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Mariner Mars 1964, Mariners 3 and 4 to Mars: imaging plans?
Phil Stooke
post Apr 28 2005, 05:05 PM
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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.

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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Nov 29 2005, 05:56 AM
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Guests






Fawning won't be necessary. It was indeed the originally planned destination of one of the 1959 Atlas-Able probes. It and the probe that later became Pioneer 5, after being launched in 1960, were to be launched in the direction of Venus in the first few days of June 1959 -- but Pioneer 5 (lauched by a Thor-Able, later to be renamed Thor-Delta) had no midcourse correction system and so would certainly have missed Venus by a great distance, whereas the spin-stabilized Atlas-Able probe had two hydrazine engines pointing out its two poles. The rearward pointing one could be fired four times; the forward-pointing one only twice (at least in the lunar version), with one of those burns being for final orbit insertion -- but apparently they had some confidence that this awkward setup could put them close enough to have a shot at orbiting Venus.

This thing came astonishingly close to being launched -- the front-page headline for the NY Times on (I believe) May 1, 1959 shows the mission being cancelled only then, apparently because the planned science experiments couldn't be gotten ready in time. I've spent years trying to find out what those experiments were, but the only clue I've found is a single paragraph in a 1959 issue of "Astronautics" magazine quoting a Lousisiana Congressman on "Meet the Press" who very briefly described them in a way which implies that they were exactly the same as on the second Atlas-Able Pioneer, which was scheduled for a launch to the Moon later in 1959. That is, they were particles and fields experiments, plus an IR photometer that could build up a low-resolution spin-scan map -- of the Moon's farside, or (presumably) Venus' cloud tops. (I'd assume that such a craft could have carried a UV photometer like Mariner 5's, to measure the planet's atomic H and O and thus provide an indirect estimate of its water vapor; but this wasn't mentioned. I also presume that it could, in any case, have carrried out radio occultations of Venus' atmosphere.)

At any rate, after that cancellation, Pioneer 5 was rescheduled for a launch in late 1959 into a solar orbit with its perihelion at Venus' orbit -- and after months of technical delays it ws finally launched in March 1960, although the booster underperformed somewhat and so it fell well short of reaching Venus' orbit. They had hoped to communicate with it at distances of up to 50 million miles, but a slow battery leak finally silenced it 22.5 million miles out -- which still utterly shattered Pioneer 4's radio-range record of 407,000 miles.

The Atlas-Able probe was rescheduled for that single launch to the Moon on Oct. 3 (a day before the Russians launched Luna 3), but its Atlas booster blew itself to kingdom come during a static test on Sept. 24, so they drafted the Atlas that had been scheduled for the second unmanned Mercury "Big Joe" test (which had been cancelled because the first was successful) and attached the Able upper stages and the probe to that instead. It took off on Nov. 26 and immediately failed ignominiously because its payload shroud hadn't been adequately vented and came off due to internal air pressure about 45 seconds after launch; the air blast quickly tore off the probe and the third stage, and damaged the second state enough to knock out its radio (apparently it then ignited without separating from the Atlas). This, of course, would have happened had it been launched to Venus.

Since the cancellation of the Venus launch meant that they still had a second such probe built, the White House ordered a third probe to be built, one launch attempt to be made in 1960, and the third probe launched only if that first 1960 effort failed. Alas, they too both failed. (Neither carried that IR scanner; instead, they were the very first US spacecraft to carry plasma analyzers.)

