Venus Is Covered in Volcanoes
Scientists aren’t quite sure what to make of Venus’s volcanoes. The planet is peppered with massive ones (the Sacajawea caldera, shown above, is over 100 miles across), but no one is quite sure whether volcanic activity on Venus persists or if the structures are now all dormant. In 2020, a team of researchers reported 37 active volcanic structures, so it’s possible that there is still lava burbling forth from the planet’s interior today. In March 2023, researchers investigating 30-year-old radar imagery by the Magellan spacecraft spotted evidence of possible volcanic activity on the planet.
The volcanic structures have range, from towering shield volcanoes to the flat-lying “pancake dome” volcanoes. And besides the volcanoes themselves, there’s what they produce, ossified now in canali, which are huge, dried-up channels of lava. Exactly when these canali were carved is unknown. The VERITAS mission will likely get a better sense of the planet’s volcanism when it begins orbiting Venus around 2030.
