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Old Soviet Venus descent craft nearing Earth reentry
- ConanRus 1y agoSoviet is the best (c)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- quercusa 1y agoThose of a certain age will remember this as the premise of the Six Million Dollar Man episode Death Probe (S4E13).
- donnachangstein 1y agoThey would also remember there is a man with a cape in a phone booth that could be called upon to stop this thing.
- greggsy 1y agoNo, the Six Million Dollar Man stopped it
- CobrastanJorji 1y agoThat's a super idea, but sadly Underdog is fictional.
- gcanyon 1y ago“There’s no need to fear! ...”
- dreamcompiler 1y agoRaise your hand if you remember phone booths.
- rbanffy 1y agoCan't. My back hurts.
- bunderbunder 1y agoI was in one a few weeks ago.
- alabastervlog 1y agoIt's been so long since those could reliably be found, that even the 1978 Superman movie has a gag about it (Clark steps up to one of those stand-style payphones, briefly looks befuddled, then runs into door turnstile instead, super-speed changing while it spins)
- RetroTechie 1y agoBonus points if you've used those equipped with a rotary dial.
- AStonesThrow 1y agoThe other week, I was dining at the Old Spaghetti Factory, and their lobby is impressive for classic furniture and cool stuff on display, including a Donkey Kong and a (nominally) Ms. Pac-Man cabinet, and some "Fragadas Españolas" models. There was also a bona fide telephone booth in there, in wood and glass, and I absolutely went nuts, actually needing to place a phone call. But I couldn't quite figure out whether it would open and admit me, or if customers were supposed to be fiddling with it at all, or whether it was only a showpiece. So that exploration will wait until the next time I drop by.
- potato3732842 1y agoIt would be pretty stereotypically Soviet to create a parachute system that only mostly (some of the Venera probes kinda crashed) works in the intended use case (short 1-way trip to Venus) but also somehow manages to work once way, way, way outside of its intended operating environment (50yr orbiting earth).
- 0x000xca0xfe 1y agoTo be fair Venus' atmosphere is pretty much hell.
- BitwiseFool 1y agoHigher up the Venusian atmosphere is surprisingly earth-like. Interestingly though, once a probe gets deep enough into the atmosphere a parachute becomes unnecessary because the atmosphere has gotten so thick that a probe can simply soft-land.
- varjag 1y agoParachute deployment was possibly gasodynamic rather than electronically controlled. In which case there's a broad similarity on reentry in Earth atmosphere which could trigger the release.
- orbital-decay 1y agoSounds unlikely, but it could have malfunctioned. I believe the deceleration chute was designed to deploy after the hot entry phase and be triggered mechanically once crossing the certain deceleration threshold of about 2g (I could be wrong though, take it with a huge grain of salt). It also worked as a pilot chute for the cap protecting the main one.
- mrtksn 1y agoIn my experience, in soviet engineering they don't augment stuff unless absolutely necessary. As a result, stuff tend to work as long as the physics work. It results in relatively crude but simple and reliable machines. The elegance comes from simplicity, in western tech the elegance comes from being well thought and designed for specific use cases. I.e. a Lada will be uncomfortable, loud, uneconomical car but at the same time it will withstand abuse and be easy to repair enough to get it going. Thinking about the elevator in our commie block, it would have given a heart attack to a western European. Instead of having double doors to keep us safe from the moving wall, it had pads on the bottom and top edge so if your hand or leg is stuck, the pad will be pushed and the elevator will stop immediately. Also there was a tiny cabinet door on the right side so you can access the mechanism to force open the door or force move/halt the elevator. As kids, we would be experimenting with those mechanisms. They worked every single time, no legs or arms were lost.
- em-bee 1y agowhen i first heard about this probe last week i was wondering, isn't this thing old and unique enough to warrant a mission to rescue and preserve it? combined with todays lower prices for a space flight, it might just be worth it. and now it looks like it might just survive anyways. but then according to the article there also seems to be a second (identical?) model. so maybe it's not that important, except for maybe material analysis what does 50 years of exposure to space do to the material.
- rdtsc 1y agoIn principle this is not science fiction, Space Shuttle captured a satellite, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-49 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-49, they just didn't return it back. It was a catch, fix, and release.
- dreamcompiler 1y agoThey did that when they fixed the Hubble telescope too. Five times. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Servicing_missions_and_new_instruments https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Servi...
- euroderf 1y agoHow many satellites have the USAF and US Space Command captured ? Inquring minds want to know.
- kjkjadksj 1y agoThey do run their own unmanned shuttle based platform spacecraft but full capabilities aren’t public.
- walrus01 1y agoThe space shuttle also captured and returned the long duration exposure facility satellite, a materials test bus for future missions. Extremely uneconomical, however.
