Anniversary of first planet landing

Tomorrow (March 1st) marks the 40th annivesary of the first visit of a man-made spacecraft to another planet. The Soviet Union's Venera 3 was launched toward the planet Venus back in the November of 1965, during the height of the space race between the United States and Soviet Union. Although built to withstand the high pressures and temperatures expected in the Venusian atmosphere, the communication systems failed before the spacecraft 'impacted' on the planet's surface and therefore no measurements were ever received back.

These were the very early days of human exploration in space and it wasn't unusual for such missions to go wrong. Indeed it was another 5 years before Venera 7 sent back the first temperature and pressure measurements, and another 10 before we saw the first pictures of Venus's rocky surface, as shown below.