It’s hard to imagine, with its pressure-cooked 800º baked-rock surface, but Venus may have once had oceans, suggests data from the European Space Agency’s Venus Express orbiter. Extensive infrared mapping of Venus’ southern hemisphere shows large areas of rock that appears to be granite. Granite, as we know it on Earth, is formed when basalt…
Tag: ESA
Chaos Crunch
No, it’s not the back of a Nestle Crunch bar…it’s a photo of a region on Mars known as “Ariadnes Colles”. This lumpy, rock-filled landscape is called chaos terrain, and in other areas of Mars is usually attributed to water erosion but in this case it’s believed that wind is the source. The image above…
But What About Venus?
I haven’t posted anything yet about our other neighboring planet, Venus, mostly because the currently active mission exploring it, the European Space Agency’s Venus Express orbiter, hasn’t been updating much with new images since I’ve begun this site. Still, Venus deserves some attention, so here’s a quick byte of Venus info. Possibly the most inhospitable of…
Portrait of Home
It’s important to know where you came from. When it was on its way to the red planet in the summer of 2003, Europe’s Mars Express turned its camera and got a photo of the Earth and Moon. This is what we all look like from 5 million miles away. By the time it reaches Mars,…
Lights in the Dark 