Mariner Mars 1964, Mariners 3 and 4 to Mars: imaging plans? |
Mariner Mars 1964, Mariners 3 and 4 to Mars: imaging plans? |
Apr 28 2005, 05:05 PM
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Solar System Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 10256 Joined: 5-April 05 From: Canada Member No.: 227 |
I am currently working on a book about lunar exploration, but looking ahead to the next one, which will cover Mars. One question to which I think I have an answer - but I'd like to see what my fellow Mars enthusiasts think - is this:
Mariner 3 failed to leave Earth. But if it had flown successfully, what area on Mars would it have photographed? My understanding is that there was no specific plan. The MM64 press kit, for instance, says nothing about image coverage for either Mariner 3 or Mariner 4. I believe that navigation to planetary distances was still so uncertain that the flight team could not predict at launch the sub-spacecraft point at closest approach - uncertainties included the exact time of the flyby, the distance and the point at which the spacecraft would pass through the target plane. These things would be known closer to the flyby but they weren't precisely predictable at launch, so Mariner 3 never got to the stage of having an imaging plan. Am I right? Phil -------------------- ... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.
Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke Maps for download (free PDF: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Cartography.pdf NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain) |
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
Mar 16 2006, 10:41 PM
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Oh, yes. I well remember the shock when the dust cleared and all those things started getting gradually unveiled before Mariner 9. Still, I doubt that their earlier discovery would have done much to change the schedule of launches -- the one aspect of that schedule that wasn't rational was the launch of the 1969 flyby Mariners instead of jumping directly to 1971-type orbiters, and that was a consequence of the fact that the Mariner Mars program kept getting expanded incrementally as the Voyager Mars program gradually fell apart. (I even learned recently that in 1968 they seriously considered cancelling the second 1969 Mariner flyby so that they could save money by rebuilding the craft into one of the 1971 Mariner orbiters, as they rebuilt the 1969 spare flyby craft into the other 1971 orbiter.)
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