For an article on the Soviet-Russian Venera program, I'm searching some high-resolution photos or schemas of the spacecraft themselves (Orbiter and Lander, especially the latter).
I have some photos but mostly low resolution and I'm searching good (color) photos showing the Venera 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 and 14 landers.
Can anyone help, maybe with photos taken in the Russian musea?
Thanks in advance,
Phill


http://homepage.eircom.net/~jackcelestia/b...ges/veneras.htm

http://www.mentallandscape.com/V_Venus.htm

Great Link Phil !
I fell in love with the "Perspective Image" of Venera-13. The one with Horizon ! Great Stuff

Dirk,

Great link and superb scale model !!!

Not exactly what you are asking for, but perhaps pertinent to point out that the
Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy center (a must-see, 15 mins from Washington Dulles airport)
has a full-up VEGA spacecraft you can take all the photos you want of...

http://collections.nasm.si.edu/code/emuseu...ch=A19960108000

O.K. great to know, it has been 6 years since I've been in NASM Washington D.C. so any reason for another visit is valid
http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/models/sovietsp/vega.html

Some Venera hardware images here:
http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/models/Yaho...ders/index.html

WOW!

Thank you! Keep them coming!

Venera missions overview:
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft_...tary_venus.html

Question: Did the main parachute of the Venus lander have 3 or 4 parachutes?
Clicking the ‘Landing Sequence’ reveals 3 main parachutes: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/venera75.html

While this Russian website shows 1 large main chute just before landing:
http://epizodsspace.narod.ru/bibl/getlend/22.html

IIRC Venera 9 and 10 had three parachutes and later landers only one

Those Venera were amazing spacecraft indeed.
Some questions:
What is the size of the lander?
Would it been able to float?
Why did these land close together?

In fact, during the first Venera missions ( Venera 1 in 1961 to Venera 8 in 1972 ) the 'lander' was simply a bowl-shaped capsule and only 7 and 8 made it to the surface, although Venera 4 to 6 made succesful atmospheric measurements. The Russians were trying out several pressure-limits for their first veneras.
Landing into a liquid surface (there's no water on Venus) could have been an option I guess, as 1960s planetary scientists only had an idea of the Venusian surface by Radar measurements from Earth, although these may have excluded liquid surfaces?
The early bowl capsule weighing 400 kilograms could probably float but the later lander certainly lot as those had a weight of 700 kilograms.
Landing close together is linked to the fact that the Venera missions were 'flown' in pairs and arrived in the same weekly period at the cloudy slowly rotating greenhouse world
So the Venera pairs landed at similar longitudes as the planet rotates very slowly ( a day on Venus (244 Earthdays) is longer than a year on Venus (224 Earthdays) ).
In attchment a drawing used by scale modelers with approximate dimensions of the later Venera landers.

Before Venera 4 (the first attempt to make a landing) it was already known that Venus had a temperature of at least the boiling point of water, so no one was concerned with vehicles floating.

Those early estimates of temperature were always low because they measured IR throughput at various levels in the atmosphere, which excluded the hot surface. But people were aware that the measurements were probably lowballing things. The Mariner 2 measurements ranged from about 400K to 600K as it scanned the disk, and this built suspicion that the surface was actually a lot hotter (the correct answer: about 730K).

Venera 1, at least, was designed to float. Venera 4 was also, so presumably 2 and 3 were as well.

I remember I read in a soviet publication from the seventies that on the first Venera landers the antenna was connected to the landing capsule by bolts made of compressed sugar.
In case the capsule would immerse into the - unknown - liquid the bolts were expected to dissolve and the antenna would surface and maintain communication.
It wasn't told how long the cable was, but it was mentioned that this technique was adopted from naval warfare technology - this way floating contact mines were released.

The early Venera capsules (Venera 1 to Venera 8) had in facrt 2 antennas: One foxed at the centre of the top and one that was deployed on a approx 2 meter long cable. Some good images of the Venera 4 ground tests: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cBHtUFwRT8

A nice video with lots of schematic drawings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7IINGA7Ju0...feature=related

And a nice scale model showing the descent module (containing the lander) ontop of the orbiter:

I combined your two posts - Moderator

Very interesting Venera weblink (German): http://www.bernd-leitenberger.de/venera9-16.shtml

PhilCo, I found from a book a very similar schema of Venera 9, however there are some differences.
In the German article number 15 refers to magnetometer, but in the image below both '4's (in the German article as '14' and '15') are attitude thrusters. In the image below magnetometer is '3'

Click to view attachment

In posts #09 and #10 we discussed the Venera padobran (parachutes) so I wanted to post one more image.
Remember later Venera landers had a single large main chute of which I'll post an image later...

This is great Stuff!!

It was so hard to find things like these before.

I appreciate these pics and links everyone!

And another one by a Soviet-Russian space artist who made a nice choice of colors:

Yet another artist' impressions of the Venera lander on the surface:

Here is a reworked image of the Venera 14 Camera 1 panorama. Camera 1 is on the soil sampler side.

Click to view attachment

I took all the Venera 14 images processed by Ted Stryk and tried to align them up and play with the color.
The predicted changes of the calibration target due to temperature, presssure, and predicted lighting were done by Don Mitchell (here).
I used this to compare to the calibration target on the camera 1 side.
Camera 1 side is facing towards the light source.

A Soviet emblem can be seen on the base of this side of the lander as a pentagonal shape. Normally silver, after color adjustment it appears to be reflecting orangish-yellow light (good!).


(I was trying to get all fancy and do a polar projection. That didn't work so well.)

And here is the Venera 14 Camera 2 adjusted panoramic.

Click to view attachment

Note how the green end of the calibration target matches the background rock.
(I also tried to get rid of some of the vertical striping in the images.)