Venera 7: The 23-minute first data relay from Venus's surface
On December 15, 1970, the Soviet lander Venera 7 became the first object to transmit from the surface of another planet, delivering about 23 minutes of data before its batteries overheated in Venus’s ~475°C heat and 90 atm pressure; a misfired parachute left the antenna poorly oriented, masking the success until a later tape review confirmed the surface transmission via temperature telemetry. Venus’s extreme environment has limited long-duration landers, a pattern the Venera program confirmed with successive missions, while future Venus exploration emphasizes orbiters and short descent probes (e.g., DAVINCI, EnVision, VERITAS) rather than long-lived landers.