IPB

Welcome Guest ( Log In | Register )

8 Pages V  « < 2 3 4 5 6 > »   
Reply to this topicStart new topic
Mariner Mars 1964, Mariners 3 and 4 to Mars: imaging plans?
ljk4-1
post Mar 20 2006, 04:16 PM
Post #46


Senior Member
****

Group: Members
Posts: 2454
Joined: 8-July 05
From: NGC 5907
Member No.: 430



'Now that we have a map, let's start colonizing outer space'

The Register Mar. 17, 2006

*************************

Mapping the solar system started in
1965 when Mariner 4 sent back much
improved pictures of Mars, said SETI
expert Seth Shostak. Since that
time, astronomers -- with the help
of high-powered telescopes and
various exploration vehicles and
probes -- have delivered stunning
pictures of most of the planets and
their moons. The quality of these...

http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedire...sID=5393&m=7610


--------------------
"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
Guest_DonPMitchell_*
post May 31 2006, 03:48 AM
Post #47





Guests






QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Apr 28 2005, 03:52 PM) *
Coming soon, if you're all nice to me: a brief report on how NASA came within one month of trying to launch a VENUS ORBITER in June 1959 (although it definitely would have failed had it been launched). One of the most bizarre forgotten episodes of the early Space Age.


Hey, I'm interested! Was this the idea of sending Pioneer 5 toward Venus?

One of the greatest old books on space is the McGraw Hill Encyclopedia of Space (1968). Find a copy if you can, and buy it! I sure wish someone would put together a contemporary book that's as good. One odd thing about this book is that it lists Pioneer 5 as a failed Venus probe, which I don't think is quite accurate. But the idea must have still been in the air then.

And I'm still looking for a really good photograph of Pioneer 5.
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post May 31 2006, 06:18 AM
Post #48





Guests






The scheme was more complex than that. It did involve launching Pioneer 5 toward Venus in early June 1959, but without a midcourse correction motor no one thought it would get anywhere close. HOWEVER: it also involved simultaneously launching the very first of the much bigger Atlas-Able Pioneer orbiters to Venus -- and since that had two restartable hydrazine motors sticking out of its poles, the plan really would been to make an honest effort to put it into Venus orbit. Aviation Week had several short items on it in 1959 -- and the NY Times of (I believe) May 1, 1959 made the plan's last-minute cancellation its front-page headline. (It was cancelled on the grounds that "the science payload could not be gotten ready in time", by which NASA may have meant the entire spacecraft.)

A second Pioneer orbiter was to be built simultaneously to be put into lunar orbit later. I've wasted a little time trying to find out what the exact science payload of the Venus version would have been, and all I've been able to find is one short paragraph in a 1959 aerospace magazine quoting a Democratic Louisiana Congressman briefly describing its payload on "Meet the Press" in a way that suggests it would have been identical to the payload on the lunar Atlas-Able orbiter -- that is, a bunch of fields and particles instruments plus a spin-scan IR photometer that could build up images (in this case, presumably a temperature map of Venus' cloud cover). No mention of a UV photometer, which would seem to be a natural for such a mission -- but such an orbiter could have given us radio occultations of the atmosphere.

I first heard about this plan all the way back in 1965, when I was 11 years old. (It was mentioned briefly in a back issue of "Sky and Telescope".) But finding information on it is like looking for an Upsidaisium mine -- you just find tiny crumbs here and there (including one brief mention in the June 1959 "American Mercury", H.L. Mencken's magazine which by then had been bought by a bunch of rabid right-wing anti-Semites who used to refer to "the Jewish termites gnawing at the Cross"). I finally found, in an early 1990s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a long historical reminiscence by a fields and particles scientist mentioning some of the instruments he'd put on these Atlas-Able orbiters, and I eagerly asked him for the Straight Dope -- only to be told that even HE had never heard of the Venus plan!

Anyway, after the cancellation of that plan, the goal of the smaller Pioneer 5 remained to be put into a solar orbit with its perihelion at Venus' orbit -- and after sitting on the pad through delay after delay during the last half of 1959, it finally got off the ground in March 1960 and became the only genuine success of the early Pioneers (although its perihelion ended up considerably outside Venus' orbit, and its power supply failed at a range of 22.5 million miles instead of the 50 million hoped for). The plan to launch a single Atlas-Able orbiter to the Moon remained; and after its planned October launch was scrubbed when the booster blew up during a September static test, NASA grabbed the Atlas planned for the cancelled second Mercury "Big Joe" test and launched it in late November -- only to end up with the infamous "turkey shoot" in which the shroud came off due to inadequate venting of internal air pressure, and the air blast then tore off the probe and third stage and crippled the second stage. No doubt this would have been its fate had it been launched to Venus in June.

