"Viking 1 Viking 1 was the first of two spacecraft (along with ""Viking 2"") sent to Mars as part of NASA's Viking program. On July 20, 1976, it became the second spacecraft to soft-land on Mars, and the first soft lander to successfully perform its mission. (The first spacecraft to soft-land on Mars was the Soviet Union's Mars 3 on December 2, 1971, which stopped transmitting after 14.5 seconds.) ""Viking 1"" held the record for the longest Mars surface mission of days (over 6¼ years) or Martian solar days, until that record was broken by ""Opportunity"" on May 19, 2010."
"1976, respectively. Helios 2 set a maximum speed record among spacecraft at about relative to the Sun ( or 0.000229c). The Helios space probes completed their primary missions by the early 1980s, but they continued to send data up to 1985. The probes are no longer functional but still remain in their elliptical orbit around the Sun. The Viking program consisted of a pair of American space probes sent to Mars—Viking 1 and Viking 2. Each vehicle was composed of two main parts, an orbiter designed to photograph the surface of Mars from orbit, and a lander designed to study"
"Seasonal dust storms, pressure changes, and movement of atmospheric gases between the polar caps were observed. A biology experiment produced possible evidence of life, but it was not corroborated by other on-board experiments. While searching for a suitable landing spot for ""Viking 2""s lander, the ""Viking 1"" orbiter photographed the landform that constitutes the so-called ""Face on Mars"" on July 25, 1976. The Viking program was a descendant of the cancelled Voyager program, whose name was later reused for a pair of outer solar system probes. NASA's ""Mars Pathfinder"" spacecraft, launched one month after Global Surveyor, landed on July 4,"
"Viking 2 The Viking 2 mission was part of the American Viking program to Mars, and consisted of an orbiter and a lander essentially identical to that of the ""Viking 1"" mission. The ""Viking 2"" lander operated on the surface for days, or sols, and was turned off on April 11, 1980 when its batteries failed. The orbiter worked until July 25, 1978, returning almost 16,000 images in 706 orbits around Mars. The craft was launched on September 9, 1975. Following launch using a Titan/Centaur launch vehicle and a 333-day cruise to Mars, the ""Viking 2"" Orbiter began returning global"
"Voyager 1 Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977. Part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System, ""Voyager 1"" launched 16 days after its twin, ""Voyager 2"". Having operated for as of , the spacecraft still communicates with the Deep Space Network to receive routine commands and return data. At a distance of (21.289 billion kilometers; 13.229 billion miles) from the Sun as of June 4, 2018, it is the most distant man-made object from Earth. The probe's objectives included flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn's largest moon, Titan. While the"
"and expensive. Voyager was the first major space science project to be cancelled by the U.S. Congress. Despite the cancellation, the planning and development of the Voyager Mars program was eventually carried out by NASA's Viking program in the mid-1970s. Cheaper and simpler than the Voyager Mars program (using the same Mariner 8/9 design for the orbiter, but with an automobile-sized lander with a very expensive microbiology lab), the Viking 1 and Viking 2 probes were launched to Mars on separate Titan IIIE/Centaur rockets in 1975 and reached Mars in 1976. After the cancellation, the ""Voyager"" name was recycled for"
"Balkanska. Other Eastern and Western classics are included, as well as various performances of indigenous music from around the world. The record also contains greetings in 55 different languages. Voyager 1 Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977. Part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System, ""Voyager 1"" launched 16 days after its twin, ""Voyager 2"". Having operated for as of , the spacecraft still communicates with the Deep Space Network to receive routine commands and return data. At a distance of (21.289 billion kilometers; 13.229 billion miles) from the Sun"
"on September 3. The orbiters continued imaging and performing other scientific operations from orbit while the landers deployed instruments on the surface. The project cost roughly 1 billion USD in 1970s dollars, equivalent to about billion USD in dollars. The mission was considered successful and is credited with helping to form most of the body of knowledge about Mars through the late 1990s and early 2000s. The primary objectives of the two Viking orbiters were to transport the landers to Mars, perform reconnaissance to locate and certify landing sites, act as communications relays for the landers, and to perform their"
"Voyager 2 Voyager 2 is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, to study the outer planets. Part of the Voyager program, it was launched 16 days before its twin, ""Voyager 1"", on a trajectory that took longer to reach Jupiter and Saturn but enabled further encounters with Uranus and Neptune. It is the only spacecraft to have visited either of the ice giant planets. Its primary mission ended with the exploration of the Neptunian system on October 2, 1989, after having visited the Uranian system in 1986, the Saturnian system in 1981, and the Jovian system"
