1975: Mariner 10, the first spacecraft to visit two planets, completes its third and final fly-by of Mercury. Mariner 10, the last of the Mariner family, launched on Nov. 3, 1973 from Cape Canaveral, ...

NASA’s Mariner 10 became the first space probe to fly by Mercury on March 29, 1974. It was launched on November 3, 1973, approximately two years after Mariner 9 and was the last spacecraft in the ...

On Sept. 21, 1974, the Mariner 10 spacecraft made its second flyby of Mercury, passing by the surface at a distance of just under 30,000 miles (48,000 kilometers). Launched Nov. 3, 1973, Mariner 10 ...

As it sped away from Venus, NASA’s Mariner 10 spacecraft captured this seemingly peaceful view of a planet the size of Earth, wrapped in a dense, global cloud layer. But, contrary to its serene ...

Click to open image viewer. Mariner 10 was the seventh successful launch in the Mariner series and the first spacecraft to use the gravitational pull of one planet (Venus) to reach another (Mercury).

On Feb. 5, 1974, Mariner 10 took this first close-up photo of Venus. Made using an ultraviolet filter in its imaging system, the photo has been color-enhanced to bring out Venus’s cloudy atmosphere as ...

The ESA's BepiColombo mission blasted off over the weekend on its way to Mercury, but it's not the first spacecraft to explore the small planet closest to the Sun. The first, Mariner 10, swung past ...