First Spaceship on Venus (1959)

In 1985, while constructing an irrigation project in the Gobi Desert, workers finding an unusual rock. Further investigation reveals that it contains an ancient, long-buried flight recorder that originally came from a Venusian spaceship. Apparently, the ship ran into trouble on its approach to Earth in 1908 and exploded. It created a giant crater in Siberia that had previously been attributed to a large meteor impact. This discovery prompts the first inter-planetary flight from Earth to be dispatched with an international crew of nine. Once on Venus, they discover a long-dead Venusian civilization that had constructed an energy projection device which they intended using to destroy all life on the Earth prior to colonizing it. But before they could execute their plan, they perished in a global nuclear cataclysm that left nothing but "shadows" of their bodies burned into the sides of buildings. The Earth team accidentally activates the projector. They are barely able to disarm it before it can do some damage. In doing so, they strand three members on Venus.