Table of Contents . ... Image and Animation Index . Solar System Introduction . ... Educator's Guide to Convection . ... Chronology of Sun Exploration . ... Chronology of Mercury Exploration . ... Chronology of Venus Exploration . ... Mars . Mars Introduction . ... Selected Images from Mars Pathfinder . ... Chronology of Mars Exploration . ... Mars Image Browser . ... Galileo Spacecraft Press Releases and Information . ... Comets . ... Chronology of Comet Space Exploration . ... Introduction . ...

... Taken from the NASA/JPL information summary "Our Solar System at a Glance". The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) automated spacecraft for solar system exploration come in many shapes and sizes. ... Electrical power is required to operate the spacecraft instruments and systems. ... Between 1959 and 1971, NASA spacecraft were dispatched to study the Moon and the solar environment; they also scanned the inner planets other than Earth -- Mercury , Venus and Mars . ...

... Spacecraft . ... To space by cannon? Finally, the deep space explorers --spacecraft which break away from the Earth's gravity . ... The "Luna" series of the USSR conducted 7 soft landing of unmanned probes, two of them with wheeled robotic "Lunokhods," and two of those missions returned samples to Earth. Others spacecraft have visited the major planets of the Solar system. ... The Mariner series have explored Venus and Mars--and Mariner 10 even reached Mercury, for three separate encounters! ...

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,