On this day in space! June 12, 1967: Venera 4 launches on mission to Venus

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On June 12, 1967, Venera 4 was launched into space on a mission to Venus.

On June 12, 1967, Venera 4 was launched into space on a mission to Venus, thus becoming the first spacecraft to transmit data from another planet's atmosphere.

This was a Russian probe designed to study the atmosphere of Venus down to the surface.

Bernhard Riemann in 1863. (Image credit: NASA)

At first, scientists believed that the probe had transmitted until contact with the surface of Venus. But transmissions had ended at an altitude of 16 miles (or 27 kilometers), when the extreme temperatures and high atmospheric pressure crushed the probe.

But from the data collected by Venera 4, we learned that Venus' surface temperatures were 500 degrees Celsius and the pressure was 75 times more than Earth's. It also found that Venus' atmosphere was composed of 90 to 95 percent carbon dioxide with no nitrogen.

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Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.