French and American scientists made an attempt to explain the unusual results of observations that were made in the atmosphere of the planet Venus by the mission of Soviet astronauts (station "Vega-2"). At an altitude of about seven kilometers from the surface of the planet, the device revealed a sharp temperature drop, and modern researchers explained this drop by changes in the chemical shell of the planet.
Scientists don't know much about Venus. In the middle of the last century, experts argued that Venus, which is the second distant from the Sun, is similar to the early Earth, and liquid water on the surface is hidden under its dense atmosphere. In the Soviet film "Planet of Storms", which appeared in 1962, the authors said that there is very little scientific information about Venus, moreover, they are extremely contradictory. Therefore, only fantasy helps to look into the undiscovered world. And this world may turn out to be completely different from what scientists imagine it to be. In this film, the planet Venus was inhabited by creatures that resembled dinosaurs, and there were seas. In addition, the heroes of the film found artifacts of intelligent life on the surface of Venus.
Half a century ago, scientists had more than enough reason to consider Venus, and not Mars, as an earthly twin. After all, it is Venus, just like our planet, located in the so-called habitable zone, it has a dense atmosphere, its mass and size, and hence the force of gravity, is approximately the same as that of our planet. Venus makes a complete revolution around the star in almost 225 Earth days. However, a few years after the release of the picture "Planet of Storms" it was found that this planet is even less suitable for life than the Red Planet, since its gas shell is 90 times denser than the Earth's, and the temperature reaches 477 degrees Celsius.
Most of Venus's atmosphere is carbon dioxide and virtually no water. On Venus, experts explain such a high temperature by the presence of the greenhouse effect, since the upper atmosphere is 13 times hotter than the lower. Venus, unlike Earth or Mercury, is devoid of tectonics and its magnetosphere. At the same time, it is likely that there are active volcanoes. Scientists are not yet ready to answer the question of why Earth and Venus are so different. Perhaps the second planet of the solar system in ancient times overheated, which led to the rapid evaporation of its oceans.
During the period 1961-1984, the Soviet Union sent more than three dozen space stations to Venus, while the United States sent only six. Despite the fact that a certain part of the missions were either flyby, or unsuccessful, or in their programs the study of Venus was not the main point, it is with Venus that the main success of the USSR is connected in the process of studying the depths of space. Most of the missions to this planet were called "Venus", and the last two were called "Vega".
The first data transmission from the atmosphere of another planet was carried out in 1967 by the Soviet station "Venera-4". The device, which was lowered to the planet's surface, was crushed by the atmospheric pressure of Venus, but it managed to transmit scientific information to Earth. This made it possible to determine that there is almost no oxygen and water in the planet's atmosphere, and carbon dioxide predominates. Then, as part of the Venera 7 mission in 1970, the astronauts performed the first successful soft landing on the surface of Venus. The device worked on the surface of the planet under conditions of tremendous pressure and high temperature for about 20 minutes.
The lander as part of the Venera-9 mission in 1975 transmitted images from the surface of Venus for the first time. It should be noted that practically all Soviet missions that started after Venera-4 were successful or partially successful - the descent probes made a soft landing, and the vehicles went into orbit. In the Soviet Union in the 1980s, a map of Venus was drawn up, and it turned out to have many Russian names. The Soviet interplanetary research program reached its peak in 1985, when the vehicles Vega-1 and Vega-2 reached Venus.
These vehicles were launched in December 1984 from the Baikonur cosmodrome on the Proton-K rocket with an interval of six days. They consisted of a descent vehicle and a flight vehicle. Upon reaching Venus, the flying vehicles moved towards Halley's comet, having successfully completed the scientific program. For the first time, the descent vehicles were equipped with balloon probes, which were thrown at an altitude of about 46 kilometers. As the balloons filled with helium, they climbed about 10 kilometers up (altitude - 55 kilometers). They stayed at this height for 46 hours, having covered over 11 thousand kilometers during this time. The descent vehicle of the "Vega-1" station, as a result of the fact that the landing signal was triggered prematurely, made a hard landing, but the "Vega-2" module - a soft one.
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Thanks to the Vega mission, scientists have found that it is very convenient to explore Venus with the help of balloon probes. According to planetary scientist Colin Wilson of the University of Oxford, it is neither too cold nor too hot, and the atmospheric pressure is about half the earth's atmosphere. Probably the astronauts could leave the module without a spacesuit. This is very convenient if there are no poisonous sulfur clouds.
With the exception of the ExoMars 2016 program (the contribution of European astrnauts prevails), the Vega missions were the last successful interplanetary missions of the Soviet Union and Russia. The United States continued to explore Venus - during the period 1990-1994, the Magellan station was studying the planet. In addition, such US spacecraft as Cassini, Galileo and MESSENGER flew past Venus. In 2015, Venus Express's European mission ended. Currently, only the Japanese device Akatsuki is in orbit of the planet. In 2020-2021, it is planned to fly by the planet of the European-Japanese station BepiColombo, the launch of which is scheduled for 2018. As for Russia, it will be ready to return to the study of Venus only by 2024.