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Venus

Venus has a dense carbon-dioxide atmosphere, sulfuric-acid clouds and a surface hot enough to melt lead. Its extreme temperature results from the balance between absorbed sunlight and the difficulty of radiating heat through the atmosphere. Radar penetrates the clouds to map volcanoes and plains that visible cameras cannot see from orbit. Magellan’s repeated observations also supplied evidence of surface changes consistent with volcanic activity.

Mean diameter
12,104 km
Rotation
243 Earth days
Year
0.62 Earth years
Venus
View in the Solar System

NASA VTAD · reference globe

Perspective rendering using Magellan radar and topography. Relief is exaggerated and colour is assigned. NASA/JPL

Beneath the clouds

Magellan’s radar map

Radar penetrated the cloud cover to map volcanoes, plains and craters. Repeat observations of Maat Mons revealed changes consistent with volcanic activity.

How radar draws a hidden planet

3 min readRelated missionSTS-30 · Magellan

More investigations

How radar draws a hidden planet

3 min read

Why Venus holds its heat

4 min read

Why Venus’s clouds outrun the planet

3 min read

Through the instruments

Open an image for the full frame and its source.

Venus beneath the clouds

NASA/JPL

Maat Mons

NASA/JPL

Venus’s cloud deck

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Radar mosaic of Venus mapped onto a globe

NASA/JPL

Missions & milestones

48 launch records · 29 linked events

77 related records

Programs (3)
About these records

The source cohort includes dedicated missions, attempts and reviewed scientific flybys or gravity assists. Launch outcomes describe the recorded flight. They do not establish whether an old spacecraft is operating today. Events show published targets unless the record confirms an outcome.

Venus & Earth

Earth12,742 km
Venus12,103.6 km

Mean diameters on one scale. Separation is omitted.

Rotation
243 Earth days · retrograde
Solar day
116.75 Earth days
Orbital period
224.7 Earth days
Surface gravity
8.87 m/s² 0.91 × Earth
Mean distance from the Sun
0.72 AU
Surface pressure
9,200 kPa

Earth–Venus radio time

One way9.45 min
There and back18.90 min

Choose a reference Earth–Venus separation. Radio travel time is calculated in vacuum; the range is illustrative, not a current ephemeris.