This is a short paper that my brother wrote about Venera 9, the first spacecraft to return surface photos of another planet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_9
Despite losing the manned mission to the moon portion of the space race, the Soviets were still leading on many other fronts. One of these many notable firsts of the Soviet Union space program occurred with the Venera 9 spacecraft. Named after the Russian word for Venus, the Venera 9 lander successfully touched down on Venus on October 22, 1975. It was launched on June 8, 1975 and successfully entered orbit on October 20, 1975. The same day, the lander separated from the orbiter and made its descent through the atmosphere. The orbiter then acted as a communications relay and performed multiple survey missions from October 26 until December 25, 1975 (Mitchell 2004).
Russia accomplished two notable firsts with the Venera 9 mission. It was the first spacecraft to successfully orbit Venus and the lander was the first to return images from the surface of another planet (NASA 2010). These accomplishments occurred despite several failed Venera missions leading up to Venera 9 with the notable exceptions of Venera 4, first spacecraft to enter the atmosphere of another planet, and Venera 7, the first spacecraft to land on another planet (Burrows 1999, 11180 Kindle Ed.) Thus, Venera 9 followed in a long line of firsts accomplished by the Soviet Union and provided further scientific insight into the conditions and harshness of Venus. It also provided the first evidence that Venus’s geography was surprisingly similar to Earth’s despite the much hotter temperatures and harsher atmosphere overall (Burrows 1999, 11278 Kindle Ed.)
The lander itself was built of a thick titanium hull approximately 80 cm in diameter. It had a specially designed layer of thermal insulation that protected some of its key components and could efficiently absorb hundreds of degrees of excess heat. Additionally, there was a 2 meter aerodynamic brake, parachutes, an antenna for transmissions, a variety of atmospheric sensors, as well as shock absorbers and a hollow pad designed to crush and absorb the impact of landing. Of course there were also two cameras on board as well that would send pictures back to the orbiter via the antenna and these were designed to be able to survive for a minimum of 30 minutes. Interestingly, only one of the cameras was able to deploy upon landing and it functioned successfully for 53 minutes until radio transmission was lost with the orbiter (Mitchell 2004). It was ultimately this lack of radio contact and not the harsh conditions that finally terminated the Venera 9 lander’s mission.
The Venera 9 lander had to be specifically designed to deal with the harshness of the Venus environment. At greater than 100 atmospheres of pressure, temperatures that exceed 475° C, and with sulfuric acid present in the atmosphere it was a great engineering challenge to design something that could survive on the planet for any length of time (Mitchell 2004). In addition to this, the entire system had to fly across space with pinpoint accuracy, descend through a hostile atmosphere, land without crashing, and then turn on and utilize scientific equipment to take pictures and measurements of the planet. Finally it had to be able to send that data back to the orbiter for transfer back to Earth. This was no small feat and the fact that Venera 9 was able to do it all is a credit to the Soviet scientists and engineers that designed and built it. Despite the relatively short transmission period of the lander, Venera 9 was overall a huge success for the Soviet space program and demonstrated that landing and taking pictures of another planet from the surface was possible for the first time.
Reference List
Burrows, William. 1999. This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age. New York:
Modern Library. Kindle Ed.
Davis, Phil. Ed. 2010. “Missions to Venus: Venera 9.” NASA.
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/profile.cfm?Sort=Target&Target=Venus&MCode=Venera_09&Display=ReadMore 2 Dec. Accessed 21 May 2012.
Mitchell, Don. 2004. “First Pictures of the Surface of Venus.” Mental Landscape.
http://www.mentallandscape.com/V_Lavochkin2.htm Accessed 21 May 2012.
Topic: Venera 9 landing on Venus (Read 6215 times)
