Only four spacecraft have ever sent back images from their surface before being destroyed. The Soviet Union’s Venera probes, launched in 1975 and 1982, took the only photos ever captured from Venus’ ...

In 1975, a Soviet probe plunged through Venus’s thick, poisonous atmosphere, landed on a terrain never seen by a human eye, and lasted only 53 minutes before being overwhelmed by the heat and pressure ...

To study the surface features in further detail, mission scientists will once again point WISPR toward Venus on Wednesday as the Parker Solar Probe swoops within 233 miles (376 km) of the planet's ...

At its closest approach during the gravity assist, the probe will pass within 233 miles (376 kilometers) of Venus’ surface. In that maneuver, the probe will fly around Venus, leveraging the ...

During the 2021 flyby, the spacecraft’s orbit lined up perfectly for WISPR to image Venus’ nightside in entirety. “The images and video just blew me away,” Wood said. ### ...

Under these conditions, it’s hard to send a spacecraft to Venus’ surface. The last NASA spacecraft sent to observe Venus wrapped up operations on October 12, 1994 by plunging into the Venusian ...

When scientists recently took a closer look at archival images of the surface of Venus, they discovered something new: evidence of volcanic activity on Earth's "twin." The NASA Magellan spacecraft ...

For more insight into the July 2020 images, the WISPR team planned a set of similar observations of the Venusian nightside during Parker Solar Probe’s latest Venus flyby on Feb. 20, 2021.

Venera 7 launched in August 1970 and made the first-ever successful Venus landing on Dec. 15 of that year. It sent valuable data back to Earth from the surface, if only for a few brief minutes.