Venus Probe Set to Reach Target 141
Accommodate Students writes "The BBC is reporting on the first space mission to Venus in a decade, which is about to reach its target. From the article: 'On Tuesday morning, a European robotic craft will perform a 50-minute-long engine burn to slow its speed enough to be captured by Venus' gravity. Venus Express will orbit our nearest planetary neighbour for about 500 Earth days to study its atmosphere, which has undergone runaway greenhouse warming.' If all goes well, it could shed important light on climate change here on Earth."
fp (Score:3, Funny)
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From the article (Score:5, Funny)
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
Re:From the article (Score:1)
Oh and I should mention that this is a dupe [slashdot.org].
Re:From the article (Score:2)
Re:From the article (Score:1)
Re:From the article (Score:2)
Re:From the article (Score:1)
Re:From the article (Score:1)
It will not be seen on the pictures because it has a VEIL pattern all over it, and therefore the cameras will switch themselves off as soon as it would be in the image.
Re:From the article (Score:2)
They're just saying that to justify the invasion by this spacecraft before the full scale attack.
Re:From the article (Score:1)
Climate on Venus (Score:2, Funny)
We are also sure that Democrats don't rule Mars, either -- they haven't yet ran out of sand.
What about global COOLING (Score:2)
Really, who's to say that Venus hasn't cooled over the years? Sure, CO2 may keep it quite hot, but it doesn't necessitate that the planet is getting warmer
It's just another term that's misused in libby propoganda. Nothing to see here, move along, report to Minitru for re-education.
Global warming and the Republican Denial (Score:3, Insightful)
Global warming, beside the point (Score:2, Interesting)
Yet global warming is a fact, no-one disputes that (anymore). What are we going to do about it? In addition, oil is going to become harder and harder to extract. It IS a finite resource.
Right now we are looking at massive future crop failures. Massive hunger even in western countries.
Large scale flooding of important cities and centers of production, disruption to transportation and communication.
We should be planning for these, stockpiling food, re-thi
Re:Global warming, beside the point (Score:4, Insightful)
That is what I thought too, then I took a little survey. Very few of my coworkers, none of our distributors, and few of my family members believe it is happening.
One distributor said something which everyone really agreed with. "I can't imagine our temperature measurements from 100 years ago were all that accurate. What did they do, stick a thermometer down in a hole, light a match to read it, and estimate the temperature?"
I have no idea what the hole was for, but everyone seemed to agree with him. Plus, anyone who sees global warming for what it really is, is chastized as some crazy person, an untrue American, and a probably a terrorist.
I have tried clouding the issues with facts and figures, but they seem meaningless. I would guess it is just denial, so they don't have to feel guilty for driving their SUV's and Minivans over an hour to work.
Re:Global warming, beside the point (Score:2)
Repeat after me: "Correlation does not equal causation."
Re:Global warming, beside the point (Score:1)
Okay:
Just because global temperatures are rising, does not mean that global warming exists.
Re:Global warming, beside the point (Score:2)
I know you're being sarcastic, but oddly enough you're right. For all we know, we might just be leaving an era of global cooling. Not that I believe it, mind you, but we don't know enough yet to be sure. More than anything else, we need to find out just what's happening before we start making sweeping, draconic changes.
Re:Climate on Venus (Score:1, Informative)
As for climate data, we have climate data for 10% of the planets history, no, you don't want to know how and yes it is only mean temperatures over longer periods of time. However we do have roughly year on year data for the last tenthousand years though through various ways and it
Re:Climate on Venus (Score:3, Insightful)
"Maybe if the enviro leftist nuts shut the hell up and let real science speak we all would see that this is a part of the normal cycle in this tiny little planet and Solar system."
Maybe? Maybe? Don't you think that even if there is a slight chance that global warming is caused by humans, it should be confronted and fixed.
Ah what the hell, we have lots of other planets to live on.
Re:Climate on Venus (Score:2)
I think you are quite naive if you think that all of the oil on the earth won't be used up (all that carbon will be transferred in to the atmosphere).
Even if the west managed to restructure its economy tomorrow the poorest parts of the world would still use the oil because its cheap.
Technology will have to solve the problems this causes.
Re:Climate on Venus (Score:2)
I think you are quite naive if you think that guppies cannot be used for world conquest!
