New Propulsion Systems.

Ionocraft This invention relates to improved heavier-than-air aircraft, and more specifically to structures which are capable of either hovering or moving in any direction at high altitudes by means of ionic discharge.

Such Ionocraft may serve as platforms which would be stationed above the earth for long periods of tinge and serve other purposes as will be explained below. The output power from microwave generators, such as magnetrons, coupled with high power capacity amplifier tubes may be beamed to the Ionocraft while airborne or the craft may carry its own power supply. A principal object of the present invention is to provide a novel Ionocraft with space provided by the structure, preferably at the center of the craft, for installation of electronic equipment and for the power plant a crew where used.

The Wingless Electromagnetic Air Vehicle (WEAV) is a heavier than air flight system in development for NASA at the University of Florida.
The aircraft uses electrodes on its undercarriage in order to ionize air, and it then propels the resultant plasma using electromagnets. The high pressure zone created underneath the aircraft is consequently used to create thrust for propulsion and stability. Electro gravities is a hypothesis proposed by Nikola Tesla and Tesla's subsequent extensive experimentation and demonstrations of the effect. The term was in widespread use by 1956. The effects of electro gravity have been searched for extensively in countless experiments since the beginning of the 20th century. To date, other than Tesla's experiments and the more recent ones reported by R. L. Talley, Eugene Podkletnov, and Giovanni Modanese, "no conclusive evidence of electro gravitic signatures has been found". Just recently, some investigation has begun in electro hydrodynamics (EHD) or sometimes electro-fluid-dynamics, a counterpart to the well-known magneto hydrodynamics, but these do not seem a priori to be related to Tesla's "electro gravitics". Electrokinetics is a term used by Thomas Townsend Brown for the electrically generated propulsive force.

The Biefeld–Brown effect was initially investigated by Thomas Townsend Brown (USA) and Dr. Paul Alfred Biefeld (Germany) in the 1920s.

Research continued through the 1950s and 1960s by Brown and other researchers. The use of this electrogravitic propulsion effect was further explored during the publicized era of gravity control propulsion research, which included the United States gravity control propulsion initiative. Research, based upon Thomas Townsend Brown's hypotheses, includes the idea that electrogravitics could be used as a means of propulsion for aircraft and spacecraft. Electrogravitic processes use an electric field to charge or, more properly, polarize an object with a specially-constructed shape. Brown's disks, for example, used an "asymmetrical" capacitor, sketches of which can be found in the literature pertaining to the Biefeld–Brown effect.

An ionocraft or ion-propelled aircraft, commonly known as a lifter or hexalifter, is an electro hydrodynamic (EHD) device (utilizing an electrical phenomenon known as the Biefeld–Brown effect) to produce thrust in the air, without requiring any combustion or moving parts. The term "Ionocraft" dates back to the 1960s, an era in which EHD experiments were at their peak. In its basic form, it simply consists of two parallel conductive electrodes, one in the form of a fine wire and another which may be formed of either a wire grid, tubes or foil skirts with a smooth round surface. When such an arrangement is powered up by high voltage in the range of a few kilovolts, it produces thrust. The ionocraft forms part of the EHD thruster family, but is a special case in which the ionisation and accelerating stages are combined into a single stage.

An EHD (electrohydrodynamic) thruster is a propulsion device based on ionic fluid propulsion, that works without moving parts, using only electrical energy.
The principle of ionic (air) propulsion with corona-generated charged particles has been known since the earliest days of the discovery of electricity, with references dating back to year 1709 in a book titled Physico-Mechanical Experiments on Various Subjects by Francis Hauksbee. The first publicly demonstrated tethered model was developed by Major De Seversky in the form of an Ionocraft, a single stage EHD thruster, in which the thruster lifts itself by propelling air downwards.
De Seversky contributed much to its basic physics and its construction variations during the year 1960 and has in fact patented his device U.S. Patent 3,130,945 , April 28, 1964). Only electric fields are used in this propulsion method. The basic components of an EHD thruster are two: an ioniser and an ion accelerator. Ionocrafts form part of this category, but their energy conversion efficiency is severely limited to less than 1% by the fact that the ioniser and accelerating mechanisms are not independent. Unlike the ionocraft, within an EHD thruster, the air gap in its second stage is not restricted or related to the Corona discharge voltage of its ionising stage. Unlike related propulsion devices, they need a fluid for their operation and cannot operate in space or vacuum. Superconductors expel magnetic field, and hence repel magnets. This repulsion can be stronger than gravity, which leads to levitation - the most fascinating manifestation of superconductivity.

