The Soviet Venera program was really fascinating. It is quite impressive that they managed to build landers that survived even a short period on the surface of Venus, let alone return photographs.
> The Soviet Venera program was really fascinating
Reading my uncle’s old tech magazines and sci-fi from the 70’s was fascinating. Eastern European sci fi was all about colonizing Venus and the Venera landers. The way kids in USA are obsessed with Mars, kids in my part of Europe used to be obsessed with Venus before the influx of Western media.
Getting to grow up on the cusp of that vibe shift was cool.
chasil 16 days ago [-]
This Kurzgesagt video is equally sci-fi, but of the "potentially possible if we wanted to bankrupt the planet" variety.
Življenje in tehnika[1] – popular science magazine in Slovenia that's been running since 1950. Grandparents used to have my uncle's collection from I guess his high school years. Spanned from the mid 70's and into the 80's.
I used to read random issues when I'd go visit. My favorite were the 70's stories about "We are imminently going to have AI cars. Experiments are underway and trucks can now autonomously drive long distances on the highway! Humanoid robots are coming soon look at this super dextrous hand!!".
On the sci-fi side one notable example is The Land of Crimson Clouds (Страна багровых туч, 1959) by the Strugatsky brothers. Unfortunately, there’s no official English translation that I can find.
If you’re into hard SF I recommend The House of Styx, and The House of Saints by Derek Künsken.
TurkTurkleton 16 days ago [-]
There's a collection of images returned by the various Venera probes (including the surface photos from Venera-9, -10, -13, and -14) restored from tapes of the original transmissions here: http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm
Edit: Oop, missed that someone else posted a link to that same site (different page) a while before me. Well, nevertheless.
Cthulhu_ 16 days ago [-]
I read about it years ago, I never knew they actually landed on Venus.
That said, I wonder whether with advances in material science and the likes they could build something that lasts longer.
The photos, the huge effort involved, and general strangeness of Venus is a great read. Lots of good youtube docs as well.
Paul-Craft 16 days ago [-]
The Soviets literally beat the US to every single major milestone in the space program, up through the 60's, except for literally landing men on the moon.
WillPostForFood 16 days ago [-]
US had a couple good milestones with the Mariner program. Mariner 2 was the first Venus flyby in 1962, and Mariner 4 was the first Mars flyby in 1965.
xenadu02 15 days ago [-]
That was deliberate for propaganda purposes. They rushed many of their programs (and got a number of people killed by doing so) and simply never told anyone about the failures. Besides which Sputnik 1 wasn't very useful, but it was what they could rush out the door once they knew the US launch schedule.
Not to say the US Apollo program was fundamentally different... it was just much much bigger. And unlike the Soviets the US published their failures (see the Apollo 1 fire).
Odd to think about how much progress was generated thanks to national pride and propaganda. What a strange time in the history of the world.
15 days ago [-]
euroderf 16 days ago [-]
I want to see the proposed balloon missions proceed and succeed.
sph 15 days ago [-]
Nothing represents alien, inhospitable world than those yellowed pictures from Venus. Even Mars seems mundane in comparison.
It’s sad that I will probably not live long enough to see a better quality picture of the Venusian hellscape.
andrewflnr 16 days ago [-]
Such an incredible mixture of badass achievement and hilarious failure. I guess that's kind of in character for the Soviets, but you don't usually see the two ends of the spectrum mixed so closely.
> As this is a lander that was designed to survive passage through the Venus atmosphere, it is possible that it will survive reentry through the Earth atmosphere intact, and impact intact.
I did not consider this outcome at all, but this makes sense. I am hoping the descent mechanism activates and the spacecraft lands intact.
orbital-decay 16 days ago [-]
It will not, of course - anything that's inside is long dead, not designed for Earth atmosphere, and it had to be programmed to trigger in the first place.
In fact, the capsule could also burn up on reentry. Sure, it's a Venera-8 double designed to enter Venus' atmosphere at 11.6km/s... but it has extra mass on it (the upper stage never separated so it should look like [1]) and the capsule's CoG doesn't take all that stuff into account, which might cause it to tumble, reenter backwards, or damage it. On the other hand, it's reentering from a really low-energy orbit so it could survive the reentry - but not the impact in case it lands on the ground.
Marco Langbroek, who did the reentry forecast that the linked article is based on, convincingly argues[0] that the bus did separate and reenter separately (in 1981) and what remains in orbit is just the lander. There are several independent pieces of evidence that are consistent with this; the orbital decay pattern, the radar cross section and optical telescope observations all point to only the lander itself remaining.
See also his blog[1] for an up-to-date reentry forecast.
The descent mechanism would be built for the much denser Venusian atmosphere. On Earth, it may not slow the thing down enough.
wolrah 16 days ago [-]
> I am hoping the descent mechanism activates and the spacecraft lands intact.
I think it's a safe bet that any descent mechanism designed for the thick atmosphere of Venus is not going to function the same way on Earth.