Since you brought it up, yes, oil will continue to be used until it isn't the best option for the user. Very good. Have a sticker.
Re:Climate on Venus (Score:1)
Re:Climate on Venus (Score:4, Informative)
Nobody is ignoring global warming. Many are questioning that humans are causing the global warming.
Including only a tiny fraction of the scientific community! But of course, lay people always know better than scientists. Silly scientists. What do they know? Them and their years of silly "studying".
I personally agree that humans can have a slight effect but certianly not enough to do what is seen.
That's great to hear that you disagree with the majority of the scientific community. Now, are you going to do so with evidence?
You enviro wannabe's ignore the fact that all inner planets of the solar system are currently experiencing the SAME global warming as well as some of the outer planets as well.
BZZZT, wrong! First off, I have no clue where you get this from, but there are only two solid planets and one moon with significant atmospheres, and one planet with a tenuous but relevant atmosphere. Surface air temperatures are only being measured on Earth and Mars (we have precisely one datapoint on Titan for the surface).
By the way, if you want to look at cloudtop temperatures (so that you could add gas giants to the list), you're taking a rather silly route. Not only is the vast majority of the atmosphere near the surface, but temperatures in a planet or moon's stratosphere or thermosphere have little to do with the surface temperatures. Of course, even that wouldn't support your claim.
If you want to look at surface temperatures so that you can get solid planets without atmospheres, I don't know about Mercury offhand, but pluto is cooling.
Ref:
You guys also love to ignore the blatent fact that we are coming out of an ice age.
Peak of the last ice age: 20,000 years
Temperature at peak: ~4 degC cooler
Expected rate of warming: 0.0002 degC/yr
Current Rate of warming:
Um, yeah. That's a major factor, sure.
Maybe if the enviro leftist nuts shut the hell up and let real science speak
Sure, lets let the real science speak [wikipedia.org].
Cripes we know 0.0001% of this planet's climate history
It depends on the detail you're talking about. We know the climate of the planet 4.5 billion years ago, but we can't tell you how much it changed from year to year, or even millenium to millenium. However, the detailed Vostok cores go back half a million years, and are amazingly consistant in one thing: temperature is *incredibly* tied to CO2 levels (which should be obvious), and that doesn't reverse quickly. And CO2 levels are headed off the charts at a rate never before seen. And we know exactly where almost all of that CO2 is coming from, and it's from human activities.
and you nuts go around acting like experts.
Don't argue with me. Argue with the near scientific concensus. Of course, that would require that you actually learn what you're talking about first.
Give me 10,000 years of daily measured data and then I'll pay attention to your wild ass claims.
Daily measured? What the heck good would daily measured do? We're talking about change over the course of decades at the most precise. You need decade-averaged measurements, and we have those for a hundred thousand years.
You only want a mere 10,000 years? Heck, we have annual data for almost that long from dendrochronlogy records alone. And yes, dendrocronology isotopic ratios matches up with that from ice cores and even deposits in varves.
No, you can not get accurate temperature data from ice packs
BZZT! You can create a concordia/discordia plot for error checking from your data because there are several independent methods from a given core, not to mention that the Vostok cores aren't the only ones (midatlantic cores, greenland cores, etc).
No, it is not a local measurement. There is differential eva
Re:Climate on Venus (Score:2)
Re:Climate on Venus (Score:2)
Venus Express (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Venus Express (Score:1)
Re:Venus Express (Score:1)
(Compare and contrast with Envisat.)
Re:Venus Express (Score:1)
Re:Venus Express (Score:2)
Re:Venus Express (Score:1)
It sure beats the original name of Venus Muff Diver.
Moons (Score:1, Interesting)
From TFA:
Moons venus: 0 earth: 1I remember an old theory that the moon keeps Earth from boiling over by sweeping away much of the atmosphere over time. I wonder if this is still considered a significant factor?
Its worth noting that the moons of Mars are in much lower orbits than our moon, and mars has much less of an atmosphere than earth.
Re:Moons (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps the surface of Venus is covered in pirates - that could explain its thick dense atmosphere.
Jolyon
Re:Moons (Score:3, Insightful)
If this mission confirms that this is indeed the case, it'll be further evidence that the gospel of the FSM is indeed correct.
Re:Moons (Score:2)
Re:Moons (Score:2)
OMG!!! Pirates!!!
