and composition, Venus was once believed to hold life.In fact, the idea of Venus being a tropical world persisted well into the 20th century, until the Venera and Mariner programs demonstrated the absolute hellish conditions that actually exist on the surface.
Artist’s concept of the Venus in Situ explorer mission, which could be deployed to Venus by 2022. Credit: NASA
by MATT WILLIAMS on OCTOBER 5, 2015
NASA’s latest round of Discovery Program missions envision sending craft to study Venus, near-Earth objects, and asteroids. Credit: NASA
by MATT WILLIAMS on OCTOBER 7, 2015
Artist’s concept of the VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy) spacecraft,
a proposed mission for NASA’s Discovery Program that would launch by the end of 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
AREE is a clockwork rover inspired by mechanical computers. A JPL team is studying how this kind of rover could explore extreme environments, like the surface of Venus. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Artist’s impression of the AREE clockwork rover operating on the surface of Venus. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
A look inside the AREE rover (next to an astronaut for scale). Wind would be channeled through the rover’s body for primary power. Rotating targets on top could be “pinged” by radar, sending data as Morse code. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Artist’s concept for the Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments (AREE). Credit: NASA/JPL
An Automaton Rover is a mechanically based robot that thrives in Venus' high temperatures, where electronics would quickly fail. Inspired by Strandbeests, this high temperature alloy rover extends science fiction "steampunk" to space exploration. For more information, see: This work is funded by NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC). The research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. © 2017 California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged.
by Dan Leone, Space News Writer | May 12, 2015 11:06am ET
Northrop Grumman has come up with a Venus mission concept called VAMP (Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable Platform):
An inflatable propeller plane that could cruise Earth's super-heated sister planet for years,
SAMPLING the acidic alien atmopshere directly and safely observing the venusian surface from 50 kilometers up.
Aircraft like the Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable Platform (VAMP) could explore the cloud tops of Venus for possible signs of life. Credit: Northrop Grumman Corp.
Northrup Gruman Press release on the vamp mission
“Our project centers around a unique aircraft and method for harvesting energy from Venus’s upper atmosphere that doesn’t require additional sources of energy for propulsion. Our experience working on unmanned aircraft systems that interact with severe convective storms on Earth will hopefully provide a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion for how best to explore this turbulent environment. Additionally, the work we do will help inform better designs of our own aircraft and should lead to longer observation times and more robust aircraft to observe everything from volcanic plumes to hurricanes.”
The Russian Academy of Sciences’ Space Research Institute (IKI) Venera-D mission concept includes a Venus orbiter that would operate for up to three years, and a lander designed to survive the incredibly harsh conditions a spacecraft would encounter on Venus’ surface for a few hours. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Black Swift Technologies has won a NASA contract to develop a drone to study Venus' upper atmosphere. Credit: Black Swift Technologies
Our project centers around a unique aircraft and method for harvesting energy from Venus’s upper atmosphere that doesn’t require additional sources of energy for propulsion. Our experience working on unmanned aircraft systems that interact with severe convective storms on Earth will hopefully provide a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion for how best to explore this turbulent environment. Additionally, the work we do will help inform better designs of our own aircraft and should lead to longer observation times and more robust aircraft to observe everything from volcanic plumes to hurricanes.”
NASA Langley researchers want to get a better idea about conditions on our nearest planetary neighbor, Venus , so they have come up with HAVOC or a High Altitude Venus Operational Concept – a lighter-than-air rocket ship that would help send two astronauts on a 30-day mission to explore the planet’s atmosphere. Exploration of Venus is a challenge not only because its smog-like sulfuric acid-laced atmosphere, but also its extremely hot surface temperature and extremely high air pressure on the surface.
A New Class of Vehicle for Exploration
e spacecraft would circumnavigate Venus every four to six days, with solar panels charging every two to three days on the side of the planet illuminated by the sun. Credit: CRASH Lab, University at Buffalo.
