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Nov 9, 2017 · Venus: Exploration. 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. All NASA Science Missions.
- 45 Years Ago, Mariner 10 Off to Venus and Mercury - NASA
The spacecraft returned 500 more images of Mercury. And on...
- 55 Years Ago: Mariner 2 First to Venus - NASA
The spacecraft made a number of important scientific...
- 45 Years Ago, Mariner 10 Off to Venus and Mercury - NASA
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 ...
SpacecraftLaunch Date [7]OperatorMission10 February 2020Gravity assist20 October 2018Gravity assist12 August 2018NASA United StatesGravity assist20 May 2010UNISEC JapanFlyby- Venus Express. The European Space Agency's Venus Express studied the planet's ionosphere and atmosphere, enabling scientists to draw important conclusions about the surface.
- MESSENGER. NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft flew past Venus twice on its way to Mercury.
- Cassini-Huygens. NASA and the European Space Agency's Cassini-Huygens mission visited Venus twice during its long trek out to Saturn.
- Magellan. NASA's Magellan orbiter mapped over 98% of Venus at a resolution of 100 meters or better using its radar.
Nov 5, 2018 · The spacecraft returned 500 more images of Mercury. And on March 16, 1975, Mariner 10, nearly out of attitude control gas, made its final visit to Mercury, this time at a close range of 327 km, passing over the planet’s north pole. The spacecraft returned some of the most detailed images and additional data on the planet’s magnetic field.
- John Uri
- Overview
- Spacecraft exploration
The greatest advances in the study of Venus were achieved through the use of robotic spacecraft. The first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of another planet and return data was the U.S. Mariner 2 in its flyby of Venus in 1962. Since then, Venus has been the target of more than 20 spacecraft missions.
Successful early Venus missions undertaken by the United States involved Mariner 2, Mariner 5 (1967), and Mariner 10 (1974). Each spacecraft made a single close flyby, providing successively improved scientific data in accord with concurrent advances in spacecraft and instrument technology. After visiting Venus, Mariner 10 went on to a successful series of flybys of Mercury. In 1978 the United States launched the Pioneer Venus mission, comprising two complementary spacecraft. The Orbiter went into orbit around the planet, while the Multiprobe released four entry probes—one large probe and three smaller ones—that were targeted to widely separated points in the Venusian atmosphere to collect data on atmospheric structure and composition. The three small probes were called the North probe, which entered the atmosphere at about 60° N latitude; the Night probe, which entered on the nightside; and the Day probe, which entered on the dayside and actually survived for an hour after impact. The Orbiter carried 17 scientific instruments, most of them focused on study of the planet’s atmosphere, ionosphere, and interaction with the solar wind. Its radar altimeter provided the first high-quality map of Venus’s surface topography. Pioneer Venus Orbiter was one of the longest-lived planetary spacecraft, returning data for more than 14 years.
Venus was also a major target of the Soviet Union’s planetary exploration program during the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, which achieved several spectacular successes. After an early sequence of failed missions, in 1967 Soviet scientists launched Venera 4, comprising a flyby spacecraft as well as a probe that entered the planet’s atmosphere. Highlights of subsequent missions included the first successful soft landing on another planet (Venera 7 in 1970), the first images returned from the surface of another planet (Venera 9 and 10 landers in 1975), and the first spacecraft placed in orbit around Venus (Venera 9 and 10 orbiters).
In terms of the advances they provided in the global understanding of Venus, the most important Soviet missions were Veneras 15 and 16 in 1983. The twin orbiters carried the first radar systems flown to another planet that were capable of producing high-quality images of the surface. They produced a map of the northern quarter of Venus with a resolution of 1–2 km (0.6–1.2 miles), and many types of geologic features now known to exist on the planet were either discovered or first observed in detail in the Venera 15 and 16 data. Late the following year the Soviet Union launched two more spacecraft to Venus, Vegas 1 and 2. These delivered Venera-style landers and dropped off two balloons in the Venusian atmosphere, each of which survived for about two days and transmitted data from their float altitudes in the middle cloud layer. The Vega spacecraft themselves continued past Venus to conduct successful flybys of Halley’s Comet in 1986.
In 1990, on its way to Jupiter, the U.S. Galileo spacecraft flew by Venus. Among its more notable observations were images at near-infrared wavelengths that viewed deep into the atmosphere and showed the highly variable opacity of the main cloud deck.
The most ambitious mission yet to Venus, the U.S. Magellan spacecraft, was launched in 1989 and the next year entered orbit around the planet, where it conducted observations until late 1994. Magellan carried a radar system capable of producing images with a resolution better than 100 metres (330 feet). Because the orbit was nearly polar, the spacecraft was able to view essentially all latitudes on the planet. On each orbit the radar system obtained an image strip about 20 km (12 miles) wide and typically more than 16,000 km (almost 10,000 miles) long, extending nearly from pole to pole. The image strips were assembled into mosaics, and high-quality radar images of about 98 percent of the planet were ultimately produced. Magellan also carried a radar altimeter system that measured the planet’s surface topography as well as some properties of its surface materials. After the main radar objectives of the mission were completed, the spacecraft’s orbit was modified slightly so that it passed repeatedly through the upper fringes of the Venusian atmosphere. The resulting drag on the spacecraft gradually removed energy from its orbit, turning an initially elliptical orbit into a low, circular one. This procedure, known as aerobraking, has since been used on other planetary missions to conserve large amounts of fuel by reducing the use of thrusters for orbital reshaping. From its new circular orbit, the Magellan spacecraft was able to make the first detailed map of Venus’s gravitational field.
