News Planetary Science

Venus might be as volcanically active as Earth

Decades-old data reveal signs of relatively fresh lava flows

Sif Mons on Venus with recent lava flow (arrow)

The slopes of Sif Mons, a large shield volcano on Venus, show signs of relatively recent lava flows (arrow) in archival data from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft, which orbited the planet in the early 1990s.

David Sulcanese/D’Annunzio University

By Adam Mann

Present-day volcanism on Venus might be far more pervasive than previously believed.

A new analysis of decades-old data from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft finds signs of fresh lava flows occurring on the Venusian surface between 1990 and 1992, researchers report May 27 in Nature Astronomy.