Venus and Earth are similar in size, mass, density, composition, and gravity. There, however, the similarities end. Venus is covered by a thick, rapidly spinning atmosphere, creating a scorched world with temperatures hot enough to melt lead and surface pressure 90 times that of Earth (similar to the bottom of a swimming pool 1-1/2 miles deep). Because of its proximity to Earth and the way its clouds reflect sunlight, Venus appears to be the brightest planet in the sky.
We cannot normally see through Venus' thick atmosphere, but NASA's Magellan mission during the early 1990s used radar to image 98 percent of the surface, and the Galileo spacecraft used infrared mapping to view both the surface and mid-level cloud structure as it passed by Venus on the way to Jupiter. In 2010, infrared surface images by the European Space Agency's Venus Express provided evidence for recent volcanism within the past several hundred thousand years. Indeed, Venus may be volcanically active today.