ESA - Venus Express - Venus holds warning for Earth

Europe goes to Venus

Tribute to the cryptic planet Penetrating an impenetrable world Past missions to Venus

About Venus Express

Venus Express mission facts Venus Express objectives The spacecraft Orbiter instruments The launcher Operating Venus Express

About Venus

Venusian geography The surface Acid clouds and lightning Greenhouse effect, clouds and winds Venus compared to Earth

Meet the team

International collaboration Project Manager: An interview with Don McCoy Project Scientist: An interview with Håkan Svedhem Launch Campaign Manager: An interview with Michael Witting Spacecraft Operations Manager: An interview with Andrea Accomazzo Venus Express Flight Control Team Principal Investigators

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Venus holds warning for Earth

30 November 2010

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This animation shows Venus, a planet very similar to Earth in mass and size, but in reality an entirely different, exotic and inhospitable world. It is hidden below blankets of dense clouds of noxious gases, such as carbon dioxide and sulphuric acid, and presents the most dramatic greenhouse effect taking place in the Solar System. Venus Express is helping to find out how a planet apparently so similar to Earth evolved in a way so radically different.

Credits: ESA - C. Carreau

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Close-up on venusian cloud structures at the south pole

This false-colour ultraviolet image of the south pole of Venus was obtained by the Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC) on board ESA’s Venus Express on 25 February 2008 from a distance of about 20 000 km, at a wavelength of 365 nanometres. The octagonal shape of the image is due to the VMC field of view.

It is a zoom-in on the south polar ‘cap’, located inside a 60-degree-latitude circle. It shows a very bright and uniform appearance and lacks small-scale markings. However several dark streaks usually encircle the polar regions and seem to indicate strong jet-stream-like winds in the atmosphere around the pole.

Credits: ESA/MPS/DLR/IDA

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Venus Express has two solar cell panels per wing comprising alternating rows of standard triple junction solar cells as well as highly reflective mirrors to reduce the operating temperatures. There is twice as much sunlight in Venus's orbit as there is in Earth's orbit, plus additional thermal input from the Venusian surface and atmosphere – 75% of sunlight being reflected up from it. In certain cases, this results in Venus Express receiving an equivalent of the thermal input from 3.5 Suns.

Looking at Venus

ESApod: Venus Express

Venus Express finds planetary atmospheres such a drag Was Venus once a habitable planet?Venus is alive – geologically speaking New map hints at Venus' wet, volcanic past Watching Venus glow in the dark ESA extends missions studying Mars, Venus and Earth’s magnetosphere Where did Venus’s water go?Venus comes to life at wavelengths invisible to human eyes Venus Express searching for life – on Earth How windy is it on Venus? Venus Express answers Closing in on Venus New details on venusian clouds revealed Key molecule discovered in Venus’s atmosphere

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