Venus, though hidden from view by dense clouds, is slowly giving up some of its secrets. One of them is a lava tube beneath its surface.
This type of cave forms from the flow of molten lava. Once that lava drains away, an underground tunnel remains. This is the first lava tube detected on Venus. Scientists discovered it by taking a fresh look at radar images of the planet. They’d been captured by a NASA spacecraft in the early 1990s.
The data revealed a collapsed “skylight” — a hole where the roof of the lava tube had caved in. Researchers shared the finding February 9 in Nature Communications.
Venus has been called Earth’s “sister planet.” It’s relatively nearby and almost the same size. But clouds shield its surface from view.
Let’s learn about Venus
In the 1990s, NASA’s Magellan probe mapped that surface. Analyses of those maps have been revealing a landscape
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