RARE Pioneer Venus Orbiter 1978 NASA ARC Hughes Staff Photo Album Build Launch

Description: NASA Pioneer Venus Orbiter 1978 ARC Hughes Rare Staff Photo Album Build/Launch Offering this rare photo album containing over 85 photographs of the assembly and launch of the Pioneer Venus Orbiter 1 (May 20, 1978) and Pioneer Venus 2 (August 8, 1978). This album belonged to a staff member involved in the build for NASA / Ames Research Center / Hughes. It includes candid photos of the employees in their work environment, building the orbiter, and the launch. It also includes the Pioneer Venus Newsletter, newspaper clipping of the launch, POPPR newsletter, an Air Missile Support group photo (dated August 16, 1960) and various other personal photos. There are over 185 photos in this album. Please examine photographs, they are part of the description. Questions welcome. From the Pioneer Venus Newsletter dated May 17, 1978… “When Pioneer Venus Orbiter lifts into the morning sky over Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Saturday, May 20, the spacecraft will carry 12 scientific instruments, each of which will sense certain qualities of the planet and transmit the data back to Earth. The instruments are actually small laboratories, designed in response to NASA's Announcement of Opportunity, an invitation to the academic com-munity, Government agencies, and private industry to participate in this ambitious exploration of our neighboring planet's atmosphere, surface, and dynamics. In addition to designing and building the Orbiter to accommodate this science "package" Hughes was responsible for design and fabrication of two of the instruments, the radar mapper and cloud photopolarimeter, and provided interface and integration for all experiments. Pioneer Venus - NASA's only planetary mission of 1978 - thus represents a technical challenge among the greatest faced by Space and Communications Group since Surveyor landed on the moon in 1966. The spacecraft's design lifetime is one Venusian day, the equivalent of 243 Earth days. Six months will elapse before Orbiter enters Venus' atmosphere. During its periapsis orbit, which will bring the spacecraft within 90 miles of Venus, atmospheric samples will be taken onboard and analyzed, and the data formatted and transmitted to Earth. In apoapsis, when Orbiter will be some 41,000 miles from the planet, its imaging instruments will function. The spacecraft will be in continuous contact with Earth - through one of three Deep Space Network stations, located in Canberra, Australia; Madrid, Spain; and Goldstone, California. The receiving station will transfer data to NASA personnel at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, who will command the craft. The Pioneer Venus program is a significant contribution by Hughes to comparative planetology and meteorology, mankind's most effective methods for learning more about the origin and destiny of our own Earth. Hughes' employees, their families and friends, are invited to share in the excitement of the launch on May 20. A launch information center with direct telephone contact to Cape Canaveral will be set up on the eleventh floor of Building 373, El Segundo, beginning at 1 a.m. PDT. Launch is scheduled for 6:13 am PDT.”

Price: 525 USD

Location: Las Vegas, Nevada

End Time: 2024-09-27T21:13:54.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 USD