Re:Moons (Score:2)
If so, Edgar Rice Burroughs [barnesandnoble.com] was more accurate than he thought. If so, there's a lot of grand adventure waiting for us on the Hidden Planet!
Re:Moons (Score:5, Interesting)
I've heard the same thing... in science fiction novels. Larry Niven, I believe. It may be true, but I've never seen any comprehensive explanation of how this is supposed to occur. Does the atmosphere somehow leak away on geological timescales through the Lagrange points somehow? I've got no idea. Does anyone know?
This idea does appeal to me, though, because if true it adds another factor to the Drake equation for finding *earthlike* civilizations in the galaxy. According to the impactor theory of the moon's origin, the moon's creation was a very improbable event. Perhaps that's why we don't see any Dyson spheres- you not only need a planet in the liquid water region of a solar system, you need that planet to be whacked at a very particular angle to form a moon large enough to prevent a Venus from forming instead of an Earth.
Its worth noting that the moons of Mars are in much lower orbits than our moon, and mars has much less of an atmosphere than earth.
It's also worth noting that Mars' moons are TINY. Phoebos and Deimos are 22 and 12 km in diameter, respectively. They're utterly insignificant.
Compare that to the Moon, which is comparable to Earth in both diameter (27% of the earth's) and to a lesser extent mass (1.2% of the earth's). In fact, some astronomers consider the Earth-moon system to be a double planet because of this fact.
Re:Moons (Score:3, Interesting)
When that huge impact happened, what was blown off was most of the lighter, surface material of the early Earth. All of those light silicates eventually clumped up to form the moon, leaving a body with a much thinner crust and a higher overall proportion of heavy metals. This made it much easier for convection currents to run inside the Earth's core, allowing the creation of a magnetic field. This deflected the solar wind, protecting the Earth from most of t
Re:Moons (Score:2)
Doubtful. Even when the moon was much closer than it is now I
can't see how its gravity could have bodily lifted the atmosphere
high enough to drag it out of the earths magnetic field. Even
if the moon was right next to the earth it would still only
pull 1/6 G which means the atmosphere would overall feel 5/6G.
Not
Re:Moons (Score:2)
You don't have to have the moon pull all of the gases off the planet's surface, just act in a tidal action to loft them somewhat. 2.5 billion years ago, the moon was closer and the atmosphere was thicker. When the lunar tidal forces acted on the atmosph
Re:Moons (Score:3, Insightful)
have to extend it more than a fraction. Yes , the moon causes
tides but at the very most they're about 10 metres. Take that as
a percentage of average ocean depth (about 5km) and its nothing.
At best the moon might make the atmosphere rise a few miles
which is nothing like enough to pull it out of the magnetic field.
Re:Moons (Score:2)
You're correct in observing that the atmosphere doesn't extend above the magnetic field... anymore. That part of the atmosphere which used to, is gone now.
Too much atmosphere and the planet cooks in a runaway greenhouse. Too little atmosphere and
Moon's creation not that improbable (Score:3, Insightful)
Does the atmosphere somehow leak away on geological timescales through the Lagrange points somehow? I've got no idea. Does anyone know?
Some gases escape like H and He. Heavier modecules like N2, O2, CO2 do not. This [cwru.edu] talks about the process. The moon plays absolutely no role in helping earth retain atmosphere.
According to the impactor theory of the moon's origin, the moon's creation was a very improbable event.
I don't see why it is so improbable. Pluto has a much larger moon relative to its size t
Re:Moons (Score:2)
Without dry land you cannot easily have fire, and without fire you cannot easily have civ
Re:Moons (Score:4, Interesting)
No, but the Moon did slow down the rotation of the Earth by quite a bit. If Luna'd be lacking, Earth's surfaces would supposedly be battered by extremely strong winds.
It's theorised that Venus' climate isn't caused by its lack of a moon but because it's rotating way too slow (I got the climate-link from Stephen Baxter's Space, but I'm sure it's well documented in astronomic science). It takes about 243 days for Venus to rotate around its axis, and it's even rotating in the opposite direction as most of the rest of the (Sol system) planets.
Slow Rotation of Venus / Temperature of Dark Side? (Score:2)
Are there regions in perpetual darkness or perpetual light? Is it possible that there are areas that are much lower temperature? Or perhaps a moving seasonal band of low temperature following the rotational cycle of the planet?
