 Most people with a burning passion that drives their professional lives can pinpoint the moment they fell in love with whatever it is they fell in love with. For me and Space, that was my second grade project on Venus. And my mom recently found it. So let's revisit 1992 Amy and her 1992 Venus knowledge, which is not that different, sadly, from 2020 Venus knowledge. Hello everyone! I'm Amy. This is The Vintage Space. If you're new here, welcome. If you're a regular on my channel, welcome back. So I've talked about my second grade Venus project before as the moment I knew I loved space. In large part, I loved telling this as my space origin story because I have this picture as a visual aid. Apparently, my grade school principal, Mr. Fry, took pictures of the class presentations for the yearbook, and years later, a volunteer going through all the junk and storage found this picture and gave it to my mom. My mom obviously kept it, which isn't surprising. She has pictures of my first time eating McDonald's because, well, I'm the only child. Last week, in a fit of quarantine basement cleaning, my mom found the actual report. Yes, there are two Earths on this glorious cover page. It was about art, not science for this one, and the report itself for my seven-year-old self is not half bad. So here's exactly what I wrote. In the solar system, Venus is the second planet in the Sun. Its distance from the Sun is 108.2 million kilometers. It is located between Mercury and Earth. Venus and Earth are twins. It takes 243 days to turn on itself, and 224.7 days to turn on the Sun. The day and the year are the same length. Venus turns in the opposite direction than the Earth. On Venus, the Sun rises to the West and sets to the East. Venus doesn't have moon. Venus is like huge burning air. On Venus, there is a very thick cloud layer. In the clouds, there are very, very, very small pieces of sulfuric acid. The clouds catch the heat of the Sun. The temperature is 867 degrees Fahrenheit, or 464 degrees Celsius. The atmosphere on this planet is 96% CO2. There are large storms all the time. There are 25 lightning strikes per second. Venus is the only planet we can see without a telescope. It is the brightest object in the sky, except for the Moon and the Sun. Its distance from Earth is 25.7 million miles. Every three months, Venus changes its position in the sky. For example, in January, Venus will be the star of the evening, and in April, it will be the star of the morning. Venus has another name, it's the star of the day. And this might be my favorite part, this collage showing the lightning storms. I vividly remember the book that this artist's rendering was inspired by, but don't have it anymore. Alas. But moving on. Reading this report from my past self, I was struck by two things. First, the language. I was in French immersion from the start of my education and continued largely in French through high school. I'm still fluent, rusty, but fluent. But if you asked me to give a talk on my work or about fighting for space, my new book, I'd have to go through an interpreter. I have no grasp on technical terminology in French. The phrase, elle tourne sur elle-même, literally translates to she turns around herself, bearing a mind that nouns, the noun Venus in this case, are gendered in French. But the technical translation would be something like orbits around its own axis. If there's a proper way to say that in French, I do not know it. The second thing I noticed is how little we've learned about Venus since. Yes, any three-page grade school report is obviously not an in-depth scientific paper, but I would think a seven-year-old today would have more to add and more images to show and describe. My second grade report was in the spring of 1992, sometime in late-ish March because I remember seeing Venus in the sky on vacation during March break around the time I gave this presentation. My mom thinks that it was my dad pointing out Venus in the evening sky on that vacation that got me excited to learn about other plants in the first place, but I don't remember what came first, the assignment or the fascination. In any case, that means the books and encyclopedia articles I was using likely included at least some early data from the Magellan mission. Magellan launched on May 4th, 1989, and arrived at Venus on August 10th, 1990. Its primary goal was to map the surface and topography of Venus, looking specifically into land forms and tectonics, impact processes, erosion, deposition, and chemical processes, all of which would help scientists understand the planet's interior. What it found was a lack of Earth-like plate tectonics and a surface at least 85% covered in volcanic flows. The rest of the planet was marked with highly deformed mountain belts. As to what formed this landscape, Magellan confirmed it wasn't any Earth-like processes. In addition to the lack of plate tectonics, Venus' high temperature of 475 degrees Celsius or 887 degrees Fahrenheit and high atmospheric pressure of 92 bars means that any erosion from these features is negligible. For comparison's sake, the pressure on Earth at sea level is 1.01 bars and 1,086 bars at the deepest point on the planet being the Marianas Trench. This hot, high-pressure environment means any erosion is so slow its effects are negligible. Not to mention there's no flowing water to shape any surface features. The biggest source of erosion was found to be winds. But Venus wasn't just shaped by wind. Magellan also found the planet's gravity field to be consistent with its topography, suggesting that some deep interior processes may be behind its surface details. Magellan, which went silent on October 12th, 1994 added a good amount of Venus' understanding to the handful of missions that preceded it, missions from both the Soviet Union and the United States. Venus had been a target of a less popularized space race in the 1960s, the race to return the first picture from the surface of another world. Both the United States and the Soviet Union launched a handful of missions, some of which succeeded in passing by their target and others that failed to reach orbit. Well, the United States found its best successes with Mars, capturing the first clear