Venus' Once Molten Surface
If you could look at Venus with radar eyes - this is what you might see. This computer reconstruction of the surface of Venus was created from data from the Magellan spacecraft . Magellan orbited Venus and used radar to map our neighboring planet 's surface between 1990 and 1994. Magellan found many interesting surface features, including the large circular domes , typically 25-kilometers across, that are depicted above . Volcanism is thought to have created the domes , although the precise mechanism remains unknown. Venus ' surface is so hot and hostile that no surface probe has lasted more than a few minutes.