Venera 9
- id: PRB-005
- launch_year: 1975
- operated_by: Soviet space program
- visited: Venus
- status: completed
- confidence: believed-correct
- sources: NASA NSSDCA Master Catalog
Venera 9, launched by the Soviet space program in June 1975, was an orbiter–lander pair sent to Venus. On 22 October 1975 the lander touched down and transmitted the first photographs ever returned from the surface of another planet: a rocky, harshly lit landscape under a crushing atmosphere.
Built by the Lavochkin design bureau, the lander survived the roughly 90-atmosphere pressure and furnace heat of the Venusian surface for nearly an hour — an extraordinary feat of engineering that later Venera landers extended.