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Air at the surface of Venus presses as hard as ocean water a kilometer below our own waves.

Astronomy Facts, sourced to NASA.

What it means

The pressure is around ninety times what you feel at sea level on Earth. The first landers sent there were built like submarines and still lasted less than two hours before the heat and the crushing atmosphere finished them. Any future mission to the surface faces the same problem, which is why so much of the exploration of Venus has been done from orbit or from balloons in the upper air.

The claim comes from NASA, and the page it comes from was read on 2026-08-27 to confirm it still says this.

This is not the kind of claim that goes out of date, which is why it was set as a puzzle rather than a fact with a shelf life.

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