pictures with flybys and eventually the surface with the Viking landers in 1977. Though, yes, the Soviets doomed Mars' three lander half succeeded. The Soviets really found stunning success with the Venera missions. Venera was an evolving series of satellites launched by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s to study Venus' environment. Over the course of the program, 13 probes reached Venus and eight landed successfully on the surface, four of which returned pretty outstanding images. Venera 7's lander reached the surface on December 15th, 1970, but failed almost immediately. Venera 8 reached Venus on July 22nd, 1972 and once it reached the surface, it sent back data for 63 minutes. Venera 9 landed in good health on October 22nd of 1975, but only one of the lens caps on the two cameras released. The planned 360-degree panorama became a 180-degree image. Venera 10 landed on Venus on October 25th, 1975 and again only one of the lens caps separated, returning another 180-degree image before going silent after 65 minutes on the surface. The next two missions were also partial successes. Venera 11 landed on December 25th and Venera 12 landed on December 21st, both in 1978. Both were struck again with lens cap issues. So while we got data from those landers, there were no images returned. Venera 13 landed on Venus on March 1st, 1982 and finally, this one did manage the planned panorama around the lander and it survived for 127 minutes before succumbing to Venus' literally crushing environment. But aside from the Venera series, most of the missions before Magellan were flybys. Missions swinging past Venus to get a gravity assist on their way to more distant destinations and some of the ones since Magellan have as well. The Galileo mission to Jupiter swung by Venus as did the Cassini mission to Saturn, the Messenger mission to Mercury and the Solar Parker probe and Solar Orbiter missions. Only one mission since Magellan has been sent expressly to Venus. The European Space Agency's Venus Express. Launched on November 9th, 2005, it went into orbit around Venus on April 11th, 2006. This was an orbiter designed to study Venus' atmosphere, its plasmid environment as well as the interaction between the upper atmosphere and the solar wind. Venus expressed gathered data until contact was lost on November 28th, 2014. Okay, yes, there is likely still data scientists are working with and Earth-based observations of Venus are possible. But if we look at the dates of the missions, the dedicated Venus probes mostly pre-date my spring 1992 report. So a modern-day grade schooler's project would not be that much different than mine. No early grade school project is going to go into depth about atmospheric interactions with plasma or gravity wells. The highlights of Venus, if we're giving an overview, are largely the same. It's the second planet from the sun, it's about the size of the Earth. Its day, which sees the sun rising in the west and setting in the east, is just longer than its year. Venus' terrain is diverse with plains and mountains, but no oceans. All enveloped in a carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere does lead to a runaway greenhouse effect. That atmosphere, while being too toxic to support life as we know it, is super-rotating. Hurricane Force winds send clouds completely around the planet every five days. Venus has no rings or moons, but it has had a number of artificial moons. More than 40 satellites have visited or flown past Venus since the space age began. Our hypothetical modern-day grade schooler would also have the same surface images I use, too. The ones from the later Venera missions. We haven't taken any new pictures of Venus' surface. We've only gained new renderings from data, which are awesome, but not the same. So what's the purpose of revisiting my second grade knowledge, aside from it being an adorable blast from the past? We need more Venus missions. There are always proposals floating around, and earlier this year, four were shortlisted as possible future missions. One to Jupiter's moon Io, one to Neptune's moon Triton, which I'm super on board with, and two to Venus. DaVinci Plus, which stands for Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble Gases, Chemistry, and Imaging Plus, is a proposed probe. It would follow through Venus' atmosphere to gather data to help understand how Venus formed and evolved and determine whether it ever had oceans. It would also be an imager, having a component of cameras to map the surface rock types. Another proposed mission called Veritas, short for Venus Emissivity, Radioscience, INSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy, is a proposed mission to map the surface to determine the planet's geologic history. The ultimate goal is to understand why Venus developed so differently than Earth. Another interesting aspect of possible Venus exploration is that in its thick atmosphere, oxygen is a lifting gas. We could theoretically have a human mission just floating in the clouds, imaging the surface and doing science, and it would float by virtue of keeping humans alive. Mars is great, and the fact that we've had a presence on the red planet for the better part of the last 30 years means we know what we're dealing with there. But, and I say this as someone with absolutely no influence over anything at all, it would be so nice to have as good an understanding about Venus, our other neighbor as we do about Mars. And some updated pictures wouldn't hurt either. So what do you guys think? Would you like to see more Venus missions, or at least an emphasis on Venus in future space plans? Or is there somewhere else you'd like to explore? Titan and Triton are topping my list for distant solar system targets. Let me know where you want to go in the comments below. For a little more on Venus, I've included links in the description, including a link to my blog about my 1992 school project. I've also got a link to Fighting for Space in there, my new book that offers a dual biography of Jackie Cochran and Jerry Cobb surrounding the issue of women in space in the 1960s. Thanks so much for hanging out with me today, guys, in this deep dive into Venus, and I'll see you next time.