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| About The Magellan Venus Probe
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The Magellan spacecraft was launched on May 4, 1989, arrived at Venus on August 10, 1990 and was inserted into a near-polar elliptical orbit with a periapsis altitude of 294 km at 9.5 deg. N. Radio contact with Magellan was lost on October 12, 1994. The primary objectives of the Magellan mission were to map the surface of Venus with a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and to determine the topographic relief of the planet. At the completion of radar mapping 98% of the surface was imaged at resolutions better than 100 m, and many areas were imaged multiple times. The mission was divided up into "cycles", each cycle lasted 243 days (the time necessary for Venus to rotate once under the Magellan orbit - i.e. the time necessary for Magellan to "see" the entire surface once.) The mission proceeded as follows:
- 04 May 1989 - Launch
- 10 Aug 1990 - Venus orbit insertion and spacecraft checkout
- 15 Sep 1990 - Cycle 1: Radar mapping (left-looking)
- 15 May 1991 - Cycle 2: Radar mapping (right-looking)
- 15 Jan 1992 - Cycle 3: Radar mapping (left-looking)
- 14 Sep 1992 - Cycle 4: Gravity data acquisition
- 24 May 1993 - Aerobraking to circular orbit
- 03 Aug 1993 - Cycle 5: Gravity data acquisition
- 30 Aug 1994 - Windmill experiment
- 12 Oct 1994 - Loss of radio signal
- 13 Oct 1994 - Presumed loss of spacecraft
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