Venus (planet)

2021

The first mission since the USSR to Venus is scheduled for November 11, 2029

In particular, as part of the Venerian program, it is planned to solve the problem of delivering soil to Earth from the second planet from the Sun

Roscosmos allocates 318 million rubles for the study of Venus

May 17, 2021 it became known about the allocation by Roscosmos of more than 318 million rubles for the study of Venus. These funds will be used to implement the first stage of the project, within the framework of which it is planned to create a Russian automatic station for studying this planet. More details here.

2020: Tomsk scientists clarify the map of Venus for Roscosmos and NASA

Specialists of the Geological and Geographical Faculty of Tomsk State University together with colleagues from Carleton University (Canada) compile detailed maps of fragments of the surface of Venus. This will help in choosing the future landing site of the orbiter with sampling at the Venus-D research mission, which is being prepared by Roscosmos and NASA Tomsk^[1]

As specified in the press service of TSU, Venus-D is a joint project of Roscosmos and NASA to send an orbiter and landing module to Venus to determine the composition of the material of surface structures and understand the geological processes that formed the surface of this planet. The flight is planned for the period between 2026 and 2033.

The task of the international research group, which included Ekaterina Antropova, a junior researcher at the GGF TSU Geochronology and Geodynamics Laboratory, and Carlos Braga, a 3rd year student at GGF, is to create detailed maps of fragments of the surface of Venus, 10 times higher in scale than earlier studies.

As GGF scientists explain, at present most of Venus is charted on an intelligence scale - 1: 10,000,000, 1: 5,000,000. The planned regional mapping will be of a smaller scale - 1: 500,000.

"The results obtained will become the basis for a more detailed study of the surface of the planet, including during the research missions of Venus-D. To do this, it is necessary to take into account the potential safety of landing on a particular area; representativeness of materials, potential simplicity and quality of geochemical signal at the landing site; orbital limitations of the mission, "says Ekaterina Antropova.

The study will also be relevant for the exploration of land ore deposits that are associated with large eruptive provinces (TRC) formed by the introduction of huge amounts of mantle magmas and for assessing their impact on planet climate change.

Since the Earth and Venus are similar in size and some other characteristics, the processes that take place there can also be compared. It is currently recognized that the formation of instruments on Earth has had a significant impact on the climate, including, for example, the mass extinction of dinosaurs. There is an assumption that it was KIP that caused a sharp change in the climate on Venus - as a result of the release of CO2 and the increasing greenhouse effect after large-scale eruptions of volcanoes, life may have disappeared there.

"Moreover, since erosion processes on the surface of Venus are almost absent, in the pictures we can observe and analyze structures similar to Earth's in their primary form, when the destructive force of wind, water and other agents has not yet violated the original appearance," adds Ekaterina Antropova.

That is, on Venus, geological objects are kind of "mothballed" due to the lack of erosion and other phenomena, they can be studied - and it is possible to understand exactly how the changes took place.

Scientists have already charted several areas of Venus with multi-directional volcanic flows, areas of shield volcano fields and entire large volcanic centers. For example, they found out that the Atira Mons volcano, on which Carlos Braga is working, is 500 km in diameter, this is comparable to the length of the Tomsk region from north to south. The next stage of work will be a demonstration of materials at an international industry conference, which is scheduled for March 2021 in Texas, USA.

The Laboratory of Geochronology and Geochemistry of TSU was created with the support of the Government of the Russian Federation as part of the megagrant "Origin, metallogeny, climatic effects and cyclicity of large eruptive provinces (TRC)." Scientists from TSU, USA, China, Canada and Spain are working on the project. The leader is Canadian scientist Richard Ernst.

1970: The Venus 7 landing vehicle turned to the surface of Venus

On August 17, 1970, the Soviet landing vehicle Venus-7 returned to the surface of Venus - humanity received the first information about the neighboring planet. The first soft landing of the Earth's apparatus on another planet.

Venus 7

Lyudmila Zasova, head of the laboratory of the Institute for Space Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, about the landing of Venus-7: Prior to this, the missions of six vehicles, which were called Venus, were unsuccessful. Venus-4, -5 and -6 stations entered the atmosphere, but they were crushed at an altitude of 20-25 kilometers above the surface. After landing, Venus 7 realized what pressure there was on the planet - 90 atmospheres. It was amazing for everyone. The temperature was more or less known.

The landing station gave other scientific discoveries: it measured wind speed, atmospheric composition, radiation level. The information was useful for preparing the landings of the following devices, including Venus-9, which was the first to photograph what is hiding under the dense clouds of the planet's atmosphere.

