File:Venera_1_(a)_(Memorial_Museum_of_Astronautics).JPG · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Key facts
- Mission type
- Venus impactor
- Operator
- OKB-1
- Harvard designation
- 1961 Gamma 1
- Cospar id
- 1961-003A
- Mission duration
- 7 days
- Spacecraft
- 1VA No.2
- Manufacturer
- OKB-1
- Launch mass
- 6,424.0 kilograms (14,162.5 lb)
- Dry mass
- 643.5 kilograms (1,419 lb)
- Launch date
- 12 February 1961, 00:34:36 ( 1961-02-12UTC00:34:36Z ) UTC
- Rocket
- Molniya 8K78
- Launch site
- Baikonur 1/5
- Last contact
- 19 February 1961 ( 1961-02-20 )
- Reference system
- Heliocentric
- Perihelion altitude
- 0.718 AU
- Aphelion altitude
- 1.019 AU
- Inclination
- 0.58°
- Period
- 311 days
via Wikipedia infobox
~6 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Venera 1 (Russian: Венера-1 meaning Venus 1), also known as Venera-1VA No.2 and occasionally in the West as Sputnik 8, was the first spacecraft to perform an interplanetary flight and the first to fly past Venus, as part of the Soviet Union's Venera programme. Launched in February 1961, it was intended as an impactor, but flew past Venus on 19 May of the same year; however, radio contact with the probe was lost before the flyby, resulting in returning only some data and only from interplanetary space.
Spacecraft
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Venera 1” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.