... Mars Polar Lander Mission Status . ... Flight controllers for Mars Polar Lander continued their attempts to communicate with the spacecraft yesterday and today so that they can be certain they have exhausted all possibilities before they conclude their search. ... Mission planners are also working to implement a plan to use Mars Global Surveyor to take pictures of the landing site for Mars Polar Lander starting sometime next week in hopes of spotting the spacecraft or parachute. ...

NASA's Galileo spacecraft, now in orbit around the planet Jupiter, this morning began the first scheduled return of data from its companion atmospheric probe that parachuted into the jovian atmosphere last Thursday. ... Forty minutes of data collected by the probe stored in the orbiter's onboard computer memory will be radioed to Earth over the next four days and presented to Galileo scientists for analysis. ... Space History Galileo . ...

Mariner 2 . Mariner 2, the world's first successful interplanetary spacecraft, was launched August 27, 1962. It reached Venus on December 14, 1962, after a 108-day journey from Earth. ... The Mariner 2 mission was authorized by NASA in August 1961, less than a year before the first launch window. ... Mariner 2, the world's first successful interplanetary spacecraft, was launched August 27, 1962, and passed 34,916 kilometers (21,648 miles) from Venus on December 14, 1962. ... Space History . ...

Cosmic Research, Vol. 42, No. 5, 2004, pp. 435­488. Translated from Kosmicheskie Issledovaniya, Vol. 42, No. 5, 2004, pp. 453­508. Original Russian Text Copyright © 2004 by Veselovsky, Panasyuk, Avdyushin, Bazilevskaya, Belov, Bogachev, Bogod, Bogomolov, Bothmer, Boyarchuk, Vashenyuk, Vlasov, Gnezdilov, Gorgutsa, Grechnev, Denisov, Dmitriev, Dryer, Yermolaev, Eroshenko, Zherebtsov, Zhitnik, Zhukov, Zastenker, Zelenyi, Zeldovich, Ivanov-Kholodnyi, Ignat'ev, Ishkov, Kolomiytsev, Krasheninnikov, Kudela,