THE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF                   THE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF THE ATLANTIC                         Volume 4, Number 9 - April 1993                           ###########################                                TABLE OF CONTENTS                           ###########################            * ASA Membership and Article Submission Information            * The Soviets and Venus, Part 3 - Larry Klaes                           ###########################                           ASA MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION          The Electronic Journal of the Astronomical Society of the Atlantic     (EJASA) is published monthly by the Astronomical Society of the     Atlantic, Incorporated.  The ASA is a non-profit organization dedicated     to the advancement of amateur and professional astronomy and space     exploration, as well as the social and educational needs of its members.          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THE SOVIETS AND VENUS                                      PART 3                         Copyright (c) 1993 by Larry Klaes  	The author gives permission to any group or individual wishing 	to distribute this article, so long as proper credit is given,         the author is notified, and the article is reproduced in its          entirety.          To the North Pole!          On June 2 and 7, 1983, two of the Soviet Union's mighty PROTON      rockets lifted off from the Tyuratam Space Center in the Kazakhstan      Republic.  Aboard those boosters were a new breed of VENERA probe      for the planet Venus.           Designated VENERA 15 and 16, the probes were meant not for landing     yet more spherical craft on the Venerean surface but to radar map the     planet in detail from orbit.  To accomplish this task, the basic     VENERA design was modified in numerous areas.  The central bus core     was made one meter (39.37 inches) longer to carry the two tons of     propellant required for braking into orbit, double the fuel carried by     the VENERA 9 and 10 orbiters eight years earlier.  Extra solar panels     were added on to give the vehicles more power for handling the large     amounts of data which would be created by the radar imaging.  The     dish-shaped communications antennae were also made one meter larger      to properly transmit this information to Earth.           Atop the buses, where landers were usually placed, were installed     the 1.4 by 6-meter (4.62 by 19.8-foot), 300-kilogram (660-pound)     POLYUS V side-looking radar antennae.  The radar system, possibly a     terrain-imaging version of the nuclear-powered satellites used by      the Soviets for Earth ocean surveillance, would be able to map Venus'     surface at a resolution of one to two kilometers (0.62 to 1.2 miles).           The Soviet probes' imaging parameters were a vast improvement over     the United States PIONEER VENUS Orbiter, which could reveal objects      no smaller than 75 kilometers (45 miles) in diameter.  And while the     VENERAs' resolution was comparable to that of similar observations      made by the 300-meter (1,000-foot) Arecibo radio telescope on the      island of Puerto Rico, the orbiters would be examining the northern     pole of Venus.  This region was unobtainable by either Arecibo or      PIONEER VENUS and appeared to contain a number of potentially      interesting geological features worthy of investigation.          On October 10, 1983, after an interplanetary journey of 330      million kilometers (198 million miles) and two mid-course corrections,      VENERA 15 fired its braking rockets over Venus to place itself in a      polar orbit 1,000 by 65,000 kilometers (600 by 39,000 miles) around      the planet, completing one revolution every twenty-four hours.  VENERA      16 followed suit four days later.  The twin probes thus became Venus'      first polar-circling spacecraft.          Radar operations began on October 16 for VENERA 15 and October 20      for VENERA 16.  For up to sixteen minutes every orbit over the north     pole, the probes would make a radar sweep of the surface 150 kilometers      (ninety miles) wide and nine thousand kilometers (5,400 miles) long.       The craft would then head out to the highest part of their orbits over      the south pole to recharge their batteries and transmit the data back      to two large Soviet antennae on Earth.  Each strip of information took      eight hours to process by computer.  By the end of their main missions      in July of 1984, the VENERAs had mapped 115 million square kilometers      (46 million square miles), thirty percent of the entire planet.          VENERA 15 and 16 revealed that Venus has a surface geology more     complex than shown by PIONEER VENUS in the late 1970s.  Numerous hills,      mountains, ridges, valleys, and plains spread across the landscape,      many of them apparently formed by lava from erupting volcanoes in the      last one billion years.  