The First Spacecraft Ever Sent to Another Planet Reached Venus in 1961. It Had Been Dead and Silent for Three Months by the Time It Arrived

The first spacecraft ever sent to another planet reached Venus in 1961. It had been dead and silent for three months by the time it arrived

Summary and Key Points: In February 1961, the Soviet Union launched Venera 1, the first spacecraft ever sent from Earth toward another planet. Built with solar panels, sun sensors, and a single course-correction engine, the probe was meant to fly past Venus and radio home what it found. Its launch and escape from Earth succeeded, but its orientation system failed about a week later, and contact was lost for good. Tracking calculations indicate V…

In 1970, Venera 7 appeared to fall silent when it hit Venus, but engineers later found 23 minutes of faint radio data buried in the recording — the first transmission ever received from the surface of another planet

Venera 7’s radio signal appeared to end when the Soviet capsule reached Venus on 15 December 1970. The strong descent transmission dropped at impact, leaving what ground stations initially treated as unintelligible noise. The recording had not ended with the apparent failure. Computer processing later separated a much weaker trace from the background and recovered 22 minutes 58 seconds of post-impact data. Rounded to 23 minutes in mission histor…