Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, has found out that atmosphere in Venus has high wind speed and is rotating near the equator.
JAXA's Venus Climate Orbiter spacecraft, which is on an exploration of the second nearest planet to the Sun, has found proof of strong winds near the equator. The wind velocity is found to be stronger in the low and middle cloud region between 45 to 60 km altitude.
The JAXA scientists and researchers from Hokkaido University, who are studying Venus events, have named it Venusian Equatorial Jet.
Another phenomenon in which the entire atmosphere rotates at a high speed above the altitude of 70 km has also been observed and named as Superrotation.
The researchers were using images taken by the IR2 camera of the Akatsuki for their observational analysis. Theoretical and numerical analysis of these phenomena is yet to be found out with better observation and reasoning.
Venus Express Orbiter of the European Space Agency and Galileo spacecraft of the NASA had previously made similar observations from the planet's low-latitude zones. The scientists have already calculated the wind speed at lower altitudes through these voyages.
Reports said that images from the near infrared IR2 camera from July 2016 had shown evidence of speeding wind around the rotational axis which peaks near the equator. The equatorial jet was present for at least two months. But later the researchers could identify only the low-velocity wind in the region during March of the same year.
The JAXA official site said that the IR2 camera along with IR1 camera was paused due to instability in power consumption. Three other cameras – long wave-infrared camera, ultraviolet imager and lightning and airglow camera still works in the probe. The authorities are trying ways to repair the spacecraft cameras.
Akatsuki was launched from Japan's Tanegashima space center on May 20, 2010. The probe failed to enter the Venus orbit on Dec 7, the same year due to its engine failure. It waited for five years in space, orbiting the sun, to make a final plunge into the Venus orbit on Dec. 6, 2015.
