Japanese Spacecraft Approaches Venus

Thought some may find this interesting.?

The reason for the question mark because i remember the other Japanese mission JAXA and the moon pics that never got updated.

Anyway lets see if they are more open with this Venus mission.

August 16, 2010: For the next few months, Venus will be softly resplendent in the evening sky, a treat for stargazers – but looks can be deceiving.
Consider this: The Venusian surface is hot enough to melt lead. The planet's 96% carbon dioxide atmosphere is thick and steamy with a corrosive mist of sulfuric acid floating through it. The terrain is forbidding, strewn with craters and volcanic calderas – and bone dry.
Takeshi Imamura can't wait to get there.
Imamura is the project scientist for Akatsuki, a Japanese mission also called the Venus Climate Orbiter. The spacecraft is approaching Venus and will enter orbit on December 7, 2010. Imamura believes a close-up look at Venus could teach us a lot about our own planet.

Link science.nasa.gov...

So it should enter Venus orbit december 7 this year so not long now.

Thankyou

S & F. Thanks for the post. About time there's an update on the Venus mission. I wonder what new things we will discover.

I find that interesting... last year I sent messages from my kids on that craft via the JAXA website...it was a cool opportunity for them to know their names will be left on Venus.

Thanks for the replies i just wish i was as excited about this but like i said i remember this www.kaguya.jaxa.jp... there moon mission i was excited about this at one point and not many images came out and the ones that did just did not look right.

I hope my view changes we will see.

Thankyou

Wow 1 went up from Nasa to moniter Sun now new Venus moniter from Japan. What do they want to see? That Venus weather sounds so tropical and energizing lol um sayen. Awaits the pictures, if it makes it. Imagine if they see living creatures there this time.
S&F for I loves VENUS its naturally my guiding planet in relation to my birth!

[edit on 8/17/10 by Ophiuchus 13]

It's too bad that Venus is so inhospitable.

I wish there was some way to terraform it reasonably fast (human beings won't be around much longer) by dropping bacteria or something into the atmosphere that would eat up the sulfur dioxide and make it into liquid water. Something neat like that.

But that doesn't solve the problem of the slow rotational period. Atomic bombs? I don't think we have enough power to get a planet spinning faster.

Oh, well.

reply to post by Blue Shift


It doesn't look that bad...



www.abovetopsecret.com...

I've posted this before, but this seems to be a good thread to post it in again.

The link below is to a NASA research paper on the subject of the possibility of life in the clouds of Venus, plus some unexplained observations of chemical dis-equilibriums in the atmosphere that point to that possibility.

NASA Paper -- Astrobiology: The Case for Venus
[scroll to the bottom of the linked page for the pdf link]

Excerpt:

3.3 Present Life
Could bacterial life exist in the atmosphere of Venus today? Although this is considered unlikely, the possibility of life in the clouds or the middle atmosphere of Venus has not been ruled out by any observations made to date. While the atmosphere is both dry and acidic, extremophilic life has adapted to far more harsh conditions on Earth. There is some evidence that the trace-gas constituents of the Venus atmosphere are not in chemical equilibrium with each other. On Earth, the primary source of disequilibrium in the atmospheric chemistry is the activities of biological processing; could disequilibrium on Venus also be a sign of life? In 1997, David Grinspoon made the suggestion that microbes in the clouds and middle atmosphere could be the source of the disequilibrium. In 2002, Dirk Schulze-Makuch independently proposed that observations of the Venus atmosphere by space probes showed signatures of possible biological activity.

As noted by Grinspoon and Schulze-Makuch, the Venus atmosphere has several trace gasses which are not in chemical equilibrium. The Venera missions and the Pioneer Venus and Magellan probes found that carbon monoxide is scarce in the planet.s atmosphere, although solar radiation and lightning should produce it abundantly from carbon dioxide. Hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide, two gases which react with each other and thus should not be found together, are also both present, indicating some process (possibly biological?) is producing them. Finally, although carbonyl sulfide is difficult to produce inorganically, it is present in the Venusian atmosphere. On Earth, this gas would be considered an unambiguous indicator of biological activity. While none of these chemical combinations are in themselves an unambiguous sign of life, it is interesting enough to warrant a more careful look at the atmospheric chemistry. Another interesting sign is the nature of the ultraviolet-absorbing aerosols that form the
markings seen in UV images of the planet (figure 2). The nature of these aerosols, and whether they are biological in origin, is still unknown.

On Earth, viable microorganisms are found in clouds…

This Japanese probe is only a climate-observing probe, so I doubt it has the necessary equipment to be able to specifically study the question of life in the clouds, but I think it could give us a better understanding as to what compounds and elements make up the atmosphere, and perhaps a hint why those compounds and elements exist -- whether through non-biological processes or not.



[edit on 8/18/2010 by Soylent Green Is People]

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


If all goes well we could get a lot of interesting data from this but me personally not got much of a scientific mind so its the images i want to see.

At least we don't have long to wait so lets hope the mission is successful.

Thankyou

reply to post by mars1

You're welcome! Cool thread

Venus is covered with a thick blanket of clouds, so I don't think there will be any "traditional" images of the surface (no surface images in "visible light"). The link says the Japanese probe does have an infrared camera, so I suspect we may get some infrared images of the surface, but I don't think these will be the same type of hi-res "visible light" images we are used to seeing -- such as the pictures of Mars from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Back in the 1990s, NASA sent the Magellan Probe to Venus. Magellan had an instrument that could pierce through the clouds to collect Radar data. Computers then took this Radar Data and turned it into visible images, as seen in the links below:
Magellan Radar Images of Venus
More Magellan Radar Images of Venus




[edit on 8/18/2010 by Soylent Green Is People]

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


Thanks for the links and you made a good point there about infrared images.
But i suppose anything is better than nothing and thanks again for the links.

Thankyou

reply to post by mars1

there moon mission i was excited about this at one point and not many images came out and the ones that did just did not look right.

Compared to what?

The NASA pictures of the moon you think are also faked?

The pictures of the moon you took at home through your 88-inch reflecting telescope?

The sets from 2001: A Space Odyssey?




[edit on 18/8/10 by Astyanax]

reply to post by Astyanax


I don't know what you are getting at i never said they was fake

I said they did not look right maybe that's because they were images from HD video but i never said FAKE.

Thankyou