Titan Oceans Just Dive.

Finding Pandora From Earth's environment of one bar pressure. Watery rocks that need osmoses the only requirement is a back pack. This oxygen-facility is key to find some form of tavern type Igloo.
It took Voyager 1 probe over three years to reach Titan, Saturn's Moon. This maybe brought down to less than a year. How did Saturn moon atmosphere form?This view shows a close up of toward the south polar region of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and show a depression within the moon's orange and blue haze layers near the south pole. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft snapped the image 2011 and it was released.

As NASA's Cassini spacecraft peers through the murk of Titan's thick atmosphere in this view, taken with Cassini's narrow-angle camera is on. This false-color image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows Titan in ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths. Facts About Saturn's Largest Moon Titan is Saturn's largest moon and the second largest in the solar system (after Ganymede of Jupiter). It is the only moon in the solar system with clouds and a dense, planet-like atmosphere. Scientists believe that conditions on Titan are similar to Earth's early years (the main difference is that, because it is closer to the sun, Earth has always been warmer). According to NASA, "In many respects, Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is one of the most Earth-like worlds we have found to date."

Titan stats Diameter: 3,200 miles (5,150 kilometers), about half the size of Earth and almost as large as Martian Surface and similar temperature except on Mars a human would boil with out a Spacesuit.

minus 290 Fahrenheit (minus 179 degrees Celsius), which makes water as hard as rocks and allows methane to be found in its liquid form Surface pressure: Slightly higher than Earth's pressure. Earth's pressure at sea level is 1 bar while Titan's is 1.6 bars. Orbital period: 15,945 days Other Titan facts Titan's name comes from Greek mythology. The Titans were elder gods who ruled the universe before the Olympians came to power, according to the Theoi Project website. The moon was discovered by Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens in 1655. The Huygens lander probe sent to the moon aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft by the European Space Agency is named in his honor. Huygens was the first human-built object to land on Titan's surface. Amazing Photos of Titan Titan's diameter is 50 percent larger than that of Earth's moon. Titan is larger than the planet Mercury but is half the mass of the planet. Titan's upland areas are shorter than Earth's. The largest mountains are only a few hundred yards high. Titan's mass is composed mainly of water in the form of ice and rocky material. Titan has no magnetic field.

Atmosphere of Titan Titan is surrounded by an orange haze that kept its surface a mystery for Earth ´s scientists until the arrival of the Cassini mission. Titan's atmosphere extends about 370 miles high (about 600 kilometers), which makes it a lot higher than Earth's atmosphere.
Because the atmosphere is so high, Titan was thought to be the largest moon in the solar system for a long time. It wasn't until 1980 that Voyager was close enough to discover it was actually smaller than Ganymede. Titan's atmosphere is active and complex, and it is mainly composed of nitrogen (95 percent) and methane (5 percent). Titan also has a presence of organic molecules that contain carbon and hydrogen, and that often include oxygen and other elements similar to what is found in Earth's atmosphere and that are essential for life. Is there is an unsolved mystery surrounding Titan's atmosphere: Because methane is broken down by sunlight, scientists believe there is another source that replenishes what is lost. One potential source of methane is volcanic activity, but this has yet to be confirmed. Magic Island There is an abundance of methane lakes, which are mainly concentrated near its southern pole. In 2014, scientists found a transient feature they playfully referred to as "Magic Island." "What I think is really special about Titan is that it has liquid methane and ethane lakes and seas, making it the only other world in the solar system that has stable liquids on its surfaces," Jason Hofgartner, a planetary scientist at Cornell University, told Space Cruiser in 2014.

