I’ve Finally Got Round To Continuing With My Series Of Photos About The Planets Of The Solar System!

Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Go for Venus! Fifty-five years ago this week, Mariner 2, the first fully successful mission to explore another planet launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Here are 10 things to know about Mariner 2.

1. Interplanetary Cruise 

On August 27, 1962, Mariner 2 launched on a three and a half month journey to Venus. The little spacecraft flew within 22,000 miles (about 35,000 kilometers) of the planet. 

2. Quick Study 

Mariner 2’s scan of Venus lasted only 42 minutes. And, like most of our visits to new places, the mission rewrote the books on what we know about Earth’s sister planet.

3. Hot Planet 

The spacecraft showed that surface temperature on Venus was hot enough to melt lead: at least 797 degrees Fahrenheit (425 degrees Celsius) on both the day and night sides.

4. Continuous Clouds 

The clouds that make Venus shine so bright in Earth’s skies are dozens of miles thick and permanent. It’s always cloudy on Venus, and the thick clouds trap heat - contributing to a runaway “greenhouse effect.”

5. Night Light 

Those clouds are why Venus shines so brightly in Earth’s night sky. The clouds reflect and scatter sunlight, making Venus second only to our Moon in celestial brightness.

6. Under Pressure 

Venus’ clouds also create crushing pressure. Mariner 2’s scan revealed pressure on the surface of Venus is equal to pressure thousands of feet under Earth’s deepest oceans.

7. Slow Turn 

Mariner 2 found Venus rotates very slowly, and in the opposite direction of most planets in our solar system.

8. Space Travel Is Tough 

Mariner 2 was a remarkable accomplishment, considering that in 1962 engineers were still in the very early stages of figuring out how operate spacecraft beyond Earth orbit. The first five interplanetary missions launched - by the U.S. and Soviet Union, the only two spacefaring nations at the time - were unsuccessful.

9. Not Ready for Its Close Up 

Mariner 2 carried no cameras. The first close-up pictures of Venus came from NASA’s Mariner 10 in 1974.  

10. Hot Shot 

The first (and still incredibly rare) photo of the surface of Venus was taken by the Soviet Venera 9 lander, which survived for a little more than a minute under the crushing pressure and intense heat on the ground.

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Pioneer Venus Artwork

Artist’s concept of Pioneer Venus mission approaching the planet.

During a 14-year orbit of Venus, Pioneer Venus 1 used radar to map the surface at a resolution of 75 km (47 miles). It found the planet to be generally smoother than Earth, though with a mountain higher than Mt. Everest and a chasm deeper than the Grand Canyon. The orbiter also found Venus to be more spherical than Earth, consistent with the planet’s much slower rotation rate (one Venus day equals 243 Earth days). It confirmed that Venus has little, if any, magnetic field and found the clouds to consist mainly of sulfuric acid. Measurements of this chemical’s decline in the atmosphere over the course of the mission suggested that the spacecraft arrived soon after a large volcanic eruption, which may also account for the prodigious lightning it observed.

After a course correction on 16 August 1978, Pioneer Venus 2 released the 1.5-m diameter large probe on 16 November 1978, at about 11.1 million km from the planet. Four days later, the bus released the three small probes while 9.3 million km from Venus. All five components reached the Venusian atmosphere on 9 December 1978, with the large probe entering first.

Data from the probes indicated that between 10 and 50 km, there is almost no convection in the Venusian atmosphere. Below a haze layer at 30 km, the atmosphere appears to be relatively clear. Amazingly, two of three probes survived the hard impact. The so-called Day Probe transmitted data from the surface for 67.5 minutes before succumbing to the high temperatures and power depletion.

Credit: NASA/Rick Guidice

Venus adores the moon by littletinperson on Flickr.

NASA considering cloud cities and air ships for manned mission to Venus

Cloud cities. On Venus. No, this is not the pitch for a potentially awesome science fiction story — this is a real-life proposal currently being considered by NASA. 

Though Venus’s surface is far too volatile for us to visit anytime soon, scientists believe there’s a “sweet spot” in the Venusian atmosphere that would be the perfect place to fly some exploratory air ships and eventually establish a legit cloud city. Even better? They think it could be a whole lot easier than going to Mars. Well, kinda.

At approximately 31 miles above the planet’s surface, you’ll find one atmosphere of pressure and gravity just a tad lower than that of Earth. The average temperature, though admittedly hot, is just 17 degrees (Celsius) above the average Earth temperature. Hot, sure, but not unmanageable. Compare that to the wasteland of Mars, and it doesn’t sound too bad. Plus, since Venus is closer to the sun than Earth, that height is the perfect spot to tap into solar power — which could keep the ships (and cities?) running forever.

