Venus Probe Set to Reach Target

Accommodate Students writes "The BBC is reporting on the first space mission to Venus in a decade, which is about to reach its target. From the article: 'On Tuesday morning, a European robotic craft will perform a 50-minute-long engine burn to slow its speed enough to be captured by Venus' gravity. Venus Express will orbit our nearest planetary neighbour for about 500 Earth days to study its atmosphere, which has undergone runaway greenhouse warming.' If all goes well, it could shed important light on climate change here on Earth."

Comments

Moons

[MichaelSmith]

From TFA:

Moons venus: 0 earth: 1

I remember an old theory that the moon keeps Earth from boiling over by sweeping away much of the atmosphere over time. I wonder if this is still considered a significant factor?

Its worth noting that the moons of Mars are in much lower orbits than our moon, and mars has much less of an atmosphere than earth.

Re:Moons

[khayman80]

I remember an old theory that the moon keeps Earth from boiling over by sweeping away much of the atmosphere over time. I wonder if this is still considered a significant factor?

I've heard the same thing... in science fiction novels. Larry Niven, I believe. It may be true, but I've never seen any comprehensive explanation of how this is supposed to occur. Does the atmosphere somehow leak away on geological timescales through the Lagrange points somehow? I've got no idea. Does anyone know?

This idea does appeal to me, though, because if true it adds another factor to the Drake equation for finding *earthlike* civilizations in the galaxy. According to the impactor theory of the moon's origin, the moon's creation was a very improbable event. Perhaps that's why we don't see any Dyson spheres- you not only need a planet in the liquid water region of a solar system, you need that planet to be whacked at a very particular angle to form a moon large enough to prevent a Venus from forming instead of an Earth.

Its worth noting that the moons of Mars are in much lower orbits than our moon, and mars has much less of an atmosphere than earth.

It's also worth noting that Mars' moons are TINY. Phoebos and Deimos are 22 and 12 km in diameter, respectively. They're utterly insignificant.

Compare that to the Moon, which is comparable to Earth in both diameter (27% of the earth's) and to a lesser extent mass (1.2% of the earth's). In fact, some astronomers consider the Earth-moon system to be a double planet because of this fact.

Re:Moons

[SigILL]

I remember an old theory that the moon keeps Earth from boiling over by sweeping away much of the atmosphere over time.

No, but the Moon did slow down the rotation of the Earth by quite a bit. If Luna'd be lacking, Earth's surfaces would supposedly be battered by extremely strong winds.

It's theorised that Venus' climate isn't caused by its lack of a moon but because it's rotating way too slow (I got the climate-link from Stephen Baxter's Space, but I'm sure it's well documented in astronomic science). It takes about 243 days for Venus to rotate around its axis, and it's even rotating in the opposite direction as most of the rest of the (Sol system) planets.

Re:Moons

[The Fun Guy]

Without the moon, there would be no life on Earth.

When that huge impact happened, what was blown off was most of the lighter, surface material of the early Earth. All of those light silicates eventually clumped up to form the moon, leaving a body with a much thinner crust and a higher overall proportion of heavy metals. This made it much easier for convection currents to run inside the Earth's core, allowing the creation of a magnetic field. This deflected the solar wind, protecting the Earth from most of the hard radiation from the Sun. Venus doesn't have much in the way of protection:

Theories of the dynamos operating in the liquid cores of the newly accreted terrestrial planets suggest that there was a magnetic moment of Venus of the same order as Earth's for about the first billion years of Venus' life. During that time, thermal convection from the heat left over from accretion drove the dynamo. However, after that energy source diminished, there was apparently no source to replace it. While solid core formation in Earth's interior maintains its dynamo to this day by virtue of the related 'stirring' of the molten core around it, Venus appears to either lack the necessary internal ingredients (chemical or physical) for solid core formation, or to have ceased such processes at an earlier time if they resulted in complete core solidification or arrested core solidification.

It's the moon pulling on the Earth that keeps this "stirring" going, by tugging on the surface and slowing it at a faster rate than the core.

