Agena rocket10/12/2023 ![]() Air Force contractor Space Technology Laboratory (STL) intended to take advantage of it. The second opportunity, around June 1959, lay just within the edge of technological feasibility, and U.S. The first such opportunity of the Space Race occurred in late 1957, before either superpower had the technology to take advantage of it. These opportunities mark the best time to launch exploratory spacecraft, requiring the least fuel to make the trip. : 172 Every 19 months, Venus and the Earth reach relative positions in their orbits around the Sun such that a minimum of fuel is required to travel from one planet to the other via a Hohmann Transfer Orbit. As the closest planet to Earth, Venus presented an appealing interplanetary spaceflight target. With the Moon achieved, the superpowers turned their eyes to the planets. In early 1959, the Soviet Luna 1 was the first probe to fly by the Moon, followed by Luna 2, the first artificial object to impact the Moon. The Pioneer program of satellites consisted of three unsuccessful lunar attempts in 1958. Earth's orbit having been reached, focus turned to being the first to the Moon. The Americans followed suit with Explorer 1 on February 1, 1958, by which point the Soviets had already launched the first orbiting animal, Laika in Sputnik 2. The Soviets launched the Sputnik 1, the first Earth orbiting satellite, on October 4, 1957. With the advent of the Cold War, the two then- superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, both initiated ambitious space programs with the intent of demonstrating military, technological, and political dominance. ![]() As it flew by Venus on December 14, 1962, Mariner 2 scanned the planet with its pair of radiometers, revealing that Venus has cool clouds and an extremely hot surface.īackground Mariner II trajectory projected on the ecliptic plane. In addition, Mariner 2 detected high-energy charged particles coming from the Sun, including several brief solar flares, as well as cosmic rays from outside the Solar System. It also measured interplanetary dust, which turned out to be scarcer than predicted. Įn route to Venus, Mariner 2 measured the solar wind, a constant stream of charged particles flowing outwards from the Sun, confirming the measurements by Luna 1 in 1959. A second objective was to measure the interplanetary magnetic field and charged particle environment. The primary mission was to receive communications from the spacecraft in the vicinity of Venus and to perform radiometric temperature measurements of the planet. These instruments were designed to measure the temperature distribution on the surface of Venus and to make basic measurements of Venus' atmosphere. The scientific instruments on board the Mariner spacecraft were: two radiometers (one each for the microwave and infrared portions of the spectrum), a micrometeorite sensor, a solar plasma sensor, a charged particle sensor, and a magnetometer. The Mariner probe consisted of a 100 cm (39.4 in) diameter hexagonal bus, to which solar panels, instrument booms, and antennas were attached. The Mariner 2 spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral on August 27, 1962, and passed as close as 34,773 kilometers (21,607 mi) to Venus on December 14, 1962. Far less instrumentation was carried than on the Soviet Venera probes of this period-for example, forgoing a TV camera-as the Atlas-Agena B had only half as much lift capacity as the Soviet 8K78 booster. As such, the design of the Mariner R vehicles was greatly simplified. ![]() Original plans called for the probes to be launched on the Atlas-Centaur, but serious developmental problems with that vehicle forced a switch to the much smaller Agena B second stage. The missions of the Mariner 1 and 2 spacecraft are sometimes known as the Mariner R missions. ![]() The first successful spacecraft in the NASA Mariner program, it was a simplified version of the Block I spacecraft of the Ranger program and an exact copy of Mariner 1. Mariner 2 ( Mariner-Venus 1962), an American space probe to Venus, was the first robotic space probe to report successfully from a planetary encounter. President Kennedy is shown a model of Mariner 2 during a meeting with NASA officials after the successful completion of the mission, 1963
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