On October 26, a Soyuz rocket will blast off from the Baikonur Cosmo-
drome in Kazakhstan, catapulting a VW Bugâ€size spacecraft toward Venus. If all goes as planned, Venus Express, which was built by the European Space Agency, will pull into orbit around the cloud-covered planet on April 4, 2006, becoming its first visitor since 1990. The reward upon arrival: searing heat,
hurricane-force winds and little, if any, water.
But planetary scientist Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington
is confident that Venus is worth the trip.

If our solar system has a Hell, it's Venus. The air is choked with foul and corrosive sulfur, literally brimstone, heaved from ancient volcanoes and feeding battery-acid clouds above. Although the second planet is a step farther from the sun than Mercury, a runaway greenhouse effect makes it hotterindeed, it's the hottest of the nine planets, a toasty 900