#venera program

[thererisesaredstar]

Surface of Venus captured by the Venera 13 probe (1982)

[siryl]

“Venera 13″ by Mattias Malmer.

[clio-muse-of-history]

October 18

In 1967, the Soviet space probe Venera 4 reached Venus and became the first spacecraft to measure another planet's atmosphere.

Scientists had long wondered about the composition of the Venusian atmosphere; it clearly had one (the reason Venus is so bright in the night sky is because of its proximity to Earth and its dense cloud cover).  Venus is nearly the same size as Earth, and is only 26 million miles/16 million kilometers closer to the Sun than our balmy little world.  It was possible that there were lush jungles under those ever-present clouds.

Venera 4 disabused us of those notions.  The Venusian atmosphere is almost entirely carbon dioxide, and the clouds are made of sulfuric acid.  The planetary surface is the hottest in the Solar System--hotter even than that of closest-to-the-Sun Mercury.  Thanks to a runaway greenhouse effect, the average surface temperature on Venus is 863 degrees Fahrenheit/462 degrees Celsius.  That is.......not comfortable.  Further complicating your Venus vacation plans, the atmosphere is incredibly dense, and the pressure at the surface is 92 times what we experience here on Earth.  Basically, it's like being 3000 feet under the ocean, if the ocean was 800 degrees and rained acid on you.  

So don't think about buying a time share there anytime soon, is what I'm saying.

[socialjusticeinamerica]

Failed Soviet-era spacecraft expected to crash back to Earth within days

A failed Soviet-era spacecraft that became trapped in Earth’s orbit by mistake more than 50 years ago is expected to crash back onto the pla

[siryl]

"Venera 14 on Venus" by James Hervat.  You can buy a print of this painting from his website.  I ought to do that someday.  All I did was save the sample image and Photoshop out the watermark.

The Soviet Union made seven successful landings on Venus between 1970 and 1981, the latest being the Venera 14.  All their landers looked like hats.  If I'm ever a director, I want to make a scene transition where a shot of a Venera probe dissolves to a shot of someone wearing a hat.  American Venus landers, by contrast, looked like Darth Maul's probe droids.  Only one was successful, the Pioneer Venus Day Probe in 1978.

I saw this painting, or a very similar one, in a book when I was little.  I remember feeling sad when my mother told me the lander melted.