Challenges of a Venus entry mission

There have been numerous NASA and international orbiters, atmospheric probes, and landers that have explored Venus over the past 50 years. The Russian Space Agency (RSA) conducted over twenty missions to Venus from the 1960's to 1980's, including flybys, entry probes, landers and orbiters. NASA's first measurements of Venus came from a flyby of the Mariner 10 in 1973. Later that same decade, the Pioneer-Venus (PV) program, consisting of two orbiters and a multiple entry probe mission, explored different regions of the planet, radar mapped the surface, and made measurements of atmospheric composition and profile. In the 1990's NASA's Magellan Orbiter provided detailed radar maps of the surface, providing detailed topographical information for future Lander missions. The European Space Agency's (ESA) Venus Express mission has yielded further information on surface topography and atmospheric composition.