On this day in space! May 20, 1978: NASA launches Pioneer Venus orbiter

News
By last updated

On May 20, 1978, NASA launched a spacecraft to Venus.

On May 20, 1978, NASA launched a spacecraft to Venus. The mission was called Pioneer-Venus 1, but it's also known as the Pioneer Venus Orbiter.

NASA's Pioneer Venus 1 spacecraft. (Image credit: NASA)

The mission launched from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas-Centaur rocket and reached Venus about six months later. While orbiting Venus, it measured the structure of the upper atmosphere and studied how the solar wind interacts with its ionosphere and magnetic field. It also detected gamma-ray bursts and made ultraviolet observations of comets.

Pioneer Venus 1 continued to beam back data for 14 years before its decaying orbit sent it into Venus's atmosphere, where it was destroyed.

On This Day in Space: See our full 365-day video archive!

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.

Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.