"It not only has lakes and seas, but also rivers and even rain.
It has what we call a hydrological cycle, and we can study it as an analog to Earth's hydrological cycle and it's the only other place we know of where we can do that." Large areas of Titan's surface are covered with sand dunes made of hydrocarbon. Dunes on Titan may resemble the Namibian desert in Africa. Because methane exists as a liquid on Titan, it also evaporates and forms clouds, which occasionally causes methane rain. Clouds of methane ice and cyanide gas float over the moon's surface. "Titan continues to amaze with natural processes similar to those on the Earth, yet involving materials different from our familiar water," Cassini deputy project scientist Scott Edgington, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. Sunlight is quite dim on Titan, and climate is driven mostly by changes in the amount of light that accompanies the seasons in future rotation wheel may be two year round trip being supplied.

Data also suggests the presence of a liquid ocean beneath the surface, but it is still to be confirmed.

Tour the Strangest Lakes of Saturn's Moon Titan. As more planets have been found outside of the solar system, Titan has served as a model of cloudy bodies. Examining the atmosphere of the moon has helped scientists to understand the atmospheres of these distant systems. "It turns out that there's a lot you can learn from looking at a sunset," said Tyler Robinson of NASA's Ames Research Center in a statement. Cassini spacecraft at Titan The Cassini spacecraft is currently in the middle of its Solstice mission at Saturn, the second mission for the spacecraft. The probe's primary mission, called Equinox, was aimed at exploring the Saturnian system and ended in June 2008 after four years orbiting the ringed planet. The spacecraft's mission was then extended, with its current Solstice effort expected to last until 2017, when Saturn's solstice takes place — hence its name.

The Cassini spacecraft launched in 1997 and carried the Huygens probe built by the European Space Agency. Huygens was equipped to study Titan by landing on the Saturn moon and achieved astounding results. Future Mission to Saturn's Moon Titan. Cassini arrived in orbit around Saturn in 2004 with the Huygens probe landing via parachute on Jan. 14, 2005. Because of Huygens's observations, Titan became a top priority for scientists.

The mission has achieved excellent results, such as taking the highest resolution images ever achieved of this moon´s surface. During its primary and extended missions, Cassini was able to get fundamental data about Titan's structure and the complex organic chemistry of its atmosphere. It is because of Cassini's findings that scientists suspect the presence of an internal ocean composed of water and ammonia. The focus of the mission, as it relates to Titan, is to find signs of seasonal changes and volcanic activity. Possibilities for life It is thought that conditions on Titan could make the moon more habitable in the far future. If the sun increases its temperature (6 billion years from now) and becomes a red giant star, Titan's temperature could increase enough for stable oceans to exist on the surface, according to some models. If this happens, conditions in Titan could be similar to Earth's, allowing conditions favourable for some forms of life. Life on Titan? Could Saturn's cold moon fascinates scientific experiments on Earth as it suggest that Titan could be more habitable than previously thought, card cut out

Complex organic chemicals once thought to hover high in the atmosphere may lie closer to the surface than estimated. "Scientists previously thought that as we got closer to the surface of Titan, the moon's atmospheric chemistry was basically inert and dull," Murthy Gudipati, the paper's lead author at JPL, said in a statement. "Our experiment shows that's not true. The same kind of light that drives biological chemistry on Earth's surface could also drive chemistry on Titan, even though Titan receives far less light from the sun and is much colder. 
Titan is not a sleeping giant in the lower atmosphere, but at least half awake in its chemical activity." NASA's Cassini Solstice Mission Planetary Society: Probing Titan's Atmosphere European Space Agency: Cassini-Huygens. Latest on Titan: Facts About Saturn's Largest Moon. Inside Cassini's Multi-Year Saturn Mission (Infographic) Cassini Watches Enceladus Fizz Into Space. Saturn's Moon Dione: Photos from Cassini's Final Close Flyby 'Its Rings' On Saturn Moon Titan Suggest Dynamic Seas. NASA Funds Titan Submarine, Other Far-Out Space Exploration Ideas. Pluto Flyby May Reveal Secrets of Saturn's Moon Titan. Cassini Captures Breathtaking View of Saturn's Dione. Saturn's Moon Titan Has Polar Winds, Just Like Earth. Alien Life on Oily Exoplanets Could Have Ether-based 'DNA' New Technique Shines Light on Titan, Largest Moon of Saturn Cassini Spacecraft Sees Saturn Moon Rhea in Eye-Popping Color. How Humans Could Live on Saturn's Moon Titan Info-graphic.

