Venus's Silent Landers: The Venera probes still sit on Venus, capturing humanity's only non-Mars surface photos
TL;DR Summary
The Soviet Venera landers remain on Venus’ surface, enduring 460°C heat, 90-bar pressure and sulfuric acid, and their 1975–1982 photos are the only surface images humanity has taken of a world other than Mars. A 2025 study suggests several probes are still recognisable as machines, turning Venus into a new kind of cultural heritage and fueling renewed interest as future missions (NASA’s DAVINCI, ESA’s EnVision, India’s Shukrayaan-1) may image them from orbit or descent, potentially revealing the sites where they lie.
- The Soviet Venera probes are still sitting on the surface of Venus, slowly being crushed and corroded by 900-degree sulfuric acid clouds, and the photographs they sent back in 1975 remain the only images humans have ever taken from the surface of another Space Daily
- The mangled remains of probes sent to Venus may still be there Scientific American
- In 1982 the Soviet Union landed a probe on the surface of Venus that survived 127 minutes in heat that melts lead and pressure dense enough to crush a submarine — long enough to scan back two panoramas of flat basaltic rock under an orange-tinted sky b Space Daily
- 57 years and one day ago, the Soviet probe Venera 6 traversed the clouds of Venus for 51 minutes under parachutes and stopped transmitting 10 kilometers from the surface because the pressure of 60 bar and the heat of 320 degrees Celsius crushed its 405- CPG Click Petróleo e Gás
- The Remains of at Least 7 Probes May Still Exist on This Hellish Planet Gizmodo
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