Is Venus ever a harbor for life?

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A panoramic shot of Venus by the Venera 13 lander.
Credits: Roscosmos.

   Now if you try asking that question, you'll be slammed with a NO. Venus, (Roman god of love and beauty) has sulfuric acid in the atmosphere, hurricane force winds, and temperatures so hot that lead melts in the planet. Venus is engulfed with many greenhouse gases and so the heat just stays in the planet, maybe never leaving the planet. Also Venus, unlike the other planets spins 'backwards', and so slowly that a day is almost half of its year (116 days and 18 hrs)! The sister planet of Earth also does not have any natural satellites unlike Earth (which is the moon), and its orbit around the sun is a little shorter by 100 days of an year of Earth (224.7 days). Scientists think that millions of years ago, Venus was just like Earth, a habitable place, and that life even exists on it!

South pole of Venus, radar mapped by a probe in the Magellan Mission.
Credits: NASA.
    However, the landers sent to the planet does not have enough time to live through the climate of Venus to tell the story of life on Venus. The conditions are so poor, that each of these landers survive for no more than 2 hours! With all the dusty clouds of gas blocking the atmosphere, orbiting probes cannot even take a picture of the pure surface of Venus, they can use radar mapping, so we can have a clue of Venus' surface. Venera 7 was the first lander to touchdown in Venus (sent by Roscosmos), but didn't survive long, Venera 9, the first to sent a picture of the hellish planet's surface, and Venera 13, also landed in the planet and took a colored panoramic shot of the environment (first picture above), and successfully sent data back to Earth. This mission was the Soviet Venera mission, which ended 1984.
Some extra Venus facts.
     NASA had its Venus missions too, but mostly probes. The space agency did launch a lander, which they lost contact during landing process, and was just gone. One of the most successful of the mission, was the Magellan Mission (the Magellan spacecraft  aka   Venus Radar Mapper), which radar mapped to hot planet, and did research on the planet, including measuring the planet's magnetic field, until its fall into the planet in 1994, when it ran out of propulsion, and got too close to the planet.

Live Com (bottom), and
False Imaging (top), of Venus's South Pole.
Credits: ESA
     The Venus Express, sent by the ESA, has fetched many data from Venus' atmosphere, and continue to do so today, as it orbits the planet polarly. Recently, because the spacecraft was about to run out of fuel, the team brought the spacecraft really close to the atmosphere (1/3 of the orbital distance of the ISS on Earth), and used many of the propellant to boost it out of Venus' gravity, and into safe orbit, as well as gathering data during its risking taking dive. Nevertheless, the dive had given the spacecraft extra life, but not forever. After a few hundred orbits, the spacecraft will be sucked in, and to never be seen again.
Venus' atmosphere as captured by the
Venus Express probe.
Credits: ESA
     Radar mapping from the satellites, give hints that water may have existed on the planet, from the geological structures on the planet.  However, now, the water will just instantly turn to dry air, and without Hydrogen (for the Hydrogen all escaped from the planet), water cannot form on the planet. From these facts, scientists believe that Venus once spinned faster, had a thinner atmosphere, had water, and possibly life.

(NASA, is planning to put people 'flying' on top of the gasy planet with airships floating in the high atmosphere.)

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT VENUS, GO TO:    https://lazyryan4.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-solar-system-venus.html



Bibliography:

Space.com Staff. "Photos of Venus" Space.com July 26, 2011. Retrieved on October 2, 2018, from 
https://www.space.com/12437-venus-photos-planets-venusian-solar-system.html/.

Bartels, Meghan. "Should We Land on Venus Again? Scientists Are Trying to Decide." Space.com October 2, 2018. Retrieved at October 2, 2018 from
https://www.space.com/41986-venus-landing-mission-venera-d.html/.

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