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.

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

The 245 kg Mariner 5 was actually built as a backup for the 1964 Mariner 4 Mars flyby mission but after the success of the Mariner 4 mission, it was modified for a Venus flyby mission.
Mariner V was launched on 14th June 1967 and flew by Venus on 19th October 1967…
Radio occultation data from Mariner-5 helped to understand the temperature and pressure data returned by the Soviet-Russian Venera 4 lander which landed a day earlier.
Mariner’s close encounter over the night side and subsequent swing across the terminator towards the Sun altered its trajectory, allowing the determination of the planet’s mass at 81.50% of Earth’s. The operations of Mariner 5 ended on 21st November 1967 when the craft was put in hibernation. Between April and November 1968, NASA tried to reacquire Mariner 5 to continue probing interplanetary conditions… without success.