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ESA to Send Spacecraft to Venus
teeto writes to tell us The International Herald Tribune is reporting that the European Space Agency is planning to send a spacecraft to peer at Venus." From the article: "If the robot craft pulls off the complex maneuver of slowing down enough to swing into orbit, scientists hope it will help solve the mystery of how the shrouded, churning atmosphere of Venus formed and how it maintains the planet's broiler-like temperatures."
"ESA to Send Spacecraft to Venus"? They already did, Venus Express launched on 2006-11-09, it arives at Veuns on Tuesday.
Is this article a bit late?
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See here:
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?f
The thing is due to achieve orbit in a few days.
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
Keep in mind that Venus averages a solar irradiance almost twice that of earth. Any water that would've existed in the planet would have boiled off to the upper atmosphere with the hydrogen getting carried off by the solar wind.
Check out http://www.mentallandscape.com/V_Venus.htm for an excellent archive of the Soviet exploration of Venus.
Venera 9 sent image telemetry for 50 minutes. It scanned 174 of the panorama from left to right, and then 124 scanning right to left.
They drilled, photographed, and used penetrometers on the surface. Each mission lasts a few hours to days before the atmosphere crumples the spacecraft like a soda can due to the pressure. Much different than life on Mars!
Space and Computers.
The Discovery Science channel is running a special, "Venus Unveiled", about the planet and this ESA program. It airs several times during the next 2 weeks.
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http://science.discovery.com/tvlistings/episode.j
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
1 - Suit and machinery design for Mars are overwhelmingly easier. (Think Mars = suburban backyard. Venus = two feet under flowing lava on the bottom of the Marianas Trench.)
2 - Nobody has figured out how to get rid of the gigatons of carbon that would have to be removed from the Venusian atmophere. (You can't just convert it to bricks and pile it up - it's flammable as hell.)
Where's the love and the dreams for Venus?
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right here in this here paper is where it is.
http://powerweb.grc.nasa.gov/pvsee/publications/v
From the link:
Abstract. Although the surface of Venus is an extremely hostile environment, at about 50 kilometers above the
surface the atmosphere of Venus is the most earthlike environment (other than Earth itself) in the solar system. It is
proposed here that in the near term, human exploration of Venus could take place from aerostat vehicles in the
atmosphere, and that in the long term, permanent settlements could be made in the form of cities designed to float at
about fifty kilometer altitude in the atmosphere of Venus.
"As far as I am aware, we know a lot less about the surface of Venus than we do about the surface of Mars or say, Mercury, or even Pluto."
Since the Magellan probe (which someone else already pointed you to), we've known more about the surface of Venus than we have about the Earth (oceans get in the way). Mars has been similarly mapped within the past decade or so, thanks to various orbiters. Mercury is something of the bastard child of the inner solar system; there's a probe on the way now, but the best we have is from a Mariner 10 fly-by that photographed most of one side of the planet before most of us were born.
Pluto... we're not even all that sure there is a "surface," at least for half of its orbit.
Actually, the view from the surface is surprisingly clear, see these shots made by the Russian Venera 13 lander. Apparently, the bottom kilometers of the atmosphere are actually transparant.
The Soviets sent probes to Venus a while back and retured pictures. Color pictures in the visible spectrum.
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It has a horizon and due to the extreme fisheye it is perhaps difficult to tell just how far the horizon is, but it appears to be perhaps 10 meters or a bit more.
http://www.mentallandscape.com/V_DigitalImages.ht
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95