After a 117-day journey across 180 million miles of space, the spherical Venera 8, emblazoned with a hammer and sickle and a portrait of Lenin, plummeted toward the thin, sunlit crescent of Venus that is now visible from earth. Under its heat-resistant parachute, the 2,600-lb. spacecraft floated down through the thick, hot Venusian atmosphere. After it landed, it continued sending signals for about 50 minutes before it burned out on the scalding Venusian surface.
Pravda promptly hailed the second successful landing in eight Russian Venus probes as "another victory of Soviet science and technology."...