Saturn's Moon Titan.

Titan’s surface did it originate from Earth? Photo by the Huygens lander. University of Arizona states theirs large bodies of liquid in Titan’s northern hemisphere, this has been mapped by Cassini in 2006.

Saturn’s Largest Moon Would Host Really, strange organisms. Titan. Saturn’s largest, haziest moon had a brief starring role in last night’s Cosmos. As space cruises 2005 space time fantasy, Neil DeGrasse Tyson eases his spaceship into one of the moon’s dark, oily seas. He wanted to see what was down there are more specifically and what kind of life might be down there NASA getting to replicate this. After spending most of an hour describing the evolution of life on Earth, it was time to turn toward alien terrains and chemistries to a place that, while not so very far away, could host some very, very strange life forms. “There’s a world I want to take you to, a world far different from our own, but one that may harbour life. 

If it does, it promises to be unlike anything we’ve ever seen before,” Tyson says, in the episode.

Titan is deceptively like Earth as  It has a thick, nitrogen atmosphere.
Seasonal rainstorms produce wet patches that are visible from orbit. It has lakes. In fact, Titan is the only place in the solar system, besides Earth, with a stable liquid running  on its surface. Those liquids flow through rivers and streams, pool into lakes and seas, sculpt shorelines and surround islands, just like on Earth. As Titan’s puddles aren’t filled with water as the moon is soaked in hydrocarbons. Its a Methane and ethane, compounds that are gassy on Earth because of its lower temperature remains a liquid. These liquids on Titan’s frigid surface. Here, temperatures hover around -179 Celsius (or -290 Fahrenheit). It’s so cold that water ice is rock hard in fact, the rocks littering the moon’s surface are made from water. Water is everywhere on Titan, but it’s locked in a state that’s inaccessible for life sustaining chemistries. An astrobiologist about the prospect of finding life on Titan, and they’ll say the shrouded, orange moon is the place to go if you’re looking for bizarre frozen type organism types of life organisms see earth be there Venus.

Life that’s not at all like what we know on Earth. Life that, instead of being water-based, uses those slick, liquid hydrocarbons as a solvent. Life that, if we find it, would demonstrate a second genesis a second origin and be suggestive of the ease with which life can populate the cosmos.
Life that’s worth taking a chance to find? “We will never know if liquid water is the only special solvent in which life can form and propagate unless we go and sample these damn lakes and seas,” planetary scientist Jonathan Lunine of Cornell University said during a recent astrobiology conference. Lunine has spent years studying Titan; at one point, he and his colleagues designed a spacecraft that could land on the moon and float in one of its hydrocarbon seas. Thinking about life on Titan isn’t new. In the 1970s, Carl Sagan and chemist Bishun Khare, then at Cornell University, were already publishing papers describing the organic chemistry that might be taking place on the Saturnian moon back then . At that point, though, the large bodies of liquid on the moon’s surface hadn’t yet been spotted, so Sagan and Khare were thinking about the types of reactions that might be taking place in the moon’s atmosphere (in 1982, Sagan and Stanley Dermott proposed that such lakes might exist).

Sagan and Khare would show it was possible to make amino acids using the elements found in the moon’s haze.
In the 1990s, the Hubble space telescope offered hints of a wet world, but it wouldn’t be until NASA’s Cassini mission that scientists got a good look at the moon. In 2004, the spacecraft began peering beneath Titan’s cloudy shroud; in 2005, Cassini sent the Huygens probe parachuting through the haze to a spot on Titan’s equator. Data sent back to Earth revealed a world that looks very much like ours—just with a completely different chemistry. What that different chemistry means for the possibility of life is still speculative. “Think about life on Earth we’re all either in water or we’re fancy bags of water,” says astrobiologist Kevin Hand of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “On Titan, life in the lakes would be ‘bags’ of liquid methane and/or ethane. That 90[Kelvin] liquid would be the solvent and then whatever is dissolved into the lakes would be the material that’s used to build the other components needed for life, and to power metabolism.”

