Study of Venera Spacecraft Trajectories and Wider Implications

TL;DR

This study investigates the trajectories of Venera spacecraft and similar objects, analyzing their orbital properties to determine if some space probes could be mistaken for natural objects like asteroids or comets.

Contribution

The paper introduces a method using the Earth Tisserand parameter to identify potential Venera probes among near-Earth objects, linking specific dark comets to space missions.

Findings

Dark Comets have an Earth Tisserand parameter close to 3, similar to Venera probes.

Certain Dark Comets are associated with specific Venera missions, notably $2010 ext{VL}_{65}$ with Venera-12.

Probability of these associations occurring by chance is extremely small.

Abstract

Historically, there is no doubt that the early years of the USSR space program put them way ahead of the competition (the USA). Nonetheless, although this was not what the Russians wished to present to the world, the interplanetary campaign, centred around missions to the planet Venus (the Venera program) was also beset with difficulties. Many of the early Venera probes failed, despite making it to a heliocentric orbit, but naturally the success rate improved with time. The result is that there are now many Venera probes in heliocentric orbits, either completely intact, or the main bus after a successful deployment of the lander; together with the associated Blok-L upper stages. This paper is a response to some previous quite contentious research proposing that a certain member of a new class of objects, designated $2005\ VL_1$ may in fact be the Venera-2 probe. In this paper we look into the invariance of the Earth Tisserand parameter in an attempt to establish if there are indeed any members of this class which could be Venera probes. It is found, with extremely small probability, that compared to a sample of randomly chosen NEOs, members of the class of Dark Comet have an Earth Tisserand unusually close to 3, a property shared by the Venera missions. Furthermore there are particular associations of 3 Dark Comets with 3 of these probes, the most significant being $2010\ VL_{65}$ with the Venera-12 mission