You have probably noticed in the last several weeks a bright "star" in the western skies as the sun sets. That is our old friend, Venus, presenting herself as the Evening Star. There is no need to rush to see the dazzling planet; Venus will be hanging around in that part of the sky well into next year.

The reason I bring it up now is because it was this week, 28 years ago, that a spacecraft landed there and snapped the first pictures of the Venusian surface, an amazing feat of engineering and perseverance. Why? I thought you'd never ask!

First, sending a spacecraft anywhere is an awesome accomplishment. It has become pretty commonplace now with missions currently to Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and even tiny Pluto, so we take it almost for granted. But putting a car-sized laboratory on a rocket and firing it into space at exactly the right speed and direction to arrive at a place millions or billions of miles away, months or years later, and land in exactly the right spot - that is worthy of more than a pat on the back.

But a trip to Venus has its own extra bucket of angst. Not only do you have to get there perfectly, you have to land on its surface. And Venus' surface is nothing like what we have here or even on tiny Mars. It is hellish.

In the days of old - early last century - it was believed that the surface of Venus might be paradisiacal. The planet was covered with clouds, so there must be water there - probably oceans! And of course, in the eyes of many even today, water on a rocky planet means life.

Well, it turned out the paradise was more like a purgatory. Those clouds turned out not to be water, but sulfuric acid, the stuff of battery acid. And the atmospheric pressures below the cloud cover ballooned to about 90 atmospheres, which means about 90 times what we have on earth's surface. You know how diving to the bottom of a pool makes your ears hurt from the pressure of the water? Imagine diving over a half mile deep into the ocean. Those are the pressures you get on Venus just by standing on the surface.

And it turned out the temperature was not just toasty warm, it was hot enough, at over 800 degrees Fahrenheit, to melt lead. So attempting to land anything on Venus meant battling corrosive acids, crushing pressures and metal-melting temperatures. No easy task.

But those competitive friends of ours from the Soviet Union took on that task in a series of missions spanning over two decades, from the early 60's to the 80's, in a program called Venera.

Those of us growing up during that time know that we were competing with them in everything, including any type of space flight, manned or not. They won many of the competitions, including first spacecraft in orbit and first human in orbit. We stole the show with the first man on the moon in 1969.

But the Venera program gave the Soviets several other "firsts." The Venera missions alone were first to enter another planet's atmosphere, first to land safely on another planet, and, in the event we mark here in this week's column, the first to send back pictures from another planet.

It was Venera 9 that sent back a few black-and-white pictures of the scorched surface of Venus before the spacecraft itself was consumed by the heat and pressure less than an hour after it landed. A belated congratulations to the Soviet engineers on a job well done!

Plans to revisit the Venusian surface are in the works but launch dates are unknown. Right now it is "study from above," in orbit around the planet and safe from ungodly conditions below.

Next time you see Venus - like on the 31st when it is near the crescent Moon - take in its dazzling beauty. But also give thanks that you are seeing it from the surface of an amazingly gifted - and safe - planet.