Anything happening with Venus? Rovers etc.

[velve]

Ok so the title is a little stupid, and I feel a little stupid for asking this but, basically I have just started growing my interest I had as kid for space exploration, the solar system etc.(got lost somewhere along the way which is very unfortunate) this has mainly been re-ignited through playing kerbal. I am a lot older now and have been so enthralled by my music career it seemed not much else mattered. But now I find myself spending hours browsing sites and forums for interesting information. My knowledge is limited so please don't be too condescending in regards to my question. So, my question boils down to this. Are there any plans on re-visiting Venus?

I know it was done a few times a while back with limited technology. Surely though today we could protect against the amount of heat and pressure? Are there any plans in the works that I have missed about a mission to land another rover on the surface. I am captivated by the mystery of this planet (much like a women, "from venus" statement) Not that the other planets don't enthuse me, I love the recent information into Europa, as well as the voyage to Pluto. But Venus is closer to home, yet its so undiscovered. It is the only planet we will ever be able to collect data from (in my lifetime at least), that has such a close proximity to a star. And because of its atmosphere that makes it way more interesting than Mercury.

I would love to see a rover take decent photos of the landscape, unfortunately the only one we have is of the floor. This brings me to another mini-question, when are they going to fire the people involved in taking photo's on rover missions hehe. I have browsed over numerous curiosity pictures there are a few good ones but most of them are absolute rubbish. There is no doubt of the resolution capability yet it spends most of its time taking "selfies". I am not interested in seeing the Rover it is there for Mars not for its own self-absorbed persona. Ok I'm joking a little bit, but it just feels there is so much more it could have done in the 2 earth years it was there. The next big step is climbing mount sharp which will be interesting I guess, but slooooooow.

Anyway if anyone has some interesting info they have managed to scoop out about Venus exploration please share it with me, I have looked over most of the big sites and popular areas but I'm sure some of you guys know a few places way more interesting.

//oh I forgot to add that I am aware of the "zephyr" But I'm more interested in other companies than NASA.

Edited June 27, 2014 by velve

[lajoswinkler]

Roskosmos is planning a mission to the surface of Venus.

[shynung]

Venus has an unforgiving atmosphere. The last Venus-bound probe that actually landed on the surface was the Soviet Venera 14 lander in 1981, and it only lasted 57 minutes before going offline, despite having a hermetically-sealed chassis.

[Klingon Admiral]

Heat and pressure aren't the only problems. The very atmosphere of Venus is highly corrosive. A rover won't be able to take photos of the landscape, the atmosphere is that dense.. Even theorized future landers will be designed for a lifespan of not more than an hour once landed.

There is a good reason why missions to Venus are scarce while Mars is becoming the first extraterrestial car-park. That planet is deadly.

The only planned mission to Venus will be the BepiColombo flyby during the probe's trip to Mercury.

[velve]

Roskosmos is planning a mission to the surface of Venus.

See I did not know about this thank you.

Venus has an unforgiving atmosphere. The last Venus-bound probe that actually landed on the surface was the Soviet Venera 14 lander in 1981, and it only lasted 57 minutes before going offline, despite having a hermetically-sealed chassis.

Yes its a lot of money to spend on a research window of one hour. And the pressure is just unimaginable, I cant bring myself to think how it would feel to be out in the open while still feeling an equivalent to 1000m under the ocean of pressure.

Heat and pressure aren't the only problems. The very atmosphere of Venus is highly corrosive. A rover won't be able to take photos of the landscape, the atmosphere is that dense.. Even theorized future landers will be designed for a lifespan of not more than an hour once landed.

There is a good reason why missions to Venus are scarce while Mars is becoming the first extraterrestial car-park. That planet is deadly.

The only planned mission to Venus will be the BepiColombo flyby during the probe's trip to Mercury.

I will keep an eye out for BepiColumbo. They say zephyr will be planned to stay overnight, but I have a feeling that is a bit optimistic. That is if the mission ever gets off the ground.

