The Soviet Union launched nearly 30 spacecraft at Venus and became the only nation ever to land on its surface and send back pictures — color photographs of a scorched volcanic plain under a yellow-green sky, shot in the few dozen minutes before the heat

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• A Soviet spacecraft built in 1972 to land on Venus finally made its landing 53 years later, on 10 May 2025 — except it came down on Earth, carried through a fiery reentry intact by the same titanium shell its engineers had built to survive the hottest pla 19FortyFive · 1d ago broke it first
• "Venus is a Russian planet," the head of Russia's space agency declared in 2020 — a line the West laughed off, except the Soviet Union really did get there first, landed first, and shot the only photographs ever taken from the Venusian surface, a record n 19FortyFive · 1d ago broke it first
• The Soviet spacecraft landed on Venus and measured its own cover instead of the planet's surface UA.NEWS · 1d ago
• Everyone is fixated on Mars, but 30 miles above the hellish surface of Venus there is a layer of sky where the pressure matches Earth's and the temperature sits at room temperature — and NASA has a real concept to float crewed airships there, a mission th 19FortyFive · 1d ago broke it first
• When the Soviet Venera 13 probe touched down on Venus in March 1982, it survived for 127 minutes in a 465-degree atmosphere that crushed it with the pressure of nearly a kilometre of ocean water, and in that time it scraped a soil sample, analysed it, and Space Daily · 1d ago
• Soviet spacecraft built to land on Venus in 1972 spent 53 years orbiting Earth and finally returned without burning up The Times of India · 1d ago
• The Soviet Union launched nearly 30 spacecraft at Venus and became the only nation ever to land on its surface and send back pictures — color photographs of a scorched volcanic plain under a yellow-green sky, shot in the few dozen minutes before the heat 19FortyFive · 1d ago broke it first

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