Latest news with #Venera8
National Geographic
27-06-2025
- Science
- National Geographic
Venus, explained
Quadruple Conjunction The moon, Venus, Mars, and the star Spica appear in a quadruple conjunction as seen from Azul, Argentina. From its scorching temperatures to its oddball rotation, there's a lot to learn about the second planet from the sun. On September 14, 2020, scientists announced the possible detection of phosphine gas in the clouds of Venus. It's too early to say what's creating the gas, but if the result is confirmed, one possibility is that it was made by microbial life floating in the planet's thick atmosphere. Find out more about the tantalizing, if controversial, finding here. The first spacecraft to set mechanical feet on another planet landed on Venus. In the 1960s and '70s, the former Soviet Union's Venera probes plunged through the planet's punishing atmosphere, with a handful even sending back data from its rocky surface. In December 1970, for instance, the Venera 8 lander transmitted atmospheric data for more than 50 minutes after its turbulent touchdown. These early missions provided an important lesson: Venus is like a massive pressure cooker. Although the planet is the second closest planet to the sun, it's by far the hottest of the eight worlds in our solar system. Its thick atmosphere is mostly made of carbon dioxide with clouds of sulfuric acid, which traps the sun's heat and creates a runaway greenhouse effect. Thanks to this atmospheric blanket, temperatures on Venus' surface can soar over 880 degrees Fahrenheit—hot enough to melt lead. The surface pressure is around 90 times that on Earth, which would feel like standing under about a half a mile of water. Wintertime doesn't even provide a reprieve from the heat. With an axial tilt of three degrees, Venus has just one season: hot. The only planet named after a female figure, Venus is a celestial oddball. Though its rocks are shades of grey, its atmosphere imparts an eerie orange glow to the landscape. Together with Mercury, it's one of the few planets in our solar system without a moon. And like Uranus, it turns on its axis in the opposite direction to the rest of our celestial family. Due to this retrograde rotation, if you were to stand on Venus' surface, the sun would rise in the West and set in the East. But don't count on catching many Venusian sunsets; the planet turns stunningly slow. A single day there takes 243 Earth days—longer than a Venusian year, which lasts 225 Earth days. And because the planet rotates in the opposite direction as its orbit, 117 Earth days pass between each sunrise and sunset. Hellish Earth twin Despite the strange and scorching conditions, Venus shares a surprising number of features with Earth. Measuring 7,520 miles across, Venus is roughly the same diameter as our home planet. It also has a similar structure, sporting a rocky surface and an iron core, although the planet doesn't rotate fast enough to generate an Earth-like magnetic field. Thousands of volcanoes dot Venus' surface, some of which may still be active. Volcanic rock from cooled lava covers most of its surface—the oldest of which dates back some 500 million years. Many mountains also rise into Venusian skies. Its largest, dubbed Maxwell Montes, stands 36,000 feet tall. The processes driving the formation of this network of formations is unusual, however. Venus doesn't appear to harbor a churning seismic engine like that on Earth, which drives our bumper-car network of tectonic plates. Yet the planet does appear to have a spidery network of breaks in its surface, hinting at an entirely new type of plate tectonics. Scientists suspect that for up to two billion years after it formed, the planet may have even been habitable—harboring liquid oceans on its surface. Fascination with what drove that transition from happy to hellish has led many scientists to campaign for more robotic visits to Venus. Light bringer Venus' dense cloud cover has benefits for us Earthlings. It reflects the sun's rays, making the planet the brightest in the night sky. It's often called the morning star or evening star because its bright, steady glow persists either around sunrise or sunset. Ancient peoples spotted these dazzling points in the sky and believed them to be two different objects, one that glows in the morning and another that glows in the evening. Similar to Mercury, Venus can occasionally be seen making a lazy trip across the sun's face, known as a transit. But while Mercury zips across the sun every 13 to 14 years, Venus transits are much more rare. The planet's orbit is almost a perfect circle but is slightly tipped relative to Earth's path around our star. This means it's incredibly hard for the sun, Venus, and Earth to align in the right way. The last time a transit of Venus happened was in 2012, and it won't happen again until 2117. Magazine for all ages starting at $25/year
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
A failed Soviet Venus probe from the '70s crashed to Earth in May — why was it so hard to track?