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- ahmedfromtunis 1y agoMan, I wish we had the technology to just concoct a spacecraft that can intercept the lander in its shallow reentry and bring it back in as few pieces as possible. I don't know what value can it have to be studied since it never left low earth orbit (albeit it was there since 1972), but I know it would be a cool addition to any museum that may host it.
- fsckboy 1y agospace shuttle, the air force still has one, doesn't it? also, elon could whip something up.
- pacificmint 1y agoThe Air Force never had a space shuttle, though NASA flew missions for the Air Force and the NRO. But at this point none of the remaining shuttles are in an operational state. Maybe you are thinking of the X-37 which is operated by the space force?
- porphyra 1y agoIt's funny/sad how a bunch of Soviet Venera probes had malfunctioning camera lens caps and returned black photos. From Venera 9-12 all four probes had malfunctioning lens caps. And then > The Venera 14 craft had the misfortune of ejecting the camera lens cap directly under the surface compressibility tester arm, and returned information for the compressibility of the lens cap rather than the surface.
- FredPret 1y agoIt's funny now - imagine being the Commissar for Lens Cap design in the old USSR and overseeing all that
- staplung 1y agoOh that Commissar was fine. It was the Commissar for Lens Cap Ejection Systems on Interplanetary Probes that got thrown under the avtobus.
- roughly 1y agoI heard the Commissar for Lens Cap Ejection Trajectory Modeling for Venusian Planetary Environments caught the brunt of the blame, but the real fault was with the Commissar for Lens Cap Ejection Trajectory Modeling for Venusian Atmospheric Dynamics, who got off scott free. Turns out he was the general’s nephew.
- transcriptase 1y agoAt the end of the day, all that matters is that someone involved accidentally fell from a 5th to 12th story window.
- jl6 1y agoFalling upwards - truly a comrade of the space programme.
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- marcodiego 1y agoIf it falls in my backyard. Can I keep it to myself?
- eagerpace 1y agoNo
- IncreasePosts 1y agoFrom a previous probe: > Space law required that the space junk be returned to its national owner, but the Soviets denied knowledge or ownership of the satellite.[8] Ownership therefore fell to the farmer upon whose property the satellite fell. The pieces were thoroughly analyzed by New Zealand scientists which determined that they were Soviet in origin because of manufacturing marks and the high-tech welding of the titanium. The scientists concluded that they were probably gas pressure vessels of a kind used in the launching rocket for a satellite or space vehicle and had decayed in the atmosphere.[9] I wonder how space law works when the national owner (CCCP) no longer exists? Does it go to Russia? Kazakhstan?
- CryptoBanker 1y agoRussia is the successor state to the USSR
- stevage 1y agoOne of many successor states, no?
- kevin_thibedeau 1y agoI'd bet many parts were manufactured in Ukraine. Let them have dibs.
- lovegrenoble 1y ago[flagged]
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- mensetmanusman 1y agoWhat are the chances it lands and kills a whale?
- mystified5016 1y agoWhales are not typically found on land, and usually when they're already dead.
- IncreasePosts 1y agoYou've clearly never been to a Walmart outside Indianapolis before.
- ChocolateGod 1y agoWhat if it lands on water though?
- simonebrunozzi 1y agoI think we can still estimate that probability. I'd say 0%.
- aruggirello 1y agoThis thread is looking more and more as if it were written by Douglas Adams.
- whoopdedo 1y agoOh no, not again.
- TiredOfLife 1y agoYeah, that bureaucrat is at least 20% responsible for the current US administration
- alexfromapex 1y agoIt sounds like it will definitely land, no parachute, because it was made to be strong enough to survive the pressures of Venus. I hope it doesn't land near me.
- 1970-01-01 1y agoSorry, but there is still no chance it will land. It's safe to bet your house on it making a nice crater or just disappearing from radar into the drink.
- stevage 1y agoSounds like you have different definitions of landing.
- alexfromapex 1y agoSorry, I had assumed that a crash landing was obvious from what I said. I don’t know how it could be unclear since there’s no parachute.
- ahazred8ta 1y agoLithobraking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithobraking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithobraking is very reliable but a bit hard on the equipment.
- rbanffy 1y agoWould be awesome if it soft-landed on a field and started taking and transmitting pictures of sheep.
- LordGrignard 1y agoor even better yet, landed on a desert and taking pictures of cactii and camels
- rbanffy 1y agoI think sheep would e funnier, but camels would be OK as well.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- eh_why_not 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_482 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_482 > Its landing module, which weighs 495 kilograms (1,091 lb), is highly likely to reach the surface of Earth in one piece as it was designed to withstand 300 G's of acceleration and 100 atmospheres of pressure. Awesome! I don't know how you can design for 300 G's of acceleration!
- dgrin91 1y agoNitpicking, but wouldn't it be 300 Gs of deceleration? I know the math is basically the same, but technically the words a mean different things
- amoshebb 1y agoI think this is a case where “technically” the words mean the same thing but “generally” they mean different things.
