Jun 15 1985
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(New page: An international team of planetary scientists gathered at the USSR's Space Research Institute to catch the first return of data from the Vega-2 spacecraft plunging into the atmosphere of V...)
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An international team of planetary scientists gathered at the USSR's Space Research Institute to catch the first return of data from the Vega-2 spacecraft plunging into the atmosphere of Venus, the NY Times reported. At 6:06 a.m. Vega-2 began its descent. Among the roughly 100 participants were representatives from eight European nations and the French Ambassador.
Two days before, exploding bolts had freed an eight-foot sphere that carried one-and-a-half tons of payload bound for Venus's night side. The main craft would miss Venus entirely and use energy provided by the planet's gravity to propel it toward an encounter with Halley’s Comet. Inside the rapidly decelerating sphere a timing device programmed months before switched on the scientific packages around it, then set loose a 15-lb. stack of miniaturized weather instruments built by French, Soviet, and U.S. scientists. An 11-footdiameter teflon balloon filled with helium kept the instruments from reaching Venus's surface.
An hour after the balloon inflated, the Vega-2 lander had reached the surface safely. The lander, in an atmospheric pressure 80 times the earth's at sea level and in a nighttime temperature of 855° F, was relaying information on surface conditions and excavating a small sample of the surrounding soil for crude analysis of its composition.
Vega-1 's balloon had reached the planet June 11 and had covered nearly 6,000 miles through the Venusian clouds in 46 hours, passing into the planet's sunlit hemisphere before exhausting its battery.
The new Vega results suggested the planet had five discrete cloud layers whereas earlier missions detected only three. (NY Times, June 18/85, C8, June 16/85, 24; W Post, June 14/85, A10)
On the fourth and final day of his U.S. visit, Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, accompanied by Vice President Bush, toured the Johnson Space Center's mission control center and then climbed into the commander's seat of a Space Shuttle mockup to dramatize his commitment to high technology, the Washington Post reported. Later Gandhi said the spinoffs of space technology "have become part of our daily lives," and that India needed to keep abreast of technological advances in agriculture, communications, meteorology, and prospecting.
Earlier in the week, the NY Times reported the U.S. and India were scheduled during Gandhi's visit to announce a joint space effort that would include the launching in 1986 aboard the Space Shuttle of an Indian payload specialist and a satellite that was partly designed to expand the uses of radio and TV in Indian villages.
Gandhi's visit was intended to ease strains with the U.S., reach a series of space and technology agreements, and open a nationwide cultural program, the Festival of India. The previous year the Soviet Union launched an Indian astronaut into space on an eight-day mission. (W Post, June 16/85, Al2, NYT, June 9/85, A3)
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