179
It’s got to be devastating to scientists to watch your baby get flung into obscurity.
In NASA's lessons learned database, there's one where the probe made out all the way to its destination, but the pictures came back all black. Because they forgot to take off the lens cap.
There's also Mars Climate Orbiter which crashed to the planet since NASA used SI-units and Lockheed Martin (who manufactured the thing) used imperial units.
Ariane 5 met its demise by a known software deficit.
Overflow a 16-bit signed integer on the INS, and upside-down you go.
After hearing about the state of the world it decided to go back into orbit
700C… As good as anywhere else.
Experts previously warned that due to its sturdy construction — it was designed to survive Venus's harsh atmosphere — the probe could reach Earth's surface largely intact.
However, Roscosmos said, "Kosmos 482 no longer exists."
Doubt
While Venus is about the same size as Earth, it is sometimes referred to as an "evil twin."
The fuck? I have never heard it referred to as an 'evil twin'. It's fucking Venus. Goddess of beauty? Anyone?
I've heard evil twin before
same
Actually, yes, for good reason god dammit. Venus is terrifying. The acid-rain, steel-crushing atmosphere, volcanic climate, weird fuckin' backwards-spin of it's rotation? Shit ain't natural, each day I wake up expecting scientists to find the mustache it's been twirling
I've heard it called Earth's twin, but never specifically an evil twin.
Alternate headline: 50 year old Russian space junk falls back to earth.
Hey friend. Calling the Venera probes “junk” is selling them short. The Soviet Venus program pulled off some genuinely insane feats between the ’60s and early ’80s—basically the punch-card era of spaceflight.
- Venera 7 was the first spacecraft to land on another planet and send data back (1970).
- Venera 9 delivered the first photo taken from the surface of another planet (1975).
- Venera 13 survived 450°C heat and 90 atmospheres of pressure in 1982, long enough to send back color photos, audio from the surface, and a full soil analysis. No other country—not even now—has matched that on Venus.
All of this was done with computers running at 100–200 kHz and 8 KB of memory. For comparison, modern smartphones have 3–6 GB of RAM, multi-core CPUs clocking in at 2.5+ GHz, and literally millions of times the processing power. Your phone wouldn’t last five seconds on Venus. Venera 13 lasted 127 minutes.
Despite the harshest planetary environment we’ve ever targeted—900°F surface temps, atmospheric pressure like 3,000 feet underwater, and clouds of sulfuric fucking acid—the Venera program still racked up a list of milestones:
- First data from another planet’s atmosphere (Venera 4, 1967)
- First successful planetary landing (Venera 7, 1970)
- First photo from the surface of another planet – Venera 9
- First color image and audio from another planet (Venera 13, 1982)
- First soil analysis from Venus (Venera 13 again)
Here’s how their success rate compares to other space programs:
| Program | Missions | Successes | Failures | Success Rate | Notes |
| Soviet Venera | 28 | 15 | 13 | ~54% | First landings, first photos, audio, and soil data from Venus |
| NASA Venus (Mariner) | 5 | 3 | 2 | 60% | All flybys—no landings |
| NASA (modern planetary) | Many | ~75–85% | Varies | ~75–85% | Achieved after decades of experience and tech refinement |
| SpaceX (Falcon era) | 300+ | ~98% | Few | ~98% | Mostly low Earth orbit and ISS missions, not planetary landings |
SpaceX has incredible reliability, but they’re launching commsats and resupply capsules—not trying to drop hardware onto a planet that eats spacecraft for breakfast. NASA has never returned data from the surface of Venus, not ever, despite multiple attempts. Mars is a far easier target in every possible way, and it still took decades to achieve consistent success.
Lest you think Venera’s 54% success rate was a sign of failure — it wasn't — it was a sign of pushing the boundaries of what was possible. They were first. They were bold. And they made history with kilobyte-level hardware and pressure vessels tougher than your car’s engine block.
This wasn’t junk. It was triumph.
Visual and audio proof:
This was an awesome post. Thank you
This guy space nerds.
A stage cut off too early and it failed to leave orbit. It has been derelict since 1972. It was junk.
Probe that could go easily in a Museum = Junk
These guys...
It must be very depressing to view the world with the amount of negativity that these cats do.
Sure, if you can get it down, let alone in one piece. It's unreachable and uncontrollable. It's a hazard to space navigation.
Well, it was, until it deorbited, anyway. Now it's returned to the dust it was made from. (I doubt any parts made it down intact.)
The lander most probably made it down in one piece. It was designed to survive an atmospheric entry on Venus and from interplanetary speeds. It almost certainly survived a reentry into Earth from a low orbit. That being said, it probably shattered in the splashdown due to the parachute not deploying.
From wikipedia:
The landing module, which weighed around 495 kilograms (1,091 lb), may have reached the surface of Earth largely intact. Correctly oriented, it was designed to withstand 300 g of acceleration and 100 atmospheres of pressure entering the atmosphere of Venus. However, the age of the craft and the shallow angle of reentry likely reduced survivability; tumbling or misorientation may have resulted in sections of the craft burning up in Earth's atmosphere. The final impact velocity was estimated to be 65–70 metres per second (230–250 km/h; 150–160 mph).
So maybe the main body of the landing module made it down, but it's extremely unlikely that it would have maintained the correct orientation. And any part that didn't burn up was surely obliterated in the impact.
That would be a headline about Russian army in Ukraine.
Too bad we don't yet have Steve Austin to save our butts from this. Reference for the young'uns: https://bionic.fandom.com/wiki/Death_Probe
Im a little older than this thing was in space.
this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
179 points (100.0% liked)
World News
46710 readers
2334 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS