Venus weather report: 200 mph acid winds

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, April 13, 2006

The European Space Agency’s Venus Express spacecraft returned the first images of the planet’s south pole Thursday, revealing a tempestuous sky of sulfuric acid clouds whipped by more than 200 mph winds.

Scientists’ attempts to peer into Venus’ atmosphere have long been hampered by a thick haze enshrouding the planet. But the spacecraft’s infrared and visible cameras were able to capture two slices of the atmosphere at 34 miles and 40 miles above the surface.

“We have been able to see the top 1 percent of the atmosphere,” said Kevin Baines, a planetary scientist based at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and a co-investigator of the mission. “With these (cameras), we see the rest of the 99 percent.”

“People thought Venus was a boring thing to look at,” he added. “It looks like a ping-pong ball with just white clouds. But these show there really is some structure.”

The probe’s first pictures were taken from a distance of about 128,000 miles. In the next few weeks, it will gradually circle into its final orbit, 155 miles above the planet’s north pole.

There have been about 20 Russian and U.S. missions to Venus since 1962, but they have provided only snapshots of the planet’s atmosphere. Some of the probes managed to make it to the surface, but were able to transmit information for only about an hour before they were destroyed, Baines said.

Venus Express, launched in November, will allow scientists to study the planet for at least 16 months and provide the first chance to build a three-dimensional model of its atmosphere.

Venus, the second planet from the sun, and Earth, the third, share similar ages, masses and surface composition. But Venus developed a far denser atmosphere. It has a surface temperature of about 900 degrees Fahrenheit and an atmospheric pressure 90 times that of Earth.

“Venus is extremely inhospitable for life, whereas Earth is a great place to live,” project manager Don McCoy said. “If these planets were created about the same time, why would Earth take on such a different character?”