Venus’s clouds contain massive reservoirs of water and iron

Venus’s clouds contain massive reservoirs of water and iron

Venus has long been called a dry, hellish planet veiled in clouds of liquid acid. But new study of old spacecraft data tells a different story—one that’s reshaping what scientists believed they knew about the planet’s chemistry and even its potential for life. A Forgotten Dataset Revived When NASA sent out its Pioneer Venus mission in 1978, its Large Probe plummeted into the dense, yellow atmosphere of the planet, measuring gases that whirled ab…