In planetary terms this makes the Venerean      surface rather young.  Hundreds of craters were detected as well, the      largest of which had to have been created by meteorites (planetoids      would be a better term here) at least fourteen kilometers (8.4 miles)      across, due to Venus' very dense atmosphere.          There were some disagreements between U.S. and Soviet scientists     on the origins of certain surface features.  For example, the probes'      owners declared that the 96-kilometer (57.6-mile) wide crater at the      summit of 10,800-meter (35,640-foot) high Maxwell Montes, the tallest      mountain on the planet, was the result of a meteorite impact.  American      scientists, on the other hand, felt the crater was proof that Maxwell      was a huge volcano sitting on the northern "continent" of Ishtar Terra.            In any event, the U.S. decided to wait on making verdicts about     Venus until the arrival of their own radar probe, scheduled for later     in the decade.  Originally named the Venus Orbiting Imaging Radar     (VOIR), its initial design was scaled back and the craft was redesig-     nated the Venus Radar Mapper (VRM).  Eventually the machine would be      called MAGELLAN, after the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan      (circa 1480-1521).  This vehicle would map the entire planet in even      finer detail than the VENERAs.  For the time, however, the Soviet      probes maintained that distinction.          Radar imaging was not the only ability of the VENERAs.  Bolted     next to the POLYUS V radar antenna were the Omega altimeter and the      Fourier infrared spectrometer, the latter for measuring the world's     temperatures.  The majority of the areas covered registered about     five hundred degrees Celsius (932 degrees Fahrenheit), but a few     locations were two hundred degrees hotter, possibly indicating      current volcanic activity.  The probes also found that the clouds      over the poles were five to eight kilometers (three to 4.8 miles)      lower than at the equator.  In contrast, the polar air above sixty      kilometers (thirty-six miles) altitude was five to twenty degrees      warmer than the equatorial atmosphere at similar heights.          When the main mapping mission ended in July of 1984, there were      plans for at least one of the VENERAs to radar image the surface at      more southernly latitudes.  Unfortunately this idea did not come to      pass, as the orbiters may not have possessed enough attitude-control     gas to perform the operation.            VENERA 15 and 16 ceased transmission in March of 1985, leaving      the Soviet Institute of Radiotechnology and Electronics with six      hundred kilometers (360 miles) of radar data tape to sort into an      atlas of twenty-seven maps of the northern hemisphere of Venus.          Venus by Balloon          For years the thick atmosphere of Venus had been a tempting      target to scientists who wished to explore the planet's mantle of      air with balloon-borne instruments.  Professor Jacques Blamont of      the French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES)     had proposed such an idea as far back as 1967, only to have a joint      French-Soviet balloon mission canceled in 1982.  Nevertheless,      late in the year 1984, such dreams would eventually come true.          When two PROTON rockets were sent skyward on December 15 and 21,      the Soviet Union provided Western observers with the first clear, full      views of the booster which had been launching every Soviet Venus probe      since 1975.  This was but one of many firsts for the complex mission.          The unmanned probes launched into space that December were named     VEGA 1 and 2, a contraction of the words VENERA and GALLEI - Gallei     being the Russian word for Halley.  Not only did the spacecraft      have more than one mission to perform, they also had more than one      celestial objective to explore, namely the comet Halley.            This famous periodic traveler was making its latest return to      the inner regions of the solar system since its last visit in 1910.     Since it was widely believed that comets are the icy remains from     the formation of the solar system five billion years ago, scientists      around the world gave high priority to exploring one of the few such      bodies which actually come close to Earth.            Most comets linger in the cold and dark outer fringes of the solar      system.  Some, like Halley, are perturbed by various forces and fall      in towards the Sun, where they circle for millennia spewing out ice      and debris for millions of kilometers from the warmth of each solar      encounter.          The Soviet Union, along with the European Space Agency (ESA) and     Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), did not     wish to miss out on this first opportunity in human history to make a     close examination of Halley.  