3 ms·

I had the live tracking up and went to bed and apparently it fell out of the sky about 90 minutes later :-). I was hoping that if it started burning over North

I had the live tracking up and went to bed and apparently it fell out of the sky about 90 minutes later :-). I was hoping that if it started burning over North America I'd be able to go out and see it go over. Alas. I heard rumors that it had a Plutonium RTG on it for power, that would have been a bit spicy if it had splatted across the ground somewhere. Does anyone have any primary sources on whether or not that was the case?

perihelions 1y ago
There's nothing to indicate there were radioisotope sources on this mission. Public information: [0] describes the six publicly-disclosed Soviet radioisotope launches up to 1989. (It's not a primary source; it's hard to find those). This one's not among them—none of the Venus missions were reported to use radioisotopes. This Kosmos 482[1] and the rest of the Soviet Venera program were publicly described as being solar-powered, which is evidence against any engineering need for other power sources. The landing probes themselves carried chemical batteries (they were very short-lived landers). Nothing I can find through search contradicts [0]. Wikipedia's list[2] is the same, and adds two more post-1989 launches. Seven radioisotope payloads have already reentered/crashed into Earth before—four Soviet or Russian and three American; some thermometric generators and some simple heaters; containing either polonium-210 or plutonium-238. That's not counting fission reactors, of which there are several in addition (I'm unclear the precise count of which nuclear reactors returned to Earth, or simply exploded in orbit; or what became of the latter group). [0] https://nuke.fas.org/space/sovspace.pdf https://nuke.fas.org/space/sovspace.pdf (Gary L. Bennett, "A look at the Soviet space nuclear power program" (1989)) [1] https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1972-023A https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id... ("Two solar array wings, with an area of 2.5 meters, had a span of 4 meters. Due to the spacecraft's proximity to the Sun at Venus, the wings were only partially covered with solar cells".) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_systems_in_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_systems_... ("List of nuclear power systems in space")
- shoo 1y ago
  fascinating and disturbing -- i had no idea that there were fission powered satellites.
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    That isn’t rare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge... The Pioneer probes used them to power their radios decades after launch. There aren’t real alternatives.

perihelions 1y ago

There's nothing to indicate there were radioisotope sources on this mission. Public information: [0] describes the six publicly-disclosed Soviet radioisotope launches up to 1989. (It's not a primary source; it's hard to find those). This one's not among them—none of the Venus missions were reported to use radioisotopes. This Kosmos 482[1] and the rest of the Soviet Venera program were publicly described as being solar-powered, which is evidence against any engineering need for other power sources. The landing probes themselves carried chemical batteries (they were very short-lived landers). Nothing I can find through search contradicts [0]. Wikipedia's list[2] is the same, and adds two more post-1989 launches. Seven radioisotope payloads have already reentered/crashed into Earth before—four Soviet or Russian and three American; some thermometric generators and some simple heaters; containing either polonium-210 or plutonium-238. That's not counting fission reactors, of which there are several in addition (I'm unclear the precise count of which nuclear reactors returned to Earth, or simply exploded in orbit; or what became of the latter group). [0] https://nuke.fas.org/space/sovspace.pdf https://nuke.fas.org/space/sovspace.pdf (Gary L. Bennett, "A look at the Soviet space nuclear power program" (1989)) [1] https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1972-023A https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id... ("Two solar array wings, with an area of 2.5 meters, had a span of 4 meters. Due to the spacecraft's proximity to the Sun at Venus, the wings were only partially covered with solar cells".) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_systems_in_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_systems_... ("List of nuclear power systems in space")

shoo 1y ago
fascinating and disturbing -- i had no idea that there were fission powered satellites.
- kstrauser 1y ago
  That isn’t rare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge... The Pioneer probes used them to power their radios decades after launch. There aren’t real alternatives.