Abstract
Within the past fifteen years, the surface of Venus has gone from being the least well understood of all the terrestrial planets to the most thoroughly mapped surface of any terrestrial planet, including the Earth. This is primarily due to the Magellan mission, which has collected a variety of data on the surface morphology, physical properties, and interior density structure of Venus amounting to more than 1 Terabit (1012 bits) of data. Synthetic aperture radar images have been obtained for over 95% of the surface; their high resolution reveals most surface features larger than 100–200 meters across. Using its radar altimeter, Magellan has collected data on surface elevations, sub‐meter scale roughness, and radar reflectivity at a resolution of approximately 10 km. Further information on the physical properties of the surface was gathered by measuring the passive microwave emissivity of the surface [Pettengill et al, 1992]. Two‐way Doppler tracking of the spacecraft has yielded line‐of‐sight (LOS) gravity data and a spherical harmonic model of gravity and geoid out to degree 75. Collection of high‐resolution gravity data has been aided by an innovative aerobraking maneuver, which used Venus' atmosphere to brake the spacecraft and lower it from a highly elliptical orbit to a near‐circular orbit.
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