First pictures of the Venus surface (Preliminary analysis).

The paper gives a description of the first panoramic television images transmitted by the Venera-9 and Venera-10 descent vehicles, which landed on the day side of Venus in October, 1975. The scanning camera was located about one meter above the ground and its axis was inclined downwards forming a 40 deg angle with the vehicle vertical axis. Total field of the panoramas was about 40 x 180 degrees. The Venera-9 vehicle was sharply inclined to the local vertical. The majority of the rocks visible have a rather squat structure, with a ratio of height to transverse dimension of about 1/3 to 1/6, and usually are lying flat. Many of then have sharp-angular outlines with pronounced edges, which points to their considerable hardness. The radioactivity characteristics of the rocks and their general habit strongly suggest that they belong to the type of basic mountain rocks of the basaltoid series. The traces of surface changes point to the relative freshness of geological processes.