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Venera 4

 
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Venera 4 was a probe in the Soviet
Soviet space program

The Soviet space program consisted of initiatives within the Soviet Union by competing design groups. Being primarily a military program, it was classified....
 Venera program for the exploration of Venus
Venus

Venus is the second-closest planet to the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus , the Roman mythology goddess of love....
.



Venera 4 was launched from a Tyazheliy Sputnik
Molniya (rocket)

Molniya 8K78 was a modification of the well-known R-7 Semyorka rocket and has four stages.This derivative of the original three stage Vostok rocket was especially designed to bring high flying satellites into orbit or to launch probes to other planets....
 (67-058B) towards the planet Venus with the announced mission of direct atmospheric studies. On October 18, 1967, the spacecraft entered the Venusian atmosphere and released two thermometer
Thermometer

The thermometer is a device that measures temperature or temperature gradient using a variety of different principles; it comes from the Greek language roots thermo, heat, and meter, to measure....
s, a barometer
Barometer

A barometer is an instrument used to measure atmospheric pressure. It can measure the pressure exerted by the atmosphere by using water, air, or mercury ....
, a radio altimeter
Altimeter

An altimeter is an instrument used to measure the altitude of an object above a fixed level. The measurement of altitude is called altimetry, which is related to the term bathymetry, the measurement of depth underwater....
, and atmospheric density gauge, 11 gas analyzers, and two radio transmitters operating in the DM waveband.






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Encyclopedia


Venera 4 was a probe in the Soviet
Soviet space program

The Soviet space program consisted of initiatives within the Soviet Union by competing design groups. Being primarily a military program, it was classified....
 Venera program for the exploration of Venus
Venus

Venus is the second-closest planet to the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus , the Roman mythology goddess of love....
.

  • Launch Date/Time: 1967 June 12 at 02:40:00 UTC
  • On-orbit Dry Mass: 1106 kg


Venera 4 was launched from a Tyazheliy Sputnik
Molniya (rocket)

Molniya 8K78 was a modification of the well-known R-7 Semyorka rocket and has four stages.This derivative of the original three stage Vostok rocket was especially designed to bring high flying satellites into orbit or to launch probes to other planets....
 (67-058B) towards the planet Venus with the announced mission of direct atmospheric studies. On October 18, 1967, the spacecraft entered the Venusian atmosphere and released two thermometer
Thermometer

The thermometer is a device that measures temperature or temperature gradient using a variety of different principles; it comes from the Greek language roots thermo, heat, and meter, to measure....
s, a barometer
Barometer

A barometer is an instrument used to measure atmospheric pressure. It can measure the pressure exerted by the atmosphere by using water, air, or mercury ....
, a radio altimeter
Altimeter

An altimeter is an instrument used to measure the altitude of an object above a fixed level. The measurement of altitude is called altimetry, which is related to the term bathymetry, the measurement of depth underwater....
, and atmospheric density gauge, 11 gas analyzers, and two radio transmitters operating in the DM waveband. The main bus, which had carried the capsule to Venus, carried a magnetometer
Magnetometer

A magnetometer is a scientific instrument used to measure the strength and/or direction of the magnetic field in the vicinity of the instrument....
, cosmic ray detectors, Lyman-alpha spectrometers
Lyman-alpha forest

In astronomical spectroscopy, the Lyman alpha forest is the sum of Spectral lines arising from the Lyman series transition of the neutral hydrogen in the spectra of distant Galaxy and quasars....
 for atomic hydrogen
Hydrogen atom

A hydrogen atom is an atom of the chemical element hydrogen. The Electric charge neutral atom contains a single positively-charged proton and a single negatively-charged electron bound to the nucleus by the Coulomb force....
 and oxygen
Oxygen

Oxygen no O2 produced; 2) O2 produced, but absorbed in oceans & seabed rock; 3) O2 starts to gas out of the oceans, but is absorbed by land surfaces and formation of ozone layer; 4-5) O2 sinks filled and the gas accumulates]]...
, and charged particle (solar wind
Solar wind

The solar wind is a Electric current—a Plasma —ejected from the stellar atmosphere of the sun. It consists mostly of electrons and protons with energies of about 1 electron volt....
) traps. Signals were returned by the spacecraft, which braked and then deployed a parachute system after entering the Venusian atmosphere, until it reached an altitude of 24.96 km. Estimated landing place is somewhere near .

Venera-4 was the first successful probe to perform in-place analysis of the environment of another planet. It provided the first chemical analysis of the Venusian atmosphere, showing it to be primarily carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalent bond to a single carbon atom. It is a gas at standard temperature and pressure and exists in Earth's atmosphere in this state....
 with a few percent of nitrogen
Nitrogen

Nitrogen is a chemical element that has the symbol N and atomic number 7 and atomic mass 14.00674?. Elemental nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78% by volume of Earth's atmosphere....
. It provided the first direct measurements proving that Venus was extremely hot, and the atmosphere was far denser than expected.