Posted on 10/18/2005 10:29:27 AM PDT by Dr._Joseph_Warren
Venus Express set for liftoff
Venus Express, the European Space Agency's first mission to explore Earth's closest neighbour, will be launched next Wednesday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The ESA gave the prospective launch time as 0443 GMT.
The 1.27-tonne unmanned spacecraft, which will be taken aloft by a Russian-made Soyuz-Fregat rocket, is expected to arrive at Venus on April 6.
Venus Express, equipped with seven instruments, is intended to map the Venusian surface and weather system, looking at temperature variation, cloud formations, wind speeds and gas composition.
Its main goal is to help understand why Venus fell prey to runaway global warming.
Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is similar in size, mass and age to Earth, but the two planets are otherwise quite different.
The so-called Morning Star has clouds of suffocating gas driven by hurricane-force winds, as well as a surface pressure and temperature high enough to crush and melt steel.
Venus Express is a sister to Mars Express, an orbiter that is now circling the Red Planet.
Further information is available on (www.esa.int).
The ESA apparently has their heads stuck in Uranus.
Not only humans, but greedy, capitalist, SUV driving humans!
The use of the phrase "global warming" is unfortunate -
"a runaway greenhouse effect" would more succinctly describe the interesting thing about the temperature of Venus.
Venus is 100's of degrees hotter than would be predicted solely by its distance from the sun. This is caused by its dense atmosphere of over 90% CO2. This was discovered in the 1970s (Carl Sagan is a famous contributor) and is not controversial.
Interestingly, it is thought that it was once much cooler, but that the positive feedback produced by increased temperatures from atmospheric CO2 caused more CO2 to be released from surface minerals, accelerating the process.
Why doesn't Earth's C02 escape through the hole in the Ozone Layer?
AND THE POINT?
Considering a 30% albedo, 70% liquid oceans and almost the exact size of earth. What would the temperature be ona hypothetical second planet from the sun? Is Venus even in the habitable zone for Sol?
Who says ..?? Maybe global warming did them in ..??
>Why doesn't Earth's C02 escape through the hole in the Ozone Layer?
Well, one obvious answer is that CO2 is heavier than air?
Conservatives should avoid falling into the trap of projecting specific skepticism on global warming caused by industrial CO2 emissions into a general skepticism, ignorance or disdain for basic science, and especially avoid saying things that a smart 12 year old might laugh at.
The interesting thing, though, is that it's surface temperature is quite a bit higher than Mercury's.
Is Karl Rove's Evil Weather Machine® involved, somehow?....:)
I just thought it is interesting. Aren't people interested in the universe around them? Its relevance to earth is not especially strong, since the earth is not going to have no water and a dense almost-all CO2 atmopshere any time soon.
Kinda makes you wonder what you could do with Venus if you could introduce some kind of fungus/bacteria into its upper atomsphere that would help re-entrain some of that carbon.
Mercury signed the Kyoto Treaty?....:)
Lack of water would be the problem.
We're really lucky to have our plants here. Though it's thought that they might have near destroyed the planet's life at least once (1: by almost freezing it solid permanently when they wiped out our atmopheric methane (a heavy greenhouse gas) by producing free oxygen, and 2: just by introducing so much of the dealdly oxygen molecule in the atmosphere when other life wasn't adapted to it).
Goddess of love.
I appreciate you bringing some actual science discussion to this thread.
I initiated it as a light-hearted jab at the author's choice of politically charged terminology.
However, its good to see someone actually provide the type of valuable information that is usually missing in these MSM articles.
Are there any realistic connection or lessons that can be derived about Earth from studying Venus' environment?
Hot flashes?
"Its main goal is to help understand why Venus fell prey to runaway global warming."
Wow, that global warming monster lies in wait, preying on innocent planets.
Maybe next they can help understand why stuff falls down instead of sideways.
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