visit venus shaft in space

8000 records

Music. lots of it., visit venus – music for space tourism vol. 1.

Daddy was a NASA sound scientist

As much as it may be a compliment when you say that an album was way ahead of its time – there’s a tragic dimension to it as well. For obvious reasons as the visionary qualities of that album will not be attested in its time but rather when a good deal of the time that it’s ahead of will have passed. Which would be around twenty years, in my case.

Looking back from 2021, “Music For Space Tourism” is a remarkable album with an immensely creative and entertaining story behind it. For this album, Mario Cullmann and Mario von Hacht came up with this really brilliant story that both their fathers had been working as sound scientists for NASA. Their project was to create music that would be played for passengers on their long journey to Venus. According to their story, they discovered the secret tapes recorded for that project and then used them to create this album.

The fun thing about this album is that it actually lets you take that little back story and enjoy it while you listen to it, departing from “Brooklyn Sky Port” all the way to the “Venus Beach Resort”. The fact that this is a pretty good album helps as well, of course. It’s sort of a very early work of the upcoming Downbeat and Lounge era, and the elevated level of coolness hints at the fact that space tourism is an upscale experience.

It really is a trip to the future as most of the material is deeply Trip Hop and Downbeat way before these labels even existed. It already starts with a transmission from a year or two ahead as “Brooklyn Sky Port (Departure)” is pure loungy instrumental Hip Hop – the stuff that would be heard in bars around the world in the pre-Millennium world. It’s almost prophetic to place the sky port in Brooklyn – back in 1995 you’d rather have been robbed than lobbed into space.

Mario and Mario were really good at creating tracks for every stage and aspect of the journey to Venus – and giving them entertaining titles. Right after departure we pass Earth’s little buddy listening to “First Man On The Moog”, a track that features an aptly deep and groaning bass and really classy horn samples. By then we might actually already be holding our second Martini, wondering if the other side of the moon is as dark as they say.

After the Moon it’s “One Step Beyond” and a little too much emptiness in the sky (no, this track didn’t need six minutes, but it’s still enjoyable). Some of the passengers might catch a case of “Stellarphobia” – a good dose of Rhodes and a relaxing layer of beats are served as a remedy, and soon after the passengers are off to sleep listening to faint choirs from somewhere deep in space.

Naturally, trips to outer space (especially cool ones like this) will attract one or the other famous person. Is it really? No, it can’t be… But look. And listen. The soundtrack gives it all away with its elements of Blaxploitation – it really is “Shaft In Space”. Now how cool is that! He’s up front at the bar, all chilled out and having a drink – no gangsters flying along to Venus. Still, good to know he’s on board.

Cullmann and von Hacht take their time to tell the story. It’s a three piece vinyl with songs that roll along for up to nine minutes, like “Zoom” – the song that well represents the main part of the journey, gliding through space, stars sparkling and all, chatting with other passengers, having a surprisingly lavish meal on board, hardly noticing but still appreciating the tasteful music that is played. The guy sitting next to you saying did you know this music was exclusively produced for these flights? Some Germans, I heard. Who would have thought.

You know how it is up there – the inflight beverages are quick to give you a buzz, so you just let the music play, enjoying the plushy seats and the amazing view of Venus gradually becoming bigger out there as the spaceship approaches the planet. And there you are. The shuttle is waiting already and in no time you arrive at the “Venus Beach Resort”. They have a slightly Latin theme going but the band seems to be a little bit in need of practice – the beats are taking the being-broken-ness a little too serious. This is probably the moment you notice that Mario and Mario don’t really know how to swing all too well. But look at that sunset… so fiery red… Too bad Venus doesn’t have a moon though.

Isn’t it a shame how time flies when you’re on vacation. In no time it’s off to the sky port again. But what’s going on at the counter? “One Passenger Lost”. A lonely trumpet is out looking for him, sonic sound finders trying to locate the lost soul – but it sure is no reason to change the underlying grooves as more Hip Hop drum loops keep the passengers relaxed.

The captain explains that the young co-pilot is on his “Orbital Workshop 2”. Judging from the sound of the bass he might just be a descendant of the Second Man On The Moog. You quickly doze off and dream of electronic sheep until the cabin chief’s landing announcement wakes you up – really, back already? An elegant sweeping curve before landing, offering a look at “Harlem Overdrive” while the inflight entertainment offers warm jazzy rhythms to prepare you for landing. Classy stuff, really.

“Home”. A wistful saxophone admits that an additional week up there would have been a good thing, but now it’s off to the street to hail a cab, back in Brooklyn with beats to match the scenery and hints at familiar amounts of gravity. The way it sounds it’s good to be back on Earth, back at the house.

For those who chose the vinyl the party isn’t over yet – and I love both the fact that there’s a bonus track and that the title is so well chosen: “Après Sky”. The the sound of the saxophone last evening of a stellar vacation includes a drink or two, and there must be some good friends around, chilling out on the roof, under the stars, and hey, isn’t that Venus over there on the horizon?

“Music For Space Tourism Vol. 1” is a really classy album. The big advantage of music that was ahead of its time: it ages well. No problem slipping one or the other track in when you DJ at the bar. And if someone asks where that track is from you just give them a smile and say “It’s from Venus.” I like that.

Release for review: VISIT VENUS – MUSIC FOR SPACE TOURISM VOL. 1 – YO MAMA – YO 0910-1

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1 x CD Album Germany 1995

Product details

• Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.55 x 4.97 x 0.54 inches; 2.83 ounces
• Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ Yo Mama's Recording
• Date First Available ‏ : ‎ March 29, 2010
• Label ‏ : ‎ Yo Mama's Recording
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000008747
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
• #450 in Acid Jazz (CDs & Vinyl)
• #892 in Trip-hop

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NASA Picks Twin Missions To Visit Venus, Earth's 'Evil Twin'

Nell Greenfieldboyce

An image of Venus taken by NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft as it sped past the planet in February 1974. NASA has decided to send two new probes to explore Venus. NASA hide caption

An image of Venus taken by NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft as it sped past the planet in February 1974. NASA has decided to send two new probes to explore Venus.

NASA has decided to send two new missions to Venus, our closest planetary neighbor, making it the first time the agency will go to this scorching hot world in more than three decades.

The news has thrilled planetary scientists who have long argued that Venus deserves more attention because it could be a cautionary tale of a pleasant, Earth-like world that somehow went horribly awry.

"I never knew it was possible to cry and have goose bumps at the same time, because that's what happened to me when I heard the news," said Darby Dyar , a planetary geologist at Mount Holyoke College who is the deputy principal investigator on one of the missions, and chair of NASA's Venus exploration advisory group.

"The Venus community has waited decades for this moment, and to have NASA give us two missions in one, both complementary, is out of this world," Dyar said.

Venus may have suffered a runaway greenhouse effect

Venus has been called Earth's "evil twin" because it is about the same size as Earth and probably was created out of similar stuff; it might have even had at one time oceans of liquid water.

But Venus appears to have suffered a runaway greenhouse effect. Temperatures at its surface now exceed 800 degrees Fahrenheit, and its atmosphere is toxic to humans.

NASA's new administrator, Bill Nelson , announced that after considering four different proposals for its Discovery Program, including proposed trips to moons of Jupiter and Neptune, the agency went all in on Venus.

The two missions are VERITAS , a mission to map Venus' surface and understand its geologic history, and DAVINCI+ , a mission that would send a sphere of instruments plunging down through Venus' fearsome atmosphere, which is filled with clouds made of sulfuric acid droplets and other unknown chemicals.

