Toasted Dolphin

See that picture on the right?

Do you see that big chunk of semi-circular metal in the middle? That's a lens cap. It protects the camera from the Lovecraftian hell that is Venus' atmosphere during the decent. Once the probe lands it pops off so the camera can take a few pictures before being destroyed by the weather.

The Russians had a huge number of problems with those caps; they wouldn't come off. They sent a bunch of probes to Venus that had issues with those lens caps failing to work.

See that picture on the left? Do you see that extended arm-like thing? Once the probe has landed, that arm extends so it touches the ground and gets details of what the surface of Venus is composed of.

Do you see what it's sitting on? That's right. The lens cap.

They finally got the lens cap to come off successfully and it fell in exactly the spot where their surface instrument was supposed to go.

All that instrument did was send back to Russia information about the composition of their own lens cap.

Link to post by Above Top Secret member Kapusta