JPL TECHNICAL MEMORANDUM NO.

33-229
-

L
(-8% CR O R TMX OR AD NUMBER) (CATSOORY)
Contents

Landfall at Mars 1

Another World 2

The Spacecraft 7

Mariner Leaves Port 15

In -Flight Events 20

Long-Distance Communication 24
I

The Scientific Experiments 28

Mars-and After 30

The photographs of Mars on pages

2 , 4 , and 5 are reprinted through
the courtesy of Mt. Wilson and
Palomar Observatories.
 NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

JPL TECHNICAL MEMORANDUM NO. 33-229

TO MARS:
The Odyssey of Mariner IV

JET PROPULSION LABORATORY/CALIFORNlA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Copyright 0 1965
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
California Institute of Technology

Prepared Under Contract N o . NAS 7-100

National Aeronautics & Space Administration
 PREFACE
T h e Mariner M a r s Project of 1964-65 is one of a f a m i l y of
flight projects conducted by the J e t Propulsion Laboratory f o r
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Ofice of
Space Science and Applications. T h e Project has been made pos-
sible b y the valued assistance and support of m a n y government
agencies and industrial concerns. Included are N A S A ’ s Lewis
Research Center ( L a u n c h Vehicle S y s t e m Manager) and their
prime contractors : Lockheed Missiles and Space Company and
General Dynamics /Astronautics; the Goddard Space Flight Center
( L a u n c h Operations) and other agencies at Cape Kennedy; the
agencies of the Australian and South A f r i c a n governments which
operate overseas tracking stations; and m a n y hundreds of indus-
trial contractors and vendors.
N A S A authorized the Project in late 1962, with the objective
of conducting scientific observations o n the planet M a r s and return-
i n g the data t o Earth for study and analysis. Secondary objectives
were t o develop and study the equipment and techniques involved
in carrying out the M a r s mission, and to m a k e certain scientific
measurements of the interplanetary environment o n the w a y to
Mars.
Mariner IV w a s launched on November 28, 1964.
LANDFALL AT MARS

This summer, mankind’s horizon recedes about 150 million miles, to

a spacecraft coasting past the planet Mars.
In 1957-58, during the International Geophysical Year, our horizon
stretched around the E a r t h and into space above for little more than 100
miles ; each year thereafter, science has extended our knowledge of this
near region of space, while at the same time probing further into the
unknown. Starting in 1958 with the Pioneer spacecraft we pushed closer to
the Moon, a quarter of a million miles away. Late in 1962, Mariner 11,
man’s first emissary to other worlds, scouted the planet Venus, 36 million
miles distant from the Earth. By the summer of 1964 and early spring
1965, the Moon’s surface was being examined at close range by Ranger
spacecraft, and, nearer home, manned vehicles were making orbital flights.
Meanwhile, f a r beyond the Moon, past the Earth-orbiting spacecraft,
Mariner IV was headed for Mars. It was to rendezvous with the planet at
0105 Greenwich Mean Time, July 15, 1965, or about dinner time, July 14,
in California.

Mariner IV was launched from Cape Kennedy on November 28, 1964, 1

by a n Atlas/Agena D rocket without incident. Two days later, it was nearly
half a million miles out, moving at more than 7,000 miles per hour. It
appeared to be following Mars at a range of 127 million miles and a speed
of over 60,000 miles per hour relative to the planet’s motion. The spacecraft
was oriented facing the Sun, and was drawing electrical power from the
solar panels; it had just stabilized its attitude by locking on the star
Canopus.
On December 5, Mariner was commanded to change its course slightly,
using the 50-pound-thrust rocket motor built into the spacecraft. The
maneuver changed the rendezvous point a t Mars from 150,000 miles ahead
of the planet and north of the equator on July 16, 1965, t o 5600 miles behind
the planet and above the south pole on July 15.
As the range lengthened, Mariner’s radio output was stepped up on
schedule to maintain contact with Earth. On December 13, a longer-life
and slightly more powerful transmitting amplifier was turned on. Then,
 early in March, as the range became excessive for the omnidirectional
broadcast antenna and Earth entered the beam of the fixed parabolic-
reflector antenna, antennas were switched by on-board command.
On the hundredth day, March 8,1965, Mariner IV was nearly 30 million
miles from Earth, and less than 45 million from Mars. A few weeks later, by
April 14, i t had bested the U.S. long-distance communication record, just
under 54 million miles, set by Mariner II‘s Venus flight.
So f a r in its journey, Mariner has measured the fields and particles
around Earth f a r above the night side and in interplanetary space; i t has
observed the Class I1 solar flares of February 5 and April 11 and 17; and
i t has sampled the sparse but increasing cosmic dust between Earth and
Mars.
Now i t approaches Mars.

