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Venus is the second planet from the Sun.It is a terrestrial planet and is the closest in mass and size to its orbital neighbour Earth.Venus has by far the densest atmosphere of the terrestrial planets, composed mostly of carbon dioxide with a thick, global sulfuric acid cloud cover.
Venus has an orbit with a semi-major axis of 0.723 au (108,200,000 km; 67,200,000 mi), and an eccentricity of 0.007. [1][2] The low eccentricity and comparatively small size of its orbit give Venus the least range in distance between perihelion and aphelion of the planets: 1.46 million km. The planet orbits the Sun once every 225 days [3] and ...
There have been 46 (including gravity-assist flybys) space missions to the planet Venus. Missions to Venus constitute part of the exploration of Venus. The Soviet Union followed by the United States have soft landed probes on the surface. Venera 7 was the first lander overall and first for the Soviet Union, touching down on 15 December 1970.
As the closest planet to Earth, Venus presented an appealing interplanetary spaceflight target. [9]: 172 Every 19 months, Venus and the Earth reach relative positions in their orbits around the Sun such that a minimum of fuel is required to travel from one planet to the other via a Hohmann Transfer Orbit. These opportunities mark the best time ...
The planet's period of retrograde motion is 20 days on either side of the inferior conjunction. In fact, through a telescope Venus at greatest elongation appears less than half full due to Schröter's effect first noticed in 1793 and shown in 1996 as due to its thick atmosphere. Venus in daylight at 5 p.m. in the southern hemisphere ...
In this situation, the latter planet is said to be superior to the former. In the reference frame of the Earth, in which the terms were originally used, the inferior planets are Mercury and Venus, while the superior planets are Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Dwarf planets like Ceres or Pluto and most asteroids are 'superior' in the ...
Contents. Mercury (planet) Surface temp. Mercury is the first planet from the Sun and the smallest in the Solar System. In English, it is named after the ancient Roman god Mercurius (Mercury), god of commerce and communication, and the messenger of the gods. Mercury is classified as a terrestrial planet, with roughly the same surface gravity as ...
This is because at closest approach, Venus is 40 million km (25 million mi) from Earth (approximated by perihelion of Earth minus aphelion of Venus) compared to 55 million km (34 million mi) for Mars (approximated by perihelion of Mars minus aphelion of Earth) making Venus the closest planet to Earth. Venus's atmosphere consists mostly of ...