NEN Gallery

Probes were also sent to other planets. The Soviet Venera series of craft, which between the mid 1960’s and mid 1970’s saw the launch of 16 spacecraft designed to explore Venus. They found the surface temperature to be about 850 degrees Fahrenheit (454 degrees Celsius) and the surface pressure approximately 90 times that of Earth. Probes were also sent to Mars, including the Russian Mars 3 orbiter, the U.S Viking project and more recently the NASA Mars Odyssey and Spirit spacecraft launched in 2002.

Picture courtesy of NASA