I am the second planet from the Sun and the sixth largest. My orbit is the most nearly circular of that of any planet, with an eccentricity of less than 1%. I am sometimes regarded as Earth's sister planet. Me and Earth are very similar in capacity and size. Im 80% of the earths weight and 95% her size. There are strong (350 kph) winds at the cloud tops but winds at my surface are very slow, no more than a few kilometers per hour. I once had large amounts of water like Earth but it all boiled away. So I am now quite dry. Earth would have suffered the same fate had it been just a little closer to the Sun. The first spacecraft to visit Venus was Mariner 2 in 1962. It was subsequently visited by many others (more than 20 in all so far), including Pioneer Venus and the Soviet Venera 7 the first spacecraft to land on another planet, and Venera 9 which returned the first photographs of the surface. Most recently, the orbiting US spacecraft Magellan produced detailed maps of Venus' surface using radar.
