Once on the ground, Venera 8 lived for only 63 minutes, which is about what was expected given Venus’s hellish conditions. The atmospheric pressure is 93 times greater than it is on Earth, with a sea ...

Kosmos 482 was intended as a successor to Soviet probe's like Venera 4, seen above. In 1972, the Soviet Union launched a pair of space probes destined for Venus. While the USSR’s Venera 8 successfully ...

The Soviet Union launched over a dozen probes to Venus—most successfully. But one never made it past Earth’s orbit and has, in fact, stayed there since 1972. Now, over 50 years later, the ...

Belka & Strelka postcard, USSR (1960), by the photomontage artist Sveshnikov. The flags read “Happy New Year,” with the dogs’ names on the inside of the cockpits. (© FUEL Publishing) Edited by Damon ...

At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union pursued Spiral, a reusable orbital spaceplane designed to scout, strike, and intercept in space at extreme Mach speeds. This episode follows the MiG-105 ...

I sometimes wonder where we would be now, as a species, had the Soviet Union not collapsed and continued its space race with the United States. Would we have already colonized other planets by now, or ...

In 1957, Laika, a Moscow stray, became the first dog in orbit aboard Sputnik 2. Her mission aimed to study spaceflight ...

The U.S. Space Force and other international space agencies are closely monitoring what could be a dramatic reentry of a long-abandoned Soviet spacecraft. Kosmos 482 (also known as Cosmos 482), a ...

A Soviet-era spacecraft meant to land on Venus in the 1970s is expected to soon plunge uncontrolled back to Earth. It’s too early to know where the half-ton mass of metal might come down or how much ...

Congress established committees on space exploration in 1958, in response to the Soviet Union's launching of Sputnik in October 1957. Both Senate and House committees held hearings on the creation of ...

Soviet space probe Venera 5 or 6 launched in January 1969. This is a still from the film 'The Storming of Venus' released on May 17, 1969. Credit - Sovfoto/Universal Images Group—Getty Images Once on ...