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.

[nprev]

Phil, was Mariner 5 pretty much a backup bus for Mariner Mars 64? Reason I ask is that of course Mariner 3 was supposed to fly with 4 but was lost; seems odd that there would be a third spacecraft held in reserve, esp. because 5 had no camera.

[tedstryk]

Phil, was Mariner 5 pretty much a backup bus for Mariner Mars 64? Reason I ask is that of course Mariner 3 was supposed to fly with 4 but was lost; seems odd that there would be a third spacecraft held in reserve, esp. because 5 had no camera.

Mariner 5 would have had a camera as a Mars mission, but it was determined that that camera would have been relatively useless for a Venus mission, so it was removed, which also allowed the scan platform to be removed. To be clear, they didn't think that pictures of Venus were useless, but they didn't feel the Mariner 4 style camera would be able to take useful pictures. Had Mariner 4 failed, it probably would have been launched as a Mars probe.