Roscosmos Director Says Venus Is A Russian Planet

Officials in Russia have been up to some shenanigans, seemingly trying to lay claim to an entire planet. Last week the Director-General of the Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, claimed that Venus was a Russian planet. Director-General Dmitry Rogozin told reporters that resuming the exploration of Venus was on Russia's agenda.Rogozin told reporters, "we think that Venus is a Russian planet," pointing out that they shouldn't lag behind. During the conference, he also confirmed that Russia intended to send its own mission to Venus in addition to a previously proposed joint venture with the US called Venera-D. That mission would include sending and unaccrued spacecraft to the planet in 2026 or 2031.

Rogozin said that Russia was the only country to successfully land on Venus, noting that the spacecraft had gathered information on the planet calling it "hell over there." Russia is talking about its plans for exploring Venus after recent research suggested that the planet's clouds could be harboring microbial life.

The atmosphere of Venus is almost entirely carbon dioxide and is the second brightest object in the sky other than the moon. Venus is the second planet from the sun and is one of the hottest planets in the solar system. The former Soviet Union landed the spacecraft on Venus in 1970 called Venera 7, becoming the first probe to send data back to Earth.

While the probe successfully landed on the planet, it melted within seconds due to the scorching temperatures. Russia sent another probe to the planet called Venera 9 that took the first and only image of the surface of Venus from the ground-level perspective in 1975. Additional missions will likely be announced in the future now that there have been some signs of life in the planet's atmosphere.