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Photos from the Surface of Venus

Posted by michael on from the land-down-under dept.

Mean_Nishka writes "I was surprised to learn that the Soviets sucessfully landed a number of probes on the surface of Venus (the probes were given the name 'Venera') in the 70's and early 80's. NASA has a small collection of images from four of the missions. The images aren't much, but offer a stunning view of the surface of Venus. You can view surface photos at this NASA site. Space.com has a great summary of the Venera program here."

8 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Camera mounting? by moosesocks · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Couldn't the Soviets have found a better place to mount their cameras? The pictures are awfuly obstructed, and the camera appears to be aimed at a bad angle.

    Brings new meaning to 'disposible spacecraft'

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    -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
    1. Re:Camera mounting? by barakn · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I suppose you would have preferred photos of a featureless sky and a flat horizon? The Soviets took photos of the only interesting things there: the rocks. And they included the base of the lander as a convenient scale. Venera 14, for example, landed in a region with basalt-like rocks. They are thin and flat in appearance, though, suggesting that the high pressure and temperatures at Venus's surface allowed the source magma to spread out and become very thin before cooling.

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  2. you were surprised? by egomaniac · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I thought this was common knowledge. I remember reading about it when I was in elementary school. Still pretty cool, of course, but this isn't some grand secret.

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    ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
  3. Dense atmosphere is the culprit by Colonel+Blimp · · Score: 2, Interesting
    As I recall when I saw the pictures years ago (there are I believe 2 colorized photos) the density of the atmosphere essentially warps the view that the camera had, so that the photos show a wide area but it doesn't look that way.

    Its like looking through gas fumes, lots of distortion. Add in the fact that its hot enough to melt lead and you have showers of sulfuric acid as well as a dense enough atmosphere to crush a man, its a wonder that with Soviet technology, they landed there and were able to get a few holiday snaps off!

  4. Landing on Venus easier than Mars in many ways by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Soviets had much more success with their Venus probes than with their Mars probes. The reason is that Venus' atmosphere is so thick that a probe practically floats down like it is under water. The top of the probes had a hat-like thingy that acted like a small parachute.

    On the flip-side, Mars landings are *still* difficult. It has enough gravity to require carefully timed decents, has wind gusts that can swing probes around, and sharp boulders, yet the atmosphere is not quite thick enough to make parachutes very effective. Mars ate up Soviet probes like Mars Bars, and a US probe also.

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    Table-ized A.I.
  5. Re:hmm by Kesha · · Score: 2, Interesting

    BEHEPA - Russian spelling of Venera, is the Russian word for Venus. I am sure this word is not indiginous to Russian language and most likely came from the Greeks. Venus is Latin. I don't think your analogy for genus/genera applies here.

    You say Venus de Milo, I say Venera Milosskaya.

    Paul.

  6. Soviet landers and Venus by daevt · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you read the blurbs by the pitures about the missions, you'll notice that these landers all had very short lives when they landed on Venus. There are rumored to be, and my astronomy teacher claims to have seen, videos of the Soviets using language not "fit for print" as they watched their probe being eaten by the less then friendly atmospere (which contains noticible amounts of the multi-zillions dollar probe-eating compound sulfuric acid.)

  7. Interesting linguistic point by misterpies · · Score: 2, Interesting


    It's not only latin neuter plurals that end in -a.
    In all indo-european languages, the neuter nominative, vocative and accusative plurals end in -a. Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, German, Polish, Russian etc. It's one of those odd signs that show how closely related these seemingly disparate languages (and many of the people who speak them) really are.

    (Of course many Indo-European languages lost the neuter gender anyway -- eg English, French, Persian -- so it doesn't apply to those)

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