Mariner probes find out information on Mercury, Mars, and Venus, the inner planets. They also takes pictures of the planets.

In December 1962, Mariner 2 accomplished a major event - it returned information about Venus. Another great accomplishment is when Apollo landed six men on the moon! Between 1962 and 1963, space probes were launched without a man! Mariner 3 failed on November 5, 1964. Without the Sun's energy for the solar panels its batteries died and so did the probe. Mariner 8 had failed, too. Even worse, on the launch - Luna 2 and Luna 3 took pictures of the moon.

Mariner 9 gave information about the Red Planet. It also took images of Mar's two moons. Mariner 10 had also images that were close-up. The images were from the Venusian atmosphere. Luna 16 had returned samples of the Moon. Venera 7 was  the first probe that had returned data that was about the surface on Venus.

Viking 1 was launched on August 20, 1975, and it went into the orbit of the Martian planet on June 19, 1976. Viking 2 and 1 accomplished the same task, but Viking 2 was launched September 7, 1976. Its'  last information was sent November 11, 1982. Voyager 1 was launched September 5, 1977. On March 5, 1979 it flew by Jupiter.

Launched August 20, 1977 was Voyager 2. And it flew by four planets. Jupiter on August 7, 1979, Saturn  August 26, 1981, January 24, 1986 it flew by Uranus, and it flew right by Neptune. In 1979, Pioneer 11 became the first probe to study the planet Saturn. Giotto was launched July 2, 1985. It was damaged with high speed encounters by Comet Halley while it was doing a flyby.   Phobos were two space crafts launched in 1988. Without a trace, one failed. The other one failed too, but before it did some pictures were sent back. When the probe Clementine was launched a man named Lawrence Livermore had helped the probe. He had developed a flight sensor.

Credits:
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/solarsys.htm
http://library.thinkquest.org/J002741/mariner_probe.htm
http://www.nineplanets.org/spacecraft.html#marin4