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Mission record

Venera 2

Also known as Venus 2, Venera2

U.S.S.R · Launched

Explore trajectory

Lost · Failure

A Venus mission launched with its Tyazheliy Sputnik platform from Baikonur and launched from Earth parking orbit into a heliocentric orbit towards the planet. Communications during the cruise were generally poor and sporadic, and the communication system ceased to operate before the planet was reached because radiator elements did not function correctly and allowed it to overheat. The spacecraft passed Venus at a distance of 23,950 km on 27 February 1966 and entered a heliocentric orbit, and returned no data from the encounter.

Destinations
Launch vehicle
Modified SS-6 (Sapwood) with 2nd Generation Upper Stage + Escape Stage
Launch site
Tyuratam (Baikonur Cosmodrome), U.S.S.R
Countries
Soviet Union
Mission types
Flyby

Chronology

Mission timeline

  1. Launch

    Launched towards Venus from a Tyazheliy Sputnik platform

    NSSDCA's launch/orbital information page gives the launch date and time as 1965-11-12T05:02:00Z, recorded at minute precision because the page prints a whole minute with zero seconds, and publishes no trajectory details at all. The master catalog prints the same time as 5:02 UT on 12 November 1965 and records that Venera 2 was then launched from the platform into a heliocentric orbit towards the planet Venus.

    Earth

  2. Flyby

    Passed Venus at 23,950 km with no contact

    The master catalog records that on February 27, 1966, at 02:52 UT, the spacecraft passed Venus at a distance of 23,950 km and entered a heliocentric orbit, and returned no data from the encounter. Recorded at minute precision because that is the precision the page publishes.

    Venus

  3. Loss of contact

    Communication system ceased to operate before the encounter

    The master catalog records that the spacecraft communication system had ceased to operate on February 10, before the planet was reached, and that the system failed because radiator elements did not function correctly and allowed it to overheat; attempts to contact the spacecraft were ended on March 4. Carried without a timestamp because neither sentence prints a year and this catalog does not read a year out of a neighbouring sentence.

Mission architecture

Vehicles

  • Venera 2 · Spacecraft

    Destinations: Venus

Trajectory record

Trajectory dataset not yet available

No verified trajectory dataset is committed for this mission, so Mission Atlas renders no path.

Provenance

Sources

Each source is listed once and labeled with the mission, event, trajectory, or destination/body context it supports.

Data verified through September 3, 2026