On the surface

Venus is smooth, with a young surface – but it is also covered in volcanoes and lava flows that may have lasted for millions of years

Everything that we’ve learned about Venus’s surface is from radar, because the atmospheric pressure is too great for a probe to survive longer than an hour. But Magellan has mapped most of the surface, and showed that Venus has a lot of interesting surface features. It has a relatively flat surface, with about 13 kilometres (eight miles) between the lowest point and the highest point. Most of them fall into one of three categories: highlands, deposition plains and lowlands. There are also some mountain ranges, with the highest one, Maxwell Montes at 11 kilometres (6.8 miles). The highlands comprise about ten per cent of the planet’s overall surface area, and there are two main ‘continents's – Ishtar Terra and Aphrodite Terra. The deposition plains (formed from lava flows) cover over…

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All About Space Book of the Solar System (Digital) - 1 Issue, All About Space Book Of The Solar System 4th Edition

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