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Mission record

Venera 1965A

Soviet Union · Launched

Explore trajectory

Failed · Failure

NASA NSSDCA’s tentative-launch page lists a possible failed Venus flyby on 26 November 1965, while its Venus chronology lists Venera 1965A on 23 November, the date of Cosmos 96. NASA’s Deep Space Chronicle calls Cosmos 96 the third and last Soviet spacecraft prepared for a 1965 Venus encounter, but does not discuss the separately dated tentative entry. Whether that entry denotes a distinct launch remains unresolved; no outbound trajectory is assigned.

Destinations
Launch vehicle
SL-6/A-2-e
Launch site
Tyuratam (Baikonur Cosmodrome)
Countries
Soviet Union
Mission types
Flyby

Chronology

Mission timeline

  1. Launch

    Tentative Venus mission launch failure

    NSSDCA’s tentative-launch page dates this possible Venus flyby to 26 November 1965 and says the SL-6/A-2-e launcher is believed to have failed. NSSDCA’s Venus chronology instead lists Venera 1965A on 23 November, the same date it lists Cosmos 96. NASA’s Deep Space Chronicle identifies Cosmos 96 (3MV-4 No. 6) as the third and last Soviet spacecraft prepared for a Venus encounter in 1965; it records that this separate spacecraft reached Earth orbit but its Blok L stage failed to inject it toward Venus. The chronology disagreement and NASA history do not establish whether the tentative 26 November entry is a distinct flight or a duplicate/misdated identity. Keep the tentative launch date and day precision; do not assign Cosmos 96’s identity or trajectory to this record.

    Earth

Mission architecture

Vehicles

  • Venera 1965A · Spacecraft

    Destinations: Venus

Trajectory record

Trajectory dataset not yet available

Known dates and encounters do not uniquely determine a flight path. This mission’s sourced timeline is available above; no verified trajectory is currently published here.

What is needed to reconstruct this path?
  • A frame-qualified position and vector velocity at an epoch, or equivalent complete orbital elements.
  • Finer event-time constraints where required by an orbital reconstruction; the stored day/month/year precision is retained.
  • The actual failed-flight state history. Intended destinations are not evidence that the spacecraft reached them.

Provenance

Sources

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

Data verified through October 5, 2026