Earth would have suffered the same fate had it been just a little closer to the Sun. We may learn a lot about Earth by learning why the basically similar Venus turned out so differently. M ost of Venus's surface consists of gently rolling plains with little relief. The interior of Ishtar consists mainly of a high plateau, Lakshmi Planum , which is surrounded by the highest mountains on Venus including the enormous Maxwell Montes . D ata from Magellan 's imaging radar shows that much of the surface of Venus is covered by lava flows.
T here are no small craters on Venus.
It seems that small meteors burn up in Venus's dense atmosphere before reaching the surface. Craters on Venus seem to come in bunches indicating that large meteors that do reach the surface usually break up in the atmosphere. T he oldest terrains on Venus seem to be about 800 million years old. Extensive volcanism at that time wiped out the earlier surface including any large craters from early in Venus's history. Recent results from the Magellan gravity data indicate that Venus's crust is stronger and thicker than had previously been assumed.