Venera-D Mission: Russia Plans to Revisit Venus by 2036

Russia revives its historic Venera legacy with the ambitious Venera-D mission, aiming to land, orbit, and possibly float in Venus’s clouds before 2036 to uncover the planet’s climate, geology, and habitability mysteries.

Venus is often called Earth’s twin. Roughly the same size, made of the same basic rock and metal, and orbiting close by, it should have been a sister world. But the reality is far stranger. Beneath its golden clouds, Venus hides a nightmare landscape. Temperatures soar above 460°C—hot enough to melt lead—and the pressure is ninety times greater than Earth’s, as if you were a kilometer underwater. Acid clouds swirl overhead, and hurricane-force winds whip around the planet in just four days. It is, in short, the most hostile surface environment of any planet we’ve ever visited.

And yet, Venus still calls to us. It might once have had oceans and a climate not unlike Earth’s. It may hold clues about how habitable planets form—and how they can turn into something very different. For decades, though, Venus has been neglected while Mars and the outer planets took center stage. The last time a spacecraft landed there was in the 1980s, during the golden age of the Soviet Venera program.

Now Russia wants to return. Its upcoming mission, Venera-D, has been officially confirmed to enter the design phase in 2026 and is expected to launch before 2036. The “D” stands for dolgozhivushchaya, or “long-lived.” The name is a promise: this lander will try to last longer on Venus’s surface than any that came before.

A Proud Legacy

To understand Venera-D, we have to go back to the Soviet era. Starting in 1961, the USSR launched a series of missions to Venus. The early ones were failures, but by the 1970s, the Soviets had achieved a string of historic firsts.

• Venera 7 (1970) made the first soft landing on another planet.

• Venera 9 and 10 (1975) sent back the first photographs from Venus’s rocky surface.

• Venera 13 (1982) captured stunning color panoramas and even recorded the eerie sounds of Venus’s winds before it was destroyed by the heat. It lasted just over two hours.

• The later Vega balloons (1985) floated for nearly two days in the planet’s clouds, drifting across its skies and showing that exploration from the air was possible.

No other nation has matched these achievements. For more than forty years, Venus has remained untouched. That is why Venera-D carries both the weight of history and the promise of renewal.

The Mission Vision

The Venera-D concept is ambitious. At its core is a lander designed to resist Venus’s furnace-like environment for as long as possible. Even a survival time of a few hours would be a triumph, enough to send back precious data on rock chemistry, weather, and surface conditions. But engineers dream of pushing further—building technology tough enough to last days or even weeks on the surface.

Supporting the lander would be an orbiter, circling the planet to study its thick atmosphere, its interaction with solar winds, and its mysterious climate system. The orbiter would also serve as a communications relay, ensuring data from the surface makes it back to Earth.

And there may be a third element: a balloon platform. Inspired by the Vega balloons of the 1980s, this would float through the middle cloud layer—an altitude where the temperature and pressure are surprisingly similar to Earth’s. Here, instruments could investigate the planet’s winds, aerosols, and cloud chemistry, and maybe even probe the puzzle of the “unknown ultraviolet absorber,” a mysterious chemical that soaks up sunlight and still defies explanation.

Why Venus, Why Now?

Scientists believe Venus holds answers to some of the most urgent questions in planetary science. Did the planet once have oceans? If so, why did it lose them? Could it have been habitable billions of years ago? What caused it to become a runaway greenhouse world? And could something similar happen to Earth under the wrong circumstances?

These questions aren’t just academic. Studying Venus is also a way of studying climate change on a planetary scale. By comparing Earth and Venus, scientists can better understand how atmospheres evolve and what keeps a planet livable—or pushes it into catastrophe.

Venera-D also comes at the start of a global return to Venus. NASA is planning VERITAS, an orbiter that will map the surface in detail, and DAVINCI, a probe that will plunge through the atmosphere. The European Space Agency’s EnVision will also map and study the planet in the early 2030s. Together, these missions will form a powerful toolkit. If Venera-D flies in the same decade, it will provide something unique: direct, on-the-ground data to complement the views from orbit and atmospheric descent.

The Challenges Ahead

As exciting as Venera-D sounds, it faces real hurdles. The biggest is technology. Surviving Venus’s extreme surface conditions is notoriously difficult. The longest any lander has endured is just over two hours. To last longer, Russia will need new materials, stronger electronics, and clever engineering.

There are also programmatic challenges. Russia’s space program has had setbacks in recent years, including failed planetary missions and tight budgets. International cooperation with NASA, which once helped shape the Venera-D concept, has ended. Now Russia must carry the project alone. That’s why the timeline stretches to 2036—a wide window that reflects both ambition and caution.

A Cautionary Tale and a New Chapter

Despite the obstacles, the mission carries immense scientific and symbolic value. If Venera-D succeeds, it will reconnect Russia with its proud history of Venus exploration and give humanity its first new look at the planet’s surface in more than four decades.

But beyond national pride, Venus itself makes the mission worthwhile. This strange world, once so similar to Earth, took a very different path. By learning why, we might glimpse not only our planet’s past but also its possible futures. Venus is a cautionary tale written across the sky, reminding us how fragile Earth’s balance truly is.

And so, Venera-D is more than a spacecraft. It is a bridge—from the Soviet past to a new era of planetary science, from Earth’s own questions about climate to the harsh lessons of its twin. When it finally touches down, whether in 2030 or 2036, it will carry with it the promise of discovery and the hope that by listening to Venus, we might better protect our own world.

FAQs on Venera-D Mission

Q1. What is Venera-D?

Ans. It is Russia’s planned mission to Venus, featuring an orbiter and lander.

Q2. When will Venera-D launch?

Ans. Currently scheduled for no earlier than 2036.

Q3. How is Venera-D different from NASA’s missions?

Ans. NASA’s DAVINCI+ and VERITAS focus on atmosphere and mapping; Venera-D emphasizes surface landing and survival.

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