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Exploration of Earth’s Moon )With the shocking launch of Sputnik 1 in October 1957, the moon changed from a distant silver disk in the sky to a real place, a probable destination for probes and people. The Soviets struck first, flying Luna 1 by the moon in January (1959). They followed this success with a number of other robotic probes, culminating later the same year with Luna 3, which photographed the far side of the moon, never visible from Earth.
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The Mariner program was a 10-mission program conducted by the American space agency NASA in conjunction with Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The program launched a series of robotic interplanetary probes, from 1962 to 1973, designed to investigate Mars, Venus and Mercury
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On Nov. 3, 1973, the Mariner Venus/Mercury 1973 spacecraft, also known as Mariner 10, was launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, becoming the first spacecraft designed to use gravity assist. Three months after launch it flew by Venus, changed speed and trajectory, then crossed Mercury's orbit in March 1974.
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Voyager series:
Launched from Kennedy Space Center, Voyager 1 was the first of twin spacecrafts launched in 1977 to reach Jupiter. Voyager 1 set out to collect information on the atmospheres, interiors, satellites and magnetosphere of Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 1 took roughly 32,000 pictures of Jupiter, Saturn and their moons and rings. When its mission was complete, Voyager 1 remained rather quiet until its cameras were turned back on in early 1990 to take pictures of our solar system -
Spacecraft from several nations have visited Venus, including russia successful Venera series made the first landings on the surface of Venus. NASA’s Magellan mission, which studied Venus from (1990) to (1994), used radar to map 98 percent of the planet’s surface. Currently, Japan’s Akatsuki is studying Venus from orbit.
