These are the only photos ever taken from the surface of Venus

Venus is our closest neighbor, and it’s the second planet from the Sun. It’s also often called Earth’s twin, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about this planet. The Soviet Union’s legendary Venera program included four spacecraft that were able to successfully transmit optical photos of the surface back to us. 

All of these spacecraft had panoramic telephotometers (cameras), which allowed them to capture views of the planet. To date, no space agency has attempted to land an imaging probe on Venus’s surface since then. Here’s a look at the handful of images we have.

In 1982, we got our first-ever colored images of the surface. The Soviet Union's Venera 13's front camera captured this shot of rust-colored rock fragments spread across the surface. Unfortunately, the lander only survived a couple of hours in the heat and pressure of the planet before it stopped transmitting.

In 1975, the Soviet Union sent its Venera 9 probe to Venus. It became the first spacecraft to ever photograph the ground of a planet other than Earth. When it landed on the surface, it scanned its surroundings back and forth and gave us a view of the jagged rock that is scattered across the planet’s barren landscape.

Here’s a fun fact: this planet spins slowly in the opposite direction from most of the planets, and it's also the third brightest object in the night sky, after the Sun and the Moon.

Next up, we have Venera 10, which also touched down on the surface later that same year (1975). It gave us this panoramic view of the surface. In this image, you can see the cracked, rocky terrain under that same yellowish haze. 

Researcher Ted Stryk, a philosophy professor at Roane State Community College who has spent years reconstructing these old panoramas with the help of data from the Russian Academy of Sciences, produced the clearest version of this image, which is available today.

On March 5, 1982, Venera 14 landed on Venus and returned its own color panorama of the surface. The spacecraft managed to capture images of flat and cracked rocks that stretch toward the horizon with the help of its front camera. 

While these are the most well-known images from these missions, the Venera landers captured additional panoramas that are grainier and less processed. You can view the full gallery via the Soviet Venus Images catalog by Don P. Mitchell.