"These two sister missions both aim to understand how Venus became an inferno-like world capable of melting lead at the surface," Nelson said in his first address to the NASA workforce. "They will offer the entire science community the chance to investigate a planet we haven't been to in more than 30 years."

"This is beyond our wildest dreams," said Martha Gilmore , a planetary scientist at Wesleyan University who is working with both missions. She notes these two missions were rejected in the last round of selections for NASA's Discovery Program in 2017, so Venus proponents went into the selection process this time without any certainty of success. "I think we're relieved. I feel a lot of relief."

Two probes will be sent to Venus with different missions

These Venus missions could be ready to launch in 2026, but the exact timing is still to be determined. "The best case, if possible, would be if they could launch on a single rocket," Gilmore said.

To her, the biggest mystery she wants answered is whether Venus had oceans and whether it was habitable for billions of years. "That's what I want to know," Gilmore said. "Some rock types only form in water, so we will be able to tell that from the orbiters on both missions."

The VERITAS mission will have an orbiting probe with instruments that will let scientists create detailed 3D reconstructions of the planet's landscape, and will reveal whether Venus has active plate tectonics and volcanoes.

The DAVINCI+ descent probe would sniff in atmospheric gases to measure their composition precisely, and it would be equipped with cameras that could take photos of the surface on the way down.

Much remains mysterious about Venus, even though it was the first planet that NASA explored, in the groundbreaking Mariner 2 mission that flew by Venus in 1962. It was the first time a spacecraft had ever successfully reached another world at a time when the planets were only known by peering at them through telescopes.

Back then, cloud-shrouded Venus was thought to be another Earth, though perhaps with a warmer, more tropical climate. Mariner 2 revealed its blazing hot surface could never support life.

While rovers on Mars have sent back lots of vivid panoramas showing the stark beauty of the red planet, images of the surface of Venus are hard to come by. The heat and intense pressure simply obliterate spacecraft.

Still, some researchers have proposed that life might eke out an existence on Venus by residing up in its slightly-less-hostile yet highly acidic clouds. Just last year, one group said it had detected signs of a gas known to be linked to life in the planet's hazy atmosphere.

The last NASA spacecraft sent on a Venus mission was Magellan , which launched in 1989 to map its surface. Its work showed that much of the planet was covered with volcanic flows. The spacecraft burned up in the harsh Venusian atmosphere about 10 hours after being commanded to plunge toward the surface.

June 3, 2021

NASA Picks Two Missions to Explore Venus, the First in Decades

The space agency’s DAVINCI+ and VERITAS missions could boost planetary science when they launch later this decade

By Robin George Andrews

Composite image of Venus based on data from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft and Pioneer Venus Orbiter. The space agency is now developing two new missions to Venus, each designed to reveal hidden details of the world’s atmosphere and surface that could revolutionize our understanding of planetary habitability.

NASA and JPL-Caltech

On the morning of June 2, rumors began swirling that NASA was about to announce its latest choices for interplanetary missions, selecting the long-awaited winners of the agency’s competition for new spacecraft in its relatively low-priced Discovery exploration program. Four contending teams anxiously awaited the results: One wished to send a mission to Jupiter’s hypervolcanic moon Io. Another desired a visit to Triton, a cryovolcanic moon of Neptune. And the other two wanted to go to Venus, a destination the space agency had neglected for decades.

A press conference led by NASA administrator Bill Nelson got underway later that afternoon. After a lengthy preamble featuring updates of the agency’s efforts to combat climate change, plus its exploration plans for Mars and Earth’s moon—and an unexpected cameo by William Shatner—Nelson’s remarks turned to the Discovery program. As he spoke, a slickly-produced video began playing on nearby screens showing images of swirling, sickly yellow clouds and a desolate, volcano-scarred landscape. To the Venusian contingent of planetary scientists tuned in to the teleconference, the hellish view looked refreshingly familiar. Perhaps NASA was greenlighting one of the two Venus mission concepts. Then two acronyms flashed on-screen—“DAVINCI+ and VERITAS”—followed by cheers from the audience in the auditorium and online.

For the first time in three decades, NASA had chosen to go back to Venus—not once but twice. VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy) will orbit the planet, studying its surface and interior with radar and gravitational measurements. DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble Gases, Chemistry, and Imaging Plus) will include an orbiter, as well as a probe designed to plunge through the atmosphere down to the planet’s mysterious, cloud-shrouded surface. If all goes according to plan, both missions should launch before this decade is out.

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The last time NASA sent a dedicated mission to Venus was 1989, when its Magellan orbiter launched on a five-year mission to create a radar map of the planet. Ever since, Earth’s sister world—almost identical to our own planet in size, mass and bulk composition—had been relegated to the shadows of American space exploration. For the Venusian science community, which had labored, campaigned and struggled over the past quarter-century to raise the planet’s depressingly low profile, the decisive victory was pure catharsis.

In today's #StateOfNASA address, we announced two new @NASASolarSystem missions to study the planet Venus, which we haven't visited in over 30 years! DAVINCI+ will analyze Venus’ atmosphere, and VERITAS will map Venus’ surface. pic.twitter.com/yC5Etbpgb8 — NASA (@NASA) June 2, 2021

“I jumped up and down more than I have in quite a few years,” says Martha Gilmore , a planetary geologist at Wesleyan University, who is part of both mission teams. “We are off to Venus! ” gushes Jim Garvin , chief scientist of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the principal investigator of DAVINCI+.

“I don’t know what else we could have done better to make this the right mission for the moment,” says Sue Smrekar , a planetary geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and principal investigator of VERITAS. “I feel like we did that. And I feel like NASA noticed.”

Magellan was the very first mission Smrekar worked on, back when she was a postdoctoral researcher. She intends for VERITAS to be her last—and the crowning achievement of her life in science. “This is going to be the capstone of my career,” she says. “I can’t wait to see what we discover.”

There is no shortage of varied, favorite mysteries the researchers wish to solve about Venus, but each speaks to a single, shared conundrum: How did Earth and Venus, two planets made at the same time and out of the same stuff, have such divergent fates? Why is one a temperate biological oasis while the other is an infernal pandemonium?

“How do you build a habitable planet? That’s our main question, and we only have one answer right now: Earth,” Gilmore says. “Now we’ll have a chance for a second laboratory to understand that question.”

Armed with a sophisticated radar system, VERITAS is effectively Magellan’s successor, meant to produce extremely detailed topographic and geologic maps of planet while also peering deep into the world’s viscera with painstaking measurements of Venus’s gravitational field. DAVINCI+’s orbiter is less capable, but its probe will deliver invaluable in situ data on Venus’s atmosphere, sampling and studying the chemistry of the planet’s air throughout a one-way plunge to the spacecraft-annihilating surface. Both missions will also carry technology demonstrations to further NASA’s interplanetary capabilities: VERITAS will fly with a deep-space atomic clock for enhanced celestial navigation, and DAVINCI+ will host a novel high-resolution ultraviolet imager.

Just one mission to Venus would deliver myriad revelations. The fact that two are going to visit at practically the same time is especially exciting. At the conference, Nelson referred to them as “sister missions”—an apt description because the pair are studying two very different aspects of the world in order to address that same fundamental questions of planetary habitability. Like peanut butter and jelly, they are perfect complements to each other.

