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Film summary
The first attempts to land a probe on a different planet. Scientists hoped an Earth-like world might lie beneath Venus' dense atmosphere, but a very different reality awaited.Key facts
- Venus was discovered by Galileo in 1610.
- In 1761, Mikhail Lomonosov viewed a transit of Venus and discovered signs of an atmosphere.
- In 1967, Russian probe Venera 4 was launched to investigate Venus' atmosphere.
- Venera 4 traveled to within 15 miles of Venus' surface before becoming crushed under a pressure 15 times that of Earth's.
Transcript
As far as early astronomers knew, other planets were just like the Moon. Airless balls of rock.
Galileo first viewed Venus using a telescope in 1610
But in 1761, a Russian stargazer observed an unusual event.
From an observatory in St Petersburg, Mikhail Lomonosov saw the planet Venus pass across the …
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