16 days ago [-]
accrual 16 days ago [-]
That would be pretty cool indeed. My only concern is that the craft probably doesn't have any attitude control, so it may enter backwards or tumbling, which may limit the effectiveness of the heatshield on the probe. Even so, surely large pieces of it will make it back home intact.
voidUpdate 16 days ago [-]
If it is the same as other venera probes, it is designed so that aerodynamic forces will stabilise it into a heatshield-forward attitude
That's really cool. Do you think this will be visible for those near the entry path?
arprocter 15 days ago [-]
I defer to the much smarter folks on this site, but my layman's assumption would be if it comes down in the dark it'll look like a shooting star
The altitude seems to be falling pretty quickly at the moment, although presumably the atmosphere will slow it down
Oneword 14 days ago [-]
It may have been engineered to withstand high heat but.. is this thing going to be controlled from the ground for heat shield positioning?
Highly unlikely. This thing will tumble and fly into a million pieces. Perhaps parts will survive entry but its not going to be a slam dunk. Or maybe it will. The Earth is 2/3's water after all.
dhc02 16 days ago [-]
I like to imagine as if we threw something into the air so hard that it went up for 26 years, then came back down for 26 years.
1970-01-01 16 days ago [-]
That's exactly what happened, except it went around the world a million times too.
trympet 16 days ago [-]
I’m not much of a YouTuber shill, however, I feel this crowd would enjoy Scott Manley’s video [1] on the subject
According to Wikipedia, the stage timer was set incorrectly so the injection burn cut out early.
rich_sasha 16 days ago [-]
[flagged]
SoftTalker 16 days ago [-]
Hope it's not full of plutonium or other nasty stuff.
m4rtink 16 days ago [-]
That would be more likely for outer system probes, where even simple radio isotope heaters could be very useful.
For Venus it is unlikely to need anything like that, as the expected flight duration was much shorter (quite important for not very durable Soviet electronics) and main issue would be actually cooling.
16 days ago [-]
tocs3 16 days ago [-]
Would I get to keep it if it lands in my yard?
bobmcnamara 15 days ago [-]
Probably not, but maybe.
Some of it came down in New Zealand in 1972, the Soviets didn't own up to it, so the farmer kept it.
Oneword 16 days ago [-]
[flagged]
Molitor5901 16 days ago [-]
This reminded me of space junk and what the heck are we going to do with it?? There's not enough money behind cleaning it up to make it even feasible. There are some interesting magnetic ideas, but overall it seems like the concept of space junk is just here to stay.
aaron695 16 days ago [-]
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dumdedum123 16 days ago [-]
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Crontab 16 days ago [-]
I am old enough to remember watching those episodes when they debuted.
https://www.astronomy.com/science/the-venera-program-interpl...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera
Reading my uncle’s old tech magazines and sci-fi from the 70’s was fascinating. Eastern European sci fi was all about colonizing Venus and the Venera landers. The way kids in USA are obsessed with Mars, kids in my part of Europe used to be obsessed with Venus before the influx of Western media.
Getting to grow up on the cusp of that vibe shift was cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI
I used to read random issues when I'd go visit. My favorite were the 70's stories about "We are imminently going to have AI cars. Experiments are underway and trucks can now autonomously drive long distances on the highway! Humanoid robots are coming soon look at this super dextrous hand!!".
[1] https://www.tzs.si/zivljenje-in-tehnika/revija
https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/smithcordwainer-whenthepeoplefel...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants
Edit: Oop, missed that someone else posted a link to that same site (different page) a while before me. Well, nevertheless.
That said, I wonder whether with advances in material science and the likes they could build something that lasts longer.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43638520
The photos, the huge effort involved, and general strangeness of Venus is a great read. Lots of good youtube docs as well.
Not to say the US Apollo program was fundamentally different... it was just much much bigger. And unlike the Soviets the US published their failures (see the Apollo 1 fire).
Odd to think about how much progress was generated thanks to national pride and propaganda. What a strange time in the history of the world.
It’s sad that I will probably not live long enough to see a better quality picture of the Venusian hellscape.
I did not consider this outcome at all, but this makes sense. I am hoping the descent mechanism activates and the spacecraft lands intact.
In fact, the capsule could also burn up on reentry. Sure, it's a Venera-8 double designed to enter Venus' atmosphere at 11.6km/s... but it has extra mass on it (the upper stage never separated so it should look like [1]) and the capsule's CoG doesn't take all that stuff into account, which might cause it to tumble, reenter backwards, or damage it. On the other hand, it's reentering from a really low-energy orbit so it could survive the reentry - but not the impact in case it lands on the ground.
[1] https://epizodyspace.ru/01/2u/solnthe/ams/v-8/v-8.html
See also his blog[1] for an up-to-date reentry forecast.
[0]: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4384/1
[1]: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2025/04/kosmos-842-descent-...
I think it's a safe bet that any descent mechanism designed for the thick atmosphere of Venus is not going to function the same way on Earth.
https://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=6073
The altitude seems to be falling pretty quickly at the moment, although presumably the atmosphere will slow it down
[1] - https://youtu.be/vGQgmnQ1FtA?si=sylxAkAKj-kT5fUq
http://www.astronautix.com/v/venera.html via https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4384/1 via Wikipedia article on the probe.
For Venus it is unlikely to need anything like that, as the expected flight duration was much shorter (quite important for not very durable Soviet electronics) and main issue would be actually cooling.
Some of it came down in New Zealand in 1972, the Soviets didn't own up to it, so the farmer kept it.