The Space Mission Analysis Branch of NASA’s Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate at Langley Research Center is working on a proposal to send a robotic probe followed by manned air ships to the planet, leading to a permanent settlement. The five phases would include robotic exploration, a crewed mission to orbit on a 30-day mission, a crewed mission to the atmosphere on a 30-day mission, a crewed mission to the atmosphere for one year and finally a permanent human presence.

So, why might this be easier (in some ways) than a mission to Mars? The distance involved. A round-trip jaunt to Venus (440 days) would take almost half the travel time as a mission to Mars (650-900 days). But that doesn’t mean every aspect is easier. As IEEE Spectrum’s Evan Ackerman noted in a report that quotes NASA scientist Dale Arney, putting all the pieces together in motion above an alien planet wouldn’t be for the faint of heart:

The crewed mission would involve a Venus orbit rendezvous, where the airship itself (folded up inside a spacecraft) would be sent to Venus ahead of time. Humans would follow in a transit vehicle (based on NASA’s Deep Space Habitat), linking up with the airship in Venus orbit.

Since there’s no surface to land on, the “landing” would be extreme, to say the least. “Traditionally, say if you’re going to Mars, you talk about ‘entry, descent, and landing,’ or EDL,” explains Arney. “Obviously, in our case, ‘landing’ would represent a significant failure of the mission, so instead we have ‘entry, descent, and inflation,’ or EDI.” The airship would enter the Venusian atmosphere inside an aeroshell at 7,200 meters per second. Over the next seven minutes, the aeroshell would decelerate to 450 m/s, and it would deploy a parachute to slow itself down further. At this point, things get crazy. The aeroshell would drop away, and the airship would begin to unfurl and inflate itself, while still dropping through the atmosphere at 100 m/s. As the airship got larger, its lift and drag would both increase to the point where the parachute became redundant. The parachute would be jettisoned, the airship would fully inflate, and (if everything had gone as it’s supposed to), it would gently float to a stop at 50 km above Venus’s surface.

Considering the whole world is focused on Mars these days, even the team behind the proposal notes it’s unlikely for the focus to shift anytime soon. But the project is still a fascinating pitch. Seriously, can you even imagine a real-life Cloud City? Lando would be proud. 

(Via io9, IEEE Spectrum)

(NASA)  Venus at Night in Infrared from Akatsuki

Image Credit: JAXA, ISAS, DARTS; Processing & Copyright: Damia Bouic

Why is Venus so different from Earth? To help find out, Japan launched the robotic Akatsuki spacecraft which entered orbit around Venus late in 2015 after an unplanned five-year adventure around the inner Solar System. Even though Akatsuki was past its original planned lifetime, the spacecraft and instruments were operating so well that much of its original mission was reinstated. Also known as the Venus Climate Orbiter, Akatsuki’s instruments investigated unknowns about Earth’s sister planet, including whether volcanoes are still active, whether lightning occurs in the dense atmosphere, and why wind speeds greatly exceed the planet’s rotation speed. In the featured image taken by Akatsuki’s IR2 camera, Venus’s night side shows a jagged-edged equatorial band of high dark clouds absorbing infrared light from hotter layers deeper in Venus’ atmosphere. The bright orange and black stripe on the upper right is a false digital artifact that covers part of the much brighter day side of Venus. Analyses of Akatsuki images and data has shown that Venus has equatorial jet similar to Earth’s jet stream.

Source

Transit of Venus in 2012

Credit: NASA / SDO

Why We Need to Get Back to Venus

Paul Byrne explains why we need to get back to our cosmic neighbor.

Thoughts on revisting Venus

Solar System

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Fibonacci you crazy bastard….

As seen in the solar system (by no ridiculous coincidence), Earth orbits the Sun 8 times in the same period that Venus orbits the Sun 13 times! Drawing a line between Earth & Venus every week results in a spectacular FIVE side symmetry!!

Lets bring up those Fibonacci numbers again: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34..

So if we imagine planets with Fibonacci orbits, do they create Fibonacci symmetries?!

You bet!! Depicted here is a:

2 sided symmetry (5 orbits x 3 orbits)

3 sided symmetry (8 orbits x 5 orbits)

5 sided symmetry (13 orbits x 8 orbits) - like Earth & Venus

8 sided symmetry (21 orbits x 13 orbits)

I wonder if relationships like this exist somewhere in the universe….

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