Seems to me there might be some interesting possibi
Re:Slow Rotation of Venus / Temperature of Dark Si (Score:3, Interesting)
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] mentions min/mean/max surface temperatures of -45.15 degC, 463.85 degC and 499.85 degC (-49.27 degF, 866.93 degF and 931.73 degF) respectively.
Only if you're interested in a semi-nomadic lifestyle.
There have been proposals to establish human colonies in the cloudtops of Venus, which are much more livable temperature-
Re:Moons (Score:2)
Although I do remember arguing a few years back with a classmate who believed that wind was caused by the earth rota
Re:Moons (Score:1)
Re:Moons (Score:3, Insightful)
You have a point. That sounds a lot more plausible than my explanation. I tried to find sources to back up my initial claim, but the only one I did find [starryskies.com] compared Earth to the much-faster rotating Jupiter and concluded that a faster-rotating Earth would have stronger surface winds. Doesn't sound like a very valid comparison to me, what
Re:Moons (Score:2)
I don't think that's possible. The atmosphere tapers off about 18 miles up. The moon is 240,000 miles up. At best it would shift the atmosphere a little bit off center.
An aside on moons (Score:2, Interesting)
Years ago, Isaac Asimov wrote an article called Just Mooning Around that I read in a collection called Of Time and Space and Other Things.
In the article, Asimov calculated what he called the "tug-of-war ratio" for a particular satellite: the ratio of the sun's pull on a satellite to the primary's pull on that satellite. For Jupiter's satellites, for example, the Galilean moons are pulled much more strongly by Jupiter than by the Sun, whereas with the outer satellites Jupiter just barely wins the contest,
The Soviets (Score:2, Informative)
It's also a good time to remember that the USA government has always made out that they do not do "psyops" [wikipedia.org] on American citizens, but during the Cold War it is clear that they did. I fear that they are also doing so today with the new "Long war" [bbc.co.uk].
Re:The Soviets (Score:2, Informative)
very interesting post pubjames. It seems like the soviets were obsessed with Venus, 16 probes for god sakes!
We should point out that these missions preceded the viking missions to Mars, thus they were the first landings on another planet.
Re:The Soviets (Score:3, Informative)
Only when their first probe was crushed/cooked on descent, they realized that conditions there weren't that friendly after all.
Re:The Soviets (Score:2)
Re:The Soviets (Score:2)
Re:The Soviets (Score:2)
Proof! (Score:4, Funny)
So if we don't find any SUVs on Venus, then we'll know once and for all that they DON'T cause greenhouse warming!
Re:Proof! (Score:1)
more info (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Venus_Express/index.h
and of course, at wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Express [wikipedia.org]
Bacterial life in the clouds? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder of Venus Express will ever sample the Venusian atmosphere to see -- perhaps as an "Extended Extended Mission" as they deorbit the probe years from now.
Re:Bacterial life in the clouds? (Score:2)
Re:Bacterial life in the clouds? (Score:1)
Possibility of Life? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Possibility of Life? (Score:1)
Has arrived (Score:3, Informative)
Europe Scores new Planetary Success [esa.int]
Re:Has arrived (Score:2)
Re:Has arrived (Score:1)
Obligatory statement about Earth climate change (Score:5, Insightful)
If all goes well, it could shed important light on climate change here on Earth.
It is difficult to see how. Venus slow rotation rate, massive atmosphere, tiny inclination (-3 deg), and lack of a hydrologic cycle should make the climate very stable. The mission has a lot of merits on its own. Why make tenuous comparisons?
Re:Obligatory statement about Earth climate change (Score:2)
Re:Obligatory statement about Earth climate change (Score:2)
Perhaps the intent was to insinuate that if we don't Act Soon, we'll end up just like Venus.
Don't you think that is an overreaching and absurd insinuation? Venus atmosphere is 96% CO2. Earth's is 0.0360% Doesn't Venus science have value beyond its political use by global warming enthusiasts?
Re:Obligatory statement about Earth climate change (Score:1)
Of course, evolution might give Monkeys wings, but we need to find life on IO to prove that.
While I agree that our reliance on fossil fuels is akin to the relationship between tweakers and dealers, studying Venus gives us little to no insight on what is happening here. It will be a shame if they
Re:Obligatory statement about Earth climate change (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it's an easy way to get more money.
