Revitalizing Soviet Image Data From Venus

An anonymous reader writes "As everyone looks at Mars, a scientist has produced the best images ever obtained from the surface of a rather different planet - Venus. By using - and reprocessing - data from the Soviet Venera missions he got some really nice gems. To be found at BBC News Online and at mentallandscape.com. Nice images which resemble much that of the current Mars missions can be found here(1) and at here(2). By the way, did you know that Venus was more often targeted by space probes than Mars, including a number of ten (!) successful landers?"

Re:It's really cool that he's doing this ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mars may resemble earth more than Venus in some ways...

But for that reason, I've always been more impressed with landings on Venus than Mars. I'm not sure if that's reasonable, as I don't know much about the engineering of going to Mars or Venus. But it's always seemed odd to me that Venus, which is supposedly more hostile, has all these landers, and Mars, which is supposedly more hospitable, is a "spacecraft graveyard."

Re:It's really cool that he's doing this ...

[ajax0187]

Of course, none of those probes lasted for more than two hours once on the surface. I would think getting a probe ON Venus would be relatively easy (as planetary landings go) since the atmosphere is so thick and would act as a brake of some sort (of course, the winds could cause a lot of problems). It's just getting the thing to work long enough to take detailed soil samples, long term weather readings, etc. That way we could continue to work on the surface, instead of relying on a quick, massive work spurt before the probe got fried.

Mars boring by comparison

[Bitsy Boffin]

I'd really like to see Venusian landers operating again. Venus is IMHO a much more interesting place than Mars, if only because we can't properly see it without actually going there. And yet it's so close (relatively speaking). Those few pictures that came from the Venera probes are soo tantalising, you just want to reach through, grab the camera and tilt it up.

Sure, it might be a very hostile environment, and not being able to get a good look at possible landing sites is a bit of a bugger, but I'm sure if the old Venera peoples were to use thier experience and modern materials & ideas that they could get a lander on the planet with better (and sustainable) capabilities.

There's no chance of recognisable life on Venus of course, but that doesn't mean there isn't life there at all - bacteria can be quite happy in extreme environments.

Mars is cool and all, but really.. rock, another rock, bit of red dust, rock, oh look a crater. Been there, done that, move on.