We see a lot of Mars lately, so here’s the surface of Venus from Venera 14 of the USSR

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image showing We see a lot of Mars lately, so here’s the surface of Venus from Venera 14 of the USSR

Pparadela on June 6th, 2021 at 22:59 UTC »

According to Wikipedia: "The lander functioned for at least 57 minutes (the planned design life was 32 minutes) in an environment with a temperature of 465 °C (869 °F) and a pressure of 94 Earth atmospheres (9.5 MPa)."

What an absolute beast of a machine.

the_fungible_man on June 7th, 2021 at 00:19 UTC »

This is a heavily processed image constructed by Don Mitchell from the playback of the recorded video signals from Venera 14.

Since Venera 14 camera's field of view pivoted about a horizontal axis, the panorama it captured was centered on the base of the spacecraft, with small portions of the horizon captured at each edge. As such, Venera 14 could not and did not image the horizon directly in front of the camera, nor did it image the ground more than a few meters away in that direction.

The triangular-shaped rock seen near the end of the penetrometer lies near the edge of the original panorama. The surface beyond that, all the way out to the apparent horizon is simulated, based on imagery of more distant surface features found in the left and right extremities of the original data.

LJ_Wanderer on June 7th, 2021 at 01:02 UTC »

This was the best Soviet space mission. Very impressive even by today's standards.