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Pioneer Venus 1

Pioneer Venus 1 was NASA's long-lived Venus orbiter, built to map the surface by radar and study the atmosphere, ionosphere, solar-wind interaction, gravity field, and planetary environment.

Pioneer Venus 1
NASA · Stored JPEG is a re-encoded derivative of NASA Science's exact Pioneer Venus 1 mission-page asset (713x512; decoded composition matches the authoritative NASA rendition with mean absolute pixel difference 1.39 and per-channel correlation of at least 0.999): https://assets.science.nasa.gov/dynamicimage/assets/science/psd/solar/2023/07/pioneervenusorbiter.jpg?w=713&h=512&fit=clip&crop=faces%2Cfocalpoint. NASA's current mission page identifies this as an illustration of NASA's Pioneer Venus 1 spacecraft and credits NASA: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/pioneer-venus-1/. NASA's current Images and Media Usage Guidelines generally permit NASA content for factual, educational, and informational web use with NASA acknowledgement and without implying NASA endorsement; separately identified third-party material, NASA logos and identifiers, and some commercial, promotional, and merchandise uses remain subject to separate restrictions: https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media/. This is an asset-level provenance and conservative reuse statement, not a blanket license. · Source
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Identity

Aliases
Pioneer Venus OrbiterPioneer 121978-051A
Name
Pioneer Venus 1
Status
completed

Details

Astronauts
-
Description
Pioneer Venus 1 was NASA's long-lived Venus orbiter, built to map the surface by radar and study the atmosphere, ionosphere, solar-wind interaction, gravity field, and planetary environment.
Destination
First American spacecraft to orbit Venus; elliptical orbit with approximately 23-hour initial period adjusted to 24 hours, periapsis later maintained around 150–250 km for radar mapping
End Date
1992-10-08
Launch Site
Outcome
Successfully entered Venus orbit on December 4, 1978 and operated for nearly fourteen years until its final transmission on October 8, 1992.
Programs
Start Date
1978-05-20
Vehicle Families

Links

Official Url
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/pioneer-venus-1/

Assets & Meta

Creation Time
July 18, 2026 at 12:32:47 UTC
Updated Time
August 21, 2026 at 15:49:25 UTC
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Affiliations
Search Name
Pioneer Venus 1 Pioneer Venus Orbiter Pioneer 12 1978-051A
Space Stations
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Vehicles