In times of huge deficits and out-of-control spending politicians want to appear tough on budgets but without cutting any pork. Pure science projects are therefore a prime target.
By touting each probe as huge opportunity for important advances in climate science, medicine or whatever people (people with the power to approve budgets) care about they try to ensure continued funding of current and future projects
Re:Obligatory statement about Earth climate change (Score:2)
Oddly enough, some climatologists [realclimate.org] don't agree [realclimate.org] with you. Among other things, they are very interested in why the Venusian atmosphere rotates every 100 hours or so, even though Venus itself rotates every 243 days.
You mean the climate lobby doesn't agree with me (Score:2)
Oddly enough, some climatologists [realclimate.org] don't agree [realclimate.org] with you.
I said that a Venus atmospheric mission has good scientific value. The general circulation, composition, photochemistry, long term variation, are all interesting phenomena. I just think it is a shame the science results, whatever they are, will be hijacked, hyped, filtered, and distorted by the Kyotoist propaganda machine. Despite disclaimers realclimate.org is a mouthpiece for that machine which is desperately se
They must be very efficient at ESA (Score:2, Funny)
Just heard... (Score:1)
Go on ESA
=V=
Re:Just heard... (Score:2)
Why don't we have (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why don't we have (Score:3, Insightful)
It's more cost effective to send cheaper (less permanent design needs) single-shot probes to answer specific questions and gather specific data. Then when new questions arise from the data collected, and you would have to design & sen
It's headed where? (Score:2)
And I'm sure when it gets there, it will shop to its heart's content.
grats! (Score:3, Informative)
NICE JOB ESA!
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Venus_Express/SEMY1SN
Pictures from the surface of venus (Score:2, Informative)
Venera 9 [mentallandscape.com] sent image telemetry for 50 minutes. It scanned 174 of the panorama from left to right, and then 124 scanning right to left.
They drilled, photographed, and used penetrometers on the surface. Each mission lasts a few hours to days before the atmosphere crumples the spacecraft like a soda can due to the pressure. Much different than life on Mars!
Mining metals on Venus (Score:4, Informative)
According to this 2003 BBC article [bbc.co.uk]:
The article goes on to discuss lead and bismuth being the primary metals. Nobody's going to launch a mission to Venus to build a digestive elixir plant [pepto-bismol.com], but it seems entirely possible that the lead and bismuth might be "contaminated" with more interesting metals -- perhaps even in quantities large enough to be commericially interesting.
Re:Mining metals on Venus (Score:2)
But then I thought...why do we need to bring them back to earth? Ship them to the moon and run them supercool. Have the computers on the moon do the crunch for us lowly humans on Earth.
What natural desaster is going to happen on the moon? The moon sounds like a great place to dump toxic equipment, over clock processors, and have offsite data storage. There is a bit of a lag time, but I'm just saying it would
Those amazing Europeans ..... (Score:2, Funny)
"Venus Probe Set To Reach Target" (Score:1, Funny)
ESA needs better PR (Score:2)
Take for example the Mars probes. NASA puts its raw results on the website in a day or two of receiving them while ESA's trickle out months later, if at all.
Please stop shedding light (Score:2)
The problem is too much light, damnit! If those idiots keep shedding more, all will not be well.
Re:Enough of that (Score:1)
"This X discovery will help us understand more about... absolutely nothing... we just wasted a lot of money."
Re:Enough of that (Score:1)
Re:Enough of that (Score:1)
Re:Enough of that (Score:2)
Jesus Christ SHUT UP! Every single science/astronomy news bit has to have this "This X discovery will help us understand more about Y." I know I'm not the only starting to get sick of this.
Your complain is doubly true here! The last probe revealed that the climate of Venus has nothing to do with potential global warming here. Venus didn't become the way it is because of a "runaway" greenhouse effect - Venus basically do
Re:what about.. (Score:1)
And then "probe" like a space probe that goes to another planet, but also like a "probe" that goes into someone's anus, thus referencing the above hilarity all over again!
This joke is a marvel on all levels and it's amazing that someone has not already thought of it!
Mod parent up +27 TEH FUnnay!
Re:what about.. (Score:1)
Anal probe... ha, excuse me while I wipe away tears of uproarious laughter.