"program ended on May 21, 1983. To prevent an imminent impact with Mars the orbit of Viking 1 orbiter was raised. Impact and potential contamination on the planet's surface is possible from 2019 onwards. The Viking 1 lander was found to be about 6 kilometers from its planned landing site by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in December 2006. The Viking 1 Lander touched down in western Chryse Planitia (""Golden Plain"") at at a reference altitude of −2.69 km relative to a reference ellipsoid with an equatorial radius of 3397.2 km and a flatness of 0.0105 (22.480° N, 47.967° W planetographic)"
"monotonically from 89.81 to 81.85 degrees. The spacecraft's axis of rotation at launch was inertially fixed in its orbital plane, directed towards a constant right ascension and declination, and nearly parallel to the Earth's equatorial plane. Explorer 52 Explorer 52 was an American satellite launched on June 3, 1974 from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a Scout booster. This satellite was also known as: The primary mission objective of Hawkeye 1 (Explorer 52) was to conduct particles and fields investigations of the polar magnetosphere of the earth out to 21 earth radii. Secondary objectives were to make magnetic field and"
"Explorer 52 Explorer 52 was an American satellite launched on June 3, 1974 from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a Scout booster. This satellite was also known as: The primary mission objective of Hawkeye 1 (Explorer 52) was to conduct particles and fields investigations of the polar magnetosphere of the earth out to 21 earth radii. Secondary objectives were to make magnetic field and plasma distribution measurements in the solar wind, and to study Type-3 radio emissions caused by solar electron streams in the interplanetary medium. To accomplish these objectives, the spacecraft was instrumented with following instruments: The spacecraft was"
"in March and September 1974, and March 1975. There are currently five spacecraft on trajectories which either will or have already taken them out of the Solar System, depending on the definition used to determine the Solar System's boundary. These probes are Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11 and New Horizons, all launched by the United States. Of that group Voyager 1, Voyager 2, and New Horizons are still functioning as of 2018 and supported by active missions, with New Horizons being directed to pass by another body. The announcement of a possible Planet Nine opens the possibility"
"7 October 2006. PLA (Plasma Faraday Cup Assembly). The objective is to study the positive ions and electrons in the solar wind, transition region, and magnetotail. Parameters derived on a routine basis are proton velocity, number density, and temperature. Explorer 50 Explorer 50, also known as IMP-J or IMP-8, was a NASA satellite launched to study the magnetosphere. It was the eighth and last in a series of the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform. Explorer 50 was launched on 23 October 1973 at 02:26:03 UTC, by a Delta 1604 rocket from Cape Canaveral AFS, Florida. The spacecraft functioned nominally until 7 October"
"lot of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) called ""Third Century America"". An American flag and the Bicentennial emblem were also painted on the side of the VAB; the emblem remained until 1998, when it was painted over with the NASA insignia. NASA originally planned for Viking 1 to land on Mars on July 4, but the landing was delayed to July 20, the anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. On the anniversary of the signing of the Constitution, NASA held the rollout ceremony of the first space shuttle (which NASA had planned to name ""Constitution"" but was, instead, named"
"orbiter vehicle and a lander. Viking 1 landed in July 1976 and Viking 2 in September 1976. The Viking rovers were the first successful, working Mars landers. The mission ended in May 1983, after both landers had died. In the 1970s, the US planned the Voyager-Mars mission. This would have consisted of two orbiters and two landers, launched by a single Saturn V rocket, but the mission was cancelled. Mars 96 was the first complex post-Soviet Russian mission with an orbiter, lander and penetrators. Planned for 1996, it failed at launch. A planned repeat of this mission, Mars 98, was"
"far layers of our heliosphere, thus concluding the craft had broken beyond the heliopause. Voyager 2 was launched by NASA on August 20, 1977. The probe's primary mission was to visit the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, which it completed on October 2, 1989. It is currently the only probe to have visited the ice giants. It is the fourth of five spacecraft to have left the solar system. It has been operational for 41 years and 2 months as of October 20, 2018. Cassini–Huygens was a 5,712kg (12,593lb) space probe designed to study gas giant Saturn, along with its"
"failure. As a ""Proof Flight"", it was planned to have the same trajectory as the Viking mission to Mars that was scheduled for launch in 1975. The original plan was for this flight to carry the Viking Dynamic Simulator (VDS), a model of the Viking spacecraft. Engineers at the Lewis Research Center, however, ultimately persuaded their colleagues to put the Sphinx satellite on the flight instead of the VDS. The mission of the satellite was to measure the interaction of space plasmas with the satellite's high-voltage surfaces. The Titan performed normally during launch, but the Centaur's engines failed to start."
