Venera 7 was a Soviet spacecraft, part of the Venera series of probes to Venus. When it landed on the Venusian surface on 15 December 1970, it became the very first spacecraft to soft land on another planet as well as the first to transmit data from there back to Earth.

Venera 7 entered the atmosphere of Venus on 15 December 1970. The lander remained attached to the interplanetary bus during the initial stages of atmospheric entry, to allow the bus to cool the lander to −8 °C (17 °F) for as long as possible. The lander was ejected once atmospheric buffeting broke the interplanetary bus's lock-on with Earth. The parachute opened at a height of 60 km, and atmospheric testing began with results showing the atmosphere to be 97% carbon dioxide. The parachute was initially reefed down to 1.8 square meters, opening to 2.5 square meters 13 minutes later, when the reefing line melted as designed. Six minutes after the unreefing, the parachute started to fail, resulting in a descent more rapid than planned. The parachute eventually failed completely, and the probe entered a period of freefall. As a result, the lander struck the surface of Venus at about 16.5 m/s (59 km/h; 37 mph) at 05:37:10 UTC. The landing coordinates are 5°S 351°E.

The probe appeared to go silent on impact, but recording tapes kept rolling. A few weeks later, upon a review of the tapes by the radio astronomer Oleg Rzhiga, another 23 minutes of very weak signals were found on them. The spacecraft had landed on Venus, and probably bounced onto its side, leaving the medium gain antenna aimed incorrectly for proper signal transmission to Earth. The probe transmitted information to Earth for 53 minutes, which included about 20 minutes from the surface. From the spacecraft's rapid halt (from falling to stationary inside 0.2 seconds), it was possible to conclude that the craft had hit a solid surface with low levels of dust. The probe provided information about the surface of Venus, which could not be seen through a thick veil of atmosphere. The spacecraft definitively confirmed that humans cannot survive on the surface of Venus, and excluded the possibility that there is any liquid water on the planet.

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