Probing Venus’ mountains — Science News, February 12, 1972
Venus’ perpetually cloud-shrouded floor stays penetrable solely by radio waves. A planetary radar group now experiences outcomes of an prolonged sequence of radar measurements of the topography of Venus that for the primary time offers a view of floor peak variations across the total circumference of the planet.
Update
Those observations had been taken by the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, which was essentially the most highly effective radar system for mapping rocky our bodies in outer house till its sudden collapse in December 2020 (SN: 12/19/20 & 1/2/21, p. 8). The observatory additionally revealed historic lava flows on Venus and ice on Mercury (SN: 9/18/76, p. 181; SN: 11/9/91, p. 295). Arecibo’s maps of Mars and the asteroid Bennu helped NASA plan the Viking and OSIRIS-REx missions. Some different services have planetary radar methods, however they aren’t as highly effective as Arecibo’s was. Astronomers are including a radar transmitter to West Virginia’s Green Bank Telescope that’s anticipated to rival or exceed Arecibo’s.