ANOTHER WORLD

Though Mars has often been populated, irrigated, and civilized in

speculation and in fiction, its characteristics are relatively unearthly. It
appears to be a small orange-red desert world ; ours is a robust green-and-
blue world of jungle, grassland, and river, three-quarters ocean.
2 Mars has about half Earth’s diameter, a ninth of Earth’s mass, resulting
in a surface gravity 38 per cent of Earth’s, and an escape velocity of some
3.1 miles per second, as compared with 6.9 for Earth. Therefore, Mars is
ill-equipped to retain much of an atmosphere ; the Martian surface pressure
is probably less than Earth’s pressure at five- to fifteen-mile altitudes.
What a i r there is appears to lack oxygen and contains only enough water
vapor to make its detection barely possible from Earth. The lack of oxygen
and scarcity of water vapor, in turn, rule out liquid water (which must
reach equilibrium with a vapor pressure above i t ) except very temporarily
or underground. There a r e polar caps of ice or frost-possibly of carbon
dioxide rather than water-though probably extremely thin by E a r t h
standards.
However, Mars’ marked surface and thin atmosphere permitted astron-
omers to measure its 241h-hour day and the annual change of seasons as
early as 1659. Mars’ axis is tilted about the same as Earth’s, so its seasons
Mar8 in red light, 1956 are comparable, though scaled to the 687-Earth-day Martian year. Earth
 Mars 1666 (Cassini)

vacationers might tend to regard the four Mars seasons as little more than
variations in a bad winter: a hot midsummer afternoon might bring the
ground temperature up to 85-100°F, but during the night it would drop
to a hundred below, and six feet off the ground the air wouldn’t get above
freezing all day.

A Dim View of Canals

Like the Moon, Mars abounds with what we now know to be waterless
seas, bays, and the like. However, by this century, when it was realized
that they weren’t water, the names had already been established, and the
smaller bluish regions remained “mare,” “sinus,” and “lacus.”
Even with the most powerful telescopes and under the most favorable
atmospheric conditions, astronomers cannot get high-resolution pictures of
Mars. To appreciate the difficulties under which the observers of Mars
labor, imagine yourself watching moonrise a t the end of a hot day. The 3
Moon rises above an asphalt road still warm from the afternoon’s baking.
The faint, glowing disk wavers and dances in the warm rising air. Your
impression of the Moon might be compared to the way astronomers see
Mars. Mars is never closer to Earth than about 35 million miles, and that
only about every 15 years. At opposition (the Sun and Mars a r e opposite,
E a r t h and Mars adjacent), which occurs every 25 months, it may be as
f a r a s 62 million miles, as it was on March 5, 1965. And our atmosphere
is always in the way.
Two and a half centuries after Galileo had been barely able to distin-
guish the disk of Mars in the first astronomical telescope, Guido Schiaparelli,
working a t Milan Observatory in 1877, noted surface features which have
been argued about ever since. He called them ca~zali-“canals” or “chan-
nels”-because they were dark and seemed to reach across the “lands” from
“sea” to “sea.” Thus began a great international dispute which was to make
Mars famous to the public and somewhat infamous among astronomers. M a r s 1777 ( H e m c h e l )
 Schiapawlli’s wiap (1877-88)