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The recent fall to Earth of a failed Soviet Venus probe from the 1970s has become a detective story of sorts. Different computer models were used to predict the reentry. But why were they divergent, and how can we improve our ability to nail down the "whereabouts and when" as a space object crashes into Earth's atmosphere? The long and troubled history of the would-be Venus spacecraft, known as Kosmos-482, can shed some light on these key questions, scientists say. So, let's have a look. On May 10 of this year, the egg-shaped Kosmos-482 descent module, weighing roughly 1,091 pounds (495 kilograms), likely fell into ocean waters. According to calculations by specialists from TsNIIMash, part of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, the spacecraft entered the dense layers of the atmosphere and fell into the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta. The hardware was lofted in the spring of 1972 to study Venus, but due to a malfunction of its rocket's upper stage, it remained in a high elliptical orbit around Earth, gradually closing in on our planet. The probe was one of a pair of Venus atmospheric landers hurled skyward during their respective go-to-Venus launch windows. The twin Venera-8 spacecraft was launched a few days earlier, sent onward to become the first station to land on the illuminated side of Venus, successfully transmitting data on temperature and pressure from the planet's surface. Meanwhile, the botched probe that failed to get from Earth to Venus was "renamed" Kosmos-482. According to the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IKI), a few months later, Kosmos-482 was purposely split into a descent module and a flight module. The flight module "left orbit" (fell to Earth) in 1981, an IKI posting adds. As for the descent module's nosedive to Earth, Oleg Korablyov, head of the department of planetary physics at IKI, said it should have had sufficient heat protection. "If it could be found," Korablyov said, "it would be very interesting to study it in order to understand the effects of long-term exposure to cosmic radiation on structural materials." Russian space historian Pavel Shubin is floating the idea that Kosmos-482's Venus landing hardware might be found bobbing in ocean waters. Shubin placed the last orbit of the station on a sea traffic map, noting where it entered and where it could have flown. Shubin's posting reads (in Russian; translation by Google): "The capsule has no aerodynamic quality, so it should land along the route. Maybe someone will find it. The question is in the buoyancy of the station. It turns out to be at the limit, but it still looks like it should float in seawater. If it sinks, there is no chance of finding it. Although it can withstand a kilometer of water" (in the event the object has sunk out of sight). That said — and apologies to TV's David Letterman — will it float? Marco Langbroek is a leading satellite tracker and lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He and astrodynamicist Dominic Dirkx created an open-source TU Delft Astrodynamics Toolkit (Tudat) that they used to predict when and where the wayward Venus probe would come down. Langbroek and Dirkx wrote an informative post mortem on the descent craft's interesting reentry and the confusion it left in The Space Review, which you can find here. "And now it has finally reentered," Langbroek and Dirkx wrote. "The big question on everybody's mind is: Where did it reenter, and when exactly?" Several organizations followed the doomed probe, such as the U.S. Department of Defense, the European Space Agency (ESA) and The Aerospace Corporation, Langbroek and Dirkx explain. All of these groups posted somewhat different reentry estimates. Langbroek said it is very likely that the space leftover survived reentry through Earth's atmosphere intact, before impacting at an estimated speed of 65 to 70 meters per second after atmospheric deceleration. "Maybe, one day, something odd with Cyrilian markings will wash up on an Australian or Indian beach," Langbroek and Dirkx write. Ralf Vandebergh, also of the Netherlands, is a photographer specialized in imaging small objects orbiting Earth, tracking spacecraft and producing informative images using small to moderate aperture telescopes. Vandebergh stacked imagery data captured from his first observation of the errant spacecraft in 2011, followed by processing of more recent observations. All results pointed to the existence of an "attached structure" to the Kosmos-482 descent craft. He speculated that, perhaps, the descent vehicle had deployed its parachute. Whatever the case, that appendage is now long gone following reentry. Vandebergh published his pre-reentry Kosmos-482 photo assessment here. "In general, reentry predictions have a certain amount of challenge. You're trying to pinpoint something that is coming down that's moving really fast," said Marlon Sorge, executive director of The Aerospace Corporation's Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies (CORDS). CORDS offers expertise regarding space debris and space traffic management and maintains a reentry database that documents objects and payloads that plow into Earth's atmosphere, such as Kosmos-482. "Being off even a little bit represents hundreds or thousands of kilometers in distance on the surface of the Earth," Sorge told Also at play, he said, are some "unhelpful physics." For example, solar activity affects the density of Earth's atmosphere, which then impacts when and where an object is going to reenter. Gregory Henning, a CORDS project leader, pointed out other issues that make reentry predictions tricky as well. "You