Europe prepares to probe Venus

Europe is ready to send a spacecraft to Venus, the closest planet to the earth and a giant greenhouse, described as the " evil twin brother " of the earth.

The Venus Express will be launched from a Russian Soyuz rocket at Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan, on October 26. It will fly into Venus's orbit next year and use scientific equipment to study the planet in the air.

Venus has seen the greenhouse effect happen in a flash, so experts say it could provide a clue about the evolution of the earth.

On the surface, Venus and the earth seem to be similar, they are the same size, mass and are born from the same cloud of gas. But the similarity just stops there. The surface temperature in Venus can reach 460 degrees Celsius and the dense atmosphere creates the same surface pressure as deep in the ocean in the earth.

The Venus Express will make the first expedition in the Venusian atmosphere, to uncover the light of how the planet has formed that hellish climate.

The clouds create an acid rain that absorbs less heat from the sun than the earth, even though it is a planet near the third sun. But once absorbed, solar energy is trapped in the sky. The atmosphere consists of 96% CO2. That led to an immediate greenhouse effect, and the impact of volcanoes also contributed to the rapid warming of the climate.

" Venus has grown in a completely different way from ours," said scientist Andrew Coates. "In a way, it is the evil twin of the earth ."

The US Magellan probe has discovered on Venus the dense lava flows. " I think Venus has a very strong volcanic activity but we still don't know for sure, " said Professor Fred Taylor at Oxford University.

The ship of the European Space Agency (Esa) will investigate this issue in a two-day mission on Venus, equivalent to 500 days on earth.

MT ( according to BBC )