On Feb. 10, 1958, scientists at MITs Lincoln Laboratory bounced radar waves off of Venus. At the time, Venus was at a point in its orbit called inferior combination, where it is directly in between the Earth and the sun. Researchers beamed a radar signal towards Venus, which had to do with 28 million miles away at the time. An image of Venus recorded by Mariner 10. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) It took about 5 minutes for the signal to bounce off of Venus and go back to Earth. This was somewhat much shorter than they anticipated, which implies that Venus was really closer to Earth than researchers thought at the time. Catch up on our whole “On This Day In Space” series on YouTube with this playlist. On This Day in Space Archive! Still insufficient area? Do not forget to have a look at our Space Image of the Day, and on the weekends our Best Space Photos and Top Space News Stories of the week. Email Hanneke Weitering at [email protected] or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom and on Facebook..
