A VOLCANO MAY HAVE ERUPTED ON VENUS IN 1991
Venus’ landscape is littered with volcanoes that were clearly active in the past. But less clear is whether any are still erupting in the present. Many researchers have suspected this is the case, citing evidence of lava flows that appear relatively recent. But direct before-and-after evidence of an eruption had not emerged — until researchers found it while combing through archival data from NASA’s Magellan mission, which orbited the planet from Aug. 10, 1990, to Oct. 13, 1994. Robert Herrick, a planetary scientist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks (UAF), reexamined the over 30-year-old data and presented the findings March 15 at the 54th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, held in The Woodlands, Texas, and virtually. The results were published the same day in Science. Herrick compared February 1991 radar imagery…