- jbnorth 1y agoWhat is deceleration but acceleration in the opposite direction? /s
- esotericimpl 1y ago[dead]
- JohnKemeny 1y agoThere's no need for the "/s" on the end, there. Deceleration, and especially in this case with a natural frame of reference, deceleration is negative acceleration.
- rightbyte 1y agoMore stringently, deceleration is decreasing the magnitude of the velocity vector, I would say. If acceleration can be negative, so can speed. A negative speed with negative acceleration would not imply deceleration?
- lenerdenator 1y ago[flagged]
- copula4 1y agoHis name is not Vlad, it's a familiar form of a completely unrelated name. If you want to demonstrate contempt by using a familiar form, use Vova. It sounds about the same as if I used something like "Joe" to refer to a William.
- margalabargala 1y ago[flagged]
- int_19h 1y agoIt doesn't actually achieve that, it just makes you look like an ignorant Westerner. Similar to all the "-ski" stuff that Americans, for some reason, seem to believe is indicative of Russian. If you want to troll Putin, call him Vovochka.
- margalabargala 1y agoPutin is not in fact the intended audience, so the diminutive should be tailored to the audience, not to Putin. Kind of like calling him "Putain", or "Poo-tin", which are also not his name.
- elzbardico 1y ago[flagged]
- lenerdenator 1y ago[flagged]
- lenerdenator 1y ago[flagged]
- CommenterPerson 1y agoIf the parachute had already deployed sometime during the past 50 years, wouldn't it burn up on re-entry?
- cactusfrog 1y agoThis would be a good start of a plot line for some alien life form
- y33t 1y agoIt's already the start for Night of the Living Dead.
- varelse 1y ago[dead]
- drob518 1y agoLander reports that Venus is very… earth-like.
- erulabs 1y agoAny projected intercept for earth yet? Feels like it might be quite beautiful on reentry assuming you’re in the right (but not TOO right) spot.
- jasonkester 1y agoChildhood me hopes this will play out exactly like the Six Million Dollar Man episode. That it will roam around terrorizing rural California, and we’ll have to team up with a pretty young Russian scientist and Bigfoot to stop it. I wonder if the producers of that show knew about that failed mission, and that this was actually really in earth orbit, when they wrote that episode.
- Jun8 1y ago“Oscar: Irina, you know that Steve is bionic. If he's careful ... Irina: You don't understand. I designed that probe for Venus. Venus Oscar. A planet with temperatures of 900 degrees, 300 mile per hour winds, pressures up to 90 earth atmospheres. Even a bionic man couldn't survive under those conditions.”
- hackeraccount 1y agoCame here looking for this reference; left not dissapointed.
- Aachen 1y agoArticle says ±3.1 days, but the author wrote a newer entry (go to homepage, click on latest article, click through to space.com link¹) that says May 10, ±2.2 days. Starting to get to the range where a timezone would be helpful! Via Wikipedia², which will probably also get updated fast, this page says they'll stay updated with the latest estimate: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2025/04/kosmos-842-descent-craft-reentry.html https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2025/04/kosmos-842-descent-... ¹ https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/new-images-of-soviet-venus-lander-falling-to-earth-suggest-its-parachute-may-be-out https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/... ² https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_482 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_482
- rich_sasha 1y agoThe blog post seems to say the reentry time depends somewhat on (future, unknown) solar activity, contributing to the estimation error. Why would this be? Is the solar wind strong enough to affect the velocity of a dense object such as this?
- dotancohen 1y agoThe solar wind affects the atmosphere, specifically by raising it, such that the probe may experience more atmospheric drag.
- fguerraz 1y agoSolar activity affects the outer layer of our atmosphere which expands with solar activity and affects the drag of satellites. This is how starlight lost a bunch of satellites last year.
- af78 1y agoMay 9th is in that range. My goodness, how ironic it would be if it hit the parade in Moscow...
- oleganza 1y agowhat's ironic about that?
- kamranjon 1y agoI wonder if something like this could basically be a time capsule for germs/viruses/pathogens that no longer exist? Could that ever be a risk?
- bobxmax 1y agoHighly unlikely given sterilization before launch and Venus basically being a deep fryer But also technically not impossible. For example if the dormant microbes react to prolonged microgravity and radiation in ways we don't understand, perhaps it brings back something we haven't seen before Could be a fun science fiction plot
- cogman10 1y agoIf I'm reading the article correctly, it never made it to Venus.
- cogman10 1y agoNot likely. This thing spent 50 years in high earth orbit. Everything will have received a huge dosage of radiation along with periodic freezing and boiling temperatures. Something may have survived, life is crazy like that, but it's unlikely it will be a dangerous pathogen to humans. In fact, surviving life will have likely adapted to eat any of the pathogens.
- eabeezxjc 1y ago[flagged]