[lajoswinkler]

Heat and pressure aren't the only problems. The very atmosphere of Venus is highly corrosive. A rover won't be able to take photos of the landscape, the atmosphere is that dense.. Even theorized future landers will be designed for a lifespan of not more than an hour once landed.

There is a good reason why missions to Venus are scarce while Mars is becoming the first extraterrestial car-park. That planet is deadly.

The only planned mission to Venus will be the BepiColombo flyby during the probe's trip to Mercury.

That's simply not true. The bottom atmosphere of Venus is not highly corrosive. It's supercritical CO2 with only traces of the nasty stuff. Surface passivization of alloys is the worst thing you could expect.

And no, it's not true that you can't take photos there.

Roskosmos is planning on Venera-D.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera-D

[Seret]

Technology today is better than in the Venera days, but not enough to make a huge difference. The challenges are large, we'd still find it extremely difficult to land a probe with a lifespan of more than a few hours.

[Aethon]

http://www.space.com/25916-european-spacecraft-plunge-venus-atmosphere.html

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Venus_Express

Gotta work more later!

[metaphor]

There's a proposal for a Venus rover given a year ago. It wasn't picked yet but it might be in the future.

More in-depth pdf here.

[PakledHostage]

For anyone who's interested, there are plenty more photos on Don P. Mitchell's Soviet Venus Images website. Some are composites and/or color corrected to get a better sense of what it looks like from the Venera lander's perspective.

[velve]

Thanks all very insightful....In response to metaphors post, I really don't think that that land-sail rover "Zephyr" is ever going to be sent?

I just don't see the practicality of a wind driven sail, the chances of it being rendered useless due to being tipped over or getting stuck in a ditch just make it a kind of pointless design. Although in terms of taking advantage of the fact that less electronic equipment is needed this is a plus point, I don't think it outweighs the risk.

[christok]

Much progress is being made behind the scenes.

For example, one of the biggest problems with landing a probe on Venus is in cooling the electronics. NASA has many interesting papers on the topic of high-temperature semiconductors. I've linked to this search result https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/search/index.cfm?Criteria=high-temperature%20electronics in another thread; well worth looking at.

In short, silicon carbide (and to a lesser extent gallium nitride) transistors are under development for use on Venus and (probably later) high-temperature environments in industry on Earth. These should operate nominally at temperatures exceeding Venus ambient and can already run for periods of over a year. The idea isn't to shrink the technology until we can run a hugely complicated computer on the surface. Instead, a surface probe could be given just enough computing power to be mostly remote-controlled, with the bulk of the computations performed by a satellite.

Metallurgy has also advanced a lot from those days. When you read older books on high-temperature alloys (I have one lying on my desk at work; can't quote anything in this post) you'll see that much of the knowledge from the early days of solar system exploration was a mixture of partially-understood experimental data and hypothesis. Today's alloys are absolutely amazing in comparison. As a cool example, have a look at a jet turbine. Nowadays, the blades are made from special single-crystal nickel steels. (Normal steel is actually a mixture of ferrites/austenites/carbides/martensites and has a microscopic grain. This has no grain at all and is single-allotrope--I think austenite.) Such a steel can be (and routinely is) heated to more than 95% of its melting point* and spun at thousands of RPM, all without appreciable creep. For comparison, normal metals tend to creep an awful lot at around 50% of the melting point.

Robotic surface exploration of Venus is within our grasp. But in my opinion we should hold on just a little longer before we can really do it properly.

* I.e. about twice the absolute temperature on Venus.

[Red Iron Crown]

I wonder how much is left of that Venera probe now.

[lajoswinkler]

I wonder how much is left of that Venera probe now.

I don't see why it should deteriorate. The polymers inside are probably all carbonized by now. Structural alloys are fine.

[shynung]

I wonder how much is left of that Venera probe now.

If there's anything left. It's been 30 years since V14 launched.

[lajoswinkler]

If there's anything left. It's been 30 years since V14 launched.

