From the Archives (May 17, 1969): Soviet spacecraft lands on Venus

The Soviet inter-planetary station, Venus-5, made a soft-landing on Venus this morning [May 16] after uninterruptedly transmitting information for 53 minutes as it made a parachute descent to the planet’s surface, Tass reported. The soviet news agency said Venus-5 took 130 days to cover the 350 million kilometres to the planet. Another space station, Venus-6, launched five days after Venus-5, was approaching the planet and would enter its atmosphere to-morrow morning (at 11-33 hours I.S.T.), the Agency said. Venus-5 was launched on January 5 this year. Venus-6 took off on January 10. The two spacecraft are following up the mission of Venus-4, which made history in October, 1967, by parachuting through Venus’s atmosphere and transmitting 90 minutes of data back to earth.