In the 1970s and 80s, the Soviet Union put 5 landers on the surface of Venus and they each survived for over 30 minutes. No one has tried it since.

From time to time, someone will post to Reddit pictures from the Venera missions and everyone goes "Nice". And yeah it is pretty cool that these pictures exist. But have you ever wondered what it took to build a machine capable of taking those pictures? Like, how did they do it?

In this video, I want to look at the Venera space series and the engineering behind this stunning achievement.

If you want to hear the Venera 14 audio in full, try this soundcloud link:   / venus  

Notes:
10:35 A few people noticed the 140 kilometer number and I missed by a zero. It's 14 kilometers or 8.7 miles. Good thing I'm not an accountant.

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