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Missions to Venus constitute part of the exploration of Venus. The Soviet Union, followed by the United States, have soft landed probes on the surface. Venera 7 was the first lander overall and first for the Soviet Union, touching down on 15 December 1970.
One of the most successful deep-space missions, Magellan was the first spacecraft to image the entire surface of Venus and made several discoveries about the planet. Even as it plunged into the Venusian atmosphere and burned up, it was still collecting data.
- United States of America (USA)
- Magellan
- Venus Orbit
- 7,595 pounds (3,445 kilograms)
The Magellan spacecraft, named after the sixteenth-century Portuguese explorer whose expedition first circumnavigated the Earth, was launched May 4, 1989, and arrived at Venus on August 10, 1990. Magellan's solid rocket motor placed it into a near-polar elliptical orbit around the planet.
Magellan created the first (and currently the best) near-photographic quality, high resolution radar mapping of the planet's surface features. Prior Venus missions had created low resolution radar globes of general, continent-sized formations.
Nov 9, 2017 · Dozens of spacecraft have launched to explore Venus, but not all have been successful. NASA's Mariner 2 was the first spacecraft to visit any planet beyond Earth when it flew past Venus on Dec. 14, 1962. NASA is planning two new missions to Venus: VERITAS, and DAVINCI.
The Magellan spacecraft, which arrived at Venus in 1990, made the first global map of the surface of Venus as well as global maps of the planet's gravity field. The mission produced surprising findings about Venus, including a relatively young planetary surface possibly formed by lava flows from planet-wide volcanic eruptions.
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It rotates on its axis in a retrograde direction -- that is, opposite that of Earth and most of the other planets -- very slowly, once every 243 Earth days. The first spacecraft mission to another planet was the NASA/JPL spacecraft Mariner 2, which executed a flyby of Venus in December 1962.
