Venus rover
EXPLORING HELL
Needing to navigate mechanical rovers on Venus, NASA offered a prize
As recently illustrated in the announcement of potential life signs, Venus harbours the most benign off-Earth environment in the Solar System. Some 30 kilometres (18.6 miles) high in the clouds it is one Earth atmosphere pressure and between 15 and 30 degrees Celsius (59 and 86 degrees Fahrenheit), yet the surface is the most hostile place in the Solar System.
The dense carbon dioxide atmosphere, which produces the benign conditions higher up, traps in solar heat through the greenhouse effect. The surface temperature is hotter than the surface of Mercury, and hot enough to melt lead. The density of the atmosphere also makes the surface pressure 92 times that of Earth’s, equivalent to nearly a kilometre (0.6 miles) deep in the ocean.