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The Russians had some amazing firsts with Venus, depending on how you define "visit": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera
by biot 11y ago
The Russians had some amazing firsts with Venus, depending on how you define "visit": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera
"Among the other results, probes of the series became the first man-made devices
to enter the atmosphere of another planet (Venera 4 on October 18, 1967), to
make a soft landing on another planet (Venera 7 on December 15, 1970), to
return images from the planetary surface (Venera 9 on June 8, 1975), and to
perform high-resolution radar mapping studies of Venus (Venera 15 on June 2,
1983). The entire series could be considered highly successful."
- aunty_helen 11y agoThey were also first to test the characteristics of a lens cap on another planet in one of their most infamous science experiments.
- duskwuff 11y agoIn an infamous series of science experiments, no less: * One of the two cameras on Venera 9 failed to function because the lens cap didn't come off properly. * Ditto for Venera 10. * Venera 11 broke the trend by having lens caps fail to come off of BOTH cameras. * Venera 12... same thing. * Venera 13, ironically, broke the curse. The lens caps came off properly, and both cameras functioned. * Venera 14 had both cameras function as well. However, it had a unique new problem: the lens cap landed directly under the lander's soil probe, and it ended up measuring the compressibility of the lens cap.
- kijin 11y agoHoly crap. I hope the guy who designed those lens caps didn't get exiled to Siberia or something.