When the Venus 7 descended, they did not even know the liquid surface or solid. They believed that there could be oil lakes, jungle. But when they sat down, it became clear that the surface there was rocky, hard.

The main part of the planet's surface is similar in composition to terrestrial volcanic basalts - frozen lava from volcanic eruptions that occurred 700 million years ago. Only 8% of the surface of the planet is a mountainous area in which ancient rocks are preserved. There may be traces of oceans, traces of minerals that were in the ocean, maybe some traces of remnants of evidence that once there was life in these oceans.

Venus 7 started on August 12, 1970. Four months later, on December 15, her descent vehicle entered the atmosphere of the planet, during aerodynamic braking, it reduced speed from 11.5 km/s to 200 m/s, reaching estimated overloads of 350 units, and further movement was carried out on a parachute made of heat-resistant fabric.

Ground communication equipment received radio signals from the descent vehicle within 53 minutes - from the moment the plasma section of the descent ended, including when it sank to the surface. Unfortunately, when entering the atmosphere, the telemetry switch failed, and the station transmitted information only about the ambient temperature.

But also by indirect signs (the time of descent of the descent vehicle in the atmosphere, the length of the descent trajectory, the speed and nature of the change in the data transmitted from it), scientists managed to make a profile of the correspondence of the ambient temperature to the altitude to the surface of the planet.

Previous ideas about the gas shell of the Morning Star turned out to be erroneous. The flight of the Soviet probe helped establish the state of its atmosphere: on the surface of the planet at the landing site of the descent vehicle, the temperature was recorded - 475 ± 20 ° С, pressure - 90 ± 15 atm.

According to the Doppler shift of the radio signal going from the descent vehicle to the Earth, it was possible to assess the quality of the surface on which the station sat. A small "braking path" (the depth at which the descent vehicle buried into the soil after its free fall as a result of premature firing of parachute slings) indicated that the Venerian "soil" resembles something intermediate between sand and volcanic tuff.

The Venus 7 mission was a new achievement of Soviet engineers and scientists and demonstrated a new level of their technical capabilities.

Diagram of the interplanetary automatic station "Venus-7." Photo from RGANTD archive

1960s

The first attempt to reach Venus was made on February 12, 1961: the Venus-1 interplanetary station, developed at OKB-1 under the leadership of S.P. Korolev, went into flight from Baikonur. However, leaving the Earth at 23 million km after two weeks, the spacecraft stopped responding. The last signals from him were received on February 27, and at that time it was a record for long-range space radio communications^[2]

Subsequent missions were sent to the Morning Star in November 1965 with a difference of four days: Venus-2 and Venus-3 were equipped with equipment for transmitting images and studying the main parameters of the atmosphere and surface of the planet. On February 27, 1966, Venus-2 passed from the target at a distance of 24 thousand km, and Venus-3 even hit it, delivering a pennant depicting the coat of arms of the USSR to the surface of the second planet of the solar system on March 1. The flight tasks were not fully completed due to the failure of a number of systems, however, during the flight to Earth valuable information about interplanetary space was transmitted.

A new stage in the research of the heavenly sister of Earth was discovered by Venus 4, which started on June 12, 1967. It was a station made according to old drawings, but already at a new enterprise: in 1965 OKB-1 transferred the subject of lunar and interplanetary probes to the Lavochkin Machine-Building Plant, and the new "heads" qualitatively changed the thermal control system of the orbiter and completely redesigned the lander.

On October 18, 1967, the interplanetary station descent vehicle entered the upper layers of the Venerian atmosphere and made an hour and a half parachute descent, transmitting information about the density, chemical composition, pressure and temperature of gases.

As he plunged, the gas ocean of Venus became hotter and denser. At elevation 270℃ and 18, the shell burst, and the descent vehicle collapsed, puzzling scientists: previously it was believed that the pressure on the surface of Venus did not exceed 10 atmospheres. However, reports from the probe showed that its atmosphere is much denser and hotter.

The descent vehicles of the Venus 5 and Venus 6 missions, launched to the Blue Planet in January 1969, were strengthened, but they could not overcome the atmosphere, limiting themselves to transmitting data on its chemical composition and temperature in a wide range of altitudes. The analysis showed that to land on Venus, the device must have the strength of a bathyscaphe and withstand a pressure six times higher than that laid down in the structure earlier.

The new requirements were taken into account when developing Venus-7, the body of which was made of titanium alloy and designed for external pressure up to 180 atmospheres and overload of over 300 units. Inside it were measuring equipment, power supplies and a thermal control system. Improved thermal insulation allowed the descent vehicle to actively function on the surface of the planet - at maximum pressure and external temperature up to 530 ° C - for at least 30 minutes.

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