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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Readit News
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
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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