Black Swift Technologies has won a NASA contract to develop a drone to study Venus’ upper atmosphere. Credit:Black Swift Technologies
Artist’s conception of a terraformed Venus, showing a surface largely covered in oceans. Credit: Wikipedia Commons/Ittiz
After decades of research, including multiple landers and orbiters, science can definitively say: Venus sucks. Seriously, that place is the worst, with its boiling temperature, intense pressure, sulfuric acid rain, and more. But was it always this bad? According to new research from NASA and various universities in Sweden and the US, Venus might have actually been the first habitable world in the Solar System. And it might have maintained a reasonable climate for billions of years, finally rolling over into a runaway greenhouse effect just a few hundred million years ago. After decades of research, including multiple landers and orbiters, science can definitively say : Venus sucks. Seriously, that place is the worst, with its boiling temperature, intense pressure, sulfuric acid rain, and more. But was it always this bad? According to new research from NASA and various universities in Sweden and the US, Venus might have actually been the first habitable world in the Solar System. And it might have maintained a reasonable climate for billions of years, finally rolling over into a runaway greenhouse effect just a few hundred million years ago. Sign up to my weekly email newsletter: Support us at:Support us at: Follow us on Tumblr: More stories at Follow us on Twitter: @universetoday Like us on Facebook: Instagram - Team: Fraser Cain - @fcain / frasercain@gmail.com /Karla Thompson - @karlaii Chad Weber - Chloe Cain - Instagram: @chloegwen2001 References:
Authors: M. J. Way1,2, Anthony D. Del Genio1 , Nancy Y. Kiang1 , Linda E. Sohl1,3, David H. Grinspoon4 , Igor Aleinov1,3, Maxwell Kelley1 , and Thomas Clune5>
Was Venus the First Habitable World of our Solar System? (PDF) Simulations of Planetary Climates with ROCKE-3D
Goddard Space Flight Center
Sciences and Exploration Directorate
Earth Sciences Division Could Venus have been habitable? The europlanet society
Artist’s impression of the surface of Venus as it is today, showing its lightning storms and a volcano in the distance. Credit and ©: ESA/J. Whatmore
land-ocean pattern like that above was used in a climate model to show how storm clouds could have shielded ancient Venus from strong sunlight and made the planet habitable. Credits: NASA
The planet Venus, as imaged by the Magellan 10 mission. Credit: NASA/JPL
Venus is often referred to as “Earth’s sister planet“, owing to the number of similarities between them. Like Earth, Venus is a terrestrial (aka. rocky) planet and it resides with our Sun’s Circumstellar Habitable Zone (CHZ). And for some time, scientists have theorized that billions of years ago, Venus had oceans on its surface and was habitable – aka. not the hot and hellish place it is today.
The planet Venus, as imaged by the Magellan 10 mission. Credit: NASA/JPL
3D image of the the boundary between the lowland plains and characteristic Venusian highland terrain in Ovda Regio, based on data obtained by the NASA Magellan spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS
Surface features seen in the WISPR images (left) match ones seen in those from the Magellan mission (right). Credits: NASA/APL/NRL (left), Magellan Team/JPL/USGS (right)
As Parker Solar Probe flew by Venus on its fourth flyby, its WISPR instrument captured these images, strung into a video, showing the nightside surface of the planet. Credits: NASA/APL/NRL
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has taken its first visible light images of the surface of Venus from space. Smothered in thick clouds, Venus’ surface is usually shrouded from sight. But in two recent flybys of the planet, Parker used its Wide-Field Imager, or WISPR, to image the entire nightside in wavelengths of the visible spectrum – the type of light that the human eye can see – and extending into the near-infrared. The images, combined into a video, reveal a faint glow from the surface that shows distinctive features like continental regions, plains, and plateaus. A luminescent halo of oxygen in the atmosphere can also be seen surrounding the planet. More information: Link to paper: Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Scientists: Brian Wood (U.S. Naval Research Laboratory) Giada Arney (NASA/GSFC) Brendan Gallagher (U.S. Naval Research Laboratory) Phillip Hess (U.S. Naval Research Laboratory) Angelos Vourlidas (Johns Hopkins University/APL) Producer: Joy Ng (KBRwyle) Writer: Mara Johnson-Groh (Wyle Information Systems) Animator: Steve Gribben (Johns Hopkins APL) Music credits: “Tides” and “Subsurface” by Ben Niblett [PRS] and Jon Cotton [PRS] from Universal Production Music This video can be freely shared and downloaded at While the video in its entirety can be shared without permission, the music and some individual imagery may have been obtained through permission and may not be excised or remixed in other products. Specific details on such imagery may be found here: For more information on NASA’s media guidelines, visit If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel: Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center · Instagram · Twitter- NASA GODDARD · Twitter-NASA GODDARD PICS · Facebook: · Flickr
With so much attention on Mars, it's easy to forget there's a whole other Earth-sized planet nearby, worthy of exploration: Venus. And the Soviets worked really hard to tell us what it's like down on the surface of Venus with their Venera program. Sponsored by the .space domain name. Go to and use the code "GUIDETOSPACE" to get a domain for $2.99. Follow us on Twitter: @universetoday Like us on Facebook: Instagram - Support us at:Support us at: Instagram - Team: Fraser Cain - @fcain / frasercain@gmail.com /Karla Thompson - @karlaii Chad Weber - Chloe Cain - Instagram: @chloegwen2001 Music: Left Spine Down - “X-Ray” Team: Fraser Cain - @fcain / frasercain@gmail.com Karla Thompson - @karlaii / Karla Thompson's youtube channel Chad Weber - weber.chad@gmail.com