Venus - the 2^nd Planet

What's interesting about Venus is that it's sort of a 'mystery' planet - a planet with "many faces" - but don't confuse that with the Man-In-The-Moon or the Face On Mars.  This planet's surface has always been hidden and we never knew what it looked like. That's because it has a really thick and dense (which pretty much means the same as thick) bunch of clouds covering the whole darn planet! Yup, even the north pole!  Well, just a little while ago, NASA (those are the people that launch the astronauts into space on the Space Shuttle) figured out how to take pictures of the surface of Venus without landing on the planet - pretty cool huh?  They figured out how to take pictures right through the clouds from orbit (that's where you fly around a planet over and over again).   So, now, we know what the surface of Venus really looks like.  And guess what?  It looks alot like Mercury and Mars - sandy and rocky.

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