Word: venusized
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When Russia's Venus 4 capsule suddenly fell silent in the thick Venusian atmosphere last October, Soviet scientists assumed that the spacecraft's final readings-a temperature of 520° F. and an atmospheric pressure 15 to 22 times greater than Earth's-described conditions on the planet's surface. Not so, say U.S. Electrical Engineers Arvydas Kliore and Dan Cain. The Venusian at mosphere, they report in the current issue of Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, is much hotter and far more crushing than the Soviets think. On the surface the temperature is actually close...
Their own figures, the two Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists explain, are based not only on data from Venus 4 but also on transmissions from the U.S. spacecraft Mariner 5 which flew past Venus less than two days after the Russian landing. According to JPL, the Russian capsule stopped sending signals when it was 3,774 miles from the center of Venus. But recent measurements by four powerful U.S. radar installations have established that the planet's radius is only 3,759 miles. That means that at the instant Venus 4 stopped transmitting, it must have been 15 miles above...
...findings make it less likely than ever that future space probes will find any kind of life on Venus. A surface compression of 75 atmospheres is as crushing as the pressure of water 2,550 ft. below the ocean's surface. A temperature of 900° F. is more than enough to melt lead or zinc, or do in any form of life familiar to Earthmen...
Economy Preferred. Despite the tight budget squeeze, the space panel stresses the importance of exploratory space flights to Mars and Venus each time the earth's neighbors are in a favorable position-about five or six times a decade. But instead of using complex and expensive Mariner or Voyager spacecraft for these flights, the scientists recommended the older and more economical Pioneer-type craft first launched in 1958. They are smaller than the Mariners and spin at 60 r.p.m., but can be crammed full of sophisticated new instruments. Placed into orbit around the planets, the little craft could return...
Grand Tour in Space. Beyond this "minimal" program, the scientists say, there are other planetary opportunities that the U.S. should grasp. In 1973 and 1975, for example, the planets will be positioned so that a Mariner flying past Venus will be whipped by Venusian gravity into a trajectory that will carry it close to Mercury, affording man his first glimpse of the sun's nearest neighbor. And in 1977 and 1978, planetary positions will enable a spacecraft flying by Jupiter to take a gravity-boosted "grand tour" that will also take it on past Saturn, Uranus and Neptune...