Venus, Viewed Through Violet And Near-infrared Filters.

Please Build A Cloud City Over Venus 

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

Credit: NASA / Mariner 10

"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)."

ASTEROID DAY 2018

On 30 June 1908, 110 years ago, a 40 m asteroid struck the Earth over Tunguska, Siberia.

Destroying an area of forest the size of Greater London, this was the most significant impact event in Earth’s recent history.

Now recognised by the United Nations as Asteroid Day, 30 June marks a global opportunity to raise awareness of the threat and opportunity posed by the numerous rocky bodies traversing space.

Since 2009, ESA has played a leading role in the global hunt for risky asteroids and comets – known formally to astronomers as near-Earth objects (NEO) – and is currently developing cutting-edge widefield telescopes that will have the ability to scan the entire sky in just 48 hours.

ESA also carries out crucial analysis as part of its Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme and mobilises observatories and astronomers worldwide through its SSA NEO Coordination Centre at the Agency’s ESRIN facility in Italy.

Each year, Asteroid Day is broadcast live across the globe with a packed programme that brings together astronauts, rock stars and scientists.

Highlighting our potentially vulnerable place in space, the live event also describes the many ingenious and yet not-far-from scifi potential solutions to these dangerous roaming rocks.

Each year hundreds of regional events also take place, with 78 countries so far having hosted concerts, community events, lectures and much more.

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

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Why doesn't Venus have a magnetosphere?

For many reasons, Venus is sometimes referred to as "Earth's twin" (or "sister planet," depending on who you ask). Like Earth, it is terrestrial (i.e. rocky) in nature, composed of silicate minerals and metals that are differentiated between an iron-nickel core and silicate mantle and crust. But when it comes to their respective atmospheres and magnetic fields, our two planets could not be more different.

Information on the lack of a Venusian magnetosphere

Craters on Venus.