"Viking (satellite) Viking was Sweden's first satellite. It was launched on an Ariane 1 rocket as a piggyback payload together with the French satellite SPOT 1, on February 22, 1986. Operations ended on May 12, 1987. Viking was used to explore plasma processes in the magnetosphere and the ionosphere. Space was limited underneath the SPOT 1 satellite, and Viking had to be quite sturdy in order to withstand the stress of launch. The basic shape of the Swedish satellite was a flat octagonal disc, 0.5 metres thick and 1.9 metres across. The mechanical interface of the payload adapter from the"
"ringed system and moons. The NASA probe was launched with ESA lander Huygens on October 1, 1997 from Cape Canaveral. The Cassini probe entered Saturn orbit on July 1, 2004, and Huygens landed on Titan, Saturn's largest moon, on January 14, 2005. On September 15, 2017, the probe was de-orbited and burned up in Saturn's atmosphere, after almost 20 years in space. First probe to be launched to Pluto. Launched on January 19, 2006, it flew by the Pluto–Charon system on July 14, 2015. First spacecraft to visit and orbit a protoplanet (4 Vesta), entering orbit on July 16, 2011."
"Explorer 55 Explorer 55, also called as AE-E (Atmospheric Explorer E), was a NASA scientific satellite belonging to series Atmosphere Explorer, being launched on November 20, 1975 from Cape Canaveral AFS board a Delta 2910 rocket. The purpose of the Explorer 55 mission was to investigate the chemical processes and energy transfer mechanisms that control the structure and behavior of the earth's atmosphere and ionosphere in the region of high absorption of solar energy at low and equatorial latitudes. The simultaneous sampling at higher latitudes was carried out by the Explorer 54 spacecraft until its failure on January 29, 1976,"
"images of Mars prior to orbit insertion. The orbiter was inserted into a 1500 x 33,000 km, 24.6 h Mars orbit on August 7, 1976 and trimmed to a 27.3 h site certification orbit with a periapsis of 1499 km and an inclination of 55.2 degrees on 9 August. Imaging of candidate sites was begun and the landing site was selected based on these pictures and the images returned by the Viking 1 Orbiter. The lander separated from the orbiter on September 3, 1976 at 22:37:50 UT and landed at Utopia Planitia. Normal operations called for the structure connecting the"
"23, 1972 on a Delta 0900 out of Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The spacecraft was placed in a sun-synchronous orbit, with an altitude between 907 and 915 km. The spacecraft was placed in an orbit with an inclination of 99 degrees which orbited the Earth every 103 minutes. Landsat 1's tape recorders malfunctioned in January 1978, and the satellite was taken out of service. From launch until 1974, Landsat 1 transmitted over 100,000 images, which covered more than 75% of the Earth's surface. The majority of these images were taken with the multispectral scanner. On 5 August 1972"
"during launch in April 1975. It eventually proved a success, with missions as long as six months being conducted by the end of the decade. In terms of unmanned missions, a variety of lunar and planetary probes were launched by the US and Soviet programs during the decade. The most successful of these include the Soviet Lunokhod program, a series of robotic lunar missions which included the first unmanned sample return from another world, and the American Voyagers, which took advantage of a rare alignment of the outer planets to visit all of them except Pluto by the end of"
"Explorer 50 Explorer 50, also known as IMP-J or IMP-8, was a NASA satellite launched to study the magnetosphere. It was the eighth and last in a series of the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform. Explorer 50 was launched on 23 October 1973 at 02:26:03 UTC, by a Delta 1604 rocket from Cape Canaveral AFS, Florida. The spacecraft functioned nominally until 7 October 2006. The satellite orbited the Earth once every 12 days, at an inclination of 28.6 degrees. Its perigee was 22 earth radii and apogee was 45 earth radii. Explorer 50 was a drum-shaped spacecraft, across and height, with propulsion"
"Venera 9 Venera 9 ( meaning ""Venus 9""), manufacturer's designation: 4V-1 No. 660, was a Soviet unmanned space mission to Venus. It consisted of an orbiter and a lander. It was launched on June 8, 1975, at 02:38:00 UTC and had a mass of . The orbiter was the first spacecraft to orbit Venus, while the lander was the first to return images from the surface of another planet. The orbiter entered Venus orbit on October 20, 1975. Its mission was to act as a communications relay for the lander and to explore cloud layers and atmospheric parameters with several"
