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Mission record

Venera 2

Also known as Venus 2, Venera2

U.S.S.R · Launched

Explore trajectory

Lost · Failure

A Venus mission launched with its Tyazheliy Sputnik platform from Baikonur and launched from Earth parking orbit into a heliocentric orbit towards the planet. Communications during the cruise were generally poor and sporadic, and the communication system ceased to operate before the planet was reached because radiator elements did not function correctly and allowed it to overheat. The spacecraft passed Venus at a distance of 23,950 km on 27 February 1966 and entered a heliocentric orbit, and returned no data from the encounter.

Destinations
Launch vehicle
Modified SS-6 (Sapwood) with 2nd Generation Upper Stage + Escape Stage
Launch site
Tyuratam (Baikonur Cosmodrome), U.S.S.R
Countries
Soviet Union
Mission types
Flyby

Chronology

Mission timeline

  1. Launch

    Launched towards Venus from a Tyazheliy Sputnik platform

    NSSDCA's launch/orbital information page gives the launch date and time as 1965-11-12T05:02:00Z, recorded at minute precision because the page prints a whole minute with zero seconds, and publishes no trajectory details at all. The master catalog prints the same time as 5:02 UT on 12 November 1965 and records that Venera 2 was then launched from the platform into a heliocentric orbit towards the planet Venus. Source review: NSSDCA launch 05:02 UTC on November 12 conflicts with the NASA history's 04:46 UT. NSSDCA gives communication failure on February 10; the history describes poor communications from about three hours after injection and uncertain final loss near the encounter. The dated event is explicitly the NSSDCA account. A generic bus description uses the term lander probe; the mission was a flyby variant and its spherical scientific module is not evidence of an independently deployed lander.

    Earth

  2. Loss of contact

    Communication failure dated to February 10 by NSSDCA

    The current NSSDCA narrative dates communication failure to February 10. NASA history describes earlier intermittent trouble and uncertain final loss near the encounter; this day marks the catalog account, not a measured final signal epoch.

  3. Flyby

    Estimated Venus passage without encounter telemetry

    The master catalog records that on February 27, 1966, at 02:52 UT, the spacecraft passed Venus at a distance of 23,950 km and entered a heliocentric orbit, and returned no data from the encounter. Recorded at minute precision because that is the precision the page publishes. The reported minute and distance are retained as an estimated encounter; no time-tagged observed vector is supplied.

    Venus

Mission architecture

Vehicles

  • Venera 2 · 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.
  • Approach/departure directions and burn vectors between the reported encounters; body names and encounter distances alone are insufficient.
  • 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 September 14, 2026