Subscribe RSSJapan’s Venus objective Akatsuki successfully launched today from the Tanegashima Space Center.
After it gets into orbit around Venus the spacecraft, whose name means ‘arise’, will monitor the planet’s atmosphere in an attempt to discover why a world so similar to Earth in many respects is so cold. One of the conundrums it will try to resolve is why the planet’s atmosphere ‘super rotates’ at up to 60 times the make tracks of the surface (see: Japan prepares for Venus countdown ).
“Although Venus is believed to have formed under similar conditions to Terra, it is a completely different world from our planet with extremely high temperatures due to the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide and a wonderful rotating atmosphere blanketed by thick clouds of sulphuric acid," says Takeshi Imamura, one of the scientists working on Akatsuki ( BBC ). “Using [this business] to investigate the atmosphere of Venus and comparing it with that of Earth, we hope to learn more about the factors determining planetary environments.”
