On March 5, 1982, the Soviet Union successfully landed the Venera 14 probe on the surface of Venus after a carefully routed seven-month flight. The Venera program was made to learn more about Venus’s atmosphere and surface.
The first two Venera probes failed to leave Earth’s orbit before crashing; Venera 3, outfitted with an orbital “bus” to guide its orbit around the sun, crashed into Venus due to a miscommunication in the probe’s computer. After improving the orbital stage’s communicator, Venera 4 revealed that Venus’s atmosphere is 96.5 percent carbon dioxide, marking the first spacecraft to ever analyze another planet’s atmosphere.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth probes in the program were sent out to collect data in the hostile Venusian atmosphere, sending data for 53 minutes before melting from the 608oF surface temperatures. Missions seven through 12 were the first successful surface landings, testing the limits of probes’ engineering to run soil samples. Venera 13 and 14 were designed to study Venusian earthquakes and lightning patterns.
The last two missions, Venera 15 and 16, sought to map the northern hemisphere on Venus’s surface, before funding got drawn to other programs.
The Venera program started out with a question, “What could be going on in other planets in our solar system?” Then, it made groundbreaking innovations in aerospace engineering, inspiring further exploration into our solar system. Today, engineers are modeling designs for space stations in Venus’s upper atmosphere as concepts for interplanetary travel.
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