The relatively thin crust made it much easier for the surface to crack and float around in pieces. If it were really thick, like on Venus, it would be too rigid for easy cracking, bumping, and grinding. Plate tectonics causes a lot of carbon on the surface to be sucked under the surface and recycled.

Tidal forces caused by the moon also pulled on the early Earth atmosphere, causing it to expand upward beyond the protection of the magnetic field. Once up there, the gases were swept away.

Bacterial life in the clouds?

[Vandil X]

I've heard a variety of theories that the cloudy sky of Venus may have conditions that could possibly support bacterial/microscopic life (in this case "extremophiles").

I wonder of Venus Express will ever sample the Venusian atmosphere to see -- perhaps as an "Extended Extended Mission" as they deorbit the probe years from now.

Possibility of Life?

[Kranfer]

While I hope I am not the only one to hope this, but I do hope that this new probe might shed some light on the possibility of life in the upper atmosphere of Venus. I seem tor ecall a few space.com astrobiology articles on how the upper astmosphere without its crushing presures and temperatures might be a cradle for micro-life. I know that Venus is not the only body in the solar system that might hold life, I guess Lo and Europa and Titan also hold the possibility with their large amounts if water, but I do hope they can spark more interest in looking into the solar system and beyond.

Global warming, beside the point

[Oldsmobile]

What causes global warming is totally beside the point!

Yet global warming is a fact, no-one disputes that (anymore). What are we going to do about it? In addition, oil is going to become harder and harder to extract. It IS a finite resource.

Right now we are looking at massive future crop failures. Massive hunger even in western countries.

Large scale flooding of important cities and centers of production, disruption to transportation and communication.

We should be planning for these, stockpiling food, re-thinking food production, massively reducing oil consumption (we'll need it later) and building flood protection.

The POINT is, none of this is POLITICALLY, or more importantly ECONOMICALLY possible right now.

And that is what we should be worrying about right now.

An aside on moons

[geobeck]

Years ago, Isaac Asimov wrote an article called Just Mooning Around that I read in a collection called Of Time and Space and Other Things.

In the article, Asimov calculated what he called the "tug-of-war ratio" for a particular satellite: the ratio of the sun's pull on a satellite to the primary's pull on that satellite. For Jupiter's satellites, for example, the Galilean moons are pulled much more strongly by Jupiter than by the Sun, whereas with the outer satellites Jupiter just barely wins the contest, making it likely that they are captured asteroids.

He goes on to calculate a maximum distance at which each planet is able to hold satellites. This gets interesting in the inner solar system. Mars' "tug-of-war distance" is just beyond where its two tiny moons happen to exist; Venus' maximum satellite distance is within its atmoshpere; and Mercury's maximum distance is beneath its surface. The Earth, of course, has no natural satellites within its maximum calculated distance.

So what's up with our Moon? At a quarter of a million miles away from us, the Sun pulls our Moon more than twice as strongly as the Earth does. Therefore, Asimov speculates, the Moon is not a true satellite of the Earth. He says that if you were to draw the Moon's orbit to scale, it would always be concave toward the Sun, and concludes that the Earth and the Moon are a binary planet system.

So the reason Venus has no moons is because it can't... then again the Earth can't have the moon it does either, but it managed to cheat somehow.

Re:Slow Rotation of Venus / Temperature of Dark Si

[SigILL]

Does anyone know what the daytime / nighttime temperature variations are on Venus?

Wikipedia mentions min/mean/max surface temperatures of -45.15 degC, 463.85 degC and 499.85 degC (-49.27 degF, 866.93 degF and 931.73 degF) respectively.

Seems to me there might be some interesting possibilities for life on Venus due to it's slow rotation.

Only if you're interested in a semi-nomadic lifestyle.

There have been proposals to establish human colonies in the cloudtops of Venus, which are much more livable temperature- and pressure-wise. These would have the advantage of being relatively easily movable so as to remain optimally positioned.