Not everyone saw the “canals” to which Schiaparelli, and then a n

American, Percival Lowell, referred. Lowell was convinced of the implica-
tions of the word “canal” ; he founded a n observatory, whose contributions
to science would include the discovery of Pluto, but whose early activity
centered on Martian inland waterways. Lowell’s maps showed what
4 deVaucouleurs describes as “a veritable cobweb” of canals (400 in 1900,
almost 700 by 1909-including parallel (‘spare” channels). His books, Mars
a?id I t s Canals and M a m as t h c Abode of Life (published in 1906 and 1908,
respectively), with speculations about irrigation from the polar caps, led
to a considerable reaction. A popular idea was to attempt to communi-
cate with the Martians by digging a canal in the shape of a huge right
triangle in the Sahara, wirelesfi communication being, of course, impossible
over such a distance. Most astronomers saw the other side of the question.
‘(Nobody has ever seen a true Martian canal,” wrote one eminent observer
after prolonged study through a powerful instrument. Others compared
the drawings of different observers made on the same night, referred
charitably to optical illusion, or suggested that the smaller the telescope,
the more canals were claimed.
Photographic advances have resolved some differences by apparently
Mars, A u g u s t 1,956 ( M t . Wilsoti, resolving some canal-like features, but even photographs a r e subject to
o i’aw gc l i g h t ) interpretation : there a r e still partisans, pro and con.
 Interestingly, there do not seem to be any mountains of Rocky or
Himalayan proportions on Mars : gradual slopes, modest east-west chains,
or small prominences could not be spotted from Earth, and no shadows-the
tell-tale index of the lunar mountains-have been resolved.

The Thin Air

Studies of Mars’ atmosphere indicate that it probably consists of nitro-

gen, argon, some carbon dioxide, a trace of water vapor, and a spectro-
scopically undetectable amount of oxygen (if any) . This statement is based
on well-founded speculation for the nitrogen and argon, and extremely
skillful spectroscopy for the rest. M a r t i a n atmospheric haze, Sep-
The spectroscope is a n instrument used to analyze a beam of light for t e m b e r 1956 ( M t . W i l s o n , o r a n g e
light)
the chemical constituents of the luminous gas in which i t originates (such
as a flame or the Sun) or the partly opaque gas through which i t shines
(such as the atmosphere of Venus o r Mars). Its output is a wide photo-
graph of the color spectrum laced with a pattern of parallel bright (lumi-
nous) or dark (absorption) lines.
Carbon dioxide was detected first on the planet Venus. Nitrogen lacks
a strong spectrographic signature of absorption lines in visible light and,
in addition, Earth’s nitrogen-rich air would mask the weaker indications
from another planet. The same problem dogged the hunters for oxygen and
water vapor on Mars after Gerard Kuiper’s subsequent discovery of carbon
dioxide on Mars. They calculated that if they shot the spectrogram when
Mars and E a r t h were moving apart or together at the maximum speed,
the doppler effect would shift the indications of Martian oxygen and water
vapor out from under those of the terrestrial atmosphere. The latter refine-
ment led at last to the conclusion that water vapor was barely in evidence
and oxygen was too sparse to detect. Spectral evidence that the polar caps
were water ice had been obtained in 1948.
The atmospheric pressure, which corresponds to the weight of the 5
atmosphere per unit area a t the surface, is a function (given Mars’ gravi- SPECTROSCOPE
tational field) of the total amount and kind of gases making it up. It can PHOTOGRAPH I C

,:-”-\\
PLATE
be measured only by very indirect means from Earth, related to the effects
of the atmosphere on light. Some of the methods have involved studying DIFFRACTION
the diffusion of various colors, the polarization, the variation of color across GRATING/’
the disk, and the brightness of surface spots as they rotate from one limb --
of the disk to another and are seen through different slant thicknesses of
Y
!

the Martian air.

A very recent approach to the question of Martian atmospheric pres-
sure, which may provide the most accurate estimate, is based on the
tool used to examine the composition of the atmosphere. The spectral
absorption lines from the carbon dioxide on Mars are broadened or smeared, -c
SLIT
- a
according t o the theory, as a function of the gas pressure. Comparison
with carbon dioxide spectra obtained a t various pressures in the laboratory FROM TELESCOPE
gives, after much analysis, the pressure value. Kaplan, Munch, and Spinrad,
 who applied this method to Mars, produced a value of 25 millibars, with a n
uncertainty of 15 millibars. Subsequent refinement raised this value slightly.
Earth's standard sea-level pressure is just over 1013 millibars. Values esti-
mated by other methods, with much greater uncertainties, yield a possible
range from 200 millibars down to about 14 (corresponding to the pressure
4% to 18 miles above Earth's surface).
With Mars' smaller gravitational field, the atmosphere is not hugged
n.l,,crn tn +h
: is Earth's. Yeiiow ciouds, presumed t o be
--,L)- -....I-
cIvuL L.v Lire pLllcL> b u l l a ~ tas
fine dust swept up off the deserts, a r e frequently observed at altitudes from
3 to 6 miles, and occasionally much higher. The clouds have been observed
to move as f a s t as 85 miles per hour, though more often in the 20- to 30-
mile-per-hour range. Wind velocities necessary to pick up the dust may
range as high as 125 miles per hour at 300 feet altitude.

