50 Dollars First Probe of Venus

The Soviet Venera 1 probe, launched in February 1961, was the first spacecraft aimed at Venus — it failed when contact was lost seven days into the flight. The first successful Venus flyby came with Mariner 2 in December 1962, a NASA mission. The Marshall Islands issued a long series of commemorative dollars throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s celebrating space milestones, this piece among them.

Venera 7, in 1970, was the first probe to successfully transmit data from the Venusian surface — surviving just 23 minutes in temperatures exceeding 460°C.