Historical Photo of the Month - August 2008

VORTEX Instrument
Photograph Number 321-692

In addition to the missions that JPL has developed and managed for NASA, there are also missions which have been managed by other NASA centers and JPL has provided scientific instruments. The Pioneer Venus mission was managed by Ames Research Center near Mountain View, California. It included an orbiter, launched on May 20, 1978 and a bus with four atmospheric probes which was launched on August 8, 1978. The orbiter (Pioneer Venus 1) arrived on December 4, 1978 and the multiprobe (Pioneer Venus 2) arrived 5 days later, to collect scientific data about the atmosphere of the planet.

JPL provided five instruments for Pioneer Venus, including the Venus Orbiter Radiometric Temperature EXperiment (VORTEX), also known as the Orbiter Infrared Radiometer (OIR). Oxford University provided the pressure modulator (and principal investigator F.W. Taylor). The photo above shows a drawing done in November 1975, when the instrument was under development. The thumbnail below links to a larger image of the finished VORTEX instrument without its housing. The Section 321 photo album shows various steps in the fabrication, assembly and testing of the instrument, through May 1977. (JPL internal access only)

Photograph Number 321-889Bc

As it has done for most of NASA's missions, JPL also operated the Deep Space Network, which provided communication with the spacecraft and received data from it. Data was relayed to Oxford University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

For more information about the history of JPL, contact the JPL Archives for assistance. [Archival and other sources: photo index, Pioneer Venus web pages, A Record of NASA Space Missions Since 1958, Journal of Geophysical Research 12/30/80, Radiometer for the Pioneer Venus Orbiter, NASA Historical Data Book Vol. 3]