Venus: Welcome to Hell!
"The planet Venus is surrounded by a noble air atmosphere, such (if only not more), which is poured around our globe" … in 1761 M. V. Lomonosov discovered a halo around the disk of the planet and, unlike the enlightened European scientists, made an absolutely correct conclusion.
Exactly 300 years later, on February 12, 1961, a launch vehicle "Lightning" rose from Baikonur into the cold night sky, carrying away from the Earth a small man-made miracle intended for exploration of the endless Cosmos. A few hours later, the automatic interplanetary station (AMS) "Venera-1" lay on a course to the Morning Star. Alas, the first pancake came out lumpy - the connection with the AMC was lost and the scientific program could not be carried out.
In 1962, the Mariner 2 station swept past Venus, confirming that Venus is slowly rotating on its axis in the other direction: from east to west, and not like other planets from west to east. "Venusian Night" lasts 58 Earth days. Venus does not have a magnetic "umbrella" to protect against harsh cosmic radiation, and the planet's atmosphere is extremely hot - perhaps the ideal place for Hell.
Over the next few years, Soviet and American stations repeatedly studied the surroundings of a distant planet from a flyby trajectory, finally, in 1966, the Soviet interplanetary station Venera-3 in a suicidal peak pierced the crimson clouds of the Morning Star and was the first to reach its surface, delivering the USSR pennant to Venus.
In June 1967, the Soviet Union organized a new expedition to Venus - a heat-resistant apparatus was supposed to make a soft landing and conduct research on the planet's surface. The multi-month flight went according to plan - Venera-4 successfully braked in the atmosphere of Venus, the parachute opened, the telemetry data flow started … The descent vehicle was crushed at an altitude of 28 km - the pressure of the Venusian atmosphere exceeded the calculated 20 atmospheres. The model of the atmosphere was completely revised - according to the data obtained from "Venus-4", the pressure at the surface should reach 90-100 Earth's atmospheres (as at a depth of 1 kilometer under water - even heavy diving equipment will not save a person)!
Over the next 10 years, an entire landing battalion - 8 interplanetary stations of the Venera series - landed on the surface of Venus. One of the last AMS - "Venera-13", worked on the surface for 127 minutes in an environment with a temperature of 457 ° C and a pressure of 93 atm. During this time, the station transmitted to Earth color panoramic photographs of the Venusian landscape and an exclusive recording of sounds from another planet. There are no groans of tormented sinners on it, but distant rumbles of thunder are heard.
The last time Soviet satellites visited Venus was in 1984 - two Vega series spacecraft studied the Venusian atmosphere using balloons. Amazing airships drifted for two days at an altitude of 50 kilometers, enjoying the wonderful weather (pressure 0.5 atm., Temperature 40 ° C) and a magnificent view of lightning flashes on the night side of the planet. Then they were blown away and fell into a fiery abyss.
NASA took over the Venus exploration baton - American researchers preferred not to meddle in the infernal atmosphere of the Morning Star, studying Venus from orbit. Especially the probe "Magellan" distinguished itself - from 1990 to 1994 it carried out a detailed mapping of the entire surface of the planet.
Bathing is canceled. Water temperature minus 180 ° С
In August 1999, a terrible threat hung over the Earth - near our planet at a speed of 19 km / s, the Cassini probe, launched two years ago to Saturn, swept by. Like any apparatus for exploration of deep space, "Cassini" picked up the required speed due to gravitational maneuvers - the probe first flew to Venus, from where, having received a powerful accelerating impulse, returned to Earth, received another impulse from its home planet and headed for Jupiter. Finally, in 2004, Cassini became an artificial satellite of Saturn, almost without turning on the engine during its long journey.
The space balancing act caused a storm of protest among the “greens”: after all, an error in the calculations for a thousandth of a percent could lead to a catastrophe. An overclocked probe weighing about 6 tons would crash into the Earth's surface like a fiery meteorite, while the presence of 33 kg of plutonium on board was of particular concern. But everything went smoothly - "Cassini" flew over the Earth with an accuracy of hundreds of meters at an altitude of 1200 km.
Over the past 8 years, "Cassini" thoroughly explored the system of rings and moons of Saturn. The mission was extended until 2017, while the most exotic versions of the further application of the probe were considered - from the exploration of Uranus and Neptune, to the collision with Mercury … alas, among the researchers, the most sensible proposal won - to continue the study of Saturn.
One of the main numbers of the program was the enchanting landing of the Huygens probe on Saturn's moon Titan. This celestial body has long attracted scientists - even during the Pioneer and Voyager missions, it was revealed that the largest satellite of Saturn (2 times the size of the Moon) has a powerful atmosphere with a high content of organic matter. Of course, Titan is too far from the Sun, but … what if there are extraterrestrial life forms on it?
AMC Cassini detached a small "pill" and disappeared into the clouds of Titan. The descent of "Huygens" in the atmosphere of Titan was a real fall into the orange abyss - until the last moment scientists wondered where the probe would fall: into an icy ocean of liquid methane or, after all, onto a solid surface.