Clearly NASA's very early ambitions exceeded its grasp; the agency must have initiated this plan almost as soon as it was created at the start of 1959. It's very hard to find data on the Venus plan for this thing, but I first heard about it at age 11 from the space column of a 1959 back issue of "Sky & Telescope". You can find sprinkled references to it in other places, such as Aviation Week -- and notably that NY Times front-page headline article -- but about a decade ago, when I corresponded with one of the experimenters for the Atlas-Able probes' radiation experiments to try and get more information on it (he'd written a late 1980s nostalgic retrospective in a major science journal), I was thunderstruck to learn that HE had never heard of the Venus part of the plan!
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Posts in this topic
- Phil Stooke   Mariner Mars 1964   Apr 28 2005, 05:05 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   Well, actually it DID leave Earth -- it just left ...   Apr 28 2005, 10:52 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   Bruce: "Tell us about it, Janet!" ...   Apr 29 2005, 12:05 PM
||- - gndonald   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Apr 29 2005, 08:05 PM)Bruce...   Aug 9 2005, 02:04 PM
|- - The Messenger   In 1964, the question of whether there were 'c...   Aug 11 2005, 10:22 PM
|- - tasp   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Apr 28 2005, 04:52 PM)Co...   Nov 29 2005, 03:32 AM
|- - DonPMitchell   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Apr 28 2005, 03:52 P...   May 31 2006, 03:48 AM
- - JRehling   QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Apr 28 2005, 10:05 AM)I ...   Apr 28 2005, 11:13 PM
- - Phil Stooke   Thanks for these comments. And Bruce, I was inadv...   Apr 29 2005, 12:31 AM
- - edstrick   Mariner 4 had a scan platform, and one option they...   Apr 29 2005, 09:35 AM
|- - peter59   QUOTE (edstrick @ Apr 29 2005, 09:35 AM)Marin...   Apr 29 2005, 07:22 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   Yep. In fact, they decided some months before the...   Apr 29 2005, 11:48 PM
- - edstrick   Bruce.. that matches what I recall without digging...   Apr 30 2005, 08:36 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   Yep, that's all correct. (Don't ask me ho...   Apr 30 2005, 01:35 PM
|- - tedstryk   A planet sensor might be more trouble than it is w...   Apr 30 2005, 02:27 PM
|- - Tom Tamlyn   In Bruce Murray's book "Journey into Spac...   Oct 29 2005, 02:22 AM
|- - mcaplinger   QUOTE (Tom Tamlyn @ Oct 28 2005, 06:22 PM)In ...   Nov 29 2005, 05:40 AM
- - Phil Stooke   Ted - thanks for this... I'm not doubting you,...   Apr 30 2005, 03:52 PM
|- - tedstryk   I've got some documentation of this somewhere ...   Apr 30 2005, 06:17 PM
- - edstrick   Mariner 69 and it's mission was designed aroun...   May 1 2005, 07:59 AM
- - edstrick   Ted... I'd assume a planet sensor would only b...   May 1 2005, 08:01 AM
- - PhilCo126   Phil Stooke ... when will You start the work on th...   Oct 27 2005, 04:49 PM
- - Phil Stooke   I'm in the editing phase on the Moon book. Ne...   Oct 27 2005, 04:50 PM
- - PhilCo126   Great Phil ... don't hesitate to contact me wh...   Oct 27 2005, 05:18 PM
- - PhilCo126   Phil ... with ' information ' I meant in f...   Nov 28 2005, 05:54 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   Fawning won't be necessary. It was indeed the...   Nov 29 2005, 05:56 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   You can find a brief Web reference to it: a chapte...   Nov 29 2005, 06:05 AM
|- - tasp   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Nov 29 2005, 12:05 AM)Yo...   Nov 29 2005, 06:19 AM
- - edstrick   Random note: The UV photometer that flew on Marin...   Nov 29 2005, 07:59 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   Try the combination of "Venus" and ...   Nov 29 2005, 08:00 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   Yeah, I've got the full dibs on the process by...   Nov 29 2005, 08:07 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   While we're on the subject of lost opportuniti...   Nov 29 2005, 08:19 AM
- - edstrick   Bruce Moomaw: ".... But they did come fairly...   Nov 29 2005, 08:33 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   They certainly came breathtakingly close before th...   Nov 29 2005, 09:08 AM
- - edstrick   I'd have to dig in my "stacks" to fi...   Nov 29 2005, 10:31 AM
- - ljk4-1   Any truth that Mariner 4's flight path was aim...   Mar 15 2006, 03:21 PM
- - Phil Stooke   Not really. Any long strip of images like that wo...   Mar 15 2006, 04:24 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   At that time they had very little confidence in th...   Mar 15 2006, 10:38 PM
- - edstrick   For the canal freaks, the flyby trajectory and vie...   Mar 16 2006, 07:53 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (edstrick @ Mar 16 2006, 07:53 AM) ...   Mar 16 2006, 04:25 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   Oh, yes. I well remember the shock when the dust ...   Mar 16 2006, 10:41 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Mar 16 2006, 10:41 P...   Mar 17 2006, 11:28 PM
|- - Michael Capobianco   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Mar 17 2006, 06:28 PM) ...   Mar 17 2006, 11:45 PM