Powering metabolism is tricky at those temperatures, though, which is one of the reasons why some scientists are hesitant to focus on sending a probe to Titan.
Nonetheless, astrobiologists are studying the reactions and pathways that life might use to gain some traction on Titan—including things like breathing hydrogen and eating acetylene. “Which elements are easy and which elements are hard to access if you’re a ‘weird’ microbe living in Titan’s lakes?” Hand says. “At this point we don’t really know—work is ongoing.” Space cruises had a few questions after watching the Cosmos depiction of Titan’s alien seas. First, if I were a weird life form on Titan, would I be able to see Saturn through Titan’s hundreds of kilometers of haze? Or would the most spectacular planetscape in the solar system be hidden behind that smoggy curtain?

“Even with the human eye, Saturn would be visible as a faint, bright-ish blob in the night time haze,” Lunine says.
“If one had eyes that extended even a bit beyond human sight into the nearest part of the infrared, the ringed world would be clearly seen floating ethereally in the skies of Titan.” Second, the scene with Tyson in the spacecraft shows a craggy, chaotic seafloor, with things that look like hydrothermal vents. How much do we really know about Titan’s seafloors? These turn out, as we know quite a lot about because earth ocean Titan’s seashores, and slightly less about its seafloors. Until now, scientists had mostly used seashore shapes and surrounding topography to infer what the seafloors might be like. But in May 2013, the Cassini spacecraft aimed its radar at the depths of Ligeia Mare, the second largest sea on Titan (Kraken Mare, which Tyson took a swim in, is the largest). Using the radar data, the team created a map of the sea’s floor—its bathymetry—and saw that Ligeia Mare plunges to a depth of 160 meters (524 feet).

Pluto fifth Moon Styx.

Another moon has been discovered orbiting the dwarf planet Pluto.
This is the planet's fifth known satellite, and it was spotted by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope. Here is Nix moon as it is visible as a tiny speck of light also Hydra outer most moon, in the image below the moon – designated simply as P5 – is estimated to be between 10 and 25km (6-15 miles) across. For comparison, Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, has a diameter of over 1,200km, and our own Moon’s diameter is about 3,500km. Pluto and its five moons, including the newly-discovered P5 (circled). Image credit: NASA; ESA; M. Showalter, SETI Institute. As Pluto’s collection of moons is surprisingly complex for such a small planet. It’s thought that this moon system was formed from a collision between Pluto and another Kuiper belt object billions of years ago P4 named Kerberos / P5 Named Plutos Moon called Styx.

The New Horizons mission to Pluto keeps delivering the goods when it comes to pictures of the distant dwarf planet and NASA’s latest false-colour image is a real beauty. Combining four images from New Horizon's sensors, NASA have provided us with a dramatic view of the Sputnik Planum, the large plane on the surface, with what appears to be evidence of glacial movement to the southwest and northeast. Recent geological activity is something that many scientists had hoped to find but didn’t expect, so this news is a real treat for the New Horizons team.“We’ve only seen surfaces like this on active worlds like Earth and Mars,” said mission co-investigator John Spencer of SwRI. “I'm really smiling.” Data also suggests that the centre of the large expanse is rich in nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane ices.

With only 4-5% of data received from the probe, New Horizons will continue to supply fascinating insights from Pluto deep into 2016, but there is still plenty of work to do, as Alan Stern, the New Horizons principal investigator, warns."Pluto has a very complicated story to tell; Pluto has a very interesting history, and there is a lot of work we need to do to understand this very complicated place." As in fact a historic photo taken by NASA's New Horizon space probe on its approach to Pluto. Shot at a distance of around 71 million miles (114 million kilometres), the image is New Horizon's first colour photo of the dwarf planet and its largest moon, Charon.

