---
title: "Mariner 2 Venus Flyby"
year: 1962
country: "United States"
canonical: "https://recap.at/1962/mariner-2-venus"
slug: "mariner-2-venus"
recapType: "global_event"
startDate: "1962-01-01"
---

# Mariner 2 Venus Flyby

> The first successful interplanetary spacecraft to reach Venus, Mariner 2 proved humans could navigate the solar system.

## Summary

Mariner 2, an American space probe to Venus, was the first robotic space probe to report successfully from a planetary encounter. The first successful spacecraft in the NASA Mariner program, it 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 second 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. The Mariner 2 spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral on August 27, 1962, and passed as close as 34,773 km (21,607 mi) to Venus on December 14, 1962.

## Sources

- [Mariner-Venus 1962](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_2) - Wikipedia

---
Canonical: https://recap.at/1962/mariner-2-venus