Earth\u2019s \u201cevil twin\u201d will be the focus of Europe\u2019s next \u00c2\u00a3150m mission to space. Scientists from the European Space Agency are preparing to launch the Venus Express craft on a five month quest. <\/p>\n
The journey is the first to Venus, our closest neighbour, for 15 years and will help study the effects of global warming. Beneath Venus\u2019s thick carbon dioxide atmosphere, the surface bakes at 450C and the atmospheric pressure is 90 times greater than the Earth\u2019s. <\/font>Sulphuric acid rain falls from the sky, there have been planet-wide volcano eruptions and scientists think volcanic activity probably goes on all the time.<\/font><\/p>\n Dr Andrew Coates, one of several British scientists involved in the mission, said: \u201cVenus is sometimes called Earth\u2019s \u2018evil twin\u2019.<\/font><\/p>\n <\/font> <\/p>\n \u201cIt has some similarities like size, but big differences like hotter-than-oven temperatures, sulphuric acid clouds, crushing surface pressure, rotation the \u2018wrong\u2019 way around its axis \u2013 and no protective magnetic field,\u201d he said to Sky News.<\/font><\/p>\n \u201cVenus Express will look at how the planet\u2019s thick atmosphere works, and how it interacts with the surface below and escapes to space above. <\/font>Studying Venus, especially the runaway greenhouse effect, may give us vital lessons for the Earth\u2019s future.\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n It is hoped Venus Express will study mysterious hurricane-like vortices above the poles and also probe down to the surface, where the clouds are thinner.<\/font><\/p>\n Scientists and engineers from a number of British institutions and companies have contributed to the project, which launches on October 26.<\/font><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Earth\u2019s \u201cevil twin\u201d will be the focus of Europe\u2019s next \u00c2\u00a3150m mission to space. Scientists from the European Space Agency are preparing to launch the Venus Express craft on a five month quest. The journey is the first to Venus, our closest neighbour, for 15 years and will help study the effects of global warming. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42258"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nVenus is similar in size and mass to Earth and about the same distance from the Sun but their environments could not be further apart.<\/font> <\/p>\n