LOCAL : Venus Pictures ‘Revolutionary’
From Times Wire Services
After a shaky start, the Magellan probe is successfully mapping cloud-shrouded Venus, beaming back “revolutionary” views of a heavily fractured, volcanic planet that may be geologically active, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena said today.
A brief but dramatic movie made with Magellan data was presented at a news conference that simulated a zooming 12-mile-high flight above a tortured region of complex faults and fractures. Other photographs released today, including a giant 10-by-10-foot mosaic, show numerous volcanic craters, sharply defined Los Angeles-sized impact craters and broad regions of cracked terrain covered in places by lava flows indicating a possibly geologically active planet.
