Venera 14 (called Venus 14 in English) was a probe in the Soviet Venera program for the exploration of Venus.
Venera 14 was identical to the Venera 13 spacecraft, built to take advantage of the 1981 Venus launch opportunity. Venera 14 was launched on 4 November 1981 at 05:31:00 UTC, five days after Venera 13 launched on 30 October 1981 at 06:04:00 UTC. Both had an on-orbit dry mass of 760 kg (1,680 lb).
Each mission consisted of a cruise stage and an attached descent craft.
As the cruise stage flew by Venus, the bus acted as a data relay for the lander before continuing on to a heliocentric orbit. Venera 14 was equipped with a gamma-ray spectrometer, UV grating monochromator, electron and proton spectrometers, gamma-ray burst detectors, solar wind plasma detectors, and two-frequency transmitters which made measurements before, during, and after the Venus flyby.
The descent lander was a hermetically sealed pressure vessel that contained most of the instrumentation and electronics. The lander was mounted on a ring-shaped landing platform and topped by an antenna. Designed similar to the earlier Venera 9–12 landers, the Venera 14 lander carried instruments to take chemical and isotopic measurements, monitor the spectrum of scattered sunlight, and record electric discharges during its descent phase through the Venusian atmosphere. The spacecraft used a camera system, an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer, a screw drill and surface sampler, a dynamic penetrometer, and a seismometer to conduct investigations on the surface.
The list of lander experiments and instruments include:
Accelerometer, Impact analysis – Bison-M
Thermometers, Barometers – ITD
Spectrometer / Directional Photometer – IOAV-2
Penetrometer / Soil ohmmeter – PrOP-V
Chemical Redox indicator – Kontrast
2 color telephotometer cameras – TFZL-077
Radio / Microphone / Seismometer – Groza-2
X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer (Aerosol) – BDRA-1V
X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer (Soil) – Arakhis-2
Soil Drilling Apparatus – GZU VB-02
Stabilized Oscillator / Doppler Radio
Venera 14 landed at 13.25°S 310°E / -13.25; 310, about 950 kilometres (590 mi) southwest of Venera 13, near the eastern flank of Phoebe Regio on a basaltic plain.