kek (03/03/83)
A belated anniversary notice found in the March
issue of the McDonald Observatory News:
(March 1) "Today is the 17th anniversary of the first landing of a
man-made object on another planet - the hard landing of the Soviet
spacecraft Venus III on Venus. Of course, hard landings are not as
informative as gentle ones since the spacecraft is immediately
destroyed on impact. But the Soviets followed this stunt in the '70s
with a series of soft-landing craft (the Venera series) which gave
us our first glimpse of the sizzling cauldron that i the surface
of Venus."
Ken Kepple
BTL - Holmdel
5941ux!kek