The ESA would be using the cylindrical     GIOTTO probe to make a dangerously close photographic flyby of the      comet, while Japan's first deep space craft - SAKIGAKE (Pioneer) and      SUISEI (Comet) - would view Halley from a much safer distance.           Scientists in the United States also desired to study the comet     from the vantage of a space probe, at one time envisioning a vessel     powered by solar sails or ion engines.  However, government budget     cuts to NASA canceled the American efforts.  The U.S. would have to     make do primarily with Earth-based observations and the sharing of      data from other nations, though an instrument named the Dust Counter      and Mass Analyzer (DUCMA), designed by Chicago University Professor      John Simpson, was added on the Soviet mission in May of 1984.          The Soviets' answer to Halley were the VEGAs.  Instead of building     an entirely new craft for the mission, the Soviets decided to modify     their VENERA bus design to encounter the comet while performing an      advanced Venus mission along the way.  As VEGA 1 and 2 reached Venus,     the buses would drop off one lander/balloon each and use the mass of      the shrouded planet to swing them towards comet Halley, much as the      U.S. probe MARINER 10 used Venus to flyby Mercury eleven years earlier.      The Soviet craft would then head on to Halley, helping to pinpoint the      location of the comet's erupting nucleus for the GIOTTO probe to dive      in only 605 kilometers (363 miles) away in March of 1986.          As planned, the two VEGAs arrived at Venus in June of 1985.  VEGA     1 released its payload first on the ninth day of the month, the lander     making a two-day descent towards the planet.  The craft touched the     upper atmosphere on the morning of June 11.  Sixty-one kilometers     (36.6 miles) above the Venerean surface a small container was released     by the lander, which produced a parachute at 55 kilometers (33 miles)     altitude.  Thus the first balloon probe ever to explore Venus had     successfully arrived.           One kilometer after the opening of the parachute, helium gas was     pumped into the Teflon-coated plastic balloon, inflating it to a     diameter of 3.54 meters (11.68 feet).  Dangling on a tether thirteen     meters (42.9 feet) below was the instrument package, properly known as     an aerostat.  The top part of the 6.9-kilogram (15.18-pound) aerostat     consisted of a cone which served as an antenna and tether attachment     point to the balloon.  Beneath it was the transmitter, electronics,     and instruments.  Connected at the bottom was a nephelometer for     measuring cloud particles.  The aerostat was painted with a special     white finish to keep at bay the corroding mist of sulfuric acid which     permeated the planet's atmosphere.           The VEGA 1 balloon was dropped into the night side of Venus just     north of the equator.  Scientists were concerned that the gas bag      would burst in the heat of daylight, so they placed it in the darkened      hemisphere to give the craft as much time as possible to return data.       This action necessitated that the landers come down in the dark as      well, effectively removing the camera systems used on previous missions.       The author wonders, though, if they could have used floodlights similar      to the ones attached to VENERA 9 and 10 in 1975, when Soviet scientists      had thought the planet's surface was enshrouded in a perpetual twilight      due to the permanently thick cloud cover.          The first balloon transmitted for 46.5 hours right into the day     hemisphere before its lithium batteries failed, covering 11,600     kilometers (6,960 miles).  The threat of bursting in the day heat did     not materialize.  The VEGA 1 balloon was stationed at a 54-kilometer     (32.4-mile) altitude after dropping ballast at fifty kilometers     (thirty miles), for this was considered the most active of the three     main cloud layers reported by PIONEER VENUS in 1978.  Indeed the     balloon was pushed across the planet at speeds up to 250 kilometers     (150 miles) per hour.  Strong vertical winds bobbed the craft up and     down two to three hundred meters (660 to 990 feet) through most of the     journey.  The layer's air temperature averaged forty degrees Celsius     (104 degrees Fahrenheit) and pressure was a mere 0.5 Earth atmosphere.     The nephelometer could find no clear regions in the surrounding clouds.           Early in the first balloon's flight, the VEGA 1 lander was already     headed towards the Venerean surface.  Both landers were equipped with     a soil drill and analyzer similar to the ones carried on VENERA 13      and 14 in 1982.  However, VEGA 1 would become unable to report the     composition of the ground at its landing site in Rusalka Planitia, the     Mermaid Plain north of Aphrodite Terra.  While still ten to fifteen     minutes away from landing, a timer malfunction caused the drill to      accidentally begin its programmed activity sixteen kilometers (9.6      miles) above the surface.           