Since this meant that there was still one spare Pioneer orbiter, Eisenhower gave permission to try to launch it to the Moon in late 1960 -- and to build a third copy for one last attempt if the second one failed. Unfortunately, both the second AND third tries also failed ignominously (due to failures of the second stage, which by then was usually working pretty reliably on Thor-Able). Both these versions had slightly changed science instruments -- the IR farside spin-scanner was removed and replaced by the first plasma probe on any NASA spacecraft, for instance. All the instruments on those two 1960 lunar orbiters were fields and particles; pretty much the only information they could have gotten on the Moon itself was to look for a magnetic field, but then that was also the case for Explorer 35. And so ended one of the stranger (and sadder) forgotten stories of the early Space Age.
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
Guest_DonPMitchell_*
post May 31 2006, 06:33 AM
Post #49





Guests






QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ May 30 2006, 11:18 PM) *
The scheme was more complex than that. It did involve launching Pioneer 5 toward Venus in June 1959, but without a midcourse correction motor no one thought it would get anywhere close. HOWEVER: it also involved simultaneously launching the very first of the much bigger Atlas-Able Pioneer orbiters to Venus -- and since that had two restartable hydrazine motors sticking out of its poles, the plan really would been to make an honest effort to put it into Venus orbit. Aviation Week had several short items on it in 1959 -- and the NY Times of (I believe) May 1, 1959 made the plan's last-minute cancellation its front-page headline. (It was cancelled on the grounds that "the science payload could not be gotten ready in time", by which NASA may have meant the entire spacecraft.)


Very interesting. I don't think their rockets could have hit Venus at that time, and I'm pretty sure the telemetry system couldn't have picked up its signal (Only Jodrell Bank could get Pioneer 5's signal after about a month), so there were probably a lot of reasons it was not actually done. But it is too bad there is not more written about this.
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
PhilHorzempa
post Jun 9 2006, 04:57 AM
Post #50


Member
***

Group: Members
Posts: 169
Joined: 17-March 06
Member No.: 709





I have been intrigued by the notion of comparing detailed images,
from the Viking Orbiters or Mars Express, of the same areas of Mars
photographed by Mariner 4.

Here is a view of the footprints of each Mariner 4 image.


Attached Image



Here is a link to a low-res map of where those images are located
on Mars.

http://www.solarviews.com/raw/mars/mar4geom.jpg


Does anyone have access to Viking or Mars Express images that
would match up with those of Mariner 4?


Another Phil
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
ljk4-1
post Jun 10 2006, 05:48 PM
Post #51


Senior Member
****

Group: Members
Posts: 2454
Joined: 8-July 05
From: NGC 5907
Member No.: 430



Here are images of the famous Mariner Crater (Number 11) taken by
Viking 1 Orbiter and Mars Global Surveyor:

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/3_18_99_mariner/

And someone please correct me if my memory is faulty, but I think that
this book showed Mariner 6-7 images overlapping Mariner 4 images:

Davies, Merton E., and Bruce Murray, The View from Space, Columbia University Press, New York, 1971


--------------------
"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
Bob Shaw
post Jun 10 2006, 08:52 PM
Post #52


Senior Member
****

Group: Members
Posts: 2488
Joined: 17-April 05
From: Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Member No.: 239



The odd thing about that famous Mariner IV crater image is that in fact it *did* show something remarkable. At seven o'clock is to be found the pair of inset craters, and the Viking image reveals what Mariner IV was unable to see: lobate flow features associated with the impacts. Had these only been recognised as impacts into a volatile-rich surface then Mars exploration might have taken a different turn!

Bob Shaw
Attached thumbnail(s)
Attached Image
 


--------------------
Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
tedstryk
post Jun 10 2006, 09:04 PM
Post #53


Interplanetary Dumpster Diver
****

Group: Admin
Posts: 4404
Joined: 17-February 04
From: Powell, TN
Member No.: 33



It also photographed half of Orcas (Orcus?) Patera, but it was mistaken for another impact crater.


--------------------
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
Phil Stooke
post Jun 11 2006, 12:15 AM
Post #54


Solar System Cartographer
****

Group: Members
Posts: 10127
Joined: 5-April 05
From: Canada
Member No.: 227



Another Phil asked:

"Does anyone have access to Viking or Mars Express images that
would match up with those of Mariner 4?"

You might want to try Google Mars. These days we all have access! I've played around with that comparison, it's quite interesting especially for the earlier M4 images. In fact this will form part of my future Mars book.

And ljk4-1 said:

"And someone please correct me if my memory is faulty... "

Well, it probably is faulty! There was no overlap between Mariner 4 and Mariner 6/7 images. And those two authors would not have made a mistake like that. I don't have the book in front of me, but it wouldn't have shown that.

Ted mentioned Orcus Patera. Paterae are usually volcanic craters, but I think everybody believes now that Orcus is really just a giant oblique impact like Schiller on the Moon.

Phil


--------------------
... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.

Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke
NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain)
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
Bob Shaw
post Jun 11 2006, 12:47 AM
Post #55


Senior Member
****

Group: Members
Posts: 2488
Joined: 17-April 05
From: Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Member No.: 239



Phil:

It'd have been quite a good idea to overlap the early Mariners imaging swathes, though in reality just hitting the planet with the cameras at all was a triumph!

I wonder what Mariner IV class images of other potential targets would have looked like? If water erosion features had found themselves below the cameras, would they have been visible?

