The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is seeking a permanent manned presence in Venus' atmosphere.

It's moving closer to launching a project to colonize the inhospitable planet of Venus. A possible 30-day manned mission to Earth's closest planetary neighbor looms on the horizon.

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NASA's plan is to build a blimp city floating 30 miles above the scorching surface of Venus. There, a team of astronauts will make their home as they study one of our solar system's fieriest planets.

The surface of Venus has more volcanoes than any other planet in the solar system. Venus is also known as the Morning Star and is named after Venus, the Roman Goddess of Love and Beauty.

It shone the brightest among the five planets known to ancient astronomers.

Venus has a mean temperature of 462 degrees Celsius (862 degrees Fahrenheit) and an atmospheric pressure 92 times greater than Earth's.

To successfully push through with the mission, NASA has developed a project called the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC). A preliminary feasibility study has been carried out on how robots and humans could make a Venus mission possible.

"One concept is a lighter-than-air vehicle that could carry either a host of instruments and probes, or a habitat and ascent vehicle for a crew of two astronauts to explore Venus for up to a month," said aerospace engineer Christopher Jones.

The study they carried out showed the mission will need less time to complete than crewed missions to other planets. HAVOC could even be a practice run for a mission to Mars.

"Eventually, a short duration human mission would allow us to gain experience having humans live at another world, with the hope that it would someday be possible to live in the atmosphere permanently," Jones said.

TagsNASA, Project Havoc, venus, Floating City