There was neither any way to shut off the instrument before     touchdown nor reactivate it after landing.  This was unfortunate not     only for the general loss of data but also for the fact that most of     Venus was covered with such smooth low-level lava plains and had never      before been directly examined.  Nevertheless, the surface temperature      and pressure was calculated at 468 degrees Celsius (874.4 degrees      Fahrenheit) and 95 Earth atmospheres respectively during the lander's      56 minutes of ground transmissions.  A large amount of background      infrared radiation was also recorded at the site.          As had been done when the drills and cameras on VENERA 11 and      12 had failed in December of 1978, the Soviets focused on the data     returned during the lander's plunge through the atmosphere.  The     French-Soviet Malachite mass spectrometer detected sulfur, chlorine,      and possibly phosphorus.  It is the sulfur - possibly from active      volcanoes - which gives the Venerean clouds their yellowish color.     The Sigma 3 gas chromatograph found that every cubic meter of air     between an altitude of 48 and 63 kilometers (28.8 and 37.8 miles)     contained one milligram (0.015 grain) of sulfuric acid.          The VEGA 1 data on the overall structure of the cloud decks      appeared to be at odds with the information from PIONEER VENUS.     The case was made even stronger by the fact that VEGA 2's results     nearly matched its twin.  The VEGAs found only two main cloud layers      instead of the three reported by the U.S. probes.  The layers were      three to five kilometers (1.8 to 3 miles) thick at altitudes of 50      and 58 kilometers (30 and 34.8 miles).  The clouds persisted like a     thin fog until clearing at an altitude of 35 kilometers (21 miles),      much lower than the PV readings.  One possibility for the discrepan-     cies may have been radical structural changes in the Venerean air      over the last seven years.          When the lander and balloon finally went silent, the last      functioning part of the VEGA 1 mission, the flyby bus, sailed on     for a 708 million-kilometer (424.8 million-mile) journey around     the Sun to become the first probe to meet comet Halley.  On March     6, 1986, the bus made a 8,890-kilometer (5,334-mile) pass at the      dark and icy visitor before traveling on in interplanetary space.     The Soviets had accomplished their first mission to two celestial     bodies with one space vessel.          On June 13, VEGA 2 released its lander/balloon payload for     a two-day fall towards Venus.  Like its duplicate, the VEGA 2     balloon radioed information back to the twenty antennae tracking     it on Earth for 46.5 hours before battery failure on the morning     side of the planet.  During its 11,100-kilometer (6,660-mile)     flight over Venus, the second balloon entered in a rather still     environment which became less so twenty hours into the mission.     After 33 hours mission time the air became even more turbulent      for a further eight hours.  When the balloon passed over a five-     kilometer (three-mile) mountain on the "continent" of Aphrodite      Terra, a powerful downdraft pulled the craft 2.5 kilometers (1.5      miles) towards the surface.          Temperature sensors on the VEGA 2 balloon reported that the air      layer it was moving through was consistently 6.5 degrees Celsius      (43.7 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than the area explored by the VEGA 1     balloon.  This was corroborated by the VEGA 2 lander as it passed      through the balloon's level.  No positive indications of lightning     were made by either balloon, and the second aerostat's nephelometer      failed to function.          The VEGA 2 lander touched down on the northern edge of Aphrodite     Terra's western arm on the fifteenth of June, 1,500 kilometers (900     miles) southeast of VEGA 1.  The lander's resting place was smoother     than thought, indicating either a very ancient and worn surface or a     relatively young one covered in fresh lava.  The soil drill was in     working order and reported a rock type known as anorthosite-troctolite,      rare on Earth but present in Luna's highlands.  This rock is rich in      aluminum and silicon but lacking in iron and magnesium.  A high degree      of sulfur was also present in the soil.  The air around VEGA 2 measured      463 degrees Celsius (865.4 degrees Fahrenheit) and 91 Earth atmospheres,     essentially a typical day (or night) on Venus.          Far above the VEGA 2 lander, its carrier bus sped past Venus at     a distance of 24,500 kilometers (14,700 miles) and followed its twin      to comet Halley, making a closer flyby on March 9, 1986 at just 8,030      kilometers (4,818 miles).  Both probes helped to reveal that the comet      is a very dark and irregular-shaped mass about fourteen kilometers      (8.4 miles) across, rotating once every 53 hours, give or take three      hours.          