don't know real-time how that object is behaving," Henning said. "Is it tumbling? Have pieces broken off? Is it in a stable orientation? So you don't really know real-time what kind of surface area the object is presenting to the atmosphere." The spherical nature of the descent part of Kosmos-482 was a literal "odd ball" in terms of a reentry. Keep in mind that it was built to enter and endure a punishing plunge into the atmosphere of Venus. The Venus lander was made to withstand the extremely harsh conditions of Venus' hostile atmosphere, ESA experts have said, and was designed to take 300 G's of acceleration and 100 atmospheres of pressure. "I have not seen anything that would suggest that there were any sightings. But again, being a design to survive a Venus entry, it's fairly likely that it could have survived," Sorge said. "That means you wouldn't see the whole spectacular display of a breakup and a bunch of pieces flaming down that make other reentries so noticeable," he said. "All models are wrong, and some are useful," said Darren McKnight, senior technical fellow at LeoLabs, a company that monitors activity in space to reveal threats to safety and security. The reentry of space objects has been a vexing problem since the beginning of the space age, McKnight told because there are at least three physical phenomena that all have large uncertainties. Those phenomena combine to represent the total uncertainty of where and when an object is finally going to meet its ultimate return to Earth, McKnight said. At the crux of reentry question marks are atmospheric density profiles, the orientation of the space object, along with the way that it melts, vaporizes, and (perhaps) breaks up. "The density of the atmosphere changes drastically for a given reentry point in space based upon the solar flux/activity, time of day, etc. There are diurnal bulges and dips in the atmosphere that change during the course of the day, which also are affected by solar storms that occur, overlaid on top of the background solar activity," said McKnight. The transit of these fluctuations also varies as Earth progresses through seasons of the year, he added. RELATED STORIES — Failed Soviet Venus lander Kosmos 482 crashes to Earth after 53 years in orbit — 3 big hunks of space junk crash to Earth every day — and it's only going to get worse — New images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest its parachute may be out When a space object reaches a "magic altitude" of 50 miles (80 kilometers) above Earth, substantial heating starts to occur, McKnight said. "The orientation of the space object is critically important to accurately assess how the heating and drag effects will accelerate," he said. Toss into the mix that certain forces exerted on the space object cause an incoming object to rotate. "This may even cause there to be a net lifting effect that would delay the reentry of the space object," said McKnight. This is sometimes called skipping, because it's analogous to a thrown stone skipping over the surface of a pond. McKnight said that he's been working in aerospace engineering, space safety, and space operations since 1986. "Reentry physics and predictions in that domain have advanced the least over that timeframe," he concluded.
Scientific American
12-05-2025
- Science
- Scientific American
Sinking Cities, Waving Cuttlefish and Falling Spacecraft
Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. Let's catch up on some of the science news you may have missed last week. First, a space-junk update. By the time you listen to this a Soviet-era spacecraft may or may not have crash-landed on Earth. Kosmos-482, which the U.S.S.R. launched back in 1972, was meant to follow the successful probes Venera 7 and Venera 8 in landing on and studying Venus. But a suspected engine malfunction meant that Kosmos-482 never achieved enough velocity to escape Earth's orbit. It's been orbiting our planet ever since and losing altitude along the way. Some of Kosmos-482 already fell back down to Earth decades ago, but one last big chunk has held on for more than half a century. Last week researchers said Kosmos-482 would probably make its uncontrolled descent over the weekend. Its potential landing zone stretched from 52 degrees north to 52 degrees south latitude, which covers pretty much everywhere except for Antarctica and, like, places where you can see the northern lights. There's a chance that the 1,000-ish pound [495 kg] lander, which was designed to withstand Venus's atmosphere, will hit Earth in one piece. That could be bad if it happens to crash in a populated area, but it's statistically more likely to hit the ocean or some uninhabited patch of land. And there's still a chance the craft will break up into smaller pieces in the friction of our atmosphere or even burn up entirely. We'll update you on how everything went down next week, or you can check for the latest space news. