What the Soviets Found on Venus Still Doesn't Make Sense

For fifteen years, the Soviet Union threw spacecraft at the most hostile surface in the solar system, and most were destroyed before they could send anything home. The handful that survived produced every photograph and the first sound we have ever recorded from the surface of Venus. This is the engineering story behind the Venera landers, how they failed, how a few finally made it down, and what they found there.

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SOURCES & FURTHER READING
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Ksanfomaliti, L.V. et al, 1982 - Acoustic measurements of wind velocity at the Venera-13 and 14 landing sites (the first recorded sound) - https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1982SvAL....8..227K Surkov, Yu. A. et al, 1984 - Composition and properties of Venus rock from Venera 13 and 14 - https://doi.org/10.1029/JB089iS02p0B393 Ksanfomality, L.V., 2012 - Reanalysis of Venera-13 surface imagery, Solar System Research 46(1) - https://www.planetary.org/articles/3338 NASA NSSDCA - Venera mission archive (dates, survival times, instruments) - https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/venera.html

#Venus #Venera #SpaceHistory