Venus has the highest average surface temperature of any planet in our Solar System.
Its surface averages about 465 degrees Celsius, hot enough to melt lead. Venus is hotter than Mercury even though Mercury is closer to the Sun because Venus has an exceptionally dense atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide. That atmosphere creates an intense runaway greenhouse effect, trapping heat near the surface.
The pressure at Venus’s surface is about 92 times Earth’s sea-level pressure. Clouds made largely of sulfuric acid surround the planet, and winds high in the atmosphere can circle Venus much faster than the planet rotates.
Venus rotates very slowly and in the opposite direction to most planets. A Venusian solar day lasts about 117 Earth days, while one orbit around the Sun takes about 225 Earth days. Soviet Venera spacecraft achieved the first successful landings on another planet’s surface there in the 1970s.