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Now, the sky may not be falling, but our biggest cities are sinking. A study published last Thursday in the journal Nature Cities found that all of the 28 most populated cities in the U.S. are sinking, regardless of how far inland they are. In 25 of those cities, the researchers say, at least two-thirds of their respective area is losing height. The researchers called out Houston as the fastest-sinking city, with more than a third of its area going down by upwards of five millimeters [about 0.2 inches] each year. Around 12 percent of the city is sinking twice as fast as that, and some spots are dropping by five whole centimeters [roughly two inches] a year. While natural forces and the sheer heft of buildings can play a role, according to the researchers behind the study, the extraction of groundwater is largely responsible for all of this sinkage. The researchers tied the removal of groundwater for human use to as much as 80 percent of the sinking they observed. They noted that in Texas, gas and oil extraction likely exacerbates this problem. One obvious consequence of a city sinking is that it makes the area more prone to flooding. But the study also sounds the alarm on the unique risks brought on by uneven sink rates within a city. If some areas are sinking faster than others, that raises the likelihood that structures like building foundations and rail lines will start to tilt. The researchers noted in a press release that increases in water needs and population, along with climate-change-induced droughts, are expected to add to the problem, making it crucial that cities start adapting to these risks now. If you're looking for someone to blame for that—for the climate-change-related part, anyway—consider your millionaire or billionaire of choice: A study published last Wednesday in Nature Climate Change concluded that the wealthiest 10 percent of the global population is responsible for two-thirds of climate-change-related warming as a result of their consumption and investments. The top 1 percent of people are responsible for one-fifth of all warming all on their own. If you're in the top 10 percent, you're an estimated six times more responsible for droughts in the Amazon than the average person is. According to a recent article in Forbes, a net worth of at least $970,000 puts you in that percentile in the United States, while one-percenters have net worths of at least $11.6 million. If you're looking at your own robust bank account and feeling a little hot under the collar about this study. It does point out a major area for improvement: investments. The authors concluded that the richest among us primarily contribute to climate change through investments tied to high-carbon industries. So if you haven't cleaned up your stock portfolio, now's a great time to do so. As long as you're not, say, flying a private jet everywhere—or worse, taking jaunts into space for fun—then that should make a big difference. And hey if you are doing those things, girl stop. We'll wrap up with a fun story that takes us under the sea. In an unpublished study recently posted to the preprint server bioRxiv, scientists claim that cuttlefish wave to one another to communicate. The researchers observed four distinct arm waves: 'up,' 'side,' 'crown' and 'roll.' These movements are a bit more complicated than our one- or two-armed human gestures. In the 'roll' move the cuttlefish tucks all its arms beneath its head as if it's about to try to somersault forward. The 'side' signal has it move its arms to one side of its body. The 'crown' looks a bit like someone steepling their fingers—if their fingers were several squishy tentacles. The 'up' sign is complicated, with some arms extended up and others twisting in front of the cuttlefish. The scientists observed cuttlefish trading these signals back and forth and occasionally responding to one signal with a different one. That makes them suspect these moves are a form of communication. What's even wilder is that when the scientists recorded cuttlefish signing with an underwater microphone and played the same vibrations for another cuttlefish, that second individual would start signing. So the creatures could be sensing the vibrations of this sign language, in addition to seeing visual cues. Researchers will have to directly connect these signals with certain behaviors or actions to prove that this is actually communication, but for now it is pretty cute. That's all for this week's news roundup. Before I let you go I just wanted to plug our ongoing listener survey real quick. We're looking to learn more about you—yes, you—so we can keep making this show better and better. You can find the survey at It should only take you a couple of minutes, and folks who submit their answers this month will be entered to win some Scientific American swag. More importantly, you'll really be helping out me and the rest of the Science Quickly team. So make sure to check out whenever you get the chance. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
Business Mayor
10-05-2025
- Science
- Business Mayor
Soviet-era spacecraft set to crash into Earth today 53 years after being launched
A failed Soviet spacecraft launched more than half a century ago is expected to plummet back to Earth early on Saturday, just one day after Vladimir Putin's Victory Day parade in Moscow. The reentry window for the Cosmos 482 Venus lander opens at 6am UTC (7am UK time), with a three-hour margin of error. According to NASA, potential impact zones include 'the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans,' but the decaying spacecraft could also come down over 'parts of North and South America, Europe, Asia, or Australia'. What happens next remains unclear, because unlike typical space junk, Cosmos 482 was designed to survive far worse than Earth's atmosphere. A NASA spokesman warned: 'Because the probe was designed to withstand entry into the Venus atmosphere, it is possible the probe will survive reentry at Earth and reach the surface.' The spacecraft was part of the Soviet Union's ambitious interplanetary programme in the early 1970s. Launched on March 31, 1972—just four days after its nearly identical sister mission Venera 8—the aim was to deliver a robotic lander to the surface of Venus. While Venera 8 successfully reached its target and transmitted 50 minutes of data from the planet's surface, Cosmos 482 never got that far. After a successful launch into a temporary