THE LAST TRANSMISSIONStories from the Edge of ScienceTHE LAST TRANSMISSION / EXPLORATION MAP 005
Approach the cloud veil. Reveal the radar record. Follow the planet that still guards its surface from ordinary sight.
Select a destination. Drag to look around; pinch or use the zoom buttons.
DESTINATION 01 / VENUS SYSTEM
A world behind the clouds
Venus is close to Earth in size, yet a dense carbon-dioxide atmosphere traps heat at its surface. The pale globe in this scene represents cloud cover. The surface below is hidden from ordinary visible-light observations, and this view is an illustration rather than a live image.
DESTINATION 02 / VENUS SYSTEM
The visible veil
A global layer of sulfuric-acid clouds conceals the ground. Dark markings in ultraviolet observations remain an active chemistry question. The texture on this globe repeats and extends a limited Mariner 10 image; it does not depict a single measured global cloud pattern or current weather.
DESTINATION 03 / VENUS SYSTEM
Magellan’s hidden map
Magellan sent radar signals through the clouds and measured their return to assemble a map of Venusian terrain. Bright and dark radar areas depend on how the ground reflects radio waves. This globe is a composite radar visualization, not a natural-color photograph.
The reveal is a composite map of radar reflections from the surface. It is not a view through a transparent atmosphere or a natural-color photograph.
DESTINATION 04 / VENUS SYSTEM
A vent that changed
Researchers compared radar views made months apart in 1991 and found a vent associated with Maat Mons that changed shape and size. Later analyses found other lava-flow changes. The globe texture is too coarse to show the vent; follow the source images for the actual comparison.
DESTINATION 05 / VENUS SYSTEM
A hypothesis, not a discovery
Venus has no natural moon today. Models can ask whether an early satellite might have migrated, broken apart, or been lost, but no ancient Venusian moon has been detected. The speculative past remains separate from the planet we can measure.
DESTINATION 06 / VENUS SYSTEM
What the missions can test
DAVINCI plans to sample the atmosphere during descent, while VERITAS is designed to map the surface and its geology from orbit. Their future observations could narrow questions about atmospheric history and ongoing surface change. Mission plans may evolve; follow the agencies for current status.
The cloud globe uses a JPL texture cloned from a single Mariner 10 visible-frequency image to cover the sphere. It is an illustrative wrap, not a complete observed cloud survey. The surface globe uses a NASA/JPL-Caltech texture stitched from Magellan radar imagery, with gaps filled for display. Radar brightness and color do not show how a person would see the ground. Neither layer shows current conditions.
Sources: JPL Solar System Simulator texture documentation, NASA Venus radar texture, and the mission records linked in each file. Rotation, camera movement, lighting, and star field are illustrative. No moon or erupting vent is invented in the scene.
SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY / APPLIED HERE
Explore all twelve principlesClouds obscure much of Venus’s surface in visible light. Radar observations constrain terrain through a different measurement process. Ask which view supplies the surface information and which colors or textures help present it without becoming additional measurements.
Ask yourself What was actually observed, and what has been inferred from it?
FROM THE VISUAL ARCHIVE
Read the investigation ↗