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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. Pioneer Venus 2 contained the first spacecraft to land from the United States, the Day ...
NASA's Magellan mission to Venus was one of the most successful deep space missions. It was the first spacecraft to image the entire surface of Venus and made several discoveries about the planet. Magellan burned up about 10 hours after being commanded to plunge into the Venusian atmosphere.
- United States of America (USA)
- Magellan
- Venus Orbit
- 7,595 pounds (3,445 kilograms)
The Magellan spacecraft was a 1,035-kilogram (2,282 lb) robotic space probe launched by NASA on May 4, 1989. Its mission objectives were to map the surface of Venus by using synthetic-aperture radar and to measure the planetary gravitational field.
Magellan Mission at a Glance. Mission Summary 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.
About the mission 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.
Other U.S. spacecraft to visit Venus have included Mariner 10, which flew by Venus in 1974 on its way to Mercury in the first mission to more than a single planet; and Pioneer Venus, a 1978 mission that included an orbiter with an altimeter and imaging radar that functioned at lower resolution than Magellan's, as well as multiple probes that ...
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May 6, 2019 · The next step was to place a small radar instrument into orbit around Venus – what it lacked in size it more than made up for in proximity to the surface. The first spacecraft to study Venus using radar was Pioneer Venus Orbiter, managed by the NASA Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, which entered a polar orbit around the planet in December 1978.
