Magellan Space Probe is Inserted in Orbit Around Venus. The first spacecraft to be launched by a space shuttle, Magellan was a robotic space probe that spent 8 months gathering data about the surface of the planet also known as Earth's twin. The probe was launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida on May 4, 1989, when Space Shuttle Atlantis took it to low Earth orbit and released it.
Magellan (spacecraft)