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Derelict space probes

  • Phobos programThe Soviet Union launched the first Phobos probe on the 7th of July 1988. A second probe followed five days later on the 12th of July 1988.
  • Venera 1Venera 1 stood as a cylindrical body topped by a dome, reaching a total height of 2.3 meters. Engineers pressurized the interior to 105 kilopascals using dry…
  • Mariner 4Mariner 4 changed what humanity thought it knew about Mars. Launched on the 28th of November 1964, this spacecraft became the first to successfully fly past…
  • Pioneer 11Pioneer 11 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 36A at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on the 6th of April 1973, at 02:11:00 UTC, riding an Atlas-Centaur rocket…
  • Dawn (spacecraft)Harold R. Kaufman built the first working ion thruster in 1959 at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Ohio. This early engine used mercury as its propellant and…
  • Pioneer 10Pioneer 10 left Earth on the 3rd of March 1972, moving faster than any human-made object had ever traveled at that moment.
  • NEAR ShoemakerJohns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory built the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft in the mid-1990s. This robotic probe was designed to study asteroid…
  • Stardust (spacecraft)Stardust was a 385-kilogram robotic space probe that launched on the 7th of February 1999 on a mission to do something no spacecraft had ever done: fly…
  • Mariner 10NASA launched Mariner 10 on the 3rd of November 1973 from Cape Canaveral. Boeing finished building the spacecraft at the end of June 1973 in Seattle before…
  • Mariner 2Mariner 2 left Cape Canaveral on the 27th of August 1962, and flew for 110 days before passing within 34,773 kilometers of Venus.
  • Deep Impact (spacecraft)A comet-impact mission first appeared on NASA's desk in 1996. Engineers at the agency were skeptical that a probe could hit such a moving target.
  • International Cometary ExplorerThe International Cometary Explorer was born with a different name, a different purpose, and a different destination. Launched on the 12th of August 1978 as…
  • Pioneer 6, 7, 8, and 9The Pioneer 6 probe launched on the 16th of December 1965 from Cape Canaveral. It was part of a series designed to measure solar wind and magnetic fields.