When the Soviet Venera 13 probe touched down on Venus in March 1982, it survived for 127 minutes in a 465-degree atmosphere that crushed it with the pressure of nearly a kilometre of ocean water, and in that time it scraped a soil sample, analysed it, and transmitted the first colour photographs ever taken from the surface of another planet.

When the Soviet Venera 13 probe touched down on Venus in March 1982, it survived for 127 minutes in a 465-degree atmosphere that crushed it with the pressure of nearly a kilometre of ocean water, and in that time it scraped a soil sample, analysed it, and transmitted the first colour photographs ever taken from the surface of another planet.

On March 1, 1982, a Soviet probe the size of a small car settled onto a basalt plain on Venus, opened its camera covers, and began taking photographs while the atmosphere outside tried to crush it. The surface temperature was about 465 degrees Celsius — hot enough to melt lead, zinc and tin. The atmospheric pressure was roughly 92 times what a person feels at sea level on Earth, the equivalent of standing under almost a kilometre of seawater. Ve…