Word: venusians
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Analyzing data from Pioneer's ultraviolet spectrometer, the University of Colorado's Larry Esposito found that 1978 sulfur dioxide levels in the Venusian atmosphere were 50 times as high as expected. Since then, the sulfur dioxide lev els have been slowly tapering off, just as they drop after a major volcanic eruption on earth. Another investigator, Fred Scarf of TRW Inc., the spacecraft's builders, disclosed that an on-board instrument called a plasma-wave detector had recorded repeated lightning discharges over two mountain regions. On earth, such electrical activity commonly accompanies volcanic outbursts...
Still more tantalizing, the lightning was detected above two mountainous regions called Beta and Atla, which sit astride the Venusian equator. These areas appear to be supported by younger, denser rock, a characteristic of terrestrial volcanoes. (Intriguingly, this was deduced from precise tracking of the spacecraft...
...began working almost immediately, taking successive pictures through red, blue and green filters. This information was relayed back to earth, where the separate images were combined. Both landers provided panoramic views of a landscape strewn with rust-colored rocks. At either edge, the photographs showed patches of the orange Venusian sky, so colored because the thick atmosphere absorbs all the blue wavelengths in the light. In clarity and detail, the pictures exceeded the only previous views of Venus' surface, a series of black-and-white photographs radioed back by two earlier Soviet probes...
...less important scientifically, both landers managed to drill a few centimeters into the Venusian surface, scoop up some rock and analyze its chemistry. The conclusion: the material at both sites was basalt, fire-formed rock typically found in lava flows on earth. Indeed, based on its telltale traces of potassium, the material at Venera 14's site seemed uncannily like rocks that come out of the earth at the volcanically active mid-ocean ridges...
...Soviet Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry, made a pointed pitch for continued cooperation between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (The U.S. provided radar maps of the Venus surface and helped the Soviets select the landing sites.) In 1985 another pair of Soviet probes will be dropped into the Venusian atmosphere while their mother ship hurtles on toward a rendezvous with Halley's comet. The U.S., meanwhile, is passing up the chance to intercept that rare heavenly visitor, and its plans for another visit to Venus remain in limbo...