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Magellan reaches Venus; radar will map a planet no eye has seen
Built from Voyager spare parts, the probe arrives to punch through the clouds that have always hidden Venus's surface.
No American spacecraft had launched toward another planet in eleven years when Magellan lifted off from the shuttle Atlantis in May 1989. Venus's surface had never been seen: thick clouds hid it from every telescope pointed at it. On August 10, 1990, Magellan arrived and fired its rocket motor to slip into orbit. It carried a synthetic-aperture radar built to see through the haze. About five weeks later, on September 15, 1990, it began systematically mapping a world no one had actually seen…
