UMSF space history photo of the month Options

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Maybe we could make this a monthly item, in which we could look back at the history of Unmanned Space missions.
For January 2008 I've chosen an image showing the coverage of the Sun by early Pioneer 5-8 spacecraft.
Pioneer 5 to 8, or Pioneer V to VIII using the system of Roman numerals in vogue during the early 1960s for spacecraft designations, were directed towards the Sun along the earth's orbit to monitor solar activity. Pioneer V was launched on 11th March 1960 and provided the very first space weather report 4 to 8 hours before a solar storm hit the Earth.
Some of this Pioneer quartet, Pioneer 6-7-8 even provided updates on our Sun's activity during the early Apollo Moon landings in order to check the damaging potential of solar flares to affect the astronauts.

[edstrick]

At or near the end of the planned period of reacquisition attempts, they DID recover the signal from Mariner 5. They detected carrier wave only, no telemetry, WAY outside expected frequency limits, I think varying irregularly in wavelength, and with signal strength variations indicating the spacecraft was in a slow roll. They were able to get the spacecraft to lock on to an uplink signal, I think, but no response whatever was observed to any commands sent to the spacecraft. Without telemetry and without any signal change in response to commands, they had very little to go on for troubleshooting.

Mariner 5 was in some mechanical equivalent of a "Permanently Vegetative State" and they finally just gave up on it.

The recovery attempts were part of a dual spacecraft solar wind / solar magnetic fields investigation with Mariner 4, back in communication with Earth after being out of telemetry for about a year or more around superior conjunction. During the experiment, both spacecaft were going to be on the same idealized magnetic field spiral carried out from the sun by the solar wind. Mariner 4 did fine, 5 was useless. Mariner 4's attitude control gas ran out at the end of it's extended mission and the spacecraft transmitter was commanded off.