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The first spacecraft to explore Jupiter was Pioneer 10, which flew past the planet in December 1973, followed by Pioneer 11 twelve months later. Pioneer 10 obtained the first close-up images of Jupiter and its Galilean moons; the spacecraft studied the planet's atmosphere, detected its magnetic field, observed its radiation belts and determined ...
The spacecraft flew by Earth twice; the first time at a range of 960 km (600 mi) at 20:34:34 UTC on December 8, 1990. [82] This was 8 km (5 mi) higher than predicted, and the time of the closest approach was within a second of the prediction. It was the first time that a deep space probe had returned to Earth from interplanetary space. [62]
The first spacecraft to visit an asteroid was Pioneer 10, which flew past an unnamed asteroid on 2 August 1972; a distant incidental encounter while the probe was en route to Jupiter. The first dedicated mission was NEAR Shoemaker , which was launched in February 1996, and entered orbit around 433 Eros in February 2000, having first flown past ...
The spacecraft recorded important heliophysics data in early August 1972 by registering a solar shock wave when it was at a distance of 2.2 AU (330 million km; 200 million mi). [38] On July 15, 1972, Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to enter the asteroid belt, [4] located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The project planners expected ...
First spacecraft to orbit one of the Moon's Lagrange point (L2). USA (NASA) ARTEMIS-P1 [62] 22 October 2010: First spacecraft to orbit the Moon's Lagrange 1 point. USA (NASA) ARTEMIS-P2 [62] 18 March 2011: First orbit of Mercury. USA (NASA) MESSENGER: 16 July 2011: First orbit of an object in the asteroid belt . USA (NASA) Dawn: 6 August 2012
The European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, also known as Juice, flew past the moon on Aug. 19 and the Earth on Aug. 20. Both approaches were recorded between 5 and 6 p.m. EST, the ESA ...
The gravitational assist trajectories at Jupiter were successfully carried out by both Voyagers, and the two spacecraft went on to visit Saturn and its system of moons and rings. Voyager 1 encountered Saturn in November 1980, with the closest approach on November 12, 1980, when the space probe came within 124,000 kilometres (77,000 mi) of ...
The gargantuan rocket, which has so far only undergone uncrewed tests, will one day ferry NASA astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon's surface as part of the space agency's Artemis program ...