KSP Weekly: Venerating the Venera

Welcome to KSP Weekly everyone. Here at the KSP HQ we are Space History enthusiasts and June is a month rich in historic achievements, including the launch of the Venera 4 probe (June 12, 1967), which was the first human-made device to enter the atmosphere of another planet -Venus- and to return atmospheric data from the planet. It showed that the atmosphere was 90-95% carbon dioxide, it detected no nitrogen, the surface temperature reading was 500°C and pressure reading was 75 bar. The probe was crushed by the pressure on Venus before it reached the surface. Venera 4 was part of a series of space probes developed by the Soviet Union between 1961 and 1984 to gather data from Venus. Among other results from these series of probes, Venera 7 became the first to make a soft landing on another planet, Venera 9, which consisted of an orbiter and a lander, was the first to return images from the planetary surface and to orbit the planet, and Venera 15 was, you’ve guessed it, the first to perform high-resolution radar mapping studies of Venus. The later probes in the Venera series successfully carried out their mission, providing the first direct observations of the surface of Venus. Since the surface conditions on Venus are extreme, the probes only survived on the surface for durations varying between 23 minutes (initial probes) up to about two hours (final probes). Thanks to these and other missions, we were able to gather invaluable data from Earth’s not so identical twin as well as further expand our knowledge of the effects that a high concentration of carbon dioxide can have in the atmosphere. But you are here to read about KSP development, so let’s begin.

For starters, the QA team is back with bughunting: confirming reported issues with the latest update and, consequently, the development team is getting busy fixing those pesky bugs which will be fixed by the time update 1.3.1 comes out. One example of these recent fixes is that compound parts, such as struts and fuel ducts, can now be adjusted symmetrically from both ends. Click here to see how it works. And yes, in case you were wondering, updates and support for the core game continues!

In other news, the work on the upgraded version for consoles continues at full swing. This week the biggest highlight is the work on the new icons for the new radial menu system. Check them out!

Meanwhile the work on the Making History Expansion advances vigorously. This week the devs were busy reviewing the code process for the Mission Briefing Dialog and in the meantime some have been working with the Vessel Start Situation for the mission’s parameters. The first sketch to persist the information is already in place, but we’re still figuring out how the Flight Global Vessels will access that data.

Similarly, the art team has been mainly involved with content for the Expansion, including the modeling for the Vostok 1-inspired IVA, further work on the Mission Builder’s UI and, of course, new parts. Here’s our new 1.875 monopropellant tank. Two textures will be included - one with the traditional yellow markings used for other stack RCS tanks, and a plain white one that should blend better with historic rocket builds. So yes, we can confirm that stock texture switching will be a thing. Also, we will be using the introduction of a new monoprop tank as an opportunity to perform a long overdue balance pass on our existing monoprop tanks.

We also want to invite you to read our latest Devblog: Enter the Shadows, where JPLRepo goes into detail about how some long standing issues with the shadows were fixed, how these came to be, and a lot of insight about how shadows and the camera system work in the game. Don’t miss it.

Finally, we encourage you to participate in our latest KSP Challenge - Place the groundstations! On this occasion we’ll assume that the communication groundstations are not yet built, so the challenge consists of placing them at the right coordinates. There are six groundstations but it’s up to you how many you’ll want to deliver and how. Are you up to the challenge? Check it out and share your creations!

That’s it for this week. Be sure to join us on our official forums, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Stay tuned for more exciting and upcoming news and development updates!

Happy launchings!