The greatest advances in the study of Venus were achieved through the use of robotic spacecraft. The first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of another planet and return data was the U.S. Mariner 2 in its flyby of Venus in 1962. Since then, Venus has been the target of more than 20 spacecraft missions.
Successful early Venus missions undertaken by the United States involved Mariner 2, Mariner 5 (1967), and Mariner 10 (1974). Each spacecraft made a single close flyby, providing successively improved scientific data in accord with concurrent advances in spacecraft and instrument technology. After visiting Venus, Mariner 10 went on to a successful series of flybys of Mercury. In 1978 the United States launched the Pioneer Venus mission, comprising two complementary spacecraft. The Orbiter went into orbit around the planet, while the Multiprobe released four entry probes—one large probe and three smaller ones—that were targeted to widely separated points in the Venusian atmosphere to collect data on atmospheric structure and composition. The three small probes were called the North probe, which entered the atmosphere at about 60° N latitude; the Night probe, which entered on the nightside; and the Day probe, which entered on the dayside and actually survived for an hour after impact. The Orbiter carried 17 scientific instruments, most of them focused on study of the planet’s atmosphere, ionosphere, and interaction with the solar wind. Its radar altimeter provided the first high-quality map of Venus’s surface topography. Pioneer Venus Orbiter was one of the longest-lived planetary spacecraft, returning data for more than 14 years.
Venus was also a major target of the Soviet Union’s planetary exploration program during the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, which achieved several spectacular successes. After an early sequence of failed missions, in 1967 Soviet scientists launched Venera 4, comprising a flyby spacecraft as well as a probe that entered the planet’s atmosphere. Highlights of subsequent missions included the first successful soft landing on another planet (Venera 7 in 1970), the first images returned from the surface of another planet (Venera 9 and 10 landers in 1975), and the first spacecraft placed in orbit around Venus (Venera 9 and 10 orbiters).
In terms of the advances they provided in the global understanding of Venus, the most important Soviet missions were Veneras 15 and 16 in 1983. The twin orbiters carried the first radar systems flown to another planet that were capable of producing high-quality images of the surface. They produced a map of the northern quarter of Venus with a resolution of 1–2 km (0.6–1.2 miles), and many types of geologic features now known to exist on the planet were either discovered or first observed in detail in the Venera 15 and 16 data. Late the following year the Soviet Union launched two more spacecraft to Venus, Vegas 1 and 2. These delivered Venera-style landers and dropped off two balloons in the Venusian atmosphere, each of which survived for about two days and transmitted data from their float altitudes in the middle cloud layer. The Vega spacecraft themselves continued past Venus to conduct successful flybys of Halley’s Comet in 1986.
In 1990, on its way to Jupiter, the U.S. Galileo spacecraft flew by Venus. Among its more notable observations were images at near-infrared wavelengths that viewed deep into the atmosphere and showed the highly variable opacity of the main cloud deck.
The most ambitious mission yet to Venus, the U.S. Magellan spacecraft, was launched in 1989 and the next year entered orbit around the planet, where it conducted observations until late 1994. Magellan carried a radar system capable of producing images with a resolution better than 100 metres (330 feet). Because the orbit was nearly polar, the spacecraft was able to view essentially all latitudes on the planet. On each orbit the radar system obtained an image strip about 20 km (12 miles) wide and typically more than 16,000 km (almost 10,000 miles) long, extending nearly from pole to pole. The image strips were assembled into mosaics, and high-quality radar images of about 98 percent of the planet were ultimately produced. Magellan also carried a radar altimeter system that measured the planet’s surface topography as well as some properties of its surface materials. After the main radar objectives of the mission were completed, the spacecraft’s orbit was modified slightly so that it passed repeatedly through the upper fringes of the Venusian atmosphere. The resulting drag on the spacecraft gradually removed energy from its orbit, turning an initially elliptical orbit into a low, circular one. This procedure, known as aerobraking, has since been used on other planetary missions to conserve large amounts of fuel by reducing the use of thrusters for orbital reshaping. From its new circular orbit, the Magellan spacecraft was able to make the first detailed map of Venus’s gravitational field.
Dec 14, 2017 · The spacecraft made a number of important scientific discoveries not only about the planet but also about interplanetary space during its transit. The road to Venus, however, was anything but easy. Relatively little was known about Venus at the time; because it was roughly the same size as the Earth, scientists often called the two sister planets.
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The first successful flyby Venus probe was the American Mariner 2 spacecraft, which flew past Venus in 1962, coming within 35,000 km. A modified Ranger Moon probe, it established that Venus has practically no intrinsic magnetic field and measured the temperature of the planet's atmosphere to be approximately 500 °C (773 K ; 932 °F ).
