Exactly 55 years ago, on November 16, 1965, a four-stage Molniya-M launch vehicle with an automatic interplanetary probe Venera-3 was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome towards Venus. Venus-3 became the first artificial object in history to reach the surface of another planet.
The Venera-2 and Venera-3 stations were the last flying machines in a series of unified 3MV spacecraft developed in 1962-1964 at OKB-1 (today – the SP Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia , part of the State Corporation “Roscosmos”) for deep space exploration. The first 3MV stations were used for technological testing of Martian expeditions. In early 1965, the president of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Mstislav Keldysh, suggested using another “astronomical window” to send a group of 3MV vehicles to the “Morning Star” at once. Venera-2, launched on November 12, 1965, was intended to study and photograph the planet from a flyby trajectory, and Venera-3 was to make a soft landing on its surface to directly measure pressure, temperature and other physical parameters with an accompanying search for hypothetical signs of life.
After launch, both Venus successfully crossed over to the Venusian route and began to carry out the flight program thanks to high-precision launching using the upper stage L, also created by the designers of OKB-1. However, with the approach to the Sun, an increasing overheating of the pressurized compartments of the station’s onboard equipment was discovered as a result of the abnormal functioning of the thermoregulation system. The violation of the heat balance turned out to be critical, and on the approach to Venus in February 1966, communication with the stations ceased. According to ballistic calculations, on March 1, 1966, Venera-3 automatically entered the Venusian atmosphere, and its descent vehicle delivered a pennant with the emblem of the Soviet Union inside a metal globe of the Earth to the planet’s surface.
The Venera-3 mission ended the history of long-range interplanetary projects of OKB-1. The royal stations “Luna”, “Mars” and “Venus” paved the way for the next generations of vehicles, remaining a symbol of outstanding achievements of Russian science and technology at the initial stage of space exploration.