By Christian Nielsen
For millennia, the ancients considered Venus the “morning star”, the famous “morning star” of the Anglo-Saxons. The Incas called the star “waraq koyllur” to which they worshiped in the temple of Pucayán, thus becoming “the worshipers of the dawn star” which was how the Spanish found the Incas during the conquest.
In imperial Rome, the cult of Venus had a Greek root, like much of Roman culture, and that started from the veneration of Aphrodite.
In Guarani mythology, the morning star, ko’e mbyja, recalls the sacrifice of Porasy that allowed all evil to be buried in the cavernous depths of a hill. For sailors, Venus was always a guide that led them to a safe port. For poets, she a symbol of love eternally reborn.
For the Russians of the old USSR it was, instead, a target to hit with their spacecraft.
BROKEN THE CHARM
It was on October 23, 1975 when the Venera 10 spacecraft approached Venus after a journey of 40 million kilometers full of questions. Since the planet rotates very slowly, it always shows the same hemisphere to the Earth, just as the Moon does. So scientists were itching to find out what was on the other side.
The artifact dispatched by the Russians was made up of two modules. As the entire ship orbited Venus at a high altitude, a smaller vehicle broke away, beginning a controlled descent toward the surface. They already knew that the physical conditions they would encounter would not be even remotely similar to those on Earth.
During reentry, the lander survived loads of up to 168 g (one g equals the gravity experienced on Earth) and temperatures of up to 12,000 degrees Celsius.
From there, it became clear that the peaceful glow that is received on Earth is nothing but a pale reflection of the apocalyptic conditions that the envoy of Soviet astronautics was enduring. However, despite the mistreatment, the spacecraft launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome was going to surprise with its resistance.
BREAK RECORDS
Venera 10 transmitted for 65 minutes from the surface, even though it had been designed to do so for less than half that time. A photo of the Venera 10 landing site showed a smoother surface than the photographs sent by its twin sister, Venera 9. The idea was to cover, between the two modules, a 360-degree panorama, but some flaws prevented that the mission will be completed in its entirety.
Soviet officials operating the flight control center made no secret of their disappointment when they learned that the interruption in data reception from the Venera 9 and 10 landers was not due to adverse surface conditions, but rather because the orbiter’s relays for both spacecraft they were lost sight of.
And fixing all that at 40 million kilometers was more than impossible.
AN UNLIVEABLE WORLD
Russian scientists were quite stingy with the photographic material collected by the Venera mission. The few photos that circulated and the limited data that accompanied them show an environment that is turbulent, boiling cauldron, and absolutely unsustainable for human life.
The surface of Venus appears to be an endless field of basalt rock. One of the most notable geographical features is the Aphrodite Terra mountain, whose size is equal to the South American continent.
The atmosphere is made up of carbon dioxide mixed with small amounts of nitrogen. Its density causes a strong greenhouse effect that raises the ambient temperature to 464 degrees Celsius, more than twenty times the average temperature on Earth. Clouds that form a layer up to 40 kilometers thick contain droplets of sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid.
If the Greek Pindar, Venus inspired fiery love verses and Julius Caesar looked for good omens in it for his wars of conquest, for the Russians it was a hell to explore that gave them only some of its secrets, but at the cost of devouring all its emissaries.
Merciless Venus.
