there's probably millions of people walking around, who consider themselves relatively educated, who have no idea that we have pictures of the surface of Venus. Look at those pictures. That's just Venus. It's the surface of fucking VENUS man. Those pictures are from the Soviet Venera 9 and Vanera 10 landers, launched in 1975. That's the same year the Viking I launched, but unlike with Mars, we basically gave up on Venus. Haven't landed anything there since the 80s. Venus has a fucking surface temperature of over 400C and an atmospheric pressure around 92 times greater than Earth. Also the clouds are made of sulfuric acid. And we landed something there and got PICTURES of it.
I had a longer version of this post that was basically like a kid's book report about the Venera program but there's nothing I can tell you that you can't just read on wikipedia, or any cool pictures I can show you, but I can tell you how I feel about Veneras 13 and 14.
Built together and launched in the same opportunity window, not only were they equipped with cameras for photographs, but also springloaded arms to measure soil compressibility (14 accidentally measured its lens cap instead of the soil, oops!), a drilling arm to collect a soil sample, and a little hermetically-sealed chamber inside themselves to contain and analyze the sample right there in the field. Both probes also were equipped with acoustic microphones to record atmospheric wind noises, which would be used to measure wind speed on the surface, but also provide the first audio recordings from another planet!
You might notice I don't have a link ready for the audio bits, and that's because I'm not sure which one I should link you. Despite being a historic milestone in human history, the recordings are scattered across Youtube and Reddit with various degrees of editing and (RARE) tags, no clear sourcing, and no indication if they are genuine recordings or recreations based on the soundwave data, which I'm told is more likely. You can look em up if you want, I'm just not learned enough to discern which of the many different ones floating around is correct.
And that's part of why I think about Venera 13 and 14 so much. Both probes had a designed operating time of 32 minutes - You can't ask for much more with temperatures north of 450C and around 90 times Earth's atmospheric pressure pushing down on all that gear. Venera 14 operated for at least 57 minutes, Venera 13 operated for at least 127. We built these two probes together, split them up and shot them across the vast expanse of space to land on a harsh and unforgiving alien planet with the intent to collect data until they expired, and both devices wildly exceeded their expected lifespan and continued to provide us with more data than we could have dreamed of getting.
And then we forgot them. Maybe we're intentionally not told about them because of the flag on the sides of their hulls, or maybe we were disappointed to have so much definitive proof that Venus was uninhabitable to us (or any life as we know currently know it), maybe we just didn't realize how important their work was with so many more pressing issues happening right there on our doorstep back on Earth. Still, all these years later, I think about Venera 13 and 14, stoically and dutifully recording everything they can about an environment that is destroying them while reporting back to a planet that will largely forget their contributions, and I can't help but see them as heroic figures. They're workers just like you or me, who are every bit as capable of exceeding the expectations placed upon us, and just as likely to never be acknowledged for it. In some small way, I hope that celebrating them whenever I can will help push us towards a world that will celebrate all of us and our shared contributions in the same way.