30% hours

1967 opposition
Mars and its moons Mars receives from 36% 55.8 million miles
t o 52% as much solar
radiation as Earth does.
Its equatorial plane is 24-25"
from its orbital plane
(23%' for Earth).

1973 opposition
40.4 million miles

Oppositions 1960-1 975

The Mars Patrol

Mars, as we have seen, is a tough nut to crack. The speculations asso-

ciated with the question of canals doubtless helped to turn astronomers
away from Mars, and planetary investigation in general remained a back-
yard branch of astronomy for some years. The age of space exploration
helped in the growth of the new science of planetology, which lures geolo-
gists, biologists, meteorologists, chemists, and engineers into the field of
astronomy, and, during the last five years has wrought a great renaissance
in planetary studies, particularly of the Moon, Venus, and Mars.
I n 1963 the International Astronomical Union's planetary commission
established planetary data centers at Meudon in France and a t Flagstaff,
Arizona. Observatories in the U.S.A., Japan, USSR, South Africa, France,
and many other nations contribute to this program of collecting direct
~

photographs of Mars and other planets. The 1965 Mars opposition will add
considerably to t h e collection. JPL's Table Mountain Observatory and other
nearby facilities a r e being used in a special effort in conjunction with
Mariner. I n addition, here and abroad, spectrographic searches f o r new
and supplementary information about the surface and atmospheric com-
position and properties a r e being carried out. Thus, Mariner is not alone
in investigating Mars.

7 1
THE SPACECRAFT

When the Mariner Mars 1964 Project was authorized by the National
Aeronautics a n d Space Administration in late 1962, i t was recognized a s
--
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tasks a r e characteristic of most aspects of space exploration in its present

dawn age. The distances, forces, and hazards of interplanetary space a r e
huge; though our knowledge and technical skill are growing rapidly, the
unknown aspects remain extensive.
Mariner's Venus 1962 mission, then just successfully concluding, gave
encouragement and contributed vital knowledge and experience to the Mars
mission, but t h e scale of the problem was larger in all aspects. It was to
the successful Mariner Venus team that the new problem was presented.
 I ‘

Mariner’s Pedigree

The Mariner Mars system would be the first of its kind, but not the first
of its family. The dynasty was founded in late 1958 and 1959, when NASA
and JPL worked out a linked series of unmanned lunar and pIanetary
missions which would advance the technology of space exploration while
accumulating basic and practical knowledge about the Moon, the planets,
and the solar system.
A three-stage launch-vehicle system would have been needed, but the
development of restartable second-stage rockets (which in effect made two
stages out of one) made this unnecessary. Atlas/Agena was to be the launch
vehicle f o r Ranger, the first. lunar member of the series; early Mariner
planetary and the Surveyor lunar spacecraft developments were first asso-
ciated with AtlaUCentaur, a higher-performance system then being de-
signed. Subsequent schedule changes, together with advancements in Agena
Ranger I ( 1 9 6 1 )
and spacecraft technology, necessitated and made possible the quick devel-
opment of a n Atlas/Agena-boosted, lightweight planetary spacecraft and
its successful use in the Mariner I1 mission to Venus.
Now the same switch was suggested for the Mars mission: marry the
best elements of the Ranger-Mariner II-Atlas/Agena system with the
heavy Mars-spacecraft development and launch a Mars mission in 1964.
There were less than two years to do the job, and a rigid deadline was
imposed by the Mars launch opportunity. The Venus mission had been
developed in less than a year. It could be done-just barely.

