Launch of Mariner 10

Date: November 3, 1973 • Location: Washington D.C., United States

Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 10 toward Mercury. On March 29, 1974, it becomes the first space probe to reach that planet.

The Mariner program was conducted by the American space agency NASA to explore other planets. Between 1962 and late 1973, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) designed and built 10 robotic interplanetary probes named Mariner to explore the inner Solar System – successfully returning data from the planets Venus, Mars and Mercury for the first time, and returning to Venus and Mars for additional close observations.