If you count December of 1994 as less than twenty years, then you can count
the Soviet Vega 1 and Vega 2 missions. Their primary target was Halley's
comet, but they did fly by Venus and drop off both landers and atmospheric
probes. The balloons each lasted for a couple of days, and one of the
landers made it down in working order.
Galileo did a fly by in 1989 on the way to Jupiter. I think it took some
snapshots.
Magellan was in orbit doing radar mapping from 1989 to 1994.
That's all I can think off.
"Jim Oberg" wrote in message
.. .
Only one space mission visited Venus in
the past 20 years, by my count (T-shirt for
corrections), but a number of probes made
Venus-fly-bys on their way elesewhere --
does anybody have a complete list? I'm doing
a pre-flight piece on Venus-Express.
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