Huygens landed on the coast of the methane ocean, submerged in sand and liquid methane mud. A brave scout for four hours was reporting from this terrible world - until the Cassini relay disappeared over the horizon. During this time, he managed to transfer 474 megabytes of information, including the sound of the wind on Titan. Exclusive sound recording specially for the readers of "Military Review":
Aerial photography clearly showed methane rivers flowing, and ice floes of frozen ammonia float in the ocean from liquefied natural gas. Ice mountains are barely visible in the orange haze; The apocalyptic picture is complemented by the incessant black methane shower.
But NASA and ESA scientists would love to return there again. The only thing that scares them is not the methane rain, but the cost of the project. Damn it, for the sake of such pictures, I personally am ready to invest part of my funds. What do dear readers think about this?
While our ships cruise the Bolshoi Theater …
… the Japanese interplanetary station "Hayabusa" (Japanese peregrine falcon) landed with a sampling of soil on the asteroid Itokawa. Three times the device approached the surface of a small celestial body (transverse size is about 500 meters) and, each time, it broke something for itself. In the end, the propulsion system failed, and the delivery of soil to Earth became problematic. But the cunning Japanese were not taken aback - after all, nothing is simply lost in space. Three years later, in 2009, when the disoriented Hayabusa took an advantageous position in relation to the Earth, the specialists were able to restart the ion engine, and the capsule with soil samples from the asteroid Itokawa was successfully delivered to its home planet. Instead, an aluminum plate with data on the planet Earth and that memorable landing remained on the asteroid. I'm afraid aliens won't be able to make out anything in Japanese characters.
One of the points of the Hayabusa scientific program was the exploration of the asteroid using a miracle of Japanese robotics - a miniature MINERVA probe weighing only 519 grams, equipped with three of the same small cameras. The Japanese failed - after the separation, the probe disappeared somewhere. However, it is clear where: flew into open space after an unsuccessful ricochet. The gravity of asteroid Itokawa is too weak to support a body of this size. One detail attracts me in this whole story: the cost of the miniature MINERVA probe was $ 10 million. Maybe we should offer our services to the Japanese - even in Skolkovo, such a device assembled from a mobile phone would cost half the price.
And apple trees will bloom on Mars …
During 50 years of the space era, human civilization was able to visit the surfaces of 5 celestial bodies: the Moon, Venus, Mars, Titan and the asteroid Itokawa, plus the "Galileo" probe that burned down in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter. And every time we were in for a far from hearty welcome: a dead and dusty Moon, extremely hot Venus, deadly cold and orange haze on Titan. I don't even want to think about the possible landing on the surface of the eerie giant planets - especially since it is still unknown whether they have a solid surface at all. A man will not even be able to approach Jupiter - when flying through the radiation belts of a giant planet, the Galileo spacecraft received 25 doses of radiation that are fatal to humans. In principle, in space, there are generally few places suitable for landing even automatic vehicles.
The only celestial body that is more or less suitable for humans can only be Mars - it is no coincidence that American probes visit it so often: 11 expeditions since 1996. On Mars, the temperature range is quite adequate: from - 153 ° С in winter to + 20 ° С in summer at the equator. The wind speed never exceeds several tens of meters per second (for comparison: clouds in Saturn's atmosphere move at a speed of 500 m / s). There is no seismic activity - the planet died many years ago. There is indirect evidence of the presence of water ice. Those. there are all the necessary conditions for life.
The only problem is the too rarefied atmosphere - it corresponds to the earth's stratosphere at an altitude of 40 km. Walking on the surface of Mars without a space suit will result in instant death. Moreover, 95% of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide, with virtually no oxygen. As they say, thanks for that too.
In the outer region of the solar system, beyond the orbit of Mars, there is especially nothing to count on - 4 terrible gas giants and an unknown Pluto, lost on the outskirts of the solar system (we still do not even have an approximate image of this planet, in 2015 there will be a probe in the vicinity of Pluto "New horizons", and then, perhaps, we will learn a lot of interesting things).
The only ones that may be of interest to humans are the satellites of the giant planets. Four "Galilean" satellites, Titan, Neptune's satellite Triton … Among them there are truly unique samples, for example, another hellish place in the solar system - Jupiter's moon Io. Jupiter's powerful gravity rocks Io so that its 400 volcanoes continuously spew lava flows and the atmosphere is filled with sulfur dioxide.
At the same time, another satellite of Jupiter - Europa - is one of the main contenders for the presence of extraterrestrial life. Scientists believe that under the 100 km of ice crust is a huge warm ocean, heated by internal sources. It's a shame that the daring Jupiter Icy Moon expedition has been postponed by NASA indefinitely - it would be very interesting to drill through the ice and find out what is hidden inside Europe.
Still, you need to be very careful about Tsiolkovsky's calls to quickly leave the earthly cradle and settle in the vastness of the Cosmos. As it turned out, it's cold there and no one is waiting for us there.
