Venera 2

Mission

Venera 2 was launched by a Molniya carrier rocket, flying from Site 31/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The launch occurred at 05:02 UTC on 12 November 1965, with the first three stages placing the spacecraft and Blok-L upper stage into a low Earth parking orbit before the Blok-L fired to propel Venera 2 into heliocentric orbit bound for Venus, with perihelion of 0.716 AU, aphelion of 1.197 AU, eccentricity of 0.252, inclination of 4.29 degrees and orbital period of 341 days.

The Venera 2 spacecraft was equipped with cameras, as well as a magnetometer, solar and cosmic x-ray detectors, piezoelectric detectors, ion traps, a Geiger counter and receivers to measure cosmic radio emissions. The spacecraft made its closest approach to Venus at 02:52 UTC on 27 February 1966, at a distance of 23810 km.

During the flyby, all of Venera 2's instruments were activated, requiring that radio contact with the spacecraft be suspended. The probe was to have stored data using onboard recorders, and then transmitted it to Earth once contact was restored. Following the flyby the spacecraft failed to reestablish communications with the ground. It was declared lost on 4 March 1966. An investigation into the failure determined that the spacecraft had overheated due to a radiator malfunction.

Misidentification

In March 2025, Abraham Loeb published a paper where he claimed that the asteroid is the same object as Venera 2, arguing that the asteroid made its closest approach to Earth in November 1965 (around the same time that Venera 2 launched). However, this was quickly disproven by Federico Spada and Jonathan McDowell, where reconstructions of Venera 2's orbital trajectory does not match with that of , adding that the asteroid itself did not even made a close encounter with Venus in early 1966.

References

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| access-date= 18 August 2019 | archive-date= 18 August 2019 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20190818143640/https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/venera-2/in-depth/ | url-status= dead }}

| access-date= 11 April 2013 | archive-date= 16 December 2016 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20161216231450/http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1965-091A | url-status= dead

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