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Photos from the Surface of Venus

Posted by michael on from the land-down-under dept.

Mean_Nishka writes "I was surprised to learn that the Soviets sucessfully landed a number of probes on the surface of Venus (the probes were given the name 'Venera') in the 70's and early 80's. NASA has a small collection of images from four of the missions. The images aren't much, but offer a stunning view of the surface of Venus. You can view surface photos at this NASA site. Space.com has a great summary of the Venera program here."

2 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Camera mounting? by Muhammar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Check the Venus fact sheet - namely the surface temperature, pressure and the composition of the Venus atmosphere - and you will find reasons why their best time of the probe functioning (before disintegrating) was approx one hour. If you do not like their camera optics and mounting, please volunteer to take better pictures by yourself.

    --
    I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
  2. venus not mars by solferino · · Score: 2, Insightful

    why venus should be the focus of colonisation efforts, not mars

    • gravity is the big insurmountable - venus's gravity is much closer to earth than mars
    • extreme pressure and heat are problems that are solvable with engineering - and we have the bottome of the earth's ocean as a practice environment
    • venus is a much more interesting planet
    • finally, make love (venus) not war (mars)