On 5 March 1982, the Soviet Venera 14 spacecraft reached the surface of Venus, ejected the cap protecting its camera lens, photographed the terrain in color — and then deployed its calibrated soil-testing arm directly onto the discarded lens cap, returning a clean measurement of the compressibility of Soviet plastic instead of Venusian rock.
The Soviet Union launched Venera 13 and Venera 14 in late 1981 with the objective of surviving long enough on the surface of Venus to transmit scientific data. The spacecraft landed in March 1982, encountering Venus’s ultra-harsh conditions: a surfac... [4587 chars]