And why is that? What can possibly happen to titanium and stainless steel in hot carbon dioxide? You people do understand that there is no sulfuric acid on the surface, no water, only supercritical CO2 with a hint of nitrogen and traces of hydrogen halogenides? There are worse conditions in chemical reactors that produce sulfuric and nitric acid, and nothing happens to them.

[Motokid600]

I'm in love with this image.

I wonder if it would actually sound like your under water if you were standing there.

[velve]

I'm in love with this image.

http://mentallandscape.com/C_Venera_Perspective.jpg

I wonder if it would actually sound like your under water if you were standing there.

How did you find that! That image has just made my day, its edited in some way though right its got to be? I've never seen that. only the floor.

So beautiful, even though its a lump of rock.

//ah yes edited, I guess he just conceptualized the mountains and sky. Still very good job

Edited June 27, 2014 by velve

[Motokid600]

How did you find that! That image has just made my day, its edited in some way though right its got to be? I've never seen that. only the floor.

So beautiful, even though its a lump of rock.

//ah yes edited, I guess he just conceptualized the mountains and sky. Still very good job

Wha? The horizons fake?! Aw man... Lol. PakledHostage's link post #10. Some REALLY good stuff there.

Edited June 27, 2014 by Motokid600

[Aethon]

I would love to see a rover take decent photos of the landscape, unfortunately the only one we have is of the floor. This brings me to another mini-question, when are they going to fire the people involved in taking photo's on rover missions hehe. I have browsed over numerous curiosity pictures there are a few good ones but most of them are absolute rubbish. There is no doubt of the resolution capability yet it spends most of its time taking "selfies". I am not interested in seeing the Rover it is there for Mars not for its own self-absorbed persona. Ok I'm joking a little bit, but it just feels there is so much more it could have done in the 2 earth years it was there. The next big step is climbing mount sharp which will be interesting I guess, but slooooooow.

Ouch.. Perhaps you're not looking closely enough.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/

Here are some images taken (depending how you look at it) today.

[PakledHostage]

Or a high-res interactive 360 panorama on Sol 177: Curiosity 360 degree panorama (including selfie)

[Aethon]

Or one form sol 647.

http://www.360cities.net/image/mars-panorama-curiosity-solar-day-647

Or this from sol 530

http://www.360cities.net/image/mars-panorama-curiosity-solar-day-530

Edited June 27, 2014 by Aethon

[PakledHostage]

At the risk of derailing the thread, those photos (and the Venera photos on the previous pages) reinforce in me that we don't need manned missions to inspire people.

I remember sitting up in the middle of the night together with my wife to watch the live stream of Curiosity's landing. She isn't a space buff but she was cheering right along with me. And her Facebook feed was full of posts from people who are more likely to crush a beer can on their foreheads while watching a football (handegg) game than take an interest in science, yet they were doing the same thing. Literally millions of people stayed up late that night to watch Curiosity land. It was awesome!

[Aethon]

Agreed. Good times!

Back to Venus, here's an interview with David Grinspoon, a research scientist at SWRI in Boulder CO. about Venus.

http://www.space.com/283-venus-alive-signs.html

A few years ago a Russian scientist claimed there were scorpion like creatures on Venus

http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/could-there-be-life-on-venus-one-scientist-thinks-so/

Side note: We all know how hard planning for contingencies is during mission design. The Soviet Venera 14 Venus lander included a probe to test the compressibility of the surface material, but unfortunately the spring loaded probe arm probed the exact spot where one of the camera lens covers had been ejected moments before.

[velve]

Ouch.. Perhaps you're not looking closely enough. Here are some images taken (depending how you look at it) today.

Haven't seen those. thanks very nice, is that rover oppertunity? I was kinda kidding with the mars pictures though. They are pretty decent and I do understand the amount of work that goes into operating them. Would be nice if they could take some of Olympus Mons, this would be amazing!

//that link you shared is brilliant, the raw images. I must have been searching with very bad keywords.

Edited June 28, 2014 by velve