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.....The
Magellan spacecraft was the first
planetary explorer to be launched by a
space shuttle when it was carried aloft
by the shuttle Atlantis from Kennedy
Space Center in Florida on May 4, 1989.
Atlantis took Magellan into low Earth
orbit, where it was released from the
shuttle's cargo bay and fired by a solid-fuel
motor called the Inertial Upper Stage (IUS)
on its way to Venus. Magellan looped
around the Sun one-and-a-half times
before arriving at Venus on August 10,
1990. A solid-fuel motor on the
spacecraft then fired, placing Magellan
into a near-polar elliptical orbit around
Venus.
.....The
spacecraft carried a sophisticated
imaging radar, which was used to make the
most highly detailed map of Venus ever
captured during its four years in orbit
around Venus from 1990 to 1994. After
concluding its radar mapping, Magellan
also made global maps of Venus's gravity
field. Flight controllers then tested a
new maneuvering technique called
aerobraking, which uses a |
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