December 15 – Celebrating a Soviet Space Feat

nPostednon December 15, 2016

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Then“Space Race” between the Soviet Union and the United States, backnin the second half of the 20^th Century, was superncompetitive and nationalistic – in other words, very “rah! rah!nmy country! – not nearly as nice as the current science-orientedncooperation between Russia, the U.S., and other space-faring nations.

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nButnof course it was WAY preferable to war between our two nations!

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nAndnthe Space Race did motivate some great accomplishments, as eachnnation tried to be first to do X, Y, or Z.

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nOnnthis date in 1970, the Soviet Union became the first nation tonsuccessfully soft-land a spacecraft onto a planet. The spacecraft wasnVenera 7, and the planet was Venus.

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nSoft-landingnis, of course, the opposite of crash-landing. The Soviet Union wasnfirst to crash-land a spacecraft on Venus, too – they accomplishednthat with Venera 3 in 1966 – and it was also the firstnnation to crash-land a spacecraft onto any body in space. (Thatnfirst-ever was waaaaaaayyyyyy back in 1959, when a Soviet spacecraftnintentionally crashed onto the Moon.)

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nCrash-landingnis cool – scientists get all kinds of data and photos transmittednback until the actual moment of impact – but soft-landing is evenncooler. With a soft-landing, the spacecraft can continue to takenphotos and gather and send information about everything from soil andnair to temperature and other weather conditions. Also, of course,nmanned expeditions have to be soft landings.

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nButnsoft-landing isn’t incredibly easy. The Soviets had to try four timesnto do a soft-landing on the Moon before they succeeded. And the Moonnis way easier than Venus – it’s closer, of course, and it has nonatmosphere. Venera 4, 5, and 6 were apparently crushed by atmosphericnpressure before they could impact Venus! n

nHoo,nboy, that atmosphere of Venus! It’s incredibly thick – about 90ntimes more mass pushing on every inch of the spacecraft than Earth’snair does. And it’s got a thick layer of sulfuric acid clouds – yes,nthe burn-the-skin, poisonous kind of acid! And it’s really, reallynhot! The greenhouse effect we’re nervous about here on Earth –noften called global warming or global climate change – has reallyngone crazy on Venus, and day-time temperatures reach more than 460ndegrees C (which is 860 degrees F!!!).

nBut after having several spacecraft being crushed by Venus’s atmosphere before they could be crushed by slamming onto the ground, Soviet engineers were able to build a space probe that could withstand the pressure and the acidic clouds

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nand the heat. The Venera 7 parachute might not have worked perfectly, because the spacecraft hit the ground harder than desired. And the probe seemed to go silent as soon as it did the not-all-that-soft soft-landing. But after a few weeks Soviet scientists discovered that a really weak signal had been transmitted for 20 minutes and was sitting, waiting to be discovered, on their recordings.
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nOur best guess is that, after landing, the probe had fallen on its side and therefore the medium-gain antenna was not able to send a strong signal to Earth.

nThanks to Venera 7, humans learned for the first time just how hellish Venus is!

The photo above is from a much later U.S. spacecraft,
and the picture below is an artist’s attempt to show us what Venus
would look like from the surface.

n(By the way, back in the long-ago past, people hoped that there would be all sorts of lifeforms and maybe even human-like creatures living on Venus.)

nHere is a strange video called “A Walk on Venus.” Of course it is totally fiction — humans haven’t ever landed on another planet — not yet, at least! — although of course astronauts have walked on the Moon.

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nAlso on this date: