Various sources all seem to confirm that the camera's of the Mars 3 lander scanned vertical lines, moving from left to right, identical to the camera's on Luna 9/13 and on the later Venera landers. So, as has been mentioned here before, the image should be rotated by 90 degrees and the 'horizon' does not make sense unless the craft is lying (almost) on its side.

There is one more interesting description in 'The Difficult Road to Mars' of V.G. Perminov, who describes the receipt of the Mars 3 lander signal on earth: "The transmission of panoramic images of the Martian surface recorded on the magnetic tape was initiated. The main engineer of NII KP, Yu.K.Khodarev, who was standing close to the rack where the signal was displayed, gave a command to reduce the signal because it was too strong. Then, the telephotometer data were transmitted. There was a gray background with no details. In 14.5 seconds, the signal disappeared. The same thing happened with the second telephotometer."

I presume that the "image" we have is in fact the raw teleprint of the signal as received, in which case the quickly darkening after the white area is in fact not an automatic gain control, but a manual adjustment on receipt of the signal. With the image in its correct (vertical) orientation, the whole "horizon" is then also explained as a further manual adjustment of the gain in the hope of getting some picture...

Personally I am still convinced that the whole error was in the relay via the Mars 3 orbiter, and that the lander probably functioned normally and completed its whole preprogrammed surface schedule. Fact is that the lander survived its landing (it had to deploy its pads and antenna after landing in order to start its transmissions, so probably all the basic functions and electronics worked), and from what we now know the duststorm would probably not have had much effect on it, so it is weird that after surviving EDL and starting its surface operations, both transmitters should shut down more or less at the same time.
On the other hand we do know that the Mars 3 orbiter had some serious trouble when braking into Mars orbit. It's engineburn was cut short, resulting in a completely wrong orbit, and it lost 3-axis stabilisation untill one hour after the burn, at which time the lander data was finally transmitted to earth.
With the orbiter not 3-axis stabilised it sounds reasonable that its relay antenna were not pointing to the Mars surface and it lost lock on the lander signal quickly, in which case it is logical that all lander-channels were lost almost at the same time. The 'picture' seems to confirm this, there are black 'gaps' which seem to indicate the signal was lost, then regained, and then lost again, it did not suddenly stop but it faded in and out a few times..

Finally, the lander was pre-programmed for a surface transmission of 25 minutes, where after it would switch to hibernation mode and wait for a signal from the orbiter on its next pass (scheduled 25 hours later) before starting the next transmission. However, the orbiter burned into a completely wrong orbit, with a period of 12 days, and by the time it finally passed over the landing site again, the lander was long dead...

The only 'hope' of ever getting any information from the Mars 3 lander is finding the original tape of the transmission (the one without the manual changes to the gain), if the error was indeed in the orbiter relay due to failure of its attitude-control, then there might be some very faint whisper of the lander somewhere on the tape which was overlooked at the time, and with our modern equipment something might be retrieved from it. But I guess this is overly optimistic...

Two or three minutes into the transmission, the first data transmission (temperature, pressure, etc.) would have come in. If that could be pulled out of a tape, it would be amazing. I seriously doubt that, even if the tapes exist, that anything can be recovered, but it would be cool if it could.

Dear Tedstryk. I'd be really grateful if you could re-post your images from the start of this thread as the links seem to have expired - I'm totally intrigued !!!

It was an image I clearly labeled a "what if" image, using highly speculative techniques, basically just playing around. Brian Harvey asked to use it in his book on Soviet planetary probes, he described it with a fabricated tale of it being found in Soviet archives in Moscow after the Soviet collapse. I will never work with him again. I know other contributors to that book feel the same way for this and many other issues. The first one I would still consider a highly processed image, but the second one really (that Harvey claimed was found in the archives) is more of a drawing than a processed image.

I don't know, Ted. They're undeniably fascinating, but it looks so rocky that I'm having a hard time deciding if this is interpolated noise or not...almost looks Gaussian.

Certainly not criticizing you or your efforts, please understand.

nprev, as I said in my description at the beginning of this thread, I think it is most likely just noise. That is why I called it a "what if" image. The only difference between the two images is the level of extreme I took it to....so no offense taken.

On his excellent site on Soviet Space Cameras ( http://www.mentallandscape.com/V_Cameras.htm#Luna9 ) Don Mitchell shows a pen plotter display of the signal from the Mars 3 lander ( http://www.mentallandscape.com/V_Mars3Signal.jpg ), I suspect this plot is the source of the circulating "Mars 3 image", the true plot (and tape?) must be somewhere hiding in some Russian archive if it still exists.

As explained on above site, the plotter was drawing with horizontal strokes, however the camera was scanning with vertical lines, so the image should be rotated by 90 degrees. As also noted by Perminov, the "picture" was featureless, just a grey background. I seem to remember reading somewhere that there was even doubt whether or not this was the actual video signal, the transmitter was working but the camera itself was not (yet?) online. After only 14.5 seconds the signal from both camera's was lost.

We don't know what happened to the Mars 3 lander, we DO know that the Mars 3 orbiter, who relayed the signal, had serious trouble burning into mars orbit, ending up in a completely wrong orbit (period of 12 days instead of 25 hours) and losing 3 axis stabilization for about one hour, this doesn't sound like a very favorable situation for a data relay and might explain why the signal was lost. The lander was pre-programmed to transmit for 25 minutes, where after it would go into hibernation waiting for a signal from the orbiter on its next orbit, however due to its erroneous orbit the orbiter did not pass the landing site again until the lander battery's were long dead, so they never got a second chance to contact the lander.

Many thanks Ted. I can remember as a teenager in the 80s reading about the tantalising 'partial image' from Mars 3. I must have trawled through half the libraries in London to actually see it for myself - without success. I think what your images succinctly articulate is that all too human frailty of seeing what we want to see - transforming a little strip of noise into the first fleeting glimpse of another world. All I can say is thank goodness the Viking landers succeeded not too long afterwards. Can you imagine how iconic this 'image' might have become amongst the conspiracy theorists? The one and only probe to successfully make it to the surface suddenly and mysteriously falls silent. What is it that 'they' do not want us to see? And who are 'they'? Those that built the mighty Face on Mars of course!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is a shame they didn't start the transmission with a temperature/pressure reading or something like that. They would have been able to claim the first data from the Martian surface. Depending on the account, the signal dropped out after 14.5 or 20 seconds. However, the lander had already been on the surface for 90 seconds. That is part of what makes the loss so odd. The Mars-3 orbiter was in a poor position to try to recover it after the initial landing sequence, although it did try. As Geert eluded to, they placed it in a very high orbit that only occasionally brought it near the planet. It was no accident - it had leaked a lot of fuel during cruise, so the planned burn to put it in a shorter orbit was impossible. The fact that they were able to salvage anything is remarkable.

Conspiracy theorists are and will always be a lost case. Not only because they're always wrong, but because they don't understand engineering. Now we know a lot of technical information about Mars 2/3 landers, that they have a simpler design than Vikings (Ballistic entry+parachute+solid engines+protective foam) and it indeed works. It only needs to be improved. A good starting point for all organizations and agencies that want to land a probe on Mars.

Well, the Mars-2 and Mars-3 landers are separate cases. Mars-2 was planned using innacurate data about the atmosphere, leading to a suicide trajectory. The only way we will ever know what happened to Mars-3 is the very remote chance that something is recovered off the transmission tapes or the more likely chance that orbital imaging picks it up and gives clues to what might have happened. In the case of Mars-3, the Soviet scientists did try to process the tapes to pull out a signal beyond the time of loss of contact (this worked for Venera-7), but with no luck. I still would love to give modern equipment a crack at it. They indeed had a simpler landing technique. Also, the Vikings are the only planetary landers to have been placed into orbit until an opportune time, after the sites had been surveyed and atmospheric conditions were checked out. A very interesting thing is the Mars'96 penatrator design, which takes the hard lander idea to a new level. The MetNet landers are basically Mars-96 penetrators with improved instruments, so that design isn't dead. The small station design was never built on, but a major reason for that is the fact that the MetNet hard landers can do almost everything that the small stations were going to do and are cheaper, so thanks to improved instrumentation, they are no longer needed.

Yeah, MetNet is an elegant decision. However, I'd like to see them traveling aboard Phobos-Grunt rather than launching them separately with a Volna rocket (which will be suicidal for the mission).

Why is that suicidal? The Phobos-Grunt plan was to release the Metnet lander(s?) before entering orbit, so I don't see a difference. The only thing I wish is that they were sending more than one. A badly placed rock could ruin the mission.

I personally see Volna as an unreliable vehicle.

Oh, OK, in the sense of possible launch failure. I see what you mean now.