New Horizons has taken the first colour photo of its destination (image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute) It's over nine years since New Horizons left Earth, and the spacecraft's final destination is now only three months away.
On July 14, 2015 New Horizons will make a flyby of Pluto and its moons, returning the first ever close-up images of this icy world. Equipped with seven science instruments, the craft will perform a full analysis of Pluto, studying its geology, surface composition, climate and atmosphere, as well as its bevy of at least five moons. "Scientific literature is filled with papers on the characteristics of Pluto and its moons from ground-based and Earth-orbiting space observations, but we’ve never studied Pluto up close and personal,” says John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of the NASA Science Mission Directorate. “In [this] unprecedented flyby, our knowledge of what the Pluto system is really like will expand exponentially, and I have no doubt there will be exciting discoveries."

Venus Varied Altitudes.

The Planet Venus, its rotation is slowing down and makes this a fascinating calculation. Liquid oxygen return alpine sample. European Probe Venus Express 2006-2014 shows shape shifting in its polar vortices. Venus Express also showed winds in excess of 200 mph as its cool side like burning embers.
This discovered a surprisingly new cold region high in the planet's atmosphere. Where conditions may be frigid enough for carbon dioxide to freeze out as ice or snow. This is  although the planet's surface is like a red hot furnace, conditions are very different at an altitude of 125 km, where Venus Express revealed a very frigid layer with a temperature of around -175°C. The unexpected cold layer is far chillier than any part of Earth's atmosphere, despite Venus being much closer to the Sun. As on Earth, solar ultraviolet radiation removes electrons from the atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere, creating a region of electrically charged gas known as the ionosphere. This ionised layer interacts with the solar wind and the magnetic field carried by the solar wind. During the continuous battle with the solar wind, the ionosphere is able to slow and divert the flow of particles around the planet, creating an elongated magnetotail, shaped rather like a tadpole or wind sock, on the lee side of the planet. Until now, magnetic reconnection was not generally thought to occur near non-magnetised planets, so scientists were surprised.

Venus Express detected the reconnection events. This reconnection splits the magnetotail, causing most of the plasma (electrically charged particles) in the tail to be ejected into space. It also forms a plasmoid structure which heads towards Venus and channels some of the energy of the solar wind into the night-side atmosphere. As a result, the magnetic reconnection causes plasma circulation at Venus, similar to what happens in Earth's magnetotail. The discovery was made possible by the near-polar orbit of Venus Express, which is ideal for instruments such as the magnetometer and low-energy particle detector to observe the solar wind – ionosphere –magnetotail interaction. Previous missions, such as Pioneer Venus, have either been in different orbits or been active at different periods of solar activity, so they were not able to detect the reconnection events. The discovery was made by studying light from the Sun as it passed through the atmosphere, revealing the concentration of carbon dioxide gas molecules at various altitudes along the terminator – the dividing line between the day and night sides of the planet. Armed with information about the concentration of carbon dioxide and data on atmospheric pressure at each height, scientists could then calculate the corresponding temperatures.

Since the temperature at some heights dips below the freezing temperature of carbon dioxide, the main constituent of the atmosphere, carbon dioxide ice might be able to form there – possibly forming clouds of ice or snow particles. The data also show that the cold layer above the terminator is sandwiched between two comparatively warm layers. The temperature profiles on the hot day side and cool night side at altitudes above 120 km are extremely different, so the terminator is affected by conditions on both sides. The night side may be playing a greater role at one altitude and the day side might be playing a larger role at other altitudes. Analyser of Space Plasma and Energetic Atoms (ASPERA) instrument discovered a rapid loss of hydrogen and oxygen from the night side. This depletion occurs because water molecules in its upper atmosphere are split by incoming ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. This process creates two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom for each dissociated molecule. The solar wind is a stream of charged particles from the Sun – then strikes the upper atmosphere and carries the hydrogen and oxygen atoms into space. Unlike Earth, Venus does not generate a magnetic field which can protect its atmosphere from the solar wind.