"1988 Swedish Inst. of Space Physics, Kiruna. Since then, many other scientific articles have been written using this important data set. After the scientific mission ended, both ""Viking"" and the upper stage of the rocket used to launch the satellite became objects that would continue to orbit Earth for many years. , both objects remain in orbit. Viking (satellite) Viking was Sweden's first satellite. It was launched on an Ariane 1 rocket as a piggyback payload together with the French satellite SPOT 1, on February 22, 1986. Operations ended on May 12, 1987. Viking was used to explore plasma processes"
"Agency and NASA, was the first spacecraft to study the Sun's polar regions. Its voyage to the Sun began with a sixteen month trip to Jupiter where the planet's gravitational energy was used to fling ""Ulysses"" southward out of the orbital plane of the planets and on toward a solar south pole passage in 1994. The spacecraft crossed back over the orbital plane and made a solar north pole passage in 1995. By the time ""Discovery"" touched down at Edwards Air Force Base, ""Ulysses"" had already traversed one million miles (1.6 million km) on its five-year mission. With ""Ulysses"" on"
"ingested an incorrectly installed clip from the oxygen tank. The next Titan-Centaur flew in December 1974 and carried the joint West German-American ""Helios 1"" probe to study the sun at close range. The West Germans were concerned that NASA was using the Helios launch as a second test flight of Titan/Centaur in preparation for the upcoming Viking missions. This concern gained believability when the Helios launch used an unnecessary two-burn profile, presumably a rehearsal for the Viking launch that needed the two burns. Centaur completed a further two burns after separation, proving the stage's in-space multi-restart capability. In 1975, Titan-Centaur"
"Venera 10 Venera 10 ( meaning ""Venus 10""), or 4V-1 No. 661, was a Soviet unmanned space mission to Venus. It consisted of an orbiter and a lander. It was launched on June 14, 1975 03:00:31 UTC and had a mass of 5033 kg (11096 lb). The orbiter entered Venus orbit on October 23, 1975. Its mission was to serve as a communications relay for the lander and to explore cloud layers and atmospheric parameters with several instruments and experiments: The orbiter consisted of a cylinder with two solar panel wings and a high gain parabolic antenna attached to the"
"of the probe was the study of the atmosphere and the exposed surface of the planet. The scientific payload included a UV spectrometer, temperature and pressure sensors, a water concentration meter, a gas-phase chromatograph, an X-ray spectrometer, a mass spectrometer, and a surface sampling device. Several of these scientific tools (the UV spectrometer, the mass spectrograph, and the devices to measure pressure and temperature) were developed in collaboration with French scientists. Since the probe made a nighttime landing, no images were taken. The Vega 2 lander touched down at 03:00:50 UT on 15 June 1985 at around , in the"
"Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on October 3, 1985. This was the maiden voyage of the Atlantis, the final Orbiter in the Shuttle fleet. After 98 hours of orbital operations, Atlantis landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on October 7, 1985. Mission duration was 97 hours, 14 minutes, 38 seconds. STS-30 Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on May 4, 1989. During the four-day mission, the crew successfully deployed the Magellan Venus-exploration spacecraft, the first U.S. planetary science mission launched since 1978, and the first planetary probe to be deployed from the Shuttle. Magellan arrived at Venus in mid-1990,"
"craft was placed into a polar orbit in order to study the planet's magnetic field and internal structure. NASA's ""Galileo"" mission to Jupiter provided extensive knowledge about its upper atmosphere, however, further study of Jupiter is crucial not only to the understanding of its origin and nature of the Solar System, but also of giant extrasolar planets in general. The ""Juno"" spacecraft investigation is intended to address the following objectives for Jupiter: ""OSIRIS-REx"" stands for ""Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer"", and was launched on 8 September 2016. This mission plan is to orbit an asteroid, at the"