Since both VEGA craft were still functioning after their Halley     encounters, Soviet scientists considered an option to send the      probes to other celestial objects.  One prime target was the near-     Earth planetoid 2101 Adonis, which VEGA 2 could pass at a distance      of six million kilometers (3.6 million miles).  Sadly, the Soviets      had to back out on the opportunity to become the first nation to fly      a spacecraft past a planetoid when it was discovered that there was      not enough maneuvering fuel in the probe to reach Adonis as planned.       VEGA 1 and 2 were quietly shut down in early 1987.          Future Plans Diverted          The impressive VEGA mission had given some scientists numerous      ideas and hope for even more ambitious expeditions to the second      world from the Sun.  One example was the VESTA mission, planned for     the early 1990s.          This Soviet-French collaboration called for the launch of multiple      probes on a single PROTON rocket in either 1991 or 1992.  The craft      would first swing by Venus and drop off several landers and balloon      probes.  The aerostats would be designed to survive in the planet's      corrosive atmosphere for up to one month, a large improvement over      the VEGA balloons' two days.  The mission would then head out to      investigate several planetoids and comets, including a possible      landing on Vesta (thus the mission name), the most reflective Main      Belt planetoid as seen from Earth.          Unfortunately for Venus exploration, plans began to change in     the Soviet Union.  In 1986 the Soviets decided to reroute the VESTA     mission to the red planet Mars instead of Venus, keeping the comet     and planetoid aspects intact.  By this time in the Soviet space      program interest was focusing on Mars.  Already under construction      was an entirely new probe design called PHOBOS.  Two members of this      class were planned to leave Earth in 1988 and orbit Mars the next      year.  PHOBOS 1 and 2 would then place the first instruments on     Mars' largest moon, Phobos.           All this was a prelude to even more advanced Mars expeditions,     including balloon probes, rovers, soil sample return craft, and      eventually human explorers in the early Twenty-First Century.     The environment of Venus was just too hostile for any serious     consideration of human colonization in the near future.          But things began to look bleak for Soviet Venus and Mars     exploration.  Both PHOBOS probes failed to complete their missions,     one losing contact on the way to the Red Planet in 1988 and the other     going silent in Mars orbit just one week before the planned moon     landing in March of 1989.           In 1989 a plan was devised for a Venus orbiter to drop eight to     ten penetrators around the planet in 1998.  Several years later the     mission launch date was moved to the year 2005 and has now been put      on indefinite hold.  No other official Soviet missions to Venus have     since been put forth, a sad commentary after twenty-five years of     continuous robotic exploration of the planet.           During the late 1980s a drastic political and economic change     was taking over the Soviet Union.  President Mikhail Gorbachev began      to "open up" his nation to the benefits of increased cooperation with      the rest of the nations, particularly those in the West.  While the      culture became less oppressive than in the past, the economy was taking      a very rough ride as it also underwent the effects of a "free market".          These effects hit everywhere, including the space program.     Missions at all levels were cut back.  The Soviets began making     almost desperate attempts to cooperate with other space-faring     nations either to keep their remaining programs alive or just to      make money.            In early 1992 it was reported that the Soviets were offering for      sale several fully-equipped VENERAs they had in storage for the price      of 1.6 million dollars each, an incredibly low price for any planetary      probe.  No nation took them up on the bargain.  Meanwhile the United      States was gearing up for new Venus missions of their own.          MAGELLAN and GALILEO           The U.S. reactivated their long-dormant planetary exploration     with the launch of the Space Shuttle ATLANTIS on May 4, 1989.     Aboard the Shuttle was the MAGELLAN spacecraft, a combination of     spare parts from other U.S. probes designed to make the most      detailed and complete radar-mapping of Venus in history.  When     MAGELLAN reached the second world in August of 1990, it would be     able to map almost the entire planet down to a resolution of 108     meters (360 feet), surpassing the abilities of VENERA 15 and 16.          In the interim another American probe was launched from a Space      Shuttle which would make a quick flyby of Venus on its way to orbit      the giant planet Jupiter in 1995.  