Mariner 10 was a NASA space probe, the first to visit the planet Mercury and the first to use a gravity assist to reach another planet. After its launch it flew past Venus in February 1974, using the planet's gravity to bend its path toward Mercury, and returned ultraviolet images of Venus's clouds. It then made three flybys of Mercury, in March 1974, September 1974 and March 1975, mapping about half of the planet's surface and detecting an unexpected magnetic field. Contact ended when the spacecraft ran out of gas for its attitude control. No other probe visited Mercury until MESSENGER arrived in 2008 and entered orbit in 2011.
Before and after
- from 16 October 1973 to 17 March 19741973 oil crisis
- 20 October 1973Construction of Sydney Opera House
- 30 October 1973Construction of Bosphorus Bridge
- 1 November 1973Birth of Aishwarya Rai
- 3 November 1973Launch of Mariner 10
- from 14 November 1973 to 17 November 1973Athens Polytechnic uprising
- 29 November 1973Birth of Ryan Giggs
- 1 December 1973Death of David Ben-Gurion
- 3 December 1973Pioneer 10 flies past Jupiter
More in Universe & space
- 4 October 1957Launch of Sputnik 1
- 22 October 1969Discovery of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko
- 14 September 1974Discovery of Leda
- 28 July 1989Discovery of Galatea
- 19 January 2006Launch of New Horizons
- 26 June 2012Discovery of Styx
The era
This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 20th century.