A working group of scientists and engineers at NASA submit an official proposal for a spacecraft using synthetic aperture radar to map the surface of the planet Venus. Conceived as a mission that could be launched from a Titan IIIe or from the space shuttle, both of which still exist only on the drawing board, Venus Orbiter Imaging Radar (or VOIR) is designed to offer extensive mapping of Venus at a resolution much better than the coarse resolution of radar signals originating from Earth-based radio astronomy facilities such as Arecibo, along with such cutting-edge technologies as stereoscopic imaging and solar electric propulsion. Work on this mission will continue through the early 1980s, at which point it is cancelled by NASA and replaced by a cheaper mission intended to achieve the same goals, Magellan.