Imagine if Mariner IV had found a river valley...

Bob Shaw


--------------------
Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
edstrick
post Jun 11 2006, 09:45 AM
Post #56


Senior Member
****

Group: Members
Posts: 1870
Joined: 20-February 05
Member No.: 174



In Mariner 4's image #11 (THE crater), a fault graben radial to Tharsis is partly visible cutting across the rim of the large crater. I think it was noted during or after mission image analysis, but minimally commented on. It was visible as some sort of lineation, but what it really was needed more resolution and less noise.
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
Phil Stooke
post Jun 11 2006, 11:53 AM
Post #57


Solar System Cartographer
****

Group: Members
Posts: 10127
Joined: 5-April 05
From: Canada
Member No.: 227



Bob, the Mariner 6 and 7 strips did intersect, in Meridiani. But I don't think it would have been useful to have M6 and M7 overlap M4 - better to sample other parts of the planet. M4 would have had no trouble resolving large channels like Ma'adim, or the mouths of Tiu and Ares.

Phil


--------------------
... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.

Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke
NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain)
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
Bob Shaw
post Jun 11 2006, 01:18 PM
Post #58


Senior Member
****

Group: Members
Posts: 2488
Joined: 17-April 05
From: Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Member No.: 239



QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Jun 11 2006, 12:53 PM) *
Bob, the Mariner 6 and 7 strips did intersect, in Meridiani. But I don't think it would have been useful to have M6 and M7 overlap M4 - better to sample other parts of the planet. M4 would have had no trouble resolving large channels like Ma'adim, or the mouths of Tiu and Ares.

Phil


Phil:

And, somehow, they all managed to miss the most critical parts! It certainly demonstrates the utility of orbiters versus flyby craft.

Bob Shaw


--------------------
Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
ljk4-1
post Jun 11 2006, 02:47 PM
Post #59


Senior Member
****

Group: Members
Posts: 2454
Joined: 8-July 05
From: NGC 5907
Member No.: 430



QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Jun 10 2006, 08:15 PM) *
And ljk4-1 said:

"And someone please correct me if my memory is faulty... "

Well, it probably is faulty! There was no overlap between Mariner 4 and Mariner 6/7 images. And those two authors would not have made a mistake like that. I don't have the book in front of me, but it wouldn't have shown that.

Ted mentioned Orcus Patera. Paterae are usually volcanic craters, but I think everybody believes now that Orcus is really just a giant oblique impact like Schiller on the Moon.

Phil


Hey, go easy on an old man's memory! I think what I was remembering now was
the Mariner 6 and 7 images overlapping each other.

Here is the Mariner 4 image of Orcus Patera. It caught the end of the feature.
Too bad the image was so poor that it was hard to make out any real details.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/obj...ge/m04_03b.html

And here is a paper debating whether OP is an impact crater or a volcanic feature:

http://www.geology.pomona.edu/research/Fac..._Final_1085.pdf


--------------------
"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
edstrick
post Jun 12 2006, 07:48 AM
Post #60


Senior Member
****

Group: Members
Posts: 1870
Joined: 20-February 05
Member No.: 174



Note that despite the overwhelming impression of historical press coverage and post 1970 "historical" space reporting, Mariner 6 and 7 did see some of the "best" pieces.

Mariner 6 got some relatively clear views of chaotic terrain with the narrow angle camera and clear context from wide angle data that showed the "thermokarst like" (I think they said) collapsed terrain was part of a much larger regional feature extending into the west toward the limb and high-sun-illumination part of the disc.

Mariner 7 showed some sub-parallel ridges and mountainous terrain on the edge of Hellas, and "featureless terrain" (apparently haze-filled atmosphere) on the floor of Hellas, leading the researchers to conclude (on the basis of imperfect evidence) that there were much younger terrains than the cratered terrain.

Mariner 7 showed a complex pitted, cratered, and eroded terrain within the south polar cap, including the first view of the polar layered terrains. They couldn't guess what they were but they were clearly features of great interest.

We didn't see the great channels or the great volcanoes, that was the bad luck of the camera pointings, but we DID get informative glimpses that there was much more than just old cratered terrains.
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post

8 Pages V  « < 2 3 4 5 6 > » 
Reply to this topicStart new topic

 



RSS Lo-Fi Version Time is now: 28th March 2024 - 01:51 PM
RULES AND GUIDELINES
Please read the Forum Rules and Guidelines before posting.

IMAGE COPYRIGHT
Images posted on UnmannedSpaceflight.com may be copyrighted. Do not reproduce without permission. Read here for further information on space images and copyright.

OPINIONS AND MODERATION
Opinions expressed on UnmannedSpaceflight.com are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of UnmannedSpaceflight.com or The Planetary Society. The all-volunteer UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderation team is wholly independent of The Planetary Society. The Planetary Society has no influence over decisions made by the UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderators.
SUPPORT THE FORUM
Unmannedspaceflight.com is funded by the Planetary Society. Please consider supporting our work and many other projects by donating to the Society or becoming a member.