Nov 29 2007
From The Space Library
Scientists published a set of eight papers in the journal Nature, reporting the first observations of the ESA craft Venus Express. The spacecraft, carrying out Europe’s first mission to Venus, had launched in November 2005 to gather information that would help answer questions about Venus’s geological history; the location of water on Venus; Venus’s weather and how it differs from Earth’s; and what the composition of its atmosphere reveals about Venus’s planetary evolution. The craft had arrived at Earth’s “next-door neighbor” in 2006. Using hand-me-down Mars Express designs, ESA had quickly organized the €220 million mission, the second mission to Venus since NASA’s Magellan Mission ended in 1994. Venus Express had gathered data that presented a three-dimensional view of the planet’s atmosphere, showing the difference between weather patterns on Earth and Venus. Weather on Earth derives from Earth’s rotation. However, on Venus, winds in the planet’s upper atmosphere, reaching 350 kilometers per hour (217.5 miles per hour), are detached from Venus’s slowly rotating and windless surface. Furthermore, although no oceans exist on Venus, tiny amounts of water—200 parts per millions—are present in the atmosphere in the form of vapor, or dissolved in sulphuric-acid clouds. Venus Express data also confirmed the presence of lightening on Venus, which scientists had suspected since 1978, when a NASA probe showed signs of electrical activity in the Venusian atmosphere. Christopher T. Russell of the University of California, lead author of the paper in Nature, explained that Venus’s lightening takes the form of cloud-to-cloud lightening, 35 miles (56 kilometers) above the planet’s surface. Because lightening affects atmospheric chemistry, scientists should take into account this phenomenon when studying the atmosphere and climate of Venus.
Eric Hand, “News: European Mission Reports from Venus: Venus Express, the First European Mission to Venus, Finds Evidence for Past Oceans,” Nature News, 29 November 2007; Seth Borenstein for Associated Press, “Venus Has Frequent Bursts of Lightening,” 29 November 2007; see also Andrew P. Ingersoll, “News and Views: Venus Express Dispatches,” Nature 450, no. 7170 (29 November 2007): 617-618.
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