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The surface of Venus is dominated by geologic features that include volcanoes, large impact craters, and aeolian erosion and sedimentation landforms. Venus has a topography reflecting its single, strong crustal plate, with a unimodal elevation distribution (over 90% of the surface lies within an elevation of -1.0 and 2.5 km) [1] that preserves geologic structures for long periods of time.
The surface of Venus is comparatively flat. When 93% of the topography was mapped by Pioneer Venus Orbiter, scientists found that the total distance from the lowest point to the highest point on the entire surface was about 13 kilometres (8.1 mi), about the same as the vertical distance between the Earth's ocean floor and the higher summits of the Himalayas.
Although the surface conditions on Venus are no longer hospitable to any terrestrial-like life that might have formed before this event, there is speculation that life may exist in the upper cloud layers of Venus, 50 km (30 mi) above the surface, where atmospheric conditions are the most Earth-like in the Solar System, [106] with temperatures ...
The very first visible-light images of Venus' surface from space have been captured by NASA's Parker Solar Probe, and it could help researchers piece together the mysteries of the distant planet.
It is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" due to their similar size, gravity, and bulk composition (Venus is both the closest planet to Earth and the planet closest in size to Earth). The surface of Venus is covered by a dense atmosphere and presents clear evidence of former violent volcanic activity.
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Compared to Mercury, the Moon and other such bodies, Venus has very few craters. In part, this is because Venus's dense atmosphere burns up smaller meteorites before they hit the surface. The Venera and Magellan data agree: there are very few impact craters with a diameter less than 30 kilometres (19 mi), and data from Magellan show an absence ...
The European Space Agency has officially adopted two new space missions to study Venus from its ... Venus is similar in size and distance from the sun when compared with Earth, and some ...