Sixty two years ago, on this day, August 27th, 1962, humans go exploring.,
On August 27th 1962, the Mariner 2 spacecraft built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) was successfully launched on its way to Venus. On December 14th 1962 it passed within 35,000 km of Venus and observed the planet with its onboard instruments and returned the resulting data to Earth [1]. It was the first successful spacecraft to another planet.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 318ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that now we’d put balls, chimps and men in orbit, and JFK had set the goal for a man on the moon by the end of the decade, other planets were getting a look-see.
What we learn is that ideas about greenhouse effects are nice metaphors. And if you can apply them to other planets like Venus, then I guess it helps with the general understanding and acceptance of the problem on Earth.
What happened next? There was a flurry of articles about Venus’s Greenhouse Effect thanks to the enormous amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, meaning that the temperature on the surface of the planet was very, very high. This had already been known in scientific circles, but having the measurements and the attention meant that it got a bit more of a run in the mass media.
We kept sending rockets to other planets, especially Mars in the Vikings in the 1970s. And within another three, four years, C02 was building up in the public sphere as well as in the atmosphere.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
August 27, 1859 – The Oil Age begins. UPDATED TO BE a) accurate b) less Eurocentric
August 27, 1993 – international negotiations edge forward
August 27, 2013 – absurd claim of Nobel-prize winners’ support for Liberal non-policy is debunked.