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The surface of Venus contains almost 1000 impact craters. However, unlike some planets in our system, Venus' thick atmosphere creates a strong shield that decelerates, flattens, and can fracture incoming projectiles. The Venusian surface is devoid of small craters (≤30–50 km in size) because of the effect the atmosphere has on small bodies.
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.
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.
Thermal inertia and the transfer of heat by winds in the lower atmosphere mean that the temperature of Venus's surface does not vary significantly between the planet's two hemispheres, those facing and not facing the Sun, despite Venus's slow rotation. Winds at the surface are slow, moving at a few kilometres per hour, but because of the high ...
Over time, bodies in the Solar System are randomly impacted, so the more craters a surface has, the older it is. 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 atmospheric pressure at the surface of Venus is about 92 times that of the Earth, similar to the pressure found 900 m (3,000 ft) below the surface of the ocean. The atmosphere has a mass of 4.8 × 10 20 kg, about 93 times the mass of the Earth's total atmosphere. [ 29 ]
Planet Venus Observed with Modern Telescope on April 10, 2020. NASA's Magellan spacecraft mission discovered that Venus has a geologically young surface with a relatively uniform age of 500±200 Ma (million years). [3] The age of Venus was revealed by the observation of over 900 impact craters on the surface of the planet.
The United States Geological Survey defines sixty-two cartographic quadrangles for the surface of Venus, [54] with V-1 as the north pole region and V-62 as the south pole region. Base on the FMAPs, different groups of Venus researchers are mapping different quadrangles for the surface of Venus, resulting in different type of units defined.