MOSCOW, April 20, Nikolay Guryanov. The unique operation to send a spacecraft to Venus should confirm the planet's informal status as «Russian». One of the tasks is to check the controversial versions that life can exist in the aggressive environment of the neighboring world.
«What are you happy about?» The Union, and then Russia, is traditionally unlucky (devices either crash, like Mars-2, or their flight is canceled, like ExoMars), then the country holds absolute leadership in the study of Venus.
Back in the 18th century, Mikhail Lomonosov discovered the atmosphere of the second planet from the Sun. And the USSR became the only space power that managed to organize soft landings. In total, ten vehicles successfully landed on the surface of the neighboring world, collecting a large amount of data. In addition, they transmitted to Earth photographs of Venusian landscapes, including color ones.
However, not everyone was pleased with the results — for some scientists, what they saw caused bitter disappointment. For a long time it was believed that the planet could be habitable. And although by the beginning of the Soviet missions, the scientific community was increasingly inclined to believe that this was impossible — the surface was too hot and the atmosphere was too dense — there was still a certain hope. It was completely dispelled by the data of the first devices that looked under the veil of clouds. 0.959700093720712″ data-crop-width=»600″ data-crop-height=»576″ data-source-sid=»rian_photo» class=»lazyload» width=»1920″ height=»1843″ decoding=»async»/
It turned out that the temperature on the surface is more than 450 degrees Celsius, and the atmospheric pressure is almost a hundred times higher than on Earth. The sky is overcast with sulfuric acid clouds. No known form of life can exist under such conditions.
The Soviet journalist Yaroslav Golovanov in his memoirs cites the statement of the designer of space technology Gleb Maksimov. «What are you rejoicing about? Don't you understand that today we are orphaned in the solar system? That's it! There are no more hopes,» he said at a celebratory banquet on the occasion of the success of the Venera-4 mission.
«A large crowd gathered around our idea»
The futility of the search for life diverted attention from Venus for a long time. Scientists from Russia were the first to think about returning to the «hellish planet». In the 2010s, the Venera-D mission project appeared.
“But when we talk about something, a large ‘crowd’ immediately gathers around it,” Lev Zeleny, academician and scientific director of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, noted at a press conference at the Rossiya Segodnya MIA. “And now a whole fleet of spacecraft is planning explore Venus».
Probes to the neighboring world in 2020 are going to be sent by NASA (two missions), a private American company Rocket Lab, India, China and the European Space Agency (ESA).
Most of them will be limited to orbiters. As part of the American project DAVINCI +, they plan to lower an ultra-protected module with equipment to the surface. Russia will also have its own landing station.
It turns out to be self-sufficient
According to Zeleny, the Venus project has become a kind of «vent» for Russian scientists who are hard pressed by the cancellation of the ExoMars mission .
“At first, it (the Venera-D program. — Ed.) existed as a Russian-American one, but we are trying to replace the elements that NASA was supposed to supply with domestic ones,” the academician said. “But in general, the mission turns out to be self-sufficient” .
Now the interplanetary apparatus is under active development. The letter «D» in the name means «long-lived». Scientists tried to figure out how to extend the operation of the station on the surface of the planet — Soviet devices in an aggressive environment withstood no more than an hour and a half. However, we came to the conclusion that the protection against overheating and pressure «eats» too much working volume, and it will not be possible to place a sufficient amount of scientific equipment. jpg» media-type=»photo» data-crop-ratio=»0.841750841750842″ data-crop-width=»600″ data-crop-height=»505″ data-source-sid=»» class=»lazyload» lazy =»1″ />
In the end, we decided that the station would operate for two to three hours. During this time, modern and much more informative than in Soviet times, instruments will have time to transmit all the necessary data to Earth.
«Venera-D» will try to find out how such a strong greenhouse effect appeared on the planet, why it does not have a magnetic field, whether there are volcanoes there and where the water went. the atmosphere of Venus. One of his tasks is to understand the nature of superrotation, that is, the very rapid rotation of the atmosphere.
«Scorpion», «black patch» and others
However, the most intriguing goal of the mission is the search for life. The disappointment brought about by the results of the Soviet programs was replaced by new hope. In 2020, a sensational study was published— in the Venusian clouds, where the conditions for life are more acceptable than on the surface, phosphine gas was discovered. On Earth, it is produced by anaerobic bacteria. There was an assumption that similar microorganisms can live in the cloudy layers of Venus. True, it later turned out that the data contained an error. Nevertheless, the news spurred the interest of space agencies in studying the planet.
We cannot exclude the possibility of life on the surface — in forms fundamentally different from those on Earth, without carbon and water.
In 2012, the main IKI RAS Researcher Leonid Ksanfomality publishedan article in which he analyzed pictures of Soviet devices from Venus. I noticed that the images change over time — some objects either appear or disappear. And he suggested that the device filmed the movement of living beings, which the scientist called «chevron», «disc», «black flap» and «scorpion».
True, other experts sharply criticized this idea, insisting that the mysterious spots on the pictures appeared due to the peculiarities of the signal encoding. Xanfomality emphasized that manufacturers of equipment for shooting on Venus do not agree with this. «We don't like your explanation, but we can't think of another one,» the scientist quoted them.
According to Zeleny, the new mission should put an end to this dispute. «We expect <…> to make a very accurate panorama so that such processes cannot be explained by the intricacies of photographic image processing,» he said.
The mission was scheduled for the end of this decade. According to Zeleny, there is every reason to hope that Venus will retain the status of a «Soviet-Russian» planet.