Rocket Puts Magellan on Course to Venus
The Magellan radar-mapping probe launched from the shuttle Atlantis on May 4 successfully completed a critical 5.6-second rocket firing late Sunday to nudge the craft onto the proper course for its 1990 encounter with cloud-shrouded Venus.
More than 2 million miles from Earth and hurtling through space at 60,000 m.p.h. relative to the sun, Magellan’s eight rocket thrusters flashed to life at 7 p.m., increasing the spacecraft’s velocity by a scant 6.6 m.p.h.
The computer instructions for the “burn” were radioed to Magellan from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
“Everything went real well,” said Sam Dallas, a mission design manager at JPL.
Dallas said the “trajectory correction maneuver” was required to make sure the spacecraft will fly into the proper orbit as it sails over the north pole of Venus on Aug. 10, 1990. Magellan was built to map the surface of Venus using a high-tech imaging radar system.
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