Venus is the second planet from the sun. It is a dense, baron wasteland where no human could ever live. Venus’ atmosphere contains 90% carbon dioxide and about 5% sulphur dioxide. The reason its atmosphere contains so much carbon dioxide is because when it was young Venus was covered in volcanoes, which constantly erupted, spewing out lava and toxic gases.

Venus atmosphere is 20km thick and contains 3 layers. The top layer, furthest from the surface, is mainly carbon dioxide and sunlight can easily penetrate it. The second layer is also mainly carbon dioxide but contains small amounts of sulphuric acid. The third layers of clouds are mainly sulphuric acid, which condenses to form raindrops.

Because of all of the volcanic activity on Venuses surface 80% of Venus is dusty lava plains. All of the craters from when it was young have all disappeared and been covered with a thick layer of molten rock.

One of the largest features of Venus surface is a massive volcano called Maat Mons, which is an astounding 8km high. Its caldera, which is the hole lava comes out of, is 10km in diameter. It is also thought that there are smaller calderas along the eastern side of the volcano; these are only 4-5km high.

Venus has the most extreme greenhouse effect in our entire solar system. As I said earlier, Venus has 3 layers of clouds which are combined, 20km thick. The first layer lets sunlight through, as does the second; some sunlight makes it through the third. Once this happens the sunlight is trapped as I cannot penetrate the third layer of cloud from the bottom.

Some facts about Venus:

• Its average surface temperature is 500 degrees Celsius
• It is 0.82 times the earths size, or 82% the size of the earth.
• Its average distance from the sun is 108-109 million Km
• It has a diameter of about 12,100km
• Its atmosphere consists of 90% carbon dioxide, with the next most abundant gas being sulphur dioxide at around 5%

The closest man has ever gotten to Venus was in 1990-1992 when the Magellan space probe visited Venus. The Magellan Space probe mapped 99% of Venus and had accuracy to the size of a football field. Magellan also confirmed suspicions that Venus spun backwards.

Venus takes 177 earth days to rotate once, and 225 earth days to revolve around the sun once. Its size: gravity ratio is stronger then that of earths by about 7%. This means that if Venus was the size of earth you would weigh 7% extra.

In conclusion, a human could never live of Venus. If man stepped foot on Venus they would be

• Cooked
• They would be corroded by sulphuric acid clouds
• Be crushed by the atmosphere which is around 1300 PSI, in other words, you would have 1300 pounds of force crushing your body.