Here is more on the Soviet Union’s Venera programme, which between 1961 and 1984 launched eighteen probes to explore the atmosphere and surface of Venus. (Several additional launches failed early in their missions and were given generic “Kosmos” designations rather than being acknowledged as Venus probes.) The series accomplished the first entry into the atmosphere, first crash landing, first return of atmospheric data, first soft landing, first pictures from the surface, first soil sampling, and first sound recorded on another planet. To this day (2024), the Soviet Union is the only country to have landed a spacecraft on the surface of Venus.