On October 18, 1989, the Shuttle      ATLANTIS released its second unmanned planetary probe into space,      named GALILEO after the famous Italian astronomer who discovered the      probe's primary target's major moons in 1610.          In the absence of a powerful enough booster to send GALILEO on     a direct flight to the Jovian planet, the probe was sent around     Venus and Earth several times to build up enough speed to reach     Jupiter.  As a result, Venus became GALILEO's first planetary     goal in February of 1990.  The probe radioed back images of the     planet's swirling clouds and further indications of lightning in     that violent atmosphere.          On the Drawing Boards          With the incredible success of MAGELLAN in the last few years,     new plans have been laid out for further journeys to Venus.  Scien-     tists in the U.S. have talked to space scientists in the former Soviet      Union - now the Commonwealth of Independent States since January 1,      1992 - of a cooperative effort to launch new VENERA lander missions      within in the next decade.  Japan, India, and the ESA have also     considered their own Venus missions in the next few decades.          In February of 1993 NASA came up with several new Venus projects      as part of their Discovery Program for launching inexpensive probes     throughout the solar system.  For Venus two missions were selected     for further study:  A Venus Multiprobe Mission involving the landing     of fourteen small probes over one hemisphere to measure winds, air     temperature, and pressure; and the Venus Composition Probe, designed     to study Venus' atmosphere while descending through the thick air     with the aid of a parachute, much as the Soviets had done since 1967.     Final project decisions will be made in 1994.          Humans on Venus                Will a human ever be able to stand on the surface of Venus?     At present the lead-melting temperatures and crushing air pressure     would be threatening to any Earth life not protected in something     even tougher than a VENERA lander.  Plans have been looked into     changing the environment of Venus itself into something more like     Earth's.  However, it should be noted that any such undertaking     will require the removal of much of the thick carbon dioxide      atmosphere, a major reduction in surface heat, and the ability      to speed up the planet's rotation rate to something a bit faster     than once every 243 Earth days.  Such a project may take centuries     if not millennia.          In the meantime efforts should be made to better understand     Venus as its exists today.  We still have yet to fully know how     a world so seemingly similar to Earth in many important ways became     instead such a deadly place.  Will Earth ever suffer this fate?     Perhaps Venus holds the answers.  Such answers may best be found     through international cooperation, including the nation which      made the first attempts to lift the cloudy veils from Venus.          Bibliography -           Barsukov, V. 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Norton and Company, New York, 1989           Newcott, William, "Venus Revealed", NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE,             Volume 183, Number 2, Washington, D.C., February 1993           Nicks, Oran W., FAR TRAVELERS: THE EXPLORING MACHINES, NASA             SP-480, Washington, D.C., 1985           Oberg, James Edward, NEW EARTHS: RESTRUCTURING EARTH AND OTHER            PLANETS, A Meridian Book, New American Library, Inc., New            York, 1983           Robertson, Donald F., "Venus - A Prime Soviet Objective" (Parts             1/2), SPACEFLIGHT, Volume 34, Numbers 5/6, British Interplanetary            Society (BIS), London, England, May/June 1992           Smith, Arthur, PLANETARY EXPLORATION: THIRTY YEARS OF UNMANNED            SPACE PROBES, Patrick Stephens, Ltd., Wellingborough, Northamp-            tonshire, England, 1988           VOYAGE THROUGH THE UNIVERSE: THE NEAR PLANETS, By the Editors            of Time-Life Books, Inc., Alexandria, Virginia, 1990           Wilson, Andrew, JANE'S SOLAR SYSTEM LOG, Jane's Publishing, Inc.,            New York, 1987          About the Author -          Larry Klaes, EJASA Editor, is the recipient of the ASA's 1990      Meritorious Service Award for his work as Editor of the EJASA since      its founding in August of 1989.  Larry also teaches a course on     Basic Astronomy at the Concord-Carlisle Adult and Community      Education Program in Massachusetts.          Larry is the author of the following EJASA articles:          "The One Dream Man: Robert H. Goddard, Rocket Pioneer" - August 1989         "Stopping Space and Light Pollution" - September 1989                       "The Rocky Soviet Road to Mars" - October 1989         "Astronomy and the Family" - May 1991           "The Soviets and Venus, Part 1" - February 1993         "The Soviets and Venus, Part 2" - March 1993         THE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF THE ATLANTIC                            April 1993 - Vol. 4, No. 9