“The combined results of these missions will tell us about the planet from the clouds in its sky through the volcanoes on its surface all the way down to its very core,” said Tom Wagner , NASA’s Discovery Program scientist, in a statement following the announcement. “ It will be as if we have rediscovered the planet .”

The fact that both missions were chosen shows that NASA is not content with giving the world a cursory glance, says Paul Byrne , a planetary scientist and vocal Venus advocate at North Carolina State University. Instead the space agency is pursuing a strategy designed to reveal exactly how the planet works, inside and out. And perhaps these dual missions are just the beginning of something even greater: the revolutionary data both could obtain might become the foundations of a future Venusian mission program, similar to NASA’s Mars Exploration Program , which has transformed our understanding of the Red Planet.

It is, of course, a disappointing day for the other two teams that had hoped for a coveted Discovery mission slot. The Io Volcano Observer team wanted to understand the immense gravitational forces responsible for maintaining the eponymous Jovian moon’s magmatic ocean—and, consequently, to comprehend how the same forces can keep potentially life-sustaining watery oceans warm for billions of years on other worlds, such as Jupiter’s moon Europa, which is Io’s neighbor. The team behind the Trident mission proposal wished to work out how a surreal and utterly alien form of icy volcanism could keep Neptune’s moon Triton—an ancient relic from the dawn of the solar system—looking so preternaturally youthful over eons of time.

Volcanism, too, is the most likely culprit behind Venus’s long-ago transformation from putative ocean world to hostile wasteland, a process both VERITAS and DAVINCI+ will study in their own way. No matter which mission of the four contenders had been picked, says Jacob Richardson , a planetary volcanologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, volcanoes were always going to win. But in this case, choosing Venus so that we may understand how volcanoes can wreck entire planets seemed like a no-brainer.

For the vanquished, an inevitable melancholia is tinged with optimism. Proponents of an Io mission hope that they will clinch victory in the next Discovery competition—or perhaps even in the next tier up: a competition for the pricier and more technically capable missions in NASA’s New Frontiers program. Those wishing for a return to the oft-forgotten worlds of Uranus and Neptune, each of which last saw a spacecraft in the late 1980s , are eyeing a future “flagship” mission, one of the $1-billion-plus behemoths that constitute the pinnacle of NASA’s robotic space exploration fleet in terms of size, cost and capability.

This decade now belongs to the second planet from the sun, however. Like their DAVINCI+ colleagues, Smrekar and her VERITAS collaborators are thrilled, exhausted and incredulous all at once. The night before the announcement, she had snapped a photograph of Venus, pointlike and gleaming in the dark sky above. In the aftermath of NASA’s announcement—in the light of a new day—that diamantine speck suddenly looked quite different. It was no longer an unreachable isle but the destination for NASA’s next giant leap in interplanetary exploration.

Venus is about the same size as Earth, but a very different planet. It rotates in a backward direction, a characteristic it shares with Uranus. Venus is nearer the Sun than Earth and has a very thick atmosphere, the surface temperature is extremely high, as much as 475° Celsius (900° Fahrenheit).  

The planets closest to the Sun—Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury—are made mostly of rock. The rocky planets all formed in our inner solar system. Their geological history is preserved on their surfaces. Their landscapes reveal the processes that shaped them: impacts, crustal movements, volcanic activity, and erosion. Gravity, temperature, air, and water all play leading roles in their geological stories.

Breaking Down Astronomical Lingo

What is an astronomical unit (AU)? 

One astronomical unit is the distance from the center of the Earth to the center of the Sun, or about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers).

What is a natural satellite? 

A natural satellite is a naturally occurring object that is in orbit around an object in space of a larger size. Earth's natural satellite is the Moon, but many objects in our Solar System have multiple natural satellites. Humans have also created artificial satellites—human-made machines and spacecraft in orbit around our Earth or other objects in our galaxy.

Earth days to orbit the Sun

Earth days to complete one rotation

from the Sun

natural satellites

Characteristics of Venus 

Planets and moons across our solar system bear the scars of collisions. Impact craters form on their surfaces when a dust particle, rock, asteroid, or comet smashes into them. Impact craters come in all sizes and shapes, depending on the impacting object size, impact angle, and surface into which the object crashes.

The surface of Venus is extremely hot. When an impact creates a crater, some of the ejecta is hot and fluid. Flows of this molten material, called impact melt, can extend for long distances, as shown by this radar image of Addams crater (54 miles/ 87 kilometers across).

Venus has a very thick, hot, carbon dioxide atmosphere. Its surface pressure is more than 90 times that of Earth’s. Winds in the upper atmosphere of Venus travel 110–220 mph (180 – 360 km/h).

An atmosphere can slow down an incoming object or melt it completely. The atmosphere of Venus is so dense that some objects break apart and form clustered impact craters, like those seen in this image.

Rocky worlds can also reshape themselves from internal forces that push and pull at their crustal materials, a process called tectonics. Compressional forces shove crustal material together to create ridges and mountains. Extensional forces stretch and pull the crust apart to form fault scarps, canyons, and valleys. While impacts are sudden, tectonic forces operate over long periods of time. The landforms they create can take millions of years to form.

Earth has globalized plate tectonics. Venus does not. This is thought to be because of how hot and dry the planet is. Instead, tectonics operate regionally, rather than through plates that span the entire globe like Earth.This image shows elevation on Venus, with blue and purple colors being the lowest elevations, and greens, yellows, and oranges being areas of higher elevation.

Like Earth, volcanism also plays a role on Venus. Venus has a hot interior core surrounded by hot mantles. One way these rocky worlds release interior heat is through volcanic activity. This can involve molten rock, or magma, being forced into the crust. As the interior cools, it shrinks, causing the crust to wrinkle like the skin of an apple as the core dries and shrivels over time. Volcanism creates a variety of landforms, not just volcanoes, depending on the properties of the lava (such as viscosity and composition) and on the planetary environment (like gravity and presence of an atmosphere). 

Venus displays the greatest diversity of volcanic features among the rocky worlds. Over 80% of Venus is covered by relatively young volcanic plains, less than 500 million years old. The abundance of these plains suggests that Venus may have experienced catastrophic volcanic events that caused lava to flood large parts of its surface.

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Every mission to Venus ever

Venus was one of the first planets to be visited by spacecraft from Earth .

Probes do not last long on its surface, where the atmosphere is 50 times denser than Earth's and temperatures are hot enough to melt lead. Orbital studies hint that Venus may have hosted habitable oceans before becoming inhospitable. By studying Venus, scientists learn how Earth-like planets change over time.

Spacecraft headed to Mercury or to study the Sun up-close use Venus' gravity to adjust their trajectories.

Venus, Earth's twin sister

Venus may have had oceans and been habitable to life before being transformed into an inhospitable wasteland.

Active Missions

Akatsuki, the venus climate orbiter.

The Japanese Akatsuki mission entered orbit around Venus in 2015, searching for clues on how the planet's atmosphere works.

Future Missions

Shukrayaan India aims to launch a Venus orbiter called Shukrayaan in December 2024 equipped with a radar, infrared camera, and international instruments to map the surface.

Rocket Lab and MIT's Venus Life Finder mission

Launch vehicle company Rocket Lab and MIT plan to send the first private mission to Venus as early as January 2025.

DAVINCI, a return to Venus’ clouds

NASA’s DAVINCI will be the first mission to visit the Venusian atmosphere since 1984, providing the most detailed measurements we’ve ever had of its composition and structure.

VERITAS, NASA’s Venus mapper

NASA will launch the VERITAS spacecraft no earlier than 2031 to study Venus and its past.

