With each morning, Venus has been rising ever higher and has been getting a little brighter. The planet will reach its brightest in the morning sky on Sept. 19.

Prior to 2004, the last pair of Venus transits took place in 1881 and 1889. Get the Space.com Newsletter Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

In recent decades, space agencies have mostly been focused on visiting Mars -- but now their sights are shifting to Earth's other planetary neighbor: Venus. Skip to main content.

Command Control. For months, the world watched Mariner II. Careful measurements showed that it would pass about 21,000 miles from the planet; but space, with its sucking vacuum, fierce radiation ...

Venus's atmosphere is comprised of 96.5 percent carbon dioxide and 3.5 percent nitrogen, along with trace amounts of other gases like oxygen and sulfur dioxide.

NASA targets Venus with plans to send its first probes there in more than 30 years. The missions would study Venus’s atmosphere and topography as well as how Earth evolved, the space agency said ...

Soaring through space nearly a million miles from the earth, Mariner 5 responded smartly last week to signals radioed from Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, thereby ensuring that its Oct. 19 ...

Astronauts released it into space where it rocketed away from Earth and took a roundabout 15-month journey to Venus. From 1990-1994, Magellan used radar to peer beneath the thick clouds and map ...