Akatsuki probe successfully enters Venus orbit, returns images

Look how the cloud (or whatever it is) on the right is broken. The halves don't line up.

> This required placing the probe into "hibernation" or safe mode to prolong its life beyond the original 4.5-year design. JAXA expressed some confidence in keeping the probe operational, pointing to reduced battery wear, since the probe was then orbiting the Sun instead of its intended Venusian orbit

>At a press conference on 10 December, officials reported that Akatsuki's engines fired for less than three minutes, far short of what was required to enter into Venus orbit

>Three peri-Venus orbital maneuvers were executed on 1 November,[11] 10 and 21 November 2011 using the RCS thrusters. A total delta-V of 243.8 m/s was imparted to the spacecraft. Because the RCS thrusters' specific impulse is low compared to the specific impulse of the OME, the previously planned insertion into low Venusian orbit became impossible. Instead, the new plan was to place the probe in a highly elliptical orbit with an apoapsis of a hundred thousand kilometers and a periapsis of a few thousand kilometers from Venus.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akatsuki_(spacecraft)#Orbit_in...

There are several clever missions to Venus proposed in the decadanel planning. But Mars and outer moons have priority.

*survivable in terms of temperature. It still has a 96% carbon dioxide, oxygen free atmosphere, so not directly habitable. The temperature is about room temperature at an altitude of 55km with atmospheric pressure (and T=75C) at about 50km. Earth atmosphere would float in the more dense carbon dioxide atmosphere of venus. You could conceivably have an airship full of earth atmosphere where the cabin is within the balloon.