Mariner 2

Mariner-Venus 1962

Mission Profile

Mariner 2 (Mariner-Venus 1962) was the first spacecraft in history to conduct a successful flyby of another planet, launched on 27 August 1962 aboard an Atlas LV-3 Agena-B and flying past Venus at 34,773 km on 14 December 1962. Its six science instruments confirmed that Venus has no significant magnetic field, has a cold cloud layer topped by a hot and dry atmosphere near the surface, and is completely enshrouded in perpetual cloud cover with no evidence of precipitation. Mariner 2's findings ruled out the popular hypothesis that Venus had warm oceans and conditions similar to a tropical Earth, establishing it instead as an extremely hot hostile environment. As the first successful interplanetary probe, Mariner 2 proved that spacecraft could survive the interplanetary environment and opened the era of planetary exploration.