ISRO mission to Venus

Context:

After sending missions to the Moon and Mars, the ISRO is now readying a spacecraft to orbit Venus

Key Points:

• Purpose: to study what lies below the surface of the solar system’s hottest planet, and also unravel the mysteries under the Sulfuric Acid clouds enveloping it.
• ISRO is planning to launch the mission in December 2024.

About Venus:

• Venus is the second planet from the sun and the hottest planet in the solar system with a surface temperature of 500C – high enough to melt lead.
• The planet’s thick atmosphere has cranked the surface pressure up to 90 bars.
• 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.
• That’s 243 Earth days to rotate once – the longest rotation of any planet in the Solar System – and only 224.7 Earth days to complete one orbit of the Sun.
• Venus has been called Earth’s twin because of the similarities in their masses, sizes, and densities and their similar relative locations in the solar system.
• Venus is one of just two planets that rotate from east to west. Only Venus and Uranus have this “backwards” rotation.