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Exploration of Earth’s Moon
Launch vehicle: Luna 2
The moon is the most explored body in our solar system besides Earth, having been visited by numerous spacecrafts from multiple space agencies around the world. It’s also the only place besides Earth where human being have set foot. The Pioneer series were the very first attempts ++in doing a lunar exploration but Pioneers 0-2 were failed launches while 3 and 4 were successful. Pioneer 3 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. -
Period: to
Venera Series (Started: 1961 Completed: 1984)
The Venera Series lasted from 1961-1983 with 16 iderations and was a Soviet manned vehicle. The first two Venera series were just flybys while the rest were either Probes, Landers or Orbiters. The entirety of the Venera series was used in order to study Venus’ atmosphere and surface. -
Period: to 173
Mariner Series (First flight: July 22, 1962 Last flight: November 3, 1973 Completed: March 24, 1975)
The Mariner Series was a series of flybys going around Mercury, Venus and Mars and had 10 iterations that spanned from 1962-1975. Most of these flybys were successful in capturing beautiful pictures of those planets but some of them either got destroyed or malfunctioned.
Mariners 4,6,7, and 9 were the only successful mars explorations captured by the Mariner. All together the Mariner Series cost around $554 Million. -
Pioneer series
Launch date Pioneer 9: November 8 1968
Launch date Pioneer 10 : march 2 1972
Launch date Pioneer 11: april 6 1979
The Pioneer series lasted from 1958-1978, had 13 iderations and were used to explore Jupiter, Saturn, Venus and take flybys of the Sun. Pioneer’s 0-4 were also used as the US’ first attempt in doing a lunar mission. Pioneer’s 6-9 were used to show solar activity. -
Mariner 10
Mariner 10 was the seventh successful launch in the Mariner series and the first spacecraft to visit Mercury. The spacecraft structure was an eight-sided forger magnesium framework with eight electronics compartments. This made it survive the heat of the sun. Mariner 10 crossed the orbit of Mercury on 29 March 1974, at 20:46 UT, at a distance of about 704 km from the surface. a large portion of the planet remains unimaged. lunch date is 1973-11-03. Mass 473.9 kg. -
viking 1
Both Vikings were made for different purposes as one was made for taking picture of mars and sending it to us to look at. While the other one was made to study the surface of mars and collect data from it and see if there was once life on mars. Viking 1 was Launched date is August 20, 1975, 5:22 PM EDT).
Viking one never landed on it's landing site. It was lost in mars when communication with it died. Landed july 20 1976. -
viking 2
Last data that was received from viking 2 was at april 11 1980. Launched sep 9 1975. Viking 2 landed on mars at september 3 1976.
Viking 1 costed 1 billion -
Voyager series
Voyager 1 launch date: September 5, 1977
Voyager 2 launch date: August 20, 1977 Voyager 1 and 2 conducted a "grand tour" of the outer planets during the 1970s and '80s. Voyager 1 flew past Jupiter and Saturn, discovering new moons and rings, compiling movies of the motions of both planets' atmospheres, and conducting other observations. Voyager 2 followed the same path, but was then targeted to fly past Uranus and Neptune. -
Pioneer Venus
Launch Vehicle: Atlas-Centaur
The Pioneer Venus Orbiter carried 17 experiments (with a total mass of 45 kg)
The Orbiter was a flat cylinder 2.5 m in diameter and 1.2 m high. All instruments and spacecraft subsystems were mounted on the forward end of the cylinder, except the magnetometer, which was at the end of a 4.7 m boom. A solar array extended around the circumference of the cylinder. A 1.09 m despun dish antenna provided S and X band communication with Earth. -
Exploration of Venus
Venus has been observed for millennia. And as one of just two bodies between Earth and the Sun, Venus periodically passes across the face of the sun—a phenomenon called a transit.
Spacecraft from several nations have visited Venus, including the Soviet Union’s successful Venera series made the first landings on the surface of Venus. -
Magellan
Magellan mapped 98 percent of Venus' surface at a resolution of 100 to 150 meters. It found that 85 percent of the surface is covered with volcanic flows and showed evidence of tectonic movement. Magellan also produced high-resolution gravity data for 95 percent of the planet and tested a new maneuvering technique called aerobraking, using atmospheric drag to adjust its orbit. Lunch date is 4 May 1989
10 Aug 1990: Venus Orbit Insertion
12 Oct 1994: Final Contact -
Mars Global Surveyor
Mission Type: Orbiter
Launch: November 7, 1996 UTC
Launch Vehicle: Delta II
Launch Location: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida
Orbit Insertion: September 12, 1997
End of Mission: November 14, 2006
Launched November 7, 1996, Mars Global Surveyor became the first successful mission to the red planet in two decades. -
Sojourner
The Sojourner rover landed on Mars on 7/4/97 and was used to snap photographs of the surface and was used to track the chemicals and atmosphere among other measurements. This was supposed to be a 7 day mission but actually spent 83 days on the surface. The Sojourner was also the first rover to roam around the surface of Mars. The Sojourner took more than 500 photographs and now scientists could clearly see the Martian rocks,dirt and what they were made of. -
Galileo
Launch date October 18, 1989
Galileo was the first spacecraft to enter orbit around one of the outer planets. It arrived at Jupiter in December 1995. It dropped a probe into Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere, then observed Jupiter and its moons for seven more years. Its mission ended when it was intentionally crashed into Jupiter. Galileo's success was limited by a failed radio antenna that reduced the amount of data it could transmit to Earth to a trickle. -
Cassini
Cassini entered orbit around Saturn in the summer of 2004, and has transmitted tens of thousands of images of the planet and its rings and moons. On January 14, 2005, a second part of the mission, the Huygens probe, parachuted to a soft landing on Titan. Its images showed a landscape carved by flowing liquid. Cassini's instruments have peered through Titan's atmospheric haze to discover possible pools of liquid and a possible volcano on Titan's surface. -
Odyssey
“The opportunity to go to Mars comes around every 26 months, when the alignment of Earth and Mars in their orbits around the sun allows spacecraft to travel between the two planets with the least amount of energy.” Launched at April 7, 2001 arrived at October 24, 2001 -
Express
Launch date 2 June 2003
It it equipped with High Resolution Stereo Cameras, Energetic Neutral Atoms Analyser, Planetary Fourier Spectrometer, and a Visible and Infrared Mineralogical Mapping Spectrometer. -
Spirit
designed to study the history of climate and water at sites on Mars where conditions may once have been favorable to life. equipped with a suite of science instruments to read the geologic record at each site, to investigate what role water played there and to determine how suitable the conditions would have been for life. Launch Date June 10, 2003 | 17:58:46 UT -
Opportunity (Launch date: July 7, 2003, 11:18 PM EDT)
Opportunity drove has driven to approximately 26 miles since it landed on mars on january 25, 2004. Opportunity’s sister rover, Spirit, was launched three weeks later, and landed on the other side of Mars, but it subsequently got stuck in 2009, and no longer was able to function. Also the mission was originally slated to last only 3 months. Opportunity recently captured a panoramic photograph on one of the highest points of Mars, named “Cape Tribulation -
Exploration of Mars
Launch date: November 26, 2011
Launch vehicle: Spirit (MER-A) and Opportunity (MER-B)
Dozens of spacecraft have been sent to Mars, but only about one of every three missions has been a success. This sobering statistic underscores just how difficult it remains to send a craft to Mars and see it arrive in proper working order to transmit data back to Earth The first Mars missions were called flybys and involved getting a spacecraft close to the planet so that it could take images in passing.