AstronomyTeacher

Sometimes I wish these popular articles had a little more meat on them. For example, what is the Venus Express mission going to be able to tell us that Magellan did not?
This is as technical as the article gets:
Our planetary neighbour's hostile climate could also hold answers to how global warming will affect Earth in future decades, helping to constrain computer models of climate change.

"Our prime objective is to study the processes that are going on inside Venus' atmosphere," Gerhard Schwehm, Esa's head of planetary missions, told the BBC News website.

"Nearly all the instruments give us information on either the composition of the atmosphere, temperature profile, or circulation. We want to see how the system works there because there are still many mysteries about Venus."

Mission scientists hope to learn what causes Venus' atmosphere to rotate much faster than the planet below. The craft will also study a swirling double vortex at the planet's north pole, to discover how it remains stable and where it gets its energy from.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Probe makes encounter with Venus