Mariner 2, the world's first successful interplanetary spacecraft, was launched August 27, 1962 and passed 34,916 kilometers (21,648 miles) from Venus on December 14, 1962. Mariner 2 measured the temperatures of the clouds and surface of Venus as well as fields and particles near the planet and in interplaentary space. Contact was lost January 3, 1963 when the spacecraft was 86.9 million kilometers (53.9 million miles) from Earth. Mariner 2 was designed, built and controlled in flight by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA.
