The Magellan spacecraft: Mapping the surface of Venus
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| Magellan being prepared to be released from Space Shuttle Atlantis. Credit: NASA |
You can build your own Magellan spacecraft out of LEGO here.
Named after 16 century explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the Magellan spacecraft was the first interplanetary spacecraft to be launched from the iconic space shuttle. It's mission was to map the surface of Venus, which is hidden from view by dense cloud cover. The information in this article may be somewhat deficient, as the official Magellan website seems to be defunct.
You can find a fact sheet about the Magellan mission here, and here. Some links may be defunct.
The Mission
Before Magellan was launched, it was sometimes refered to as a "spare parts" program. Magellan had a low budget, so the team that assembled the spacecraft had to use what they had on hand. The spacecraft's antenna and engines where Voyager spares, and tape recorder parts where taken from Galileo spares.
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| Launch of Magellan aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis. Credit: NASA |
Magellan was launched aboard space shuttle Atlantis on May 4, 1989. 6 hours and 14 minutes after liftoff, Magellan was released from the shuttle aboard its Inertial Upper Stage (IUS). This two stage booster was used to send off interplanetary spacecraft from shuttle including the Ulysses and Galileo spacecraft.
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| Magellan's orbital trajectory. Credit: NASA |
After travelling through space for 15 months, Magellan reached Venus on August 10, 1990. Magellan began continuous mapping of the surface for 243 days straight. This is the length of a Venus day, which is unusually long. In fact, a venusian day is longer than a venusian year! Magellan went on to scan the surface for five more 243 day cycles.
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| Artist's illustration of Magellan orbiting Venus. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech |
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| Magellan radar map of Venus centered at 180 degrees east longitude. Credit: NASA/JPL |
After Magellan completed its Venus mapping operations, it intentionally burned up in Venus 's atmosphere on October 12, 1994. This was the end of the Magellan spacecraft, but its legacy continues to live on.
In 2022, a year after NASA revealed two new Venus missions, Robert Herrik and his team discovered volcanic activity in Magellan data. Inspired by the announcement of the new missions, Herrik's team spent 200 hours sifting through the old Magellan data. Maat Mons, one of Venus's largest volcanos, was seen to have changed between February and October of 1991. This was the first evidence of volcanic activity on the surface. The discovery shows Venus is not yet a dead world, and still possesses geological activity today.
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| Exagerated 3D view of Maat Mons. Credit: NASA/JPL |
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| Location of Maat Mons. Credit: NASA/JPL |
The Target
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| Original and enhanced views of Venus from Mariner 10. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech |
- Date Discovered: Known To The Ancients
- Radius: 6051.8 Kilometres
- Surface Pressure: 90.82 Atmospheres
- Atmospheric Composition: Carbon Dioxide, Suphuric Acid, and Hydrogen Sulfide
- Mass: 4.8673x10^24 Kilograms
- Density: 15.243 g/cm^3
- Rotational Period: -243.018 Days*
- Orbital Period: 224.7 Days
*Negative number indicates retrograde (clockwise) rotation
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