- - PhilCo126   Talking about Mariner IX... Phil (Stooke) I've...   Mar 17 2006, 06:13 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   It was for me, too. Although I was already intere...   Mar 18 2006, 12:19 AM
|- - Michael Capobianco   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Mar 17 2006, 07:19 P...   Mar 18 2006, 01:09 AM
|- - ljk4-1   'Now that we have a map, let's start colon...   Mar 20 2006, 04:16 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   The scheme was more complex than that. It did inv...   May 31 2006, 06:18 AM
|- - DonPMitchell   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ May 30 2006, 11:18 P...   May 31 2006, 06:33 AM
- - PhilHorzempa   I have been intrigued by the notion of comparing d...   Jun 9 2006, 04:57 AM
- - ljk4-1   Here are images of the famous Mariner Crater (Numb...   Jun 10 2006, 05:48 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   The odd thing about that famous Mariner IV crater ...   Jun 10 2006, 08:52 PM
|- - tedstryk   It also photographed half of Orcas (Orcus?) Patera...   Jun 10 2006, 09:04 PM
- - Phil Stooke   Another Phil asked: "Does anyone have acces...   Jun 11 2006, 12:15 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   Phil: It'd have been quite a good idea to ove...   Jun 11 2006, 12:47 AM
|- - ljk4-1   QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Jun 10 2006, 08:15 P...   Jun 11 2006, 02:47 PM
- - edstrick   In Mariner 4's image #11 (THE crater), a fault...   Jun 11 2006, 09:45 AM
- - Phil Stooke   Bob, the Mariner 6 and 7 strips did intersect, in ...   Jun 11 2006, 11:53 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Jun 11 2006, 12:53 P...   Jun 11 2006, 01:18 PM
- - edstrick   Note that despite the overwhelming impression of h...   Jun 12 2006, 07:48 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (edstrick @ Jun 12 2006, 08:48 AM) ...   Jun 12 2006, 10:21 AM
|- - tedstryk   I think a lot of the reason was that the Tharsis a...   Jun 12 2006, 11:52 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   There was certainly little mention of this at the ...   Jun 12 2006, 08:54 AM
- - ljk4-1   The famous August, 1970 issue of National Geograph...   Jun 12 2006, 12:18 PM
- - Phil Stooke   Bruce said "There was certainly little mentio...   Jun 12 2006, 03:26 PM
- - peter59   Little bit of history. Mariner IV - voyage through...   Oct 22 2007, 03:57 PM
- - peter59   Little bit of history. Mariner IV - significant pr...   Nov 6 2007, 09:34 PM
- - peter59   Mariner 4's picture #1 is about 350 km paralle...   Nov 8 2007, 04:20 PM
- - peter59   Van Allen belts detected by Mariner 4's Ion Ch...   Nov 9 2007, 10:47 PM
- - robspace54   For those who were born after 1970, you have to re...   Jan 18 2008, 08:44 PM
|- - peter59   QUOTE (robspace54 @ Jan 18 2008, 09:44 PM...   Jan 18 2008, 09:01 PM
||- - Paolo   wow! I really like those context images!   Jan 19 2008, 01:22 PM
|- - JRehling   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gl_iRDdIUc Part o...   Jan 20 2008, 04:50 AM
- - dvandorn   Yes -- I never realized before that one of the Mar...   Jan 19 2008, 06:32 PM
- - peter59   Today is the 43 anniversary of the first Mars flyb...   Jul 14 2008, 08:20 AM
|- - Alan Stern   QUOTE (peter59 @ Jul 14 2008, 09:20 AM) T...   Jul 14 2008, 05:13 PM
- - nprev   Alan, please forgive me, but I really do have to a...   Jul 15 2008, 03:32 AM
|- - Alan Stern   QUOTE (nprev @ Jul 15 2008, 03:32 AM) Ala...   Jul 15 2008, 09:07 AM
- - volcanopele   Could be just as much of as coincidence as January...   Jul 15 2008, 03:36 AM
- - mchan   The NH Pluto / Mariner 4 Mars flyby connection was...   Jul 15 2008, 08:31 AM
- - edstrick   Viking 1 was sort of trying to land on July 4, 197...   Jul 15 2008, 11:21 AM
|- - tedstryk   I have put together a little commemorative compila...   Jul 15 2008, 07:32 PM
- - Ron Hobbs   I would like to note that today is the 45th annive...   Jul 14 2010, 11:30 PM
- - peter59   I'm looking for Mariner IV televison data tab...   Dec 17 2010, 05:38 PM
- - ZLD   May be available from the NSSDC if you contact the...   Dec 17 2010, 09:59 PM
- - Phil Stooke   There was a long discussion of this deeper back in...   Dec 17 2010, 11:15 PM
|- - tedstryk   I have tried multiple places (including the NSSDC)...   Dec 17 2010, 11:47 PM
- - djellison   I think this - http://mm04.nasaimages.org/MediaMan...   Dec 17 2010, 11:54 PM
- - ZLD   That's pretty neat. So they took all the matr...   Dec 18 2010, 12:20 AM
- - djellison   They bracketed the values into big ranges - and ea...   Dec 18 2010, 12:29 AM
- - Phil Stooke   That was in the good old days when people used to ...   Dec 18 2010, 02:31 PM
- - peter59   I just found an old article in LIFE MAGAZINE (23 J...   Dec 24 2010, 09:47 AM
- - peter59   It was not very difficult. Numerical data, lines ...   Dec 24 2010, 02:27 PM
- - Paolo   nice find Peter!   Dec 24 2010, 04:20 PM
- - lyford   Wow, nice work! That is a holiday treat!   Dec 24 2010, 05:27 PM
- - 4th rock from the sun   Well, the numbers are at mostly visible on this hi...   Apr 18 2011, 08:55 PM
|- - SteveM   The task would not be straightforward since the nu...   Apr 18 2011, 10:56 PM
|- - peter59   QUOTE (SteveM @ Apr 18 2011, 10:56 PM) Th...   Apr 19 2011, 06:37 AM
- - djellison   It's in the hall of the Education and Comms of...   Apr 18 2011, 11:34 PM
- - Bjorn Jonsson   Wow!! This is a major improvement in quali...   Apr 19 2011, 01:26 PM
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