Ever since the Venus transit on June 5th, I have been wanting to write about what I learned about Venus at lectures I attended on that day. Sadly I do not recall all the cool stuff I learned, except two major ones:
1) It takes Venus longer to rotate once around itself than it does to rotate around the Sun. That is, Venus days are longer than its years! While it takes 224.65 earth days for Venus to rotate around the Sun, it takes 243 days for it to rotate around itself.
2) Venus surface is very hot! Its atmosphere is about 500 degrees in Celsius, more than 900 degrees in Fahrenheit, hot! Thus, no mission will last long in its atmosphere or on its surface. For example, Venera 4 sent scientific data from Venus atmosphere for 93 minutes before being crush by pressure and reaching Venus surface. Even with all advances in cooling and hardware technologies today, it is expected that we cannot send data for more than 4-5 hours from Venus atmosphere and surface.
Venus Express of the European Space Agency (ESA) is currently orbiting Venus. Its seven year mission will end in December 2012.
References:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus
[2] http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Venus_Express/SEMS5N808BE_0.html
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Express
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