Venus
I learned something while stuck in my way-too-small airline seats today. I learned that machines have actually landed and returned pictures from Venus. Maybe everyone else is aware of this (it isn’t exactly a recent thing), but not me. The image below was taken by one of the 16 Soviet Venera Missions, which occurred between 1961 and 1983. It is from Venera 13, more precisely, taken in 1982.
The space craft survived for a little over 2 hours after landing, at a temperature of 457 Celcius and pressure of 84 atm. It’s amazing to me the number and magnitude of the unmanned space missions that people pull off. I mean, the control to put something so far away onto such a small target, land it safely in such a hostile environment, and still be able to communicate with these things from earth!
For more info, see http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/planets/venuspage.html
