  CHAPTER 6 THE TRACKING NETWORK CHAPTER 7 THIRTEEN MILLION WORDS CHAPTER 8 THE SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS CHAPTER 9 THE LEGACY OF MARINER CHAPTER 10 THE NEW LOOK OF VENUS Prepared for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration BY THE STAFF, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology COMPILED BY HAROLD J. WHEELOCK FOREWORD BY W. H. PICKERING, Director, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology McGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, INC. New York, San Francisco, Toronto, London MARINER MISSION TO VENUSCopyright © 1963 by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 63-17489. This book describes one phase of the U. S. civilian space program—the journey of the Mariner spacecraft to the vicinity of Venus and beyond. It reports upon the measurements taken during the “flyby” on December 14, 1962, when Mariner reached a point 21,598 miles from the planet, and 36,000,000 miles from Earth (communication with the spacecraft was continued up to a distance of approximately 54,000,000 miles from Earth). The Mariner mission was a project of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, carried out under Contract No. NAS 7-100 by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. FOREWORDFor many centuries scientific information about the planets and the vast void that separates them has been collected by astronomers observing from the surface of the Earth. Now, with the flight of Mariner II, we suddenly have in our hands some 90 million bits of experimental data measured in the region between Earth and the planet Venus. Thus, man for the first time has succeeded in sending his instruments far into the depths of space, and indeed, in placing them near another planet. A whole new area of experimental astronomy has been opened up. This book is a brief record of the Mariner Project to date and is designed to explain in general terms the preliminary conclusions. Actually, it will be months or years before all of the data from Mariner II have been completely analyzed. The most important data were the measurements made in the vicinity of the planet Venus, but it should also be noted that many weeks of interplanetary environmental measurements have given us new insight into some of the basic physical phenomena of the solar system. The trajectory data have provided new, more accurate measurements of the solar system. The engineering measurements of the performance of the spacecraft will be of inestimable value in the design of future spacecraft. Thus, the Mariner II spacecraft to Venus not only looks at Venus but gives space scientists and engineers information helpful in a wide variety of space ventures. A project such as Mariner II is first a vast engineering task. Many thousands of man-hours are required to design the complex automatic equipment which must operate perfectly in the harsh environment of space. Every detail of the system must be studied and analyzed. The operations required to carry out the mission must be understood and performed with precision. A successful mission requires every member of the entire project team to do his task perfectly. Whether it be the error of a designer, mechanic, mathematician, technician, operator, or test engineer—a single mistake, or a faulty piece of workmanship, may cause the failure of the mission. Space projects abound with examples of the old saying, “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost ...,” and so on, until the kingdom is lost. Only when every member of the project team is conscious of his responsibility will space projects consistently succeed. The Mariner II Project started with the Lunar and Planetary Projects Office of the Office of Space Sciences at NASA in Washington. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, personnel provided the main body of the team effort. They were heavily supported by industrial contractors building many of the subassemblies of the spacecraft, by scientists planning and designing the scientific experiments, and by the Air Force which supplied the launching rockets. Several thousand men and women had some direct part in the Mariner Project. It would be impossible to list all of those who made some special contribution, but each and every member of the project performed his job accurately, on time, and to the highest standards. Mariner II is only a prelude to NASA’s program of unmanned missions to the planets. Missions to Mars as well as Venus will be carried out. Spacecraft will not only fly by the planets as did Mariner II, but capsules will be landed, and spacecraft will be put into orbit about the planets. The next mission in the Mariner series will be a flyby of the planet Mars in 1965. By the end of the decade, where will we be exploring, what will new Mariners have found? Will there be life on Mars, or on any other planet of the solar system? What causes the red spot on Jupiter? What is at the heart of a comet? These and many other questions await answers obtained by our future spacecraft. Mariner II is just a beginning. W. H. Pickering Director Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology April, 1963 CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTSResearching the material, gathering and comparing data, preparation of review drafts and attending to the hundreds of details required to produce a document on the results of such a program as the Mariner mission to Venus is a tremendous task. Special acknowledgment is made to Mr. Harold J. Wheelock who, on an extremely short time scale, carried the major portion of this work to completion. Although the prime sources for the information were the Planetary Program office and the Technical Divisions of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, other organizations were extremely helpful in providing necessary data, notably the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, the Astronautics Division of the General Dynamics Corporation, and, of course, the many elements of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. JPL technical information staff members who assisted Mr. Wheelock in production of the manuscript and its illustrations were Mr. James H. Wilson, Mr. Arthur D. Beeman and Mr. Albert E. Tyler. JPL is also grateful to Mr. Chester H. Johnson for his help and suggestions in preparing the final manuscript. |
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