Venera
Soviet program that explored Venus with multiple probes / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Venera (Russian: Вене́ра, pronounced [vʲɪˈnʲɛrə] 'Venus') program was a series of space probes developed by the Soviet Union between 1961 and 1984 to gather information about the planet Venus.
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Thirteen probes successfully entered the Venusian atmosphere, including the two Vega program and Venera-Halley probes. Ten of those successfully landed on the surface of the planet. Due to the extreme conditions, the probes could only survive for a short period on the surface, from 23 minutes to two hours.[1]
The Venera program established a number of precedents in space exploration, among them being the first human-made devices to enter the atmosphere of another planet (Venera 3 on 1 March 1966), the first to make a soft landing on another planet (Venera 7 on 15 December 1970), the first to return images from another planet's surface (Venera 9 on 8 June 1975), the first to record sounds on another planet (Venera 13 on 30 October 1981), and the first to perform high-resolution radar mapping scans (Venera 15 on 2 June 1983).