On a larger Scale

The energy required to ship a pound of payload to Mars in 1964/65 is

actually a little less than that which was needed to send it to Venus in 1962.
8 The slightly lower energy requirement, however, turned out to be just about
the only aspect of Mariner Mars that wasn’t twice or three times as diffi-
cult as the earlier mission.
Consider service life, f o r example. New cars a r e guaranteed f o r years
or tens of thousands of miles, if serviced regularly. TV sets a r e guaran-
teed f o r a year (except the tubes). A fine watch is guaranteed practically
forever-just send it back to the factory. However, you cannot send a
spacecraft back to the factory, or adjust the valves, or check the tubes,
when it’s a hundred million miles out in space, and still going.
Mariner I1 had had to operate for about 2500 hours on its flight to
Venus ; Mariner IV had to be designed for 6000 to 7000 hours of flight life,
on the way to Mars, at the planet, and beyond.
Then there was electrical power. Mariner Mars would need only a little
-less than 200 watts- but it must come from sunlight, whose power
decreases as you go away from the Sun. Mariner I1 had one solar panel
partly disabled enroute to Venus but drew nearly as much power from the
undamaged one a t Venus as i t had received from both panels near Earth.
Going out from Earth to Mars, the solar power decreases instead of in-
creasing. Mariner Mars must have more than twice the solar-panel area
of its predecessor-70 square feet as against 27.
Considering the environment through which the spacecraft must travel,
we again see a sharp difference from any mission attempted before. Mariner
I1 flew toward the Sun, braving increasing solar radiation, which helped
with the power problem but aggravated the temperature-control problem.
Mariner I1 had become hotter and hotter on the way to Venus; Mariner
Mars would become colder on its journey.
Beyond Mars, where one might expect to find another planet, is the
asteroid belt, consisting of thousands of planetoids in independent solar Mariner IV
orbits. Accordingly, astronomers believed that the meteoritic intensity
might be expected to increase in the direction of this belt. In addition, the
Mars path lay across several “cometary” meteor streams. Mariner might
be expected, then, to run into more space dust than had previously been
experienced. Mariner 11’s detector had recorded only two impacts in its
flight, while Mariner IV has indicated well over 100 in the first five months
of its journey. Since the total area of the spacecraft is about 200 times
that of the small dust detectors, the detectors record only a fraction of the
particles actually hitting the vehicle.
I n addition t o the increased flight time and the change of direction,
another inevitable dimension put a strain on the Mariner Mars mission:
sheer distance. A t Mariner 11’s maximum 54 million miles, radio waves
took nearly 5 minutes to come back to Earth ; communication with the Mars
spacecraft would be delayed about three times as long. More important, the
communications system would have to be better. . . nine times better, since
radio strength decreases as the square of increasing distance. Both the
ground and flight units would have to be improved.

