ЧАСЫ
since entryVenus descent
Fall 110 km through the clouds of Venus the way ten Soviet landers did, then see how long you last on the ground. The picture behind this page is built one scan line at a time, like theirs, and its colour is the sunlight that is left at each height.
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End of transmission · 127 minutes
Venera 13's last signal was received two hours and seven minutes after it landed. The lander could not reach Earth by itself. It sent everything up to the ship that had carried it, and that ship was flying on past the planet.
Earlier landers of this design were still working when their relays went out of range. How long Venera 13 kept going after its own relay left, nobody knows.
It is still there, on a plain east of Phoebe Regio, in heat that melts lead.
ПРОФИЛЬ АТМОСФЕРЫThe whole fall on one sheet
Temperature climbs almost in a straight line once you are under the clouds. Pressure multiplies: each 16 km down, roughly ten times more.
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ВРЕМЯ РАБОТЫHow long each lander reported from the ground
Minutes of signal after touchdown, in order of arrival. From Venera 9 on, the landers were built for about 30 minutes. By the published accounts it was the relay leaving that cut them off, not the heat.
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УПРОЩЕНИЯWhat is simplified
- No Venera photographed the fall. Their cameras only looked out after landing. The view on the way down is drawn from what the light sensors, cloud sensors and thermometers measured. The surface panorama is a redrawing in the real camera's geometry, not the photograph.
- The colour is a three-colour model (red, green, blue). Light is scattered by the cloud and by the carbon dioxide, and blue is also absorbed. The strengths are set so that the ground gets a few percent of the sunlight with almost no blue, which is what the Venera and Pioneer Venus instruments found. The page then brightens the picture as it gets darker, the way your eyes or a camera's gain would. The "sunlight left" gauge is the unbrightened number.
- Noise is a gauge here, not history. The speckle and dropped lines grow with the outside temperature and then with time on the ground. The real pictures stayed clean until the relay left. The striped data bars are real in kind: the landers did interrupt the picture to send other readings.
- One atmosphere for the whole planet. Temperature and pressure are the standard reference profile, so the ground reads 462 °C and 92 atmospheres. Venera 13 itself measured 457 °C and 89 at its site. Wind is a smooth curve through published probe values; real winds vary with place and time.
- The clock is worked out, not logged. Fall speed below the clouds is the landing speed (7.5 m/s) scaled by air density; under the parachute and during entry it is a plausible curve. It gives about an hour from entry to the ground, which matches the reports. The surface clock, the 127 minutes and the 32-minute design life are Venera 13's.
- When the camera started is assumed. The scan rate and the order of the filters are the published ones; the start time after landing is not.
- The landscape is illustration. The slabs are modelled on the Venera 13 and 14 pictures. The hills on the horizon, the light and dark patches seen from above and the cloud shapes are invented to show how far you can see, not what is there.
- Composite lander. The fall mixes details from Venera 9 to 14 and Vega, which shared one design. Where a number belongs to one lander, the card names it.
ИСТОЧНИКИSources
- Seiff, A. et al. (1985). Models of the structure of the atmosphere of Venus from the surface to 100 km altitude (the Venus International Reference Atmosphere). Advances in Space Research 5(11). doi:10.1016/0273-1177(85)90197-8. Table as reproduced in Wikipedia, Atmosphere of Venus.
- NASA NSSDCA, Venus Fact Sheet (size, rotation, albedo, black-body temperature, surface density and wind, composition).
- Mitchell, D. P., The Soviet Exploration of Venus: First Pictures of the Surface of Venus, Drilling into the Surface of Venus, Soviet Space Cameras, Vega (lander design, descent, cameras and scan rates, telemetry bars, loss of contact, balloons).
- Wikipedia: Venera 13, Venera 14, Venera (flight table), Pioneer Venus Multiprobe, Venus.
- Tomasko, M. G. et al. (1980). Measurements of the flux of sunlight in the atmosphere of Venus. J. Geophys. Res. 85. doi:10.1029/JA085iA13p08167 (about 2.5% of sunlight absorbed at the ground).
- Knollenberg, R. G. & Hunten, D. M. (1980). The microphysics of the clouds of Venus. J. Geophys. Res. 85. doi:10.1029/JA085iA13p08039 (cloud layers, droplet sizes).
- Counselman, C. C. et al. (1980). Zonal and meridional circulation of the lower atmosphere of Venus determined by radio interferometry. J. Geophys. Res. 85. doi:10.1029/JA085iA13p08026 (winds: about 100 m/s near 65 km, 1 m/s or less at the ground).
- Herrick, R. R. & Hensley, S. (2023). Surface changes observed on a Venusian volcano during the Magellan mission. Science 379. doi:10.1126/science.abm7735. Sulcanese, D., Mitri, G. & Mastrogiuseppe, M. (2024). Evidence of ongoing volcanic activity on Venus revealed by Magellan radar. Nature Astronomy 8. doi:10.1038/s41550-024-02272-1.
- Correia, A. C. M. & Laskar, J. (2001). The four final rotation states of Venus. Nature 411. doi:10.1038/35081000.
- Greaves, J. S. et al. (2021). Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus. Nature Astronomy 5. doi:10.1038/s41550-020-1174-4. Villanueva, G. L. et al. (2021). No evidence of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus from independent analyses. Nature Astronomy 5. doi:10.1038/s41550-021-01422-z.
Numbers checked against these sources on 11 October 2026. Display type: Russo One by Jovanny Lemonad, SIL Open Font License.