Space History for November 4: Venera 14

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CalliArcale

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On November 4, 1981, Venera 14 was launched aboard a Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, five days after Venera 13, its identical sister craft. Venera 14 would go on to land on March 5, 1982, returning images and data from the surface of Venus for nearly an hour (which was almost twice as long as the designed lifespan) before succumbing to the temperature. There is conflicting information about what data it returned; the sample arm was reported to have accidentally landed on an ejected camera cover (which is visible in returned photographs), but it has also been reported that Venera 14 took a sample and placed it into a chamber for x-ray spectrographic analysis, which revealed it to be a tholeiitic basalt. Venera 14 determined the temperature to be 465 C, and the pressure to be 94 atm; built essentially like a deep sea submersible to cope with the pressure, the only challenge was heat, and eventually it cooked itself, unable to disperse heat from its computers. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>
 
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spaceman186000mps

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Oh wow what memories I have of that era.<br /> About Venus,<br />To me, Venus is the most mysterious fascinating planet in the solar system.<br /> That is..., with the exception of Mercury,Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, PlutoCharon, Quaoar, Sedna and whatever else lurks out there past the 50 au boundary.<br />But ... back to Venus.<br /> Seems to me that among all the fascinating planets, Venus stands out to be most mysterious.<br /> Partly because it is Earth's sister planet and get's so close to Earth yet we can't visually see the surface with the exception of radar.<br />Now .... Venus does several things peculiar that no other planet (not moons) in our system does.<br />1 - It rotates retrograde slowly. (upside down?)<br />2 - It's orbit is the most perfectly circular orbit of any planet.<br />3 - No moon, (Maybe mercury was once it's moon?)<br /><br />One more thing that is exceedingly interesting about venus is this very peculiar fact.<br /> <br />4 - Planet Venus, when in opposition with Earth, (closest approach) always presents the same face toward planet Earth.<br />Truth is.... There has to be a logical reason for this...<br />What is it?<br /><br />About... what's under those acid sulfur clouds on or below the surface of Venus is also something I could postulate for days about. <br /> Fascinated by Venus here. <br /><br /><br />http://uplink.space.com/addpost.php<br /><br />and<br /><br /><br />http://www.vt-2004.org/Background/Infol2/EIS-D5.html<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong><font size="2" color="#3366ff">70 percent of novel proceeds </font></strong><strong><font size="2" color="#3366ff">www.trafford.com/06-1593</font></strong><strong><font size="2" color="#3366ff"> are donated to </font></strong><strong><font size="2" color="#3366ff">www.caringbridge.org</font></strong></p> </div>
 
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thinice

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Venus has no moon because of slow rotation. Even if it had some satellites in early history, they would have quickly falled on the planet due to tidal forces. Also, the fact that Venus always has the same face towards Earth at closest approach is a result of tidal locking with Earth.<br />
 
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CalliArcale

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Actually, it might just be dumb luck that Venus has no moon. It's slow rotation is peculiar, and says nothing about whether or not it should have a moon, because Venus' rotation is actually dramatically different than what should be expected through conservation of momentum. Venus rotates *backwards*.<br /><br />Whether any satellites would have deorbited around Venus would depend on their orbits. A satellite the size of, say, Phobos orbiting in a roughly circular orbit at 30 Venus-diameters would probably be just fine.<br /><br />Venus seems to always show the same side to Earth, but since radar studies have only been possible relatively recently, it isn't clear whether this is a real effect or simply coincidence. It was once thought that Venus was tidally locked with the Sun (which would cause it to always face the same side towards Earth at inferior conjunction) but this was eventually disproven -- Venus' rotation is slow, but it is not equal to its orbital period. It isn't tidally locked to the Earth as far as anybody knows, and indeed, the Earth should have a negligible effect on Venus' rotation. So the real answer is that scientists don't know why Venus always seems to present the same face towards Earth at inferior conjunction (the only time it is radar-imaged from Earth).<br /><br />From The Nine Planets: Venus:<br /><br /><i>Venus' rotation is somewhat unusual in that it is both very slow (243 Earth days per Venus day, slightly longer than Venus' year) and retrograde. In addition, the periods of Venus' rotation and of its orbit are synchronized such that it always presents the same face toward Earth when the two planets are at their closest approach. Whether this is a resonance effect or merely a coincidence is not known.</i> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>
 
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teije

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Beautiful<br />Bright<br />Mysterious<br />Hot<br />Deadly<br /><br />The ultimate woman.<br /><br />1 thing is certain. Her name was well chosen.<br /><img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" />
 
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