The Weight Watchers

Mariner’s planners early decided they would need more spacecraft

weight than the 450 pounds that the Atlas/Agena B vehicle had launched
to Venus in 1962. A new version of the second stage of the launch vehicle,
Agena D, basically a collection of improvements from hetter prope!!sr,t
utiiization to lightweight materials, added up to an 80-pound weight bonus
for the spacecraft. The energy difference between Venus 1962 and Mars
1964 contributed 40-odd pounds. Thus, the spacecraft could weigh about
575 pounds ; something could be done with that.
Question: How do you increase the scientific experiments, more than
double the solar power, get nine times as much radio power, and guarantee
a flight time two-and-a-half times as long, all within a mere 575 pounds?
Answer: Get tough with the design.
 F o r example, the bones of birds and the I-beams of girders indicate that
nature and man have found ways to get more strength for less structural
weight. Mariner’s structural designers went further ;they nearly eliminated
the skeletal structure. Mariner’s forebears were built around a hexagonal
skeleton belted with electronic-equipment packages and crowned with a
tower. F o r Mariner Mars the packages became the structural ‘foundations,
the tower a slim waveguide.
Eight shallow trays, deriving p a r t of their strength from their close-
packed contents, were joined in a ring ; electrical cables were contained in
two smaller concentric rings. A thermal shield was spread across the “top”
and “bottom” of the larger ring. The fixed elliptical-dish antenna, solar-panel
dampers, and the waveguide, which ended in a small omnidirectional low-
gain antenna, were mounted topside; the Canopus sensor and planetary
scanners were on the shady-side deck. Between decks, the attitude-control
gas bottles and the fuel tank for the deep-space rocket motor (mounted in
a shear plate replacing one unit of the octagonal ring) were stowed. The
spacecraft battery, too big for a shallow tray, also protruded into the space
between the decks.
A b o v e : S p a c e c r a f t u p p e r deck is Mariner’s four solar panels were conventional in appearance, but radical
covered with black-suvfaced they-
m a l shield. Ionization chamber i s in construction. Corrugation-stiffened sheet-metal floor structures were
m o u n t e d on low-gain a n t e n n a t u b e supported by stamped-aluminum-sheet-metal spars about the gauge of
( t o p of picticre); below elliptical kitchen aluminum foil. The panel structures weighed only one-half pound
‘high-gain a n t e n n a , a t l e f t , are
t r a p p e d - r a d i a t i o n , cosni ic-d u s t ,
per square foot.
a n d p l a s m a - p r o b e s e n s o r s . Pri-
m a r y s u n sensor i s n e a r bottom of
picticre; f o u r d i s k s a t lower r i g h t
a r e a b s o r p t i v i t y s t a n d a r d s for.
t h e r m a l engineering test. B e l o w : Controlled Temperatures
S p a c e c r a f t lower deck has alumi-
nized t h e r m a l shield, w i t h Canopus An object in space will be warmed by the rays of the Sun, and cooled
sensor at l e f t , TV s c a n p l a t f o r w
p r o t r u d i n g in center. by its own radiation to the black sky around it, a t a rate dependent on its
temperature. It will thus eventually stabilize a t a temperature primarily
10 dependent on its distance from the Sun: near Earth it would be about
125°F warmer than a t Mars’ distance. Its sunlit side, if it is not rotating,
might be several hundred degrees hotter than the shady side.
Mariner couldn’t tolerate such conditions. Its electronic components have
certain temperature limits within which they will operate properly, even
as we humans do. Their temperatures must be controlled.
The isolation and vacuum of outer space rule out contact conduction and
convection ; the only controllable heat-transfer factor affecting the space-
craft is surface radiation. The surfaces, then, must be controlled. If painted
black, they will radiate or absorb ; if polished like mirrors, they will reflect
and neither absorb nor radiate.
Explorer, the very first United States spacecraft, had been painted with
black and white stripes, the area of black stripes (radiating surface) cal-
culated to maintain the necessary temperature in Earth orbit. A more
advanced development, a heat blanket of layers of very thin aluminized-
Mylar plastic, gave Mariner Mars good, yet lightweight, insulation coverage.
 Magnetometer ( 1 % l b )

Low-gain antenna

Ionization chamber (2% l b )

High-gain antenna

T h e r m a l control louvers ( s i x s e t s ,
11 pairs of louvers p e r s e t , about

TV scan p l a t f o r m and c a m e r a

e recorder and radio equipment

D a t a encoder a n d command sub-
l a ) . R a d i o receiver, transpon-
s y s t e m (41 l b ) : 9800 electronic
components, including transistors,
diodes, capacitors, etc.

11

Scientific equipment (pla tronics (39 l b ) : a t t i t u d e control

probe, cosmic-ray telescope,

spacecraft. cc&S contains 703

Propulsion s u b s y s t e m (51 l b ) :
50.7-lb-thrust ?nonopropellant h y -
drazine e n g i n e capable of t w o sep-
a r a t e t h r u s t periods.
LSolar panel ( a b o u t 21 lb e a c h ) :
7056 solar cells p e r panel.
 A sophisticated thermal-control device, a set of polished aluminum shut-
ters which could open to expose a radiating surface beneath, was tested
on one compartment of Mariner I1 in its flight to Venus. The shutters
are activated by bimetallic strips, like inexpensive dial thermometers or
the thermostat in an electric blanket. As the temperature rises, the strip
uncoils, the shutters open, and heat radiates away to space. Then, as the com-
partment cools, the strip coils up again, closing the shutters to conserve heat.
Thermal-control louvers of this type were designed for six of Mariner’s
electronics trays ; they would keep the temperature inside between 55 and
85°F. An aluminized-Mylar shield would protect the sunny upper deck
and the shady lower deck; the upper blanket was surfaced with black
Dacron. The backs of the solar panels, which absorb a great deal of solar
heat in the process of tapping the Sun for photoelectric power, were black-
ened to re-radiate heat and keep the solar cells within their operating range
of 10 to 130°F.Most other exposed metallic surfaces were polished ; exposed
cables were wrapped with fiberglass or aluminized-Mylar tape. The fixed
high-gain antenna dish was painted green: i t would cool from its upper
operating limit near Earth to about room temperature a t Mars.

