A Couple Of You Have Given Us Great Topic Ideas For Inforgraphics, But If There Is Anything Else That

Venus as seen from the Mariner 10 probe taken in 1974

"NASA Langley researchers want to get a better idea about conditions on our nearest planetary neighbor, Venus, so they have come up with HAVOC or a High Altitude Venus Operational Concept – a lighter-than-air rocket ship that would help send two astronauts on a 30-day mission to explore the planet’s atmosphere. Exploration of Venus is a challenge not only because its smog-like sulfuric acid-laced atmosphere, but also its extremely hot surface temperature and extremely high air pressure on the surface."  

"The video shows a human mission that’s part of a multi-phase campaign to explore and potentially settle Venus. Before the mission in the video occurred, there would be similar robotic missions to test the technologies and better understand the atmosphere. Eventually, a short duration human mission would allow us to gain experience having humans live at another world, with the hope that it would someday be possible to live in the atmosphere permanently (hinted at in the closing shot of the video)."

Venera

The Venera series space probes were developed by the Soviet Union between 1961 and 1984 to gather data from Venus, Venera being the Russian name for Venus. As with some of the Soviet Union’s other planetary probes, the later versions were launched in pairs with a second vehicle being launched soon after the first of the pair.

Ten probes from the Venera series successfully landed on Venus and transmitted data from the surface of Venus, including the two Vega program and Venera-Halley probes. In addition, thirteen Venera probes successfully transmitted data from the atmosphere of Venus.

Among the other results, probes of the series became the first human-made devices to enter the atmosphere of another planet (Venera 4 on October 18, 1967), to make a soft landing on another planet (Venera 7 on December 15, 1970), to return images from the planetary surface (Venera 9 on June 8, 1975), and to perform high-resolution radar mapping studies of Venus (Venera 15 on June 2, 1983). The later probes in the Venera series successfully carried out their mission, providing the first direct observations of the surface of Venus. Since the surface conditions on Venus are extreme, the probes only survived on the surface for durations varying between 23 minutes (initial probes) up to.

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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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Could we create dark matter?

85% of the matter in our universe is a mystery. We don’t know what it’s made of, which is why we call it dark matter. But we know it’s out there because we can observe its gravitational attraction on galaxies and other celestial objects. 

We’ve yet to directly observe dark matter, but scientists theorize that we may actually be able to create it in the most powerful particle collider in the world. That’s the 27 kilometer-long Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, in Geneva, Switzerland.

So how would that work? In the LHC, two proton beams move in opposite directions and are accelerated to near the speed of light. At four collision points, the beams cross and protons smash into each other.

Protons are made of much smaller components called quarks and gluons. 

In most ordinary collisions, the two protons pass through each other without any significant outcome.

However, in about one in a million collisions, two components hit each other so violently, that most of the collision energy is set free producing thousands of new particles. 

It’s only in these collisions that very massive particles, like the theorized dark matter, can be produced.

So it takes quadrillions of collisions combined with theoretical models to even start to look for dark matter. That’s what the LHC is currently doing. By generating a mountain of data, scientists at CERN are hoping to find more tiny bumps in graphs that will provide evidence for yet unknown particles, like dark matter. Or maybe what they’ll find won’t be dark matter, but something else that would reshape our understanding of how the universe works entirely. 

And that’s part of the fun at this point. We have no idea what they’re going to find.

From the TED-Ed Lesson Could we create dark matter? - Rolf Landua

Animation by Lazy Chief

On this day, but in 1974 the NASA spacecraft Mariner 10 made its closest approach to Venus.

Credit: NASA / Mariner 10

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)

Venus, viewed through violet and near-infrared filters.

The 4 Terrestrial Planets