You may remember back in November of 2005 the European Space Agency (ESA) sent a spacecraft into the unknown to study Venus. The mission was plagued by a lack of fuel, but scientists in 2006 found that they could use the craft for more than what the mission was designed for. With that in mind they sent the
Venus probe takes death plunge in December of 2014.
Using it’s aerobrakes and other manuvers they were able to send the craft into the atmosphere of Venus all the while sending back data as to the makeup of the Venetian atmosphere and send some of the speculations about the world to bed. One of the speculations that they hoped to verify was the temperature on Venus which is the hottest world in the solar system. The thick atmosphere traps heat on the world and sends temperatures to a firey 860F or 460C on the surface.
Another of their findings was surprising in that the temperature near the poles is far lower than that on Earth. Polar temperatures were around -251F or -157C. This was 70 degrees colder than expected and 22 – 40 percent less dense than aticipated.
Although the
Venus probes death plunge was on purpose it wasn’t initially the way it was to end its mission. It wasn’t until 2006, after the probe was already in flight that scientists were able to decide that they could easily make the transition to get better results than they had previously thought.
Venus Probe Takes Death Plunge Results In Better Data
When
Venus Probe takes death plunge scientists found that the plunge revealed some fascinating results which were recently published in the journal
Nature Physics. One of the most fascinating things that was found was that the atmosphere around the poles is garnered by what’s called atmospheric gravity waves.
Atmospheric gravity waves are low density waves that travel vertically from low to high altitudes. The Venus probe found that these atmospheric gravity waves about 56 miles or 90 km above the poles. It also revealed that there were other waves present as a result of the planets spin.
Even though the Venus probe takes death plunge was the first to visit the planet, it’s not the only probe to take an interest in the second planet from the sun. Japan has its on probe currently on its way. The Akatsuki mission is just now making its way to Venus and with the data that we already have on the planet they hope to learn much more than what the Venus probe was able to tell us.
