We all know that geocaching can take us to interesting and weird places that we might have never heard of otherwise. I figured that events could be used in a similar manner to point out curious events and stories, various odds and sods, that I stumbled upon while wandering around in internet rabbit holes.
On this day
in 1970
The Venera 7 spacecraft landed on the surface of Venus and in doing so, it became the first spacecraft to soft land on another planet and the first to transmit data from there back to Earth. The probe appeared to go silent on impact but upon further inspection it was discovered that the signal was there just very weak – the probe probably bounced onto its side, leaving its antenna aimed incorrectly for proper signal transmission to Earth. The information it provided confirmed that humans cannot survive on the surface of Venus, and excluded the possibility of any liquid water on the planet.
