Venera 7: first landing and transmission from another planet
Venera 7: primer aterrizaje y transmisión desde otro planeta
- Date
- 15 de diciembre de 1970 · confidence high
- Place
- Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan (USSR)
- Credited to
- Soviet Venera programme (NPO Lavochkin)
- Field
- Movement
What was discovered
The Venera 7 probe landed on Venus on 15 December 1970 after a hard landing with a partly torn parachute, and transmitted about 23 minutes of weak signal, the first received from the surface of another planet. It measured about 475 °C and 90 atmospheres.
A parachute failure made the signal very weak and nearly lost on arrival; the data were recovered by reanalysing the tapes.
What it led to
- knowledge of the extreme conditions at the surface of Venus
- Venera 8-14 probes with surface images (Venera 9, 1975)
- design of probes resistant to pressure and heat