Can we fly on planet Venus?

The very thick atmosphere makes aerodynamic flight very possible, but for long term exploration or even colonization if the planet, balloons might make more sense! read more

Forget rovers on Mars or a base on the moon - one company has designs on sending a plane to Venus to fly through its atmosphere in 2021. The ambitious project would see an inflatable propeller plane cruise through the skies of Venus for years, sampling the atmosphere and studying the ground below. read more

In the early 1990s, NASA's Venus orbiter spacecraft, Magellan, used radar signals to map 98 percent of the planet (we can't see Venus's surface directly because of its thick cloud cover). After that, Venus was largely forgotten about until 2005, when the ESA launched its Venus Express spacecraft to study the planet's atmosphere, said Venus Express project scientist Håkan Svedhem. read more