Thanks for these! Mariner 2 deserves a special kind of reverence – this was the first planetary probe, and the people working on it were doing something that no one had done before. It's particularly striking that Mariner 2 had a successful flyby of Venus in 1962, while Ranger 7 was the first successful U.S. lunar mission in 1964, and Mariner 4 flew by Mars in 1965. It's wonderful to see photos from this landmark mission (pair).
Xerxes
Dec 27 2022, 05:53 PM
Very cool. I love the vibe of moving an interplanetary spacecraft by hitching it to the back of a pickup truck.