Launch of Venera 2

Venera 2 was one of the Soviet probes sent to Venus in the 1960s, launched a few days before its sister craft Venera 3. It was designed to fly past the planet and carried cameras and instruments to study the planet's surroundings, along with the interplanetary space between. The probe passed Venus in February 1966 at a distance of tens of thousands of kilometres, but its communication system had failed before the encounter, and no data from the flyby were returned. Venera 3 also lost contact, but it reached the surface of Venus in March 1966 and is counted as the first spacecraft to land on another planet. The programme continued with Veneras that sent data from the surface.

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