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Don P. Mitchell
Personal blog · mentallandscape.comsciencehistory
Don P. Mitchell's personal blog at mentallandscape.com covers science and history. Since 2012, 41 different Hacker News readers have linked it 52 times, most often “Soviet Venus Images (2004)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
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52mentions?
41HN people?
2012–2026first – last linked?
Most-linked posts?
- Soviet Venus Images (2004)16 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2012-08-09
- Venera: The Soviet Exploration of Venus7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2014-04-23
- Soviet Venus Images3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-08-09
- Soviet Moon Images (2004)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-01-24
- Plumbing the Atmosphere of Venus2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-12-22
- The Venus-Halley Missions (2004)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-11-21
What Hacker News says?
The Soviet Mars-2 and Mars-3 missions were quite successful (orbiting and landing). Here is a gallery of mars images 1971-1974[1] The soviets were also the first to land on Luna in 1966 [2] and on Venus in 1975[3] [1] http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogMars.htm [2] http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogMoon.htm [3] http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm
Comment linking /C_CatalogVenus.htm
on “Neil Armstrong has died at 82 Today”Submitted Soviet Venus Images (2004) as a story · 350 points
HN discussionWell, I'm finding an operation time of ~46 hours, although the battery life was supposedly 60 hours. I did find this tidbit[1]: "Shortly after passing into daylight, the Vega-2 aerostat plunged several kilometers, to a level of 0.9 atmospheres, dangerously close to the lower limit of its stable float zone. After the end of signal, the balloons probably overheated and burst, somewhere on the daylight side of Venus."…
Comment linking /V_Vega.htm
on “First full-resolution images of the Martian surface”Submitted Soviet Venus Images as a story · 284 points
HN discussionHis series of pages on the Venera program[1] just blows all other resources away, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. He mentions on his copyright page[2] that he studied Russian books/papers, befriended & interviewed Russian scientists, dug up rare photographs, and even processed original spacecraft data with custom C++ code to create some of the images! I look forward to his book; does he have an ETA on the p…
Comment linking /Copyright.htm
on “First full-resolution images of the Martian surface”Submitted Soviet Moon Images (2004) as a story · 160 points
HN discussionThe Venera program is definitely one of the "unsung heroes" of planetary exploration. Perhaps the best resource for surface images of Venus (along with fascinating image reconstruction) is Don P. Mitchell's page: http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm Another fascinating tidbit: the Soviets also performed the first (and to date, only) deployment of a balloon probe on another planet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Comment linking /C_CatalogVenus.htm
on “First full-resolution images of the Martian surface”Submitted Soviet Space Image Catalog as a story · 153 points
HN discussionThe Venera probes used this idea in the 1970s. [0] > One new idea, for additional thermal protection, was the addition of phase-change material. Lithium nitrate trihydrate melts at 30° C, absorbing a large amount of heat, due to its high latent heat of fusion. [0] http://mentallandscape.com/V_Lavochkin1.htm
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on “Giant 'sand battery' holds a week's heat for a whole town”Submitted Venera: The Soviet Exploration of Venus as a story · 121 points
HN discussionThey sent back video as they were remote controlling their robots, using video sent back at a decent resolution and lower frame rate, or low resolution and high frame rate. They needed this to ensure the robots did not get stuck, and because they couldn't build a robot that could automatically navigate for the length of time they hoped the mission would last (3 months). It just seems amazing that this footage was se…
Comment linking /C_Luna21_Video04.jpg
on “Soviet Venus Images”- ch · 2015-11-21
Submitted The Venus-Halley Missions (2004) as a story · 10 points
HN discussion These landings have one of my favourite ever engineering failures, regarding Venera 14. Venera 13 and 14 were twin landers which landed at the same time on Venus. Both contained a similar science package - including an arm to measure the compressibility of the soil on the surface of Venus. Venera 13's arm functioned properly. Venera 14's returned strange data, which was soon traced to a very simple fault - both Vene…
Comment linking /C_Venera_Perspective.jpg
on “Soviet Venus Images”Submitted Soviet Venus Images as a story · 5 points
HN discussionlots of images and text explaining the process of stitching and processing. Here is the money shot that made me go :O http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_Venera_Perspective.jpg Also this shot of Halley's comet fly-by from another Soviet craft (Vega-1) that only served to deposit a lander on Venus but then went on to fly close to the famous comet as well: http://www.mentallandscape.com/CS_Vega02.jpg
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on “Soviet Venus Images”Submitted Soviet Moon Images as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe details on how they built cameras (in 1980 no less) to capture and transmit data in an environment of 100atm and 400+ degrees Celsius are really interesting! http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm
Comment linking /C_CatalogVenus.htm
on “Soviet Venus Images”Submitted Photos of the Surface of Venus (1975) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionhttp://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm has a neat set of pictures, history, and altimeter data from the Soviet Venera program. I find the pictures from the surface very eerie and awe-inspiring. These seemingly boring, peaceful looking pictures of rocky ground and clear sky come from a robot in a atmosphere of super-critical CO2, at 460 C, having just descended through clouds of sulfuric acid. Before this robo…
Comment linking /C_CatalogVenus.htm
on “How the Soviets put a lander on Venus”Submitted Soviet Venus Images as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSome sources claim that in the 1980s USSR already developed instruments that were capable of operating at surface environment of Venus as part of their Venera program. From [1]: While never deployed, a seismometer and thermopile battery were developed and tested, capable of operating indefinitely on the surface of Venus. [1] http://mentallandscape.com/V_Venera11.htm
Comment linking /V_Venera11.htm
on “Electronics robust enough for Venus”Submitted Soviet Venus Images as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe Soviets succeeded in returning surface images from a number of their landers, and the photos are quite tantalizing. http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm "Venus Revealed" is a pretty good read: https://www.amazon.com/Venus-Revealed-Clouds-Mysteriious-Pla...
Comment linking /C_CatalogVenus.htm
on “Momentum is building to explore Venus”Submitted Plumbing the Atmosphere of Venus as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI am always amazed by the images the USSR missions were able to send back from the Venus surface in the freaking 70's and early 80's [1][2]. For a very long time that were the only 'real' pictures from another planet. So good looking and from such a hostile environment. [1] http://mentallandscape.com/C_Venera_Perspective.jpg [2] http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm
Comment linking /C_CatalogVenus.htm
on “NASA Designed a Low-Tech Rover to Survive Venus”Submitted Comprehensive examination of the first photos from the surface of Venus as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIn the habr article there's this link to Don Mitchell's site: http://mentallandscape.com/V_Venus.htm
Comment linking /V_Venus.htm
on “Recovering telemetry data from Venera-13 and 14”Submitted Soviet Exploration of Venus as a story · 1 points
HN discussionClick on "Show this thread" to see more. The Twitter user posted more about it as well, click his name to see his postings. There is also a website linked from his profile thats contains information about the "Soviet Exploration of Venus". http://mentallandscape.com/
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on “Recovering telemetry data from Venera-13 and 14”I went down a rabbithole and was looking for the earliest full-disc photos of Earth. Most of the sites I found used exclusively US images ("the Blue Marble" etc), no Soviet representation. Not sure if that's because there truly are no early full-disc images from the Russia or not? The earliest one I could find is from Zond-5, 1968: http://mentallandscape.com/CS_Zond05_1.jpg Anyone know if there is an earlier image?…
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on “Soviet Moon Images (2004)”
