Venus: What did we find on the Hellish Planet?

stay put for real images taken from the surface of Venus and possible life and the clouds of the burning planet while named after the goddess of love and beauty the second planet from the Sun Venus is anything but some refer to Venus as Earth's sister planet it has a similar sized mass composition and even proximity to the Sun but because of its dense atmosphere and incredible atmospheric pressure Venus has become the hottest planet in our solar system in today's video we're going to take a look at what the few missions which survived the trip to the surface actually found while NASA was putting all of their efforts into landing a man on the moon in the 1960s the Soviet Union was equally busy with other space-based projects the Vanara program was a 23 year long mission lasting from 1961 to 1984 and would see humanity breached the atmosphere of another world for the very first time the early Venera launches were met with complete failure in 1961 the Soviets launched Venera one and two they were flyby probes designed to fly past Venus without entering orbit to return information and images however the instruments on the probes failed after leaving Earth it is thought that Venera one remains in heliocentric orbit to this day the near of three was the first minor success of the program the atmospheric entry probe became the first man-made object to touch the surface of another planet this however was a crash landing the data probes broke when Venera 3 passed into the Venusian atmosphere and so no data was achieved things improved rapidly from this point with missions beginning to survive atmospheric entry with their probes intact plenty of information about the planet's atmospheric composition and topology were gathered but it wasn't until 1976 that we began to receive images from the Venera missions these early images from the surface painted the picture of a rocky world choked by its carbon dioxide rich atmosphere an arid and lifeless environment none of these probes lasted a particularly long time the incredibly harsh conditions on Venus broke the equipment of the probes incredibly quickly with the longest ground mission lasting only two hours Russia still has plans for future forays into the Venusian landscape with Venera D currently planned to launch in 2026 or 2031 it is said to include a highly capable orbiter and a landing array while the Soviet Union's Venera missions may have been the first to venture into the atmosphere of Venus nASA has followed up with their own missions the majority of NASA's missions to Venus have either been simple flybys or brief gravity assists using the planet to get to other locations in fact NASA only ever sent the Pioneer Venus multi probe into the atmosphere of Venus part of the Pioneer program this spacecraft bus was carrying one large probe alongside three smaller probes and penetrated the atmosphere in late 1978 if there's one thing we've learned from all of these missions to Venus it's that the planet no longer harbours any form of life on the surface the ground is dark and rocky scorched by the incredible heat and pressures present on the surface above thick layers of clouds swirl in an impenetrable blanket while the majority of the gas on Venus is carbon dioxide the clouds are made up of sulfur dioxide and droplets of sulfuric acid we haven't been able to spend much time on the planet but the weather on Venus is under almost constant study by telescopes here on earth we've learned that the planet's weather is violent and extreme unlike earth the atmosphere of Venus orbits the planet at rapid speed with winds frequently reaching up to 186 miles per hour at the cloud tops this means that the wind of the planet moves at around 60 times the speed of the planets rotation and our fastest at the poles while it is clear that life could not exist down on the surface the atmosphere itself is something of a different nature the Vanara and pioneer missions both discovered carbonyl sulfide in the upper atmosphere of the planet alongside hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide the habitable zone of the planet currently sits between altitudes of 51 kilometers and 62 kilometers above the surface of the planet deep within the acidic cloud layer that might sound like a downside but it has long been speculated that those acidic clouds could contain chemicals which would initiate biological activity the biggest piece of evidence in favor of life in the atmosphere of Venus is the strange dark lines that have been observed in the UV photographs of Venus currently they are dubbed unknown UV absorbers but in actual fact maybe microorganisms that are using the UV light emitted by the Sun as an energy source in 2019 it was reported that there were long-term patterns of light absorbance and changes in the albedo or how much solar radiation was being absorbed in the atmosphere one potential explanation would be large colonies of microorganisms in the atmosphere furthermore in January 2020 it was reported that there was evidence of volcanic activity on the planet and that any residue from that activity would be a source of nutrients for any Venusian microorganisms dwelling in the atmosphere Venus was not always an arid hellscape plagued by incredible temperatures and acid rain scientists believed that liquid water could have existed on the surface of Venus for up to six hundred million years which would have been more than enough time for simple forms of life to evolve other studies estimate that water could have existed on the surface for up to three billion years which would have given a chance for even complex life to form on the surface before being wiped away by the runaway greenhouse effect that eventually heated the planet up in truth we don't know all that much about the state of the surface of Venus and what may or may not have lived on it millions and billions of years ago but that might not always be the case Russ cosmoses Venera D Lander may be joined by a fleet of proposed NASA landers in the late 2020s and even a rover by 2039 will we finally uncover the mysteries of the hellish planet or will they forever be hidden by a blanket of sulfuric cloud while we wait for these missions to go ahead NASA's new Horizons probe has been exploring Pluto and has found some rather strange things including skyscrapers made of methane ice click here to see what we actually found when we reach the distant former planet thanks for watching elder Fox if you enjoyed this video then please subscribe to keep up to date with the latest discoveries

Channel: ElderFox Documentaries

Views: 1,639,506

Rating: 4.8324714 out of 5

Keywords: venus, venera missions, surface of venus, life in the clouds of venus, elderfox, elder fox, elderfox documentaries

Id: rlSkL7NZKV4

Length: 7min 17sec (437 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 07 2020