NYT: Craft Nears Venus to Seek Global Warming Clues

[DeepModem Mom]

Craft Nears Venus to Seek Global Warming Clues
By WARREN E. LEARY
Published: April 10, 2006

WASHINGTON, April 9 — After getting little attention for more than a decade, Venus is about to receive a visiting spacecraft from Earth designed to investigate its dense, hot atmosphere for clues about runaway global warming that may shed light on potential changes here.

Venus Express, the first mission by the European Space Agency to Earth's nearest neighbor, is set to go into orbit around the second planet from the Sun early on Tuesday.

If the robot craft accomplishes the complex and tricky maneuver of slowing down enough to swing into orbit, scientists hope it will help solve the mystery of how the shrouded, churning atmosphere of Venus formed and maintains the planet's broiler-like temperatures.

The United States and Russia studied Venus extensively during the early days of spacecraft planetary exploration. But the last dedicated mission was NASA's Magellan, which used radar to map most of the planet over four years before plunging into the atmosphere in 1994. Even after those missions, which included landers and atmospheric crafts, the inhospitable environment protects many secrets.

"Venus Express is equipped to peer beneath the thick clouds that encircle the planet and probe the mysteries of Venus with a precision never achieved before, and find out why Venus evolved so differently to Earth," said Fred Taylor of Oxford, a member of the project team....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/world/europe/10venus.html

[Ian David]

1. One of the first pictures from Venus, may explain the greenhouse effect