Radio Occultation experiments of Venus and Mars: similarities and differences

In the last decades Venus has not been explored as in the early days of interplanetary missions, yet today the interest has increased and different space agencies are preparing proposals for future missions. Venus provides a laboratory next door to our planet to study how rocky planets can form and evolve differently from Earth, even when they start out very similar. Our neighboring planet is the perfect example of what happens in a runaway greenhouse effect, and the state of its atmosphere is interesting in its own right, as it is directly linked to the story of water on the planet and ultimately to the big question of whether life could have arisen beyond Earth. The main purpose of this thesis is the study of the atmosphere of Venus through the radio occultation experiments performed by the Venus Express Mission (VEX), sent by the European Space Agency in 2005. In the frame of this investigation comparisons between the Venus atmosphere and Mars atmosphere are shown, in order to highlight the similarities and differences between the two planets. The conclusions derived from this work can potentially improve our knowledge and highlight new scientific results about the Venus atmosphere.