EnVision, Europe’s mission to Venus

The European Space Agency (ESA) is launching the EnVision spacecraft to study Venus and its past.

Past Missions

Venus Express The European Space Agency's Venus Express studied the planet's ionosphere and atmosphere, enabling scientists to draw important conclusions about the surface.

MESSENGER NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft flew past Venus twice on its way to Mercury.

Cassini-Huygens NASA and the European Space Agency's Cassini-Huygens mission visited Venus twice during its long trek out to Saturn .

Magellan NASA's Magellan orbiter mapped over 98% of Venus at a resolution of 100 meters or better using its radar.

Galileo NASA's Galileo spacecraft used Venus' gravity to adjust its trajectory on the way to Jupiter .

Vega 1 and Vega 2 En route to comet Halley, the Soviet Union's identical Vega 1 and 2 probes deployed balloons into Venus' atmosphere to measure the temperature, pressure, wind velocity, and visibility as they floated around the planet.

Venera 15 and Venera 16 Venera 15 and 16 created a radar map of Venus during a joint mission lasting 8 months. Together, the two spacecraft imaged the area from Venus' north pole down to about 30 degrees North latitude.

Venera 13 and Venera 14 Venera 13 and 14 were identical landers to explore Venus' surface. Venera 13 returned the first color images from the surface, revealing an orange-brown flat bedrock covered with loose regolith and thin angular rocks.

Venera 11 and Venera 12 The Soviet Union's Venera 11 and 12 spacecraft studied Venus' atmosphere and landed on the surface. They were also meant to return color images but the lens caps failed to pop off. Their data gave evidence of lightning and thunder in Venus' atmosphere, and discovered carbon monoxide at low altitudes.

Pioneer 1 and Pioneer 2 NASA's Pioneer Venus mission sent 2 spacecraft to study the planet. Pioneer 1 was an orbiter that made a radar map of the surface, while Pioneer 2 consisted of four atmospheric probes. One of the probes survived to transmit data for over an hour after it impacted with the surface.

Venera 10 The Venera 10 spacecraft separated into two different sections — an orbiter and a lander — on October 23, 1975. Two days later, the lander touched down on the surface of Venus 2,200 kilometers from the Venera 9 lander, somewhere within a 150-kilometer (93-mile) radius of 15.42° N, 291.51° E. With the orbiter acting as a relay, the lander transmitted images from the surface as well as data about clouds and the surface environment.

Venera 9 The Venera 9 lander separated from the orbiter on October 20, 1975. Two days later, the lander touched down and became the first spacecraft to transmit a picture from the surface of another planet. It landed within a 150-kilometer (93-mile) radius of 31.01° N, 291.64° E. In addition, the lander sent back information on the Venusian clouds, atmospheric composition, and light levels. All of the information was transmitted from the surface to the orbiter, which then relayed the signal to Earth. Besides acting as a data relay, the orbiter also studied the cloud structure of the planet.

Mariner 10 Launch: November 3, 1973 Venus flyby and gravity assist: February 5, 1974 Mariner 10 flew by Venus for a gravity assist on its way to Mercury. It flew within 4,200 kilometers (2,600 miles) of Venus and took the first ultraviolet images of the planet.

Venera 8 Upon Venus arrival Venera 8 used aerobraking to decelerate, and then deployed a parachute. A refrigeration unit cooled the spacecraft's components, protecting them from the intense heat as the lander descended to the surface. Once on the ground, the spacecraft transmitted data for 50 minutes, confirming a very high surface temperature and crushing atmospheric pressure. It also measured the light level on Venus’ surface and found it suitable for surface photography, setting the stage for the images to be returned by Venera 9, 10, 13, and 14.

Venera 7 When Venera 7 arrived it deployed a parachute and began its descent to the surface. Scheduled to take 60 minutes to descend, the probe touched down in only 35 minutes, possibly because its parachute may have been damaged by high winds. The spacecraft then transmitted a weak signal for 23 minutes, becoming the first spacecraft to return data from the surface of another planet. It reported surface temperatures of 475 degrees Celsius (887 degrees Fahrenheit) and atmospheric pressures 90 times greater than Earth's.

Cosmos 167 , Cosmos 359 and Cosmos 482 The final stages of the rockets carrying these spacecraft into orbit failed and none of them were able to achieve the necessary trajectory to carry it on to Venus.

Venera 5 and Venera 6 The twin Venera 5 and 6 spacecraft arrived within a day of each other at Venus, after which they deployed parachutes and descended through the atmosphere. Both spacecraft relayed data for about 50 minutes before succumbing to crushing atmospheric pressures. Venera 5 and 6 allowed us to more precisely determine Venus' atmosphere and confirm its carbon dioxide dominant composition.

Mariner 5 Mariner 5 flew within 4,000 kilometers (2,400 miles) of the Venusian cloud tops. During its flyby, the spacecraft measured a surface temperature of 267 degrees Celsius (513 degrees Fahrenheit).

Venera 4 When Venera 4 arrived at Venus it dropped several instruments, including a thermometer and a barometer, into the atmosphere. It received data back from these probes before it deployed a parachute and descended into the atmosphere itself. Preliminary readings seemed to indicate that the probe had taken measurements all the way down to the surface, but later analysis suggested that the crushing atmosphere damaged the spacecraft at an altitude of almost 25 kilometers. The probe revealed an atmosphere made almost entirely of carbon dioxide, with temperatures ranging from 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) high up in the atmosphere to 280 degrees Celsius (536 degrees Fahrenheit) closer to the surface, and pressures ranging from 15 to 22 atmospheres.

Venera 3 Venera 3 was the first spacecraft to land on (impact) another planet, but no data was returned. It is believed that Venus' thick atmosphere and crushing pressure destroyed the spacecraft on its way to the surface.

Venera 2 Venera 2 flew within 24,000 kilometers (about 14,900 miles) of Venus on February 27, 1966, but communications with the spacecraft were lost just before its close approach to the planet.

Zond 1 Communications with the spacecraft were lost while on its way to Venus.

Cosmos 27 The final stage of the rocket carrying the spacecraft into orbit failed and it was unable to achieve the necessary trajectory to carry it on to Venus.

Venera 1964A and 1964B The Soviet Union's Venera 1964A and 1964B spacecraft never reached orbit due to rocket failures.

Sputnik 19 , Sputnik 20 and Sputnik 21 The Soviet Union's Sputnik 19, 20, and 21 probes were unsuccessful due to failures of the final stages of their respective rockets.

Mariner 2 Mariner 2 was the first spacecraft to successfully fly by Venus, at an altitude of 34,773 kilometers (21,607 miles). The spacecraft discovered ground temperatures as high as 428 degrees Celsius (800 degrees Fahrenheit). Other instruments detected no water vapor in the atmosphere or any evidence of a magnetic field around the planet. Radio contact was lost on January 3, 1963.

Mariner 1 NASA's Mariner 1 veered off course after launch and had to be destroyed by ground controllers.

Venera 1 The Soviet Union's Venera 1 spacecraft was on its way to Venus when communications with the spacecraft were lost.

Sputnik 7 The Soviet Union's Sputnik 7 was the world's first Venus mission. The rocket's final stage failed and Sputnik 7 couldn't make the necessary trajectory to carry it on to Venus.

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NASA's going to send new spacecraft to Venus. Here's why

Science NASA's going to send new spacecraft to Venus. Here's why

Venus is the third-brightest object in the sky, yet we know very little about our mysterious neighbour.

