Professor Andrew Coates
Professor Andrew Coates - Writing in The Conversation, Professor Andrew Coates (UCL Space & Climate Physics) explains why sending humans to land on Earth's 'evil twin' Venus might not be such a good idea. Venus, often called Earth's "evil twin" planet, formed closer to the Sun and has since evolved quite differently from our own planet. It has a "runaway" greenhouse effect (meaning heat is completely trapped), a thick carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere, no magnetic field and a surface hot enough to melt lead. Several uncrewed scientific missions will study how and why that happened in the next decade. But now some scientists want to send a crewed mission there as well for a flyby. Is that a good idea? With a slightly smaller diameter than Earth, Venus orbits closer to the Sun. This means that any water on the surface would have evaporated shortly after its formation, starting its greenhouse effect.
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