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Venus Express Blasts Off
kitzilla writes "The European Space Agency's Venus Express probe has been successfully launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The mission's first attempt was scrubbed last month after technicians spotted a problem with the lift vehicle. In about five months, Venus Express will pull into orbit around our closest planetary neighbor and begin five months of scheduled observations. On the short list of mission objectives: a detailed mapping of Venus' surface, a survey of the planet's complex atmosphere, and a look into the possibility of active Venusian volcanoes."
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/0 8/034230&tid=160&tid=98
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
...Google Venus is on the way ??? :-)
37 megs, quicktime movie.
The ESA's Venus express portal
And a load of artist impressions, photos and cgi videos are on ESA's site here
A great day for the ESA, the data gathered from this and in comparison to that from the Mars Express is really going to give some good information on planetary warming and cooling.
Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society is keeping a running tally of events on the Society's official weblog. In general, the weblog is a great source of space science news. According to her latest post, Venus Express has already reported back to ground control and is in healthy condition.
There's also the obligatory Wikipedia article on Venus Express, which has a nice description of what the craft will be doing.
we can get Government funded missions to map and photograph other planets that place the results in the public domain but we can't get Government funded missions to map and photograph our own planet which put the results in the public domain? It occurs to me that the latter would not only be substantially cheaper to do but also far more useful to the general populous. A multi-national effort to provide such mapping would cost each country peanuts and would provide numerous benifits.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Yes, absolutely. Who cares ....
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..... bzzt .. sorry this Kansas Educational broadcast has been interrupted by the real world.
... bzzt, back to the Kansas educational department broadcast ...
.....
In fact let's ban all forms of research
In fact let's ban all forms of thought. And art, and music, oh, and teaching any form of science - especially that evilolution stuff.
Let's ban
Research doesn't always give directly useful results. It might - or it might not. The process of doing research might give useful results - or it might not.
In fact doing almost anything might give useful results. Or not.
But backing off from researching the local area - now that's really silly. Volcanoes on Venus - who cares? Well I do, for one. Any better understanding of volcanoes would seem to be a useful thing to me - there are quite a few in the world. It would be nice to learn something about them in a completely different environment.
Yes, and let's ban the Internet, and electricity, and inoculations, and
"Cats like plain crisps"
So it's great to see a space mission that combines engineering with real science and that isn't just predicated on the public's gullibility as to the long odds of ET life.
I know that the /. 'love all things space' crowd will mod me down, but I've got Karma to burn.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
If the human race innately took your attitude, we'd still be living in caves.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Venus is an extreme case of climatology. It's about the same size as the Earth. It actually receives less sunlight than the Earth, even though it's closer to the Sun, because its cloud layer reflects so much incoming radiation. But it's hot hot hot.
That atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, with some nitrogen, water vapour and sulphur dioxide. It's hot, acidic, and the pressure is the sort of thing you only get on Earth in the deep seas.
Now, we have to wonder how Venus got that way. One possibility for how Venus got such a thick, acidic atmosphere is that it is continually undergoing massive volcanic activity. If we can observe Venusian volcanoes, we can determine to what extent they might reasonably affect the climate on Venus.
If we can understand Venus, then we can use it to stress-test our planetary climate models and thereby improve our understanding of comparable processes on Earth. It shouldn't be too hard to think of a reason why we might urgently want to improve our understanding of Earth's climate systems as regards atmospheric carbon dioxide content...
There's a very good writeup of Venus and why it's interesting here.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
What rot. If that was the case we'd have used an Ariane. The rocket used here was Soyuz / Fregat - a Russian launcher.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
That there will be active volcanos on Venus, if only for the simple fact that it's apparently close enough to the Sun to be "as hot as hell", but not quite close enough to be baked to a cinder like Mercury, plus there was some interesting things observed when we last sent a probe - even with lens-cap problem.
teewurstmann does raise an interesting question - "Why are we looking for active volcanos on Venus?"
The answers "Because we can." or "It'll lead to great jumps in science." would not suffice with your average Joe Bloggs though, and if we wish to increase our ventures into space, or even just continue with space exploration altogether, then we're going to need a "hook", or a goal that we can present to the public in a unified answer that satisfies their curiosity and is not an outright lie - although a little white lie like, for example "We hope to discover a significant mineral deposit on the moon which will facilitate longer journeys into space." or "By studying the metals and minerals on Mercury we can discover how to create stronger, more tolerable materials on Earth which will create better housing, stronger and lighter cars..." etc.
Come up with a Grand Idea if you like - "We're going to save mankind."
Now seriously, who wouldn't think that saving our species is a noble goal? We don't have to tell the public "from ourselves", we'll just keep'em guessing - the continual doses of paranoia we're getting from our governments aren't doing too much harm, so we'll use a little "poetic licence".
Why are we looking for volcanos on Venus? Why not? Why not start at Mercury, or Venus, or Mars, or anywhere else in our solar system and look at it like one of those colour tests a few of us must have done in chemistry in high school.
Oh look, Mercury is mainly this colour, which means it's made mostly of this mineral... Venus is very acidic, and has all sorts of interesting liquid metals at venusian "room" temperature... Mars seems to have water, or the evidence of water...
We study, and learn, and find out how our solar system is constructed, and then one day, maybe if we don't destroy ourselves beforehand, we use the models we've made from this gathering of knowledge and we create plans.
We plan which solar systems nearby would be likely to have a sufficiently earth-like blue-green planet. We plan where we could find in our galaxy various minerals, fuels, and other resources needed to build, maintain, and power our ships as we go searching for other life, and other worlds. We plan to spread out, to colonise the most idyllic locations, and make sure that our species survives through sheer weight of numbers. We plan to live, to explore, to discover, to learn, to expand our minds and evolve.
We've been sitting on this little blue-green marble for a long time now, long enough to nurture the maths, physics, chemistry, and biological sciences enough to show us how to get up and explore the rest of our solar system. Now we need to use that knowledge and help ourselves before a meteor, asteroid, or sheer stupidity kills us.
Why explore the solar system? Why pick over rocks on Venus?
Because these are our baby steps, our first tentative journeys into space, the beginning of what I, and I'd hope many of you too, would dearly wish to be the start of our much greater journey into the galaxy.
Mistakes will be made, and lives will, as they have, be lost, but those people, our first space explorers, did not die in vain. We already have gained much knowledge, and it may not be used to any large extent now, but it will prove to be invaluable in the future.
I only hope that politics, greed, apathy, and stupidity don't condemn us to live our final days here, stuck on a world we could so easily leave if we simply worked at it.
His name is Robert Paulsen...
Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus... Its just an excuse to check out some hot Women!