But this hellish world shrouded by clouds of sulphuric acid holds answers to questions about what makes a planet habitable, and the fate of our blue planet.

"All of us love a good mystery," said Stephen Kane, an Australian planetary scientist at the University of California, Riverside.

"Venus is almost this paradox in that it is the closest planet to the Earth and it is the same size as the Earth, and it's even referred to as a twin, but we know so little about it.

"And that's primarily because it has this thick atmosphere that prevents us from being able to easily see the surface."

But we're about to find out more.

Earlier this week, NASA gave the green light to two new missions — DAVINCI+ and VERITAS  — to explore our closest neighbour (bumping out missions to Jupiter's moon Io and the ice giant Neptune and its moon Triton.)

While VERITAS will send an orbiter to map the planet in more detail than ever before, DAVINCI+ will drop a probe through the planet's thick clouds to explore its atmosphere before landing on the surface.

Due to arrive sometime near the end of the decade, they will be the first missions to Venus since the 1990s.

Dr Kane will be working on both missions.

"We didn't anticipate that both of them would be selected, but Venus has been neglected for quite some time," he said. 

Here are some of the big questions scientists are trying to find out.

Just when did Venus turn into the planet from hell?

One of the primary things that Dr Kane is interested in is "what makes a planet habitable?"

Today, life is not possible on the furnace-like surface of Venus, where temperatures exceed 470 degrees Celsius — that's hot enough to melt lead — created by a runaway greenhouse effect.

But scientists such as Dr Kane are trying to work out whether or not Earth and Venus were once twins.  

"I'm obsessed with answering that particular question; not just for Venus, but for planets around other stars," he said.

"What are the conditions that can cause planets to go down either a habitable pathway or uninhabitable pathway?

"This is something I think a lot about in terms of Earth's future as well, because when I look at Venus, it's very tempting to see it as an end state to planets."

Did Venus always have a runaway greenhouse effect? Or did something trigger the effect later in its evolution? And if so, most importantly, when did it stop?

"That would be an incredible revolutionary thing for Venus because it would confirm that indeed, Earth and Venus did have a shared history up until a certain point," Dr Kane said.

"Both the atmospheric chemistry and the geology of the surface are two very important pieces in the puzzle of 'why Venus turned out the way that it did'."

Was there ever water on Venus?

The DAVINCI+ probe will collect information about temperature, atmospheric pressure and chemistry. 

"One of the fundamental challenges we have at the moment is that we don't understand the chemistry," Dr Kane said.

Venus's atmosphere is primarily made up of carbon dioxide with droplets of sulphuric acid, and is around 90 times thicker than Earth's atmosphere.

"That kind of environment is very foreign to us."

DAVINCI+ will measure the atmosphere all the way down to the surface.

One of the things it will look for is the ratio of hydrogen to deuterium, which can tell scientists about the amount of water lost from the planet.

Today there is next to no water vapour in the atmosphere, but it could have contributed to the greenhouse effect in the past. 

"There are ideas [water vapour] remained in clouds in the atmosphere for long periods of time, but it never actually condensed down to the surface and formed oceans," Dr Kane said.

Instead it was eventually lost to space, leaving behind the thick blanket of carbon dioxide.

Another idea is that Venus may have been covered in oceans 2 billion years ago, but as the planet warmed the oceans evaporated, creating a thick blanket that got hotter and hotter.

When the oceans and water vapour disappeared, carbon dioxide continued to build up in the atmosphere.

"So what we're really trying to do with these new missions is trying to figure out at what point in Venus's history [the greenhouse effect was triggered]," Dr Kane said.

Could life exist in the clouds?

Studying the atmosphere could also help scientists work out if anything could still – if it ever did – exist in the clouds.

Last year, the idea that life could exist in the clouds swirling above Venus was reignited by research that indicated the presence of phosphine in the atmosphere . 

On Earth, this compound of phosphorus and hydrogen is generally only produced by biological processes indicating microbial action.

Since then, the biological origin of phosphine on Venus has been widely debated, Dr Kane said.

And, although the team has repeated their observations — albeit with weaker results — other teams believe the chemical detected in the clouds was simply sulphur, a component of sulphuric acid which makes up the atmosphere.

As a result, Dr Kane says whether or not the DAVINCI+ probe will explore the atmosphere for phosphine or phosphorus is still up in the air.  

What's under the clouds?

What we know about the surface of Venus is patchy.

The best data we have was captured by the Magellan mission, which mapped the planet's surface in the 1990s.

"But that data is very poor resolution," Dr Kane said.

"Imagine that Magellan had mapped the surface of the Earth, we would not have enough resolution to see features even as large as the Grand Canyon.

 "VERITAS will be able to fix a lot of these problems."

Getting better data about the surface of Venus will help scientists understand whether or not the planet ever underwent any tectonic activity.  

"We don't see a lot of evidence for plate tectonics on Venus, but that may just be because we don't have good enough data," Dr Kane said.

Geological processes such as plate tectonics on Earth are critical for the storage of carbon.

"So it could be that Venus lost the ability to have plate tectonics or a process of subduction, so it couldn't recycle its carbon," Dr Kane said.

"Therefore, it all ended up in the atmosphere and that might have been the linchpin which caused it to enter its present state."

What's under the ground?

We also know very little about what the interior of Venus looks like.

Knowing that is important, according to Dr Kane, because we want to know whether Earth and Venus formed the same way.

Venus rotates very slowly —  in fact only once every 243 Earth days  — so we don't know if it has a liquid core like Earth.   

It doesn't have a moon, so it's very hard to work out its gravitational pull.

"Some of the spacecraft that have gone to Venus in the past have tried their hardest to obtain gravity measurements as they orbit the planet, but those are very poor," Dr Kane said.

And it has almost no magnetic field.

On Earth, the magnetic field protects us from being bombarded by solar radiation and helps maintain our protective atmosphere.

"The lack of magnetic field is almost certainly related to perhaps the lack of a liquid core," Dr Kane said.

"So that would be really great to get more detailed measurements for those, so that we can model that better."

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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

The moon, Venus, Mars and bright stars shine in a summer celestial gathering this week. Here's how to see it.

The crescent moon joins Mars, Venus and some of the brightest stars to kick off the summer 2024 skywatching season.

• June 19: Gemini stars Castor and Pollux
• June 20: Moon near Venus
• June 21: Summer solstice
• June 22: Crescent moon, Mars & Regulus

Last month, we called attention to a celestial assembly involving the moon, two bright stars and two bright planets adorning our western evening sky. 

Now, another, similar gathering will take place this week; an array that will change night to night as we transition from the spring into the summer season with the summer solstice on June 21. Here's a look at the how the stars of Gemini will shine with the moon, Mars and Venus as summer begins.

Related: The brightest planets in June's night sky (guide)

Monday, June 19: Twin Gemini stars Castor and Pollux

Want to check out Saturn's rings or the craters of the moon? We recommend the  Celestron Astro Fi 102  as the top pick in our  best beginner's telescope guide . 

The week's skywatching feast begins Monday evening on June 19 , the "Juneteenth" holiday in the United States. Starting at 45 to 60 minutes after sundown, look low to the west-northwest horizon. There, you will find a slender sliver of a crescent moon, less than two days after new phase. And directly above it you should be able to make out two stars, Pollux and Castor , marking the heads of the Twin Brothers, Gemini . There seems to be some evidence that when they were first chosen to represent the Twins, they actually appeared to be twin stars of equal brightness. 

