Plane promises new views of Venus
 |  A view of Venus created from images captured by NASA's Magellan space probe which orbited the planet from 1990 to 1994. |
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(CNN) -- NASA scientists believe that a solar-powered airplane could be the key to exploring Venus at closer quarters than has ever been previously possible.
The second closest planet to the sun is similar in size and composition to the earth and experts believe that studying its climate and geology could aid our understanding of the earth's own history.
But Venus' hostile environment has long frustrated exploratory efforts.
With an atmosphere 90 times denser than the earth's, surface temperatures reaching 500 degrees Celsius, acidic clouds and 350 kilometer an hour winds, every previous probe that has visited the planet has been quickly destroyed.
But in an article published in the journal Acta Astronautica, a team at NASA's Glenn Research Center said a small aircraft powered by solar energy could fly continuously in the planet's upper atmosphere and glide down to lower altitudes for several hours at a time.
Venus' dense atmosphere makes it ideal for an airplane. The planet's slow rotation, with one day and night taking 117 earth days, would also enable the craft to stay on its daylight side indefinitely, absorbing enough solar energy to power its engines.
As well as taking atmospheric measurements, the airplane would use radar to probe the surface of Venus from an altitude that would give scientists a tenfold improvement in resolution compared with data from an orbiting probe.
The aircraft would also carry a "flying brain" for a more durable surface rover that could emulate the success of NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars, team leader Greg Landis told the New Scientist magazine.
Landis said that microchips controlling the rover's movement, communication and imaging could be contained in the airplane, with the actual rover built from more durable electronic components.
"We think we can get electrical things like motors and transistors to work at those temperatures, but not the microelectronics for computers," said Landis.
"With no vulnerable on-board computer, we might then be able to duplicate the Spirit and Opportunity missions."
Spirit and Opportunity continue to send data back from Mars more than a year since they landed on the planet. NASA recently agreed to fund the mission for a further 18 months.
The future prospects for a NASA-funded mission to Venus remain unclear, although the European Space Agency plans to send an orbiter to study the planet using infra-red instruments in late 2006.
