In 1975, the Soviet Union’s Venera 9 lander became the first spacecraft to transmit photographs from the surface of Venus, surviving only 53 minutes before succumbing to the planet’s extreme conditions. Surface pressure is more than 90 times that of Earth, equivalent to being nearly a mile beneath an ocean on our planet. Surface photographs from the Soviet Venera 9 and 10 spacecraft. Reconstructing Venus: The Work Of Modern ResearchersDecades later, scientists and enthusiasts have revisited Venera’s raw data to produce sharper images of Venus’ surface. In the words of the NASA archive, the Venera program remains a rare instance of direct human observation on a planet that resists nearly every form of exploration.