Earth parking orbit, the onboard propulsion system was meant to fire and hurl the craft towards Venus. Instead, a malfunction left the probe trapped in a highly elliptical orbit ranging from 210km to 9,800km above Earth's surface. The NASA spokesman explained: 'It separated into four pieces, two of which remained in low Earth orbit and decayed within 48 hours, and two pieces (presumably the lander probe and detached upper stage engine unit) went into a higher 210 x 9800 km orbit.' Those smaller components reentered Earth's atmosphere and burned up almost immediately. But the lander—heavily shielded against the crushing pressure and searing heat of Venus—has remained in orbit ever since, slowly descending. The probe itself weighs nearly 500kg and is shaped like a heavy, armoured sphere. The casing was built to withstand temperatures over 450°C and pressures more than 90 times greater than Earth's atmosphere. It was designed to endure impact, deploy a 2.5-square-metre parachute, and transmit scientific data from the surface of Venus. According to the NASA spokesman the lander probe 'was an insulated spherical pressure vessel of similar design to the Venera 7 probe. It had a top shell that would be jettisoned on atmospheric entry to deploy the 2.5 square meter parachute and expose the antenna and instruments.' Whether the parachute or instrument shell would survive Earth reentry is highly doubtful—but the titanium casing could plausibly reach the ground intact. Experts say tracking the probe's final descent will be difficult until the last moments. The NASA spokesman said: 'The uncertainty will be fairly significant right up to reentry,' underscoring the difficulty in modelling an object of this shape and mass at this altitude. Cosmos 482 was given its name because of Soviet policy at the time: any planetary mission that failed to leave Earth orbit was instead designated as a 'Cosmos' satellite. Despite its intended target, official Soviet records never acknowledged that it was a Venus mission. The craft was part of a long line of Venus probes launched during the Cold War space race. While many failed, the Soviets ultimately became the only country to land functioning instruments on the surface of Earth's closest planetary neighbour. A post on X by the UK Space Agency said the National Space Operations Centre will be monitoring the re-entry in the UK. The EU Space Surveillance and Tracking (EU SST) Operations Centres said it was 'actively monitoring the uncontrolled re-entry into Earth's atmosphere of the Cosmos-482 Descent Craft, a Soviet-era spacecraft launched in 1972 and intended to land on Venus. 'The EU SST network of contributing sensors is closely following the object to refine the re-entry window, which is currently estimated to be on 10 May, with an uncertainty of ±4 hours.' Now, more than five decades later, one of those relics is finally on its way back—raising the remote but real possibility that a piece of 1970s Soviet hardware could crash-land on Earth in 2025. READ SOURCE
Ammon
10-05-2025
- Science
- Ammon
Part of Soviet-era spacecraft to crash to Earth this weekend
Ammon News - Part of a Soviet spacecraft is expected to crash back down to Earth this weekend, with experts still unsure of where it will land. Kosmos 482 was launched in March 1972 on a Soyuz rocket a few days after the Venera 8 atmospheric probe, and was thought to have a similar purpose. Intended to reach Venus, it failed to escape low Earth orbit and instead broke into four pieces. Now, Kosmos 482's lander probe is expected to come down to Earth with a bump. Marek Ziebart, professor of space geodesy at University College London, said the situation was unusual, noting de-orbited satellites tended to burn up in the planet's atmosphere owing to drag. However, that is unlikely to be the case for Kosmos 482 – a spacecraft that was designed to withstand Venus's extreme conditions, such as its acidic atmosphere and extreme heat. 'Anything we try to send Venus has to be armour plated,' said Ziebart. As a result, the lander probe is expected to be robust enough to pass through the Earth's atmosphere. 'Because this thing is basically 500kg, and it's only about a metre across, then it will probably survive,' he added. It is not the first part of Kosmos 482 to do so: some components landed in New Zealand soon after the launch. According to Nasa, the lander probe contained a heat shield and a parachute to help it land. However, experts said these may have been compromised over time. While the altitude of Kosmos 482 has gradually decreased, quite when it will crash to Earth remains unclear. Nasa said it was expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere some time from 9 to 10 May. The location of where it will crash remains a mystery. At present, Nasa said it thought the landing probe could end up anywhere between the latitudes of 52 degrees north and 52 degrees south – a broad band that includes parts of Europe, the UK and the Americas as well as Africa and Australia, among other countries and regions. 'It's not going to end up de-orbiting at the poles,' said Ziebart. While Nasa said the time and location at which it would re-enter Earth's atmosphere should be known more accurately over the next day or so, uncertainty would be significant right up to re-entry. 'Because this is uncontrolled, that is the important thing here, we can't do anything to influence where it comes down, but we can track it with telescopes and with radar,' said Ziebart, although he noted that depended on the area in question having sufficient radar coverage. He added that with the lander probe not only heavy but likely to be travelling at speed, 'it would have some destructive capability'.