If true, either Pollux has grown brighter or Castor had faded in the night sky , for there is a noticeable difference between them now. Pollux now appears a little over twice as bright as Castor and is also one of the 57 standard navigational stars . But Castor is the real "star" of Gemini.  Although it appears as a single star with the unaided eye, it is actually a system of six stars. In a telescope we see two, Castor A and B. Furthermore, both A and B are themselves doubles, though much too close to be separated optically (called spectroscopic doubles). Finally, well off to the south of the main pair is Castor C, a pair of dim red stars.  

Tuesday, June 20: Crescent moon near Venus

Tuesday evening, June 20: A slightly wider crescent moon will have shifted away to the upper left of the Twin stars and will be situated roughly a dozen degrees to the lower right of the dazzler of the evening sky, the planet Venus . Your clenched fist held at arm's length measures roughly 10 degrees, so on this night, the moon and Venus will be separated by just a little over one fist's width in the sky.  

Venus, of course, continues to easily outshine everything in the evening sky, save for the moon itself.  It currently shines at magnitude  -4.6. Compared to Pollux and Castor, Venus outshines these luminaries by a factor of 100.

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Read more: The Native American night sky: 7 starry sights to see

Wednesday, June 21: Summer solstice and moon

Wednesday, June 21: This is the summer solstice and the first official day of summer for the Northern Hemisphere and on this evening the convocation of moon, stars and planets will be at its most pleasing to the eye. About an hour before the sun sets, face due west and look about halfway up in the sky to find the crescent moon.  

Now, if you have binoculars, train them on the moon and look to the left and slightly below the crescent and you should have no problem in picking out Venus, appearing as a bright speck of white light against the blue of the daytime sky. And once you've located it with binoculars , try to see if you can find it with just your eyes alone. If you have good vision and your sky is transparent and not too hazy, you should have little trouble seeing Venus through the daylight. 

Of course, once the sun has set and the sky darkens, both the moon and planet will command everyone's attention to the western sky for nearly three hours after sunset.

But Venus is not the only planet that is visible on this night. 

About 4 degrees to its upper left, appearing to shine rather feebly, will be Mars . You’ll likely need binoculars to see it at all in the bright twilight even after Venus becomes obvious. At magnitude +1.7, Mars now only ranks as a second-magnitude object and shines more than six magnitudes fainter or about 331 times dimmer than Venus! One reason is that Mars is only about half the size of Venus and is currently 200 million miles (322 million km) from Earth compared to just 53 million miles (85 million km) for Venus. 

And situated about a dozen degrees to the upper left of Mars, is yet another bright twinkler: the bluish 1st-magnitude star Regulus , brightest star of Leo the Lion. Regulus was noteworthy to ancient skywatchers as it was one of the four "royal" stars which were supposed long ago to rule over the four quarters of the heavens. 

Thursday, June 22: The moon joins Mars and Regulus

The moon, now a fat crescent nearly five days past new phase, will form a rather wide isosceles triangle with the star Regulus and Mars.  

The moon will mark the vertex angle with the "legs," measuring roughly 6 degrees, formed by the Regulus/moon and Mars/moon sides of the triangle, and Regulus and Mars separated by roughly 10 degrees marks the base of the triangle.

Not an "official" meeting

It would also appear that Venus is racing rapidly eastward each night and ultimately will reach the slower moving Mars. That scenario, however, will not come to pass. 

Venus already arrived at its greatest angular distance east of the sun on June 4, so from our viewing perspective it is now swinging around in its orbit and is heading back in the direction of the sun. Although seemingly chasing Mars down in the evening sky, the two will never get together.  

In fact, from June 19 through July 10, Mars undergoes a "quasi-conjunction" with Venus as the more brilliant world draws close but never quite catches up. A quasi-conjunction is defined as two planets approaching to within 5 degrees of each other — half the width of your clenched fist held at arm's length — without an actual conjunction in right ascension. They will appear closest together on July 1, when they will be separated by just 3.57 degrees.    

Editor's Note: If you snap an image of the moon and Saturn, and would like to share it with Space.com’s readers, send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to [email protected] . 

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Joe Rao is Space.com's skywatching columnist, as well as a veteran meteorologist and eclipse chaser who also serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmers' Almanac and other publications. Joe is an 8-time Emmy-nominated meteorologist who served the Putnam Valley region of New York for over 21 years. You can find him on Twitter and YouTube tracking lunar and solar eclipses, meteor showers and more. To find out Joe's latest project, visit him on Twitter.

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What’s Up: June 2024 Skywatching Tips from NASA

Planets rule the a.m., and what's that bright light?

Saturn and Mars meet up with the Moon, Jupiter returns at dawn, and tips for identifying some common objects seen in the sky.

• All month – All the planetary action continues to be in the morning sky, with Saturn and Mars rising in the early morning hours. They are joined later in the month by Jupiter.
• June 2 – In the hour before sunrise, reddish Mars hangs just beneath the crescent Moon. Find the pair low in the east with Saturn lurking nearby, toward the south.
• June 3 – The crescent Moon sits beneath Mars in morning twilight. Look for them low in the eastern sky.
• June 6 – New moon
• June 21 – Full moon
• June 24 – Jupiter is now visible low in the east before sunrise. Look for the bright planet around 10 degrees above the horizon this final week of June, forming a line with Mars and Saturn that stretches toward the south.
• June 27 – Look for the Moon rising in the east with Saturn around midnight. By dawn this morning, you'll find them high in the southern sky. They appear super close together – close enough to appear in the same field of view through binoculars.

"Planet Parade" note : Some online sources have shared excitement about a "parade of planets" visible in the morning sky in early June (June 3 in particular). In reality, only two of the six planets supposedly on display (Saturn and Mars) will actually be visible. In early June, Jupiter and Mercury will be at or below the horizon in morning twilight and not visible; Uranus and Neptune are far too faint to see without a telescope, especially as the morning sky brightens. The closest thing to a planet parade will be June 29, when Saturn, the Moon, Mars, and Jupiter will line up across the morning sky. This arrangement persists into July, and we'll talk more about that lineup in the next "What's Up" video.

What's Up for June? Saturn and Mars meet up with the Moon, Jupiter returns at dawn, and tips for identifying some common objects seen in the sky.

On June 2nd in the hour before sunrise, reddish Mars hangs beneath the crescent Moon. Find the pair low in the east with Saturn lurking nearby. The following morning, on June 3rd, the Moon has moved so that it sits beneath Mars.

During the last week of June, giant Jupiter re-emerges as a morning planet, after passing behind the Sun, from our point of view on Earth, over the past couple of months. By June 24th, you can find it about 10 degrees above the horizon as the morning sky begins to brighten. It climbs a little higher each morning after that as July approaches.

Then on June 27th, look for the Moon with Saturn. The pair rise around midnight, and by dawn you'll find them high in the southern sky. They appear super close together this morning – close enough to appear in the same field of view through binoculars.

When you spot bright or moving objects in the night sky, it might not be immediately clear what you're looking at. Is that a planet, or just a bright star? Is it a satellite, or maybe just an airplane? Here are a few quick tips on how to tell the difference.

First, there are five planets that are easily observed with the unaided eye. Of these, two planets – Venus and Jupiter – can sometimes appear incredibly bright, like shining beacons in the sky. The other planets are much less bright, but still generally shine as brightly as bright stars.

