Venus spacecrafts galore
Claudiu, 18 June 2010
On 21 may 2010, JAXA’s H-IIA 202 rocket successfully launched three spacecrafts en-route to Venus: Planet-C (Venus Climate Orbiter), IKAROS and UNITEC-1, after three days delay caused by weather conditions.
Planet-C was the biggest payload aboard the H-IIA 202 rocket and it should arrive around Venus in December 2010. Equipped with a ultraviolet imager (UVI), a longwave infrared camera (LIR), a 1-μmcamera (IR1), a 2-μm camera (IR2), and the radio science (RS) Planet-C will map Venus’ surface, it will search for lighting in planet’s atmosphere and study it’s surface vulcanism, sharing it’s orbit with Venus Express, the ESA probe currently studying Venus for a few years now.
IKAROS is the first successful attempt to put a solar sail ship beyond Eart’s atmosphere. Currently in good health with sails fully deployed, the ambitious spacecraft is heading to Venus too, hoping to get there by using only sun’s light as a wind for her sails.
First student-built spacecraft beyond Earth’s geosynchronous orbit is UNITEC-1, also on her way to a fly-by of Venus. With only 20 kilograms and no stabilization or attitude control, the spacecraft, built as a collaboration between a few Japanese Universities, UNITEC-1 indends to study the effects on interplanetary flight on computers aboard the probe.
With all this brand new probes on their way to Venus, there will be some very interesting months ahead for Venus exploration community.
No Comments
Lava flows
Claudiu, 09 April 2010
Venus Express team announced that recent lava flows were detected on the surface of Venus, indicating that our sister planet is indeed geologically alive. It has been speculated that volcano eruptions are present on planet’s surface, since the planet doesn’t have lots of crater markings on its surface, but this is the first time when a lava flow was recorded using probe’s instrumentation.
ESA website provides more details.
No Comments
Earth tugging Venus?
Claudiu, 17 March 2010
Gérard Caudal of the University of Versailles-Saint Quentin, France, believes that Earth’s gravity affects the rotation of Venus and this could explain why at our closest encounter with Venus, she always shows us the same face. However, we know to little about the structure of Venus’ core, but NewScientist has more on this subject.
No Comments
Venus at LPSC
Claudiu, 12 March 2010
Emily Lakdawalla, from The Planetary Society blog, have some nice insights about Venus related topics that were discussed the 41st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC, Houston) that ended a few days ago. Very interesting reading material for Venus enthusiasts that weren’t lucky enough to be at Houston during LPSC this year. Downloadable material from LPSC 2010 can be found here.