14 December 1962
Mariner 2 Venus Flyby
Mariner 2 flies past Venus and becomes the first successful spacecraft mission to another planet.
Historical place archive
Browse historical events and people recorded at Venus in United States of America. The records below are rendered directly from the World History Database into this page's initial HTML.
Mariner 2 flies past Venus and becomes the first successful spacecraft mission to another planet.
Mariner 2 detects no strong intrinsic magnetic field at Venus during its planetary encounter.
Mariner 2 measurements confirm that Venus is extremely hot, supporting greenhouse models of the planet's climate.
Mariner 5 passes close to Venus and performs radio-occultation and plasma measurements of the planet's environment.
Mariner 5 observations show that Venus's ionosphere creates a bow shock that deflects the solar wind despite the lack of a strong magnetic field.
The Pioneer Venus Orbiter begins radar observations that reveal broad topographic features beneath Venus's clouds.
Pioneer Venus measurements strengthen evidence that the planet's global cloud deck consists mainly of sulfuric acid droplets.
Pioneer Venus Orbiter becomes the first American spacecraft to enter orbit around Venus.
The Pioneer Venus probes enter the atmosphere at widely separated locations to sample Venus simultaneously.
One Pioneer Venus small probe survives impact and continues transmitting from the surface for more than an hour.
Pioneer Venus radar data reveal major highland and lowland regions, including features later mapped in greater detail by Magellan.
Galileo flies past Venus for a gravity assist on its journey to Jupiter and obtains additional planetary observations.
Galileo instruments observe Venus's clouds and atmospheric properties during the spacecraft's gravity-assist encounter.
Magellan enters Venus orbit and begins radar mapping.
Magellan begins its first radar mapping cycle, imaging the cloud-hidden surface of Venus at far higher resolution than previous missions.
Magellan completes its first radar mapping cycle after imaging most of the Venusian surface.
Magellan mapping expands radar coverage to nearly the entire surface of Venus.
Magellan uses controlled passes through Venus's upper atmosphere to circularize its orbit in the first major planetary aerobraking experiment.
Magellan conducts a gravity-mapping campaign that helps scientists investigate the internal structure and tectonic history of Venus.
Magellan is deliberately lowered into Venus's atmosphere, ending a mission that mapped almost the entire planet by radar.
Cassini performs its first Venus gravity assist while travelling toward Saturn and conducts limited observations of the planet.
Cassini completes a second Venus gravity assist, gaining speed for the next stage of its journey to Saturn.
Provenance
These entries are generated from stored World History Database records whose country and place fields match United States of America and Venus. Names, dates, event labels and descriptions are reviewed and normalised as the database develops. Historical place names may not match modern administrative boundaries.
This database is a research index. For formal scholarly citation, verify individual claims against appropriate primary, archival, academic or specialist sources.