The big tipoff that you're looking at a star and not a planet is that planets tend to shine steadily, whereas stars twinkle. Stars are so far away that they're just points of light,

and ripples in our atmosphere easily distort them, causing the familiar flicker. The planets are relatively closeby, being here in our solar system. Through binoculars or a telescope, instead of a single point, planets show us a tiny disk or crescent that's illuminated by the Sun. So even though they appear star-like to the eye, the light from a planet is coming from a slightly more spread-out area, making planets appear more constant in brightness. Both planets and stars rise in the east and set in the west, and they move very slowly across the sky during the night.

But what if you see an object that's moving? Distant aircraft are usually pretty easy to identify, because they follow a slow, steady path that's straight or gently curving. They have exterior lights that flash in a regular pattern, often including a red beacon.

Satellites tend to be most visible in the hour or so after dark or before dawn, when it's night here on the surface, but the satellites are high enough in the sky to be illuminated by sunlight. They're generally fainter than aircraft, and move in slow, very steady, very straight paths. They might briefly flare in brightness, but they don't have lights that blink.

The International Space Station is an exception, because it's very bright, and is often visible for long enough to observe the curving path of its orbit. But it doesn't have flashing lights you can see from the ground, and it does something else satellites do:  Satellites often fade out of view as they travel into Earth's shadow, or fade into view as they emerge. And occasionally you might see a train of satellites moving slowly and silently in formation.

One other sight that's sometimes confusing is rocket launches that happen soon after sunset or before sunrise. Similar to spotting satellites, this is when it's darker here on the ground, but launching rockets climb high enough to be illuminated by sunlight. When rockets launching at these times of day get really high in altitude, their exhaust can be brilliantly illuminated, and sometimes you might even see spiral or circular shapes that slowly grow and then dissipate, as a spent rocket stage empties its propellant into space.

With so much to see in the night sky, it's helpful to be familiar with some of these common sights, so you can get on with your skywatching and investigate whatever mysteries and wonders you're in search of.

Here are the phases of the Moon for June.

Stay up to date on NASA's missions exploring the solar system and beyond at science.nasa.gov. I'm Preston Dyches from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and that's What's Up for this month.

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Active lava flows on Venus raise the stakes for future exploration

Observations made by the Magellan spacecraft in the 1990s include signs of recent lava flows, highlighting possible exploration targets for probes heading to Venus in the 2030s

By Alex Wilkins

27 May 2024

The Sif Mons area with the active volcanic region highlighted in red

IRSPS - Università d'Annunzio: [email protected]​t

Recent lava flows spotted on Venus suggest the planet could be much more geologically active than first thought, possibly as active as Earth.

The geological processes producing these flows, first spotted in the 1990s by the Magellan spacecraft, are likely to still be active and will be important areas to observe in upcoming missions to Venus.

Merging black holes may create bubbles that could swallow the universe

Venus was once thought to be a “dead” planet, with possible geological activity long having ceased. But recent reanalysis of Magellan data has found compelling evidence that the activity is ongoing, such as a volcanic vent that changed shape over a period of eight months . However, it has been unclear how widespread this activity might be, with little direct evidence.

Davide Sulcanese at D’Annunzio University in Chieti, Italy, and his colleagues have now reanalysed Magellan radar data, looking at two different areas on Venus’s surface: the northern volcano Sif Mons and a plain in the east known as Niobe Planitia.

They found variations in brightness from the reflected radar signal over time, which suggests there are areas of material that have expanded, most likely from moving lava flows.

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To confirm this explanation, Sulcanese and his team had to rule out others, such as atmospheric interference or the spacecraft accidentally changing its intended observation angle, as Magellan only captured the same area once every eight months.

Once the researchers had confirmed the flows’ volcanic nature, they then worked out their properties, such as how quickly lava was being produced. The team’s lower estimates, of 3.78 and 5.67 cubic kilometres per year for Sif Mons and Niobe Planitia, respectively, are roughly the same as the average volcano on Earth.

Sulcanese and his team also used these figures to estimate the total volcanic activity on Venus. “According to this estimate, Venus could be far more volcanically active than expected,” says Sulcanese, being the same order of magnitude as Earth’s total rate of volcanic activity.

These areas will be important to look at for planned missions to Venus, such as NASA’s VERITAS and the European Space Agency’s EnVision, which are both aiming to launch in the early 2030s. “It’s probable that [these areas] will still be active in the early 2030s,” says Sulcanese. “Geologically speaking, 30 years is like a few seconds for the activity of volcanic fissions.”

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“This paper does strengthen the case for current volcanic activity,” says Philippa Mason at Imperial College London, who is also a member of the EnVision team. Known sites of geological activity, like the ones identified by Sulcanese and his team, could be imaged at least three times during EnVision’s observation cycle, she says, which will give us a much more detailed look at Venus’s interior and surface geological processes than Magellan.

“We still don’t know today how these processes work,” says Sulcanese. “Do we have some kind of one tectonic plate planet, or some sort of microplates, or something not like the plates we have on Earth? By studying this volcanic activity, we can better understand.”

Journal reference:

Nature Astronomy DOI: 10.1038/s41550-024-02272-1

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'Planet parade' 2024: How to view the astronomical event

Get ready skywatchers, another astronomical event will take place on June 3.

A planetary alignment, or a "planet parade" according to the internet, where we'll see six planets – Jupiter, Mercury, Uranus, Mars, Neptune and Saturn – grace our sky in the predawn hours, according to StarWalk.space , a stargazing and astronomical website.

How does the alignment happen?

The planets orbit the sun continuously in the solar system . The planets will slowly catch up to one another over time. Because they are all traveling along the same path, the ecliptic , as they pass Earth, it appears as though they are aligned, according to NASA . However, the alignment formation will be short-lived since each planet moves at different speeds, depending on its distance from the sun.

Where to look for the planet alignment

Looking in the eastern sky the planetary alignment will be visible almost everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, weather permitting.

You'll need high-powered binoculars to view the majority of the planets – Mercury and Jupiter will be extremely low in the sky. Uranus will be fairly dim and Neptune will appear star-like with binoculars due to its distance from Earth. But Mars and Saturn should be visible with the naked eye.

Planet alignments aren't extremely rare, especially with two to four planets. They do occur several times each year. With five or more planets aligning, it is less common.

The last planetary alignment seen in the Northern Hemisphere was on April 8.

Profiles of the six planets on parade

With eight planets in our solar system, they all have some very interesting traits. Here's a quick look at the planets aligning on June 3:

When will the planets align again?

Here's when StarWalk.space predicts the next six- and 7-planetary alignments will happen:

◾ June 3: Six planets – Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

◾ Aug. 28: Six planets – Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

◾ Jan. 18: Six planets – Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune

◾ Feb. 28: Seven planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. (The last time all seven planets aligned was on April 8 during the total solar eclipse).

◾ Aug. 29, 2025: Six planets – Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

SOUCRE StarWalk.space, NASA, Astronomy.com and USA TODAY research

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This morning's "parade of planets" proved "underwhelming." NASA gave a date for an even better and brighter one.

By Li Cohen

Updated on: June 3, 2024 / 9:07 AM EDT / CBS News

You may have heard about a " parade of planets " that was set to grace the early morning skies on Monday morning with a rare celestial event. But if you missed it, don't worry – experts say you were misled, and there will be another time soon to better see a planetary lineup.

