Launch Success
Liftoff Time (GMT)
06:53:00
Monday August 27, 1962
Watch Replay
Official Livestream
First spacecraft to reach the vicinity of another planet.
Mariner 2 (Mariner-Venus 1962), an American space probe to Venus, was the first robotic space probe to conduct a successful planetary encounter. The first successful spacecraft in the NASA Mariner program, Mariner 2 was a simplified version of the Block I spacecraft of the Ranger program and an exact copy of Mariner 1. The missions of the Mariner 1 and 2 spacecraft are sometimes known as the Mariner R missions. Original plans called for the probes to be launched on the Atlas-Centaur, but serious developmental problems with that vehicle forced a switch to the much smaller Agena B stage. As such, the design of the Mariner R vehicles was greatly simplified. Far less instrumentation was carried than on the Soviet Venera probes of this period—for example, forgoing a TV camera—as the Atlas-Agena B had only half as much lift capacity as the Soviet 8K78 booster.
Heliocentric Orbit
1 Payload
203 kilograms
21st
Mission
10th
Mission of 1962
48th
Orbital launch attempt