The First Pictures Taken on Other Planets

Until recently I didn’t know of the Viking 1 and Venera 13 missions that took the first pictures on the surface of Mars and Venus.

In 1976 NASA’s Viking 1 took the first photos as a lander on Mars. At the moment Spirit and Opportunity are still working and snapping pictures on Mars.

Viking 1 on Mars

In 1982 the Soviet Venera 13 lander performed a soft landing on Venus’ surface after many failed missions.

The lander survived for 127 minutes (the planned design life was 32 minutes) in an environment with a temperature of 457 °C (855 °F) and a pressure of 89 Earth atmospheres (8.9 MPa) [Wikipedia]

Venera13 on Venus

These achievements are quite impressive considering the technology about three decades ago. I wasn’t even born when those probes landed on our neighbor planets.

In 2005 the Huygens probe landed on Saturn’s moon Titan and took a picture after landing.

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