Talk of the June 3 "parade of planets" seemed to stem from a social media post from the space news site "Latest in Space." In a May 21 post, Latest in Space said that "in a rare event, six planets will align in a straight line on Monday (June 3) just before sunrise in the northern hemisphere," claiming that Mercury, Jupiter, Uranus, Mars, Neptune and Saturn "will all be visible." 

Many quickly took it to mean that all of the planets would be visible to the naked eye. But according to the experts, no such "spectacular celestial event" was set to appear this morning. 

According to space news site Space.com , planets simply cannot be seen as disks to the naked eye – even the brightest ones will twinkle as stars. The set positioning of the planets this morning also proved problematic to the event, as Mercury and Jupiter "will be very close to the position of the sun in the sky and thus likely will be masked by the brilliant glow of morning twilight," the website said. The two planets could be visible with binoculars, but one would need a flat horizon and no obstructions to see them, the site said.

Uranus is visible to the naked eye, but only in dark and non-polluted skies, but because it was only set to rise about an hour before sunrise this morning, the sky was already too bright to really see it. 

"If you step outside at around 3:30 or 4 a.m. on Monday morning, don't expect to be awed by the sight of a planet parade," Space.com said. "What you will likely see is a crescent moon and a bright orange 'star' shining to its right (Mars) and farther off to the right will be another relatively bright 'star' glowing with a yellowish-white hue (Saturn)."

The website also noted that while seeing such a parade would be rare, planets aligning isn't a rare event as they are all on an orbital plane. 

NASA has also confirmed that Monday morning's alignment wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. 

"In reality, only two of the six planets supposedly on display (Saturn and Mars) will actually be visible," NASA said. "In early June, Jupiter and Mercury will be at or below the horizon in morning twilight and not visible; Uranus and Neptune are far too faint to see without a telescope, especially as the morning sky brightens." 

The closest thing to a "parade of planets" will happen on June 29, NASA said, when Saturn, the moon, Mars, and Jupiter will line up in the morning. 

Space.com also noted another planetary lineup that's set for next winter. According to the site, the moon, Saturn, Venus and Jupiter will be aglow in the early evening sky on Jan. 31, 2025, and/or Feb. 1. Mars will also be visible and "more than six times brighter than it appears to us now." 

"Compared to all that, the ballyhooed "Parade of Planets" on June 3 can best be described with a single word: underwhelming," the site said.

Li Cohen is a senior social media producer at CBS News. She previously wrote for amNewYork and The Seminole Tribune. She mainly covers climate, environmental and weather news.

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Rivers of Lava on Venus Reveal a More Volcanically Active Planet

New software let scientists re-examine old radar images, providing some of the strongest evidence yet that volcanoes continue to reshape the hellish planet.

By Robin George Andrews

Witnessing the blood-red fires of a volcanic eruption on Earth is memorable. But to see molten rock bleed out of a volcano on a different planet would be extraordinary. That is close to what scientists have spotted on Venus: two vast, sinuous lava flows oozing from two different corners of Earth’s planetary neighbor.

“After you see something like this, the first reaction is ‘wow,’” said Davide Sulcanese , a doctoral student at the Università d’Annunzio in Pescara, Italy, and an author of a study reporting the discovery in the journal Nature Astronomy , published on Monday.

Earth and Venus were forged at the same time. Both are made of the same primeval matter, and both are the same age and size. So why is Earth a paradise overflowing with water and life, while Venus is a scorched hellscape with acidic skies?

Volcanic eruptions tinker with planetary atmospheres. One theory holds that, eons ago, several apocalyptic eruptions set off a runaway greenhouse effect on Venus, turning it from a temperate, waterlogged world into an arid desert of burned glass.

To better understand its volcanism, scientists hoped to catch a Venusian eruption in the act. But although the planet is known to be smothered in volcanoes, an opaque atmosphere has prevented anyone from seeing an eruption the way spacecraft have spotted them on Io, the hypervolcanic moon of Jupiter .

In the 1990s, NASA’s spacecraft Magellan used cloud-penetrating radar to survey most of the planet. But back then, the relatively low-resolution images made spotting fresh molten rock a troublesome task.

By using modern software to peruse Magellan’s data, scientists have now found two unambiguous lava flows: one tripping down the flank of Sif Mons, a broad shield volcano, and another winding its way across a western part of Niobe Planitia, a flat plain pockmarked with numerous volcanic mountains.

Many planetary scientists reckoned Venus was effervescing with eruptions. “But it’s one thing to strongly suspect it and quite another to know it,” said Paul Byrne , a planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis who was not part of the new study.

Venus lacks the plate tectonics of Earth. But its similarly rocky constitution and comparable size suggests that something must still be cooking inside the sun’s second planet — and it should be volcanically active.

There is indirect supporting evidence: Volcanic gases linger in Venus’s skies, and the way that parts of the planet glow suggests they were painted over by lava in the recent geologic past .

Direct evidence of volcanic fury finally, and surprisingly, emerged in 2023, when researchers caught sight of a volcanic vent doubling in size and possibly filling with lava in old Magellan data. Other scientists still yearned for signs of an unequivocal lava flow, an almost literal smoking gun.

Mr. Sulcanese granted their wish. He found bright, riverlike patches on Sif Mons and Niobe Planitia in later Magellan survey images that weren’t present in earlier data. After carefully ruling out other possibilities, including landslides, his team concluded that lava was the only reasonable explanation.

“Magellan is the gift that keeps on giving,” said Stephen Kane , a planetary astrophysicist at the University of California, Riverside, who was not involved with the new study.

Both lava flows are comparable in size to the output of the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii during its three-month paroxysm in 2018. And using these two eruptions, the study’s authors estimate that there is considerably more eruptive activity than previously assumed — and that it’s happening elsewhere on the planet in the present day.

“Venus is active,” said Giuseppe Mitri , an astronomer also at the Università d’Annunzio and an author of the study.

More important, volcanically speaking, Venus “is Earth-like,” said Anna Gülcher , a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology who was not involved with the work.

The result also complicates the tentative detection of phosphine in Venus’s atmosphere; phosphine is a substance that is usually associated on Earth with living things. But other explanations for its possible presence on Venus couldn’t be ruled out . Volcanic activity can also make phosphine, but rebuttals to that idea have suggested that Venus simply doesn’t have sufficient volcanism to make it.

“Well, apparently there is,” Dr. Kane said.

The only way to find better answers — on phosphine, Venus’s volcanic cadence, its cataclysmic transformation — is to revisit the planet. Fortunately, a fleet of new spacecraft is set to do just that in the 2030s .

While we wait, Magellan’s memories will continue to offer unexpected gifts.

“We can start to think of Venus as a living, breathing world,” Dr. Byrne said.

What’s Up in Space and Astronomy

Keep track of things going on in our solar system and all around the universe..

Never miss an eclipse, a meteor shower, a rocket launch or any other 2024 event  that’s out of this world with  our space and astronomy calendar .

The company SpaceX achieved a key set of ambitious goals  on the fourth test flight of a vehicle that is central to Elon Musk’s vision of sending people to Mars.

Euclid, a European Space Agency telescope launched into space last summer, finally showed off what it’s capable of with a batch of breathtaking images  and early science results.

A dramatic blast from the sun  set off the highest-level geomagnetic storm in Earth’s atmosphere, making the northern lights visible around the world .

With the help of Google Cloud, scientists who hunt killer asteroids churned through hundreds of thousands of images of the night sky to reveal 27,500 overlooked space rocks in the solar system .

Is Pluto a planet? And what is a planet, anyway? Test your knowledge here .