Venus Cloud Cover

Life existing on other planets has become a hot topic in the last twenty or thirty years. We have always thought about it, but today we are actually searching for it. NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) sends up probes looking for it, huge telescopes search the spectrum for signs of it and SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) searches for any audible signals. Aside from the technology, what is so different today from say 60 or even 100 years ago, as pertains to alien life? That is a simple question to answer, but I bet not many have really thought about it? There are now a group of people, that more or less, accept the fact that alien life exists. This is in itself sort of remarkable, since we know of no hard evidence that would merit this. As soon as something is discovered that they feel couldn't have been built by ancient people, because they feel the technology wasn't there, they give credit to the aliens. It has become laughable in a way. Here we are looking all over the universe, hoping to find life and yet, one place that may have held it, that is very close to us, is relatively unexplored by us.

Venus is the closest planet to Earth. The conditions on the surface are extremely inhospitable. The thought of life there is almost impossible to consider, so why am I saying that maybe we should try and explore it further? I look at the Earth and what do I see? I see a planet that is being ruined. Co2 is building up and creating a greenhouse effect. Things are warming up, ice is melting and oceans are rising. If things were to continue on Earth the way they are going now, perhaps, someday, Earth would be similar to Venus. It might have an atmosphere heavy with carbon dioxide and other deadly chemicals which is much heavier and crushes down on the planet such as the atmosphere of Venus. There is a theory that seems to be gaining in popularity, that we originally came from Mars. The idea is that as Mars lost it's atmosphere we came to Earth. What if the idea is right, but the place is wrong. Maybe there are some traces of humanity on Venus from millions of years ago? Wouldn't that be something? As they say with the lottery, "hey you never know."

Venus is a very hard place to explore. The planet itself is shielded by thick clouds and because of this, no surface features can be seen. The Russians seem to have a particular interest in the planet Venus and plan to send a probe there in 2015 called Venera D. It is hoped that this probe will last for over a month after it lands on the surface. The atmosphere of Venus is so heavy that it can crushes a probes like a walnut, if it isn't properly protected. In 1961 the Russians launched the first Venus probe. It was named Venera 1, but contact was lost. In 1963 Mariner 1, an American probe, sent back photos of Venus. In 1965 the Russians launched Venera 3, which impacted on Venus. In 1967 the Russians managed to have a probe land softly on Venus, the vehicle was Venera 7. Venera 5 and 6 were said to be soft landings and took place in 1969. In 1975 Venera 9 and 10 were launched and Venera 9 sent back the first photos of the surface of Venus. There have been many more probes, such as the rest of the Venera series, Vega 1 and Vega 2 along with other soviet satellites who's names were unknown and flybys by Galileo, along with orbiters such as Magellan. Many more are planned.

So why is it so hard to build a lander for Venus? Landing on Venus is like sending a probe to the bottom of the ocean, where there are extreme pressures. The atmosphere of Venus is somewhere between 75 to 100 times heavier than our own. You can see how this would crush an ordinary probe. This means that the probe must be much more sturdy and thus heavier. Weight is something that you don't want. The more weight the probe or lander has, the less weight available for scientific instruments. A rocket can only lift a finite amount of weight, in others words, it has a weight limit. You want to put useful instruments on your probe, not slabs of steel. As rockets get more efficient this becomes less of a problem. It is probably much less of a problem now than it was at the time of the first Venus probe launch.

As near as I can tell, it seems that Russia, including the former Soviet Union, has launched about 20 probes toward Venus. I am also counting the Venus Express which was launched in a joint effort with the European Space Agency in 2006. The U.S. seems to have had 10, but I am counting flybys by probes that also went to other planets or objects. Just from the figures listed, you can see that the Russians have sent 2X as many probes to Venus as we have and it is even more when you consider that they were all dedicated to exploring Venus while some of ours just took a look while flying by. Are we missing out on some potentially important data. Could there be something on Venus that might gives us a clue on how to help this planet or show us that life existed on that world before this one? Venus is the brightest object in the sky and people who say that they have seen a ufo are constantly being told that it was the planet Venus that they saw. Maybe in a way, Venus is a ufo. What I mean by this is that maybe it caries clues to an alien race, maybe it has carried aliens in the past.

View of Venus Surface By Venera 14

I realize that the chances of finding any signs of past or present life on Venus are almost zero, but the key word here is ALMOST. Just because something is hard to do, doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done. Why aren't we trying to send probes to Venus and explore it's surface in the same manner that we are supposedly doing on Mars? Sure we are sending more flybys such as the Messenger series of probes, but they are what they are, flybys. If we truly want to learn what Venus is like and if any intelligent structures exist, we need to probe the planet's surface. If we can build underwater submersibles, we should be able to build probes that will withstand the pressure on the surface of Venus.