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Mahesh

17/03/23 07:58 AM IST

Venus’ volcanoes may be active, show decades-old radar images

In News
  • Venus and Earth are often called sister planets due to similarities in size, mass, density and volume.
  • A study looking into decades-old radar images has presented new evidence to indicate they have another feature in common: Active volcanoes.
Major Findings
  • The study showed that a 2.2 square kilometre volcanic vent on Venus had changed shape in eight months, indicating volcanic activity.
  • A volcanic vent is a spot through which molten rock erupts. Comparison showed that the vent almost doubled in size to a 4 sq km blob.
  • The vent is located in a region where volcanic activity was thought to be most likely.
  • This region is associated with Maat Mons, Venus’ second-highest volcano, situated in the Atla Regio, a vast highland region near Venus’ equator.
  • The researchers speculated that Venus is less volcanically active than Jupiter’s moon Io, which has over 100 active spots.
Mission to Venus
  • The Magellan mission was launched by the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in May 1989 and operated until October 1994.
  • It used radar imaging to take images of Venus’ surface from different orbits.
  • A few locations, including those suspected to have volcanic activity, were observed two or three times over two years. Roughly 42 per cent of the global surface area was imaged two or more times, according to the researchers.
  • Three missions are being planned to Venus, including NASA’s VERITAS and DAVINCI and the European Space Agency’s EnVision, which are expected to observe our neighbour in the 2030s.
  • The Indian Space Research Organisation is also working on Shukrayaan-1 to study Venus.
About Venus
  • It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. It is the second planet from the Sun and sixth in the solar system in size and mass.
  • It is the second brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon, probably that is the reason why it was the first planet to have its motions plotted across the sky, as early as the second millennium BC.
  • Unlike the other planets in our solar system, Venus and Uranus spin clockwise on their axis.
  • It is the hottest planet in the solar system because of the high concentration of carbon dioxide which works to produce an intense greenhouse effect.
  • A day on Venus is longer than a year. It takes Venus longer to rotate once on its axis than to complete one orbit of the Sun.
Source- DTE

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