Repeating success at Venus

TIMELINE: 1977-1978

With nothing left to accomplish on the Moon, and having abandoned Mars for the immediate future, Soviet scientists and engineers focused their robotie exploration solely on Venus. In 1978 they launched a second pair of spacecraft which were near duplicates ol" Venera 9 and 10. Because the energetics for this opportunity were less favorable, it was not practicable to send an orbiter/1 under and instead the lander was to be delivered by a spacecraft that would perform a flyby and relay to Earth the data from the entry system and lander. Although both of the Venera 11 and 12 landers touched down, they suffered a number of problems and in particular were unable to provide imagery.

The US also sent spacecraft to Venus in 1978, but these were very much smaller. The Pioneer 12 Venus orbiter was an outstanding success, reporting information on the upper atmosphere for many years. Pioneer 13 adopted a collision course and deployed one large and three small entry probes, all of which successfully returned atmospheric data during their descent.

W. T. Huntress and M. Y. Marov, Soviet Robots in the Solar System: Mission Technologies and Discoveries, Springer Praxis Hooks 1, DOl 10.1007/978-1-4419-7898-1 15,

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