Venus Express has measured the rate of this escape and confirmed that roughly twice as much hydrogen as oxygen is escaping, confirmation that water (H 2 O) is the source of these escaping ions. It has also shown that a heavy form of hydrogen, called deuterium, is progressively enriched in the upper regions of Venus's atmosphere because the heavier gas finds it less easy to escape the planet's gravitational grip. This situation is unique to Venus, since the temperature profile along the terminator in the atmospheres of Earth or Mars is very different. This is one of the major discoveries made by Venus Express during the last eight years. The ozone layer in Earth's stratosphere is well known, and traces of ozone (O 3 ) were detected more than 40. years ago in the atmosphere of Mars, but until the arrival of Venus Express, no one knew whether Venus had a comparable atmospheric layer.Using observations made with the Spectroscopy for Investigation of Characteristics of the Atmosphere of Venus (SPICAV) instrument, scientists were able to detect the presence of a tenuous layer of ozone gas in its atmosphere.

The ozone was detected by means of stellar occultations – analysing light from distant stars as it passed through different layers of the atmosphere. The method relies on the availability of stars in the line of sight, meaning that it yields an uneven coverage of the planet and is limited to the night side. According to the new data, ozone is located at varying altitudes in the Venusian atmosphere, between 90 and 120 km – compared with 15-50 km on Earth – and is always confined to a rather thin layer, measuring 5 to 10 km across. The ozone layer on Venus is also very tenuous – up to 1000 times less dense than that on Earth. One surprise was the absence of ozone at the anti-solar point, where molecular oxygen is highly concentrated. Other studies based on Venus Express observations showed that sunlight illuminating the day side of the planet splits carbon dioxide molecules, liberating oxygen atoms. These are then carried to the anti-solar point, on the night side, by a strong wind which flows from the hot day side to the cooler night side.

Oxygen atoms transported to the anti-solar point give rise to molecular oxygen, so some production of ozone was also expected. However, none was found. The lack of ozone detected there can be explained if the molecules are destroyed by chlorine-based compounds, which are funnelled to the anti-solar point by the same mechanism that carries the oxygen there. The chlorine-catalysed destruction of ozone at Venus' anti-solar point may be caused by reactions very similar to those responsible for the Antarctic 'ozone hole' on Earth, highlighting the similarity of atmospheric processes on these two planets.This is one of the major discoveries made. Several planets in the Solar System, including Earth, have been found to possess hurricane-like vortices, where clouds and winds rotate rapidly around the poles. Some of these take on strange shapes, such as the hexagonal structure on Saturn, but none of them are as variable or unstable as the southern polar vortex on Venus.

The existence of the polar vortices on Venus has been known for many years, but high-resolution infrared measurements obtained by the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) instrument on Venus Express have revealed that the southern vortex is far more complex than previously believed. The southern polar vortex on Venus. The new observations show that the centre of the vortex has a highly variable shape and internal structure, and its morphology is constantly changing on timescales of less than 24 hours, as a result of differential rotation. This fast-moving feature is all the more surprising since its centre of rotation is offset from the geographical South Pole. The images show that the core of the dynamic southern vortex can take almost any shape, so although it often looks like an 'S' or figure 8, it may become completely irregular, or even chaotic, in appearance. These rapid shape changes indicate complex weather patterns, which are strongly influenced by the fact that the centre of the vortex does not coincide with the geographical pole.

Images from the Venus Monitoring Camera and from the VIRTIS instrument show that the speeds of the zonal winds change with latitude, so that the vortex is continually being pulled and stretched. Although the mean zonal wind is retrograde (blowing from east to west), its speed decreases toward the pole. The centre of rotation drifts right around the pole over a period of 5-10 Earth days. Its average displacement from the South Pole is about three degrees of latitude, or several hundred kilometres. Although its highly elliptical orbit means that Venus Express flies too close to the planet's North Pole for detailed imaging, it is likely that both vortices have similar structures and behave in a similar way. This is one of the major discoveries made by Venus Express during the last eight years. Venus is a rarity among planets as it's a world that does not generate a magnetic field internally. However, Venus does have an elongated magnetotail on its night side. Furthermore, Venus Express has discovered evidence for magnetic reconnection – the process responsible for the Northern Lights on Earth – in Venus' magnetotail. Although Venus has no magnetosphere to deflect the charged particles of the solar wind (electrons and protons) as they stream past the planet, it is partially protected from erosion of the outer atmosphere by an induced magnetic field arising from the interaction of the solar wind and the planet's ionosphere