{"id":457,"date":"2010-06-08T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-08T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=457"},"modified":"2010-06-08T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-06-08T12:00:00","slug":"venera-9-and-10-twin-missions-venus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/venera-9-and-10-twin-missions-venus\/","title":{"rendered":"Venera-9 and -10, Twin Missions to Venus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thirty-five years ago today — June 8, 1975 — the Soviet Union launched the Venera-9 mission to Venus. Venera-9 was the first mission to successfully return an image of the surface of Venus; specifically, the rocky terrain in the immediate vicinity of the lander.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(Photographs of the surface of Venus: top, from Venera-9, and bottom from Venera-10. From http:\/\/nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov\/photo_gallery\/photogallery-venus.html<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\nA Proton rocket out of the Baikonur Cosmodrome sent the Venera-9<\/a> probe on its way. Its sister ship Venera-10<\/a> launched six days later, on June 14th. Each carried an orbiter section and a lander. <\/p>\n

The Venera-9 lander<\/a> descended successfully to the surface on October 22, 1975, and operated for nearly an hour before the heat (485 degrees Celsius) and pressure (90 atmospheres) destroyed it. The Venera-10 lander<\/a> followed its sister to the surface on October 25, 1975, and landed over 2000 km away from the Venera-9 landing site. Venera-10 operated for over an hour before it, too, succumbed to the harsh Venusian environment.<\/p>\n

If only they had found the tropical paradise envisioned by classic science fiction writers, instead of fields of heat-blasted rocks, we might have developed more motivation to get out there and explore….<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thirty-five years ago today — June 8, 1975 — the Soviet Union launched the Venera-9 mission to Venus. Venera-9 was the first mission to successfully return an image of the surface of Venus; specifically, the rocky terrain in the immediate vicinity of the lander. (Photographs of the surface of Venus: \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,11,120],"class_list":["post-457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fiction","tag-launch","tag-space-history","tag-venus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}