Put Them All Together

+
Some philosopher has remarked that you can’t get from “1 1” to “2”
just by understanding the “1.” Systems engineering might be likened to
the “+” sign. It started with a job to be done. Each of the Systems of the
Mariner Mars 1964 Project (Launch Vehicle, Spacecraft, Deep Space Net,
and Space Flight Operations) was divided into subsystems or units.
I n the case of the Mariner Mars spacecraft, the functional units a r e :
structure, radio, command, telemetry, central computer and sequencer,
power, attitude control, pyrotechnic-actuator control, thermal control,
12 cabling, and postinjection propulsion ; these make up what is often called
the spacecraft “bus.” The scientific-experiment “passenger” units are

- SCIENTIFIC
INSTRUMENTS - SCIENCE DATA
AUTOMATION , TELEMETRY RADIO

ATTlTUDE
I +
PROPULSION CC&S COMMAND
CONTROL

M a r i n e r M a r s t e m p e r a t w e model
p r e p a r i n g f o r test in JPL’s 2.5-foot
space simiclator.
r-----v
GAS JETS

1 STRUCTURE, CABLES,
AND
PACKAGING
POWER

C0NT R 0L
..

science data automation, planetary scan system, television and its recorder,
and six interplanetary-environment instruments : magnetometer, plasma
probe, ionization chamber, trapped-radiation and cosmic-dust detectors, and
cosmic-ray telescope.
All in all, nearly 140,000 parts were carefully screened and put together,
inspected, subsystem-tested and system-tested, and re-tested. All members
of the Mariner team labored long and hard in the development and fabri-
cation of the components and the assemblies they constitute ; Mariner IV is
the sum of these parts.

Outer Space on Earth

Though space exploration serves experimental science, it is not itself

purely experimental ; this is evidenced by the aistaste with which spacecraft
developers brush off such labels as “cut and try,” “file to fit,” “shoot and
hope.” With the exception of extremely long missions such as Mariner IV,
most space projects live nine lives on the test bench before they are
allowed one life in flight : the emphasis is on performance as predicted from
test experience.
Mariner Mars’ development schedule allowed less than 1000 hours for
testing each flight article for a 6000-hour mission-a tight schedule for a
large and exacting job.
A Mariner Mars temperature-control model-a full-scale spacecraft
duplicating the heat-generating and heat-transferring properties designed
into the flight articles-was built and tested as long a s possible in JPL’s
%-foot space simulator, which was equipped to approximate the black, cold

13

A b o v e : Mariner’s on-board rocket

motorwasfired in aspace-simltlator
t e s t of s y s t e m i n t e r a c t i o n ( p r o o f -
t e s t m o d e l ) . L e f t : Mariner’s solar
panels p o w e r t h e s p a c e c r a f t a t t h e
b o t t o m of Earth’s atmosphere in a
unique test.
 System testing in JPL’s Spacecraft Assembly Facility.

vacuum of space and the blazing radiance of the Sun. Correction factors
learned from the flight of Mariner Venus had been engineered into this test
device to achieve the best possible Earth-surface reproduction of space
conditions.
Before the flight spacecraft were built, a prototype or proof-test model
was put together. Serving as a final test bed in subsystem development,
as well as the initial system-test vehicle, this spacecraft was a t one end
of the development loop : modifications found necessary in proof testing
were themselves retested on the same craft. At the end of the design evolu-
tion and after 1100 hours of system test, the proof-test model had evolved
into a functional duplicate of the flight spacecraft; they, in turn, were
14 spared the rigors of prolonged design evaluation by the existence of
the test spacecraft which could never fly a mission. The proof-test space-
craft was also used for inter-system testing, verifying compatibility of the
spacecraft with ground equipment. It then. supported both flight missions
by simulating observed flight situations so that they could be studied at
close range.
r .

MARINER LEAVES PORT

Three Mariner Mars spacecraft began the journey to the planet Mars
from a canyon north of Pasadena, California, a t the Jet Propulsion Labora-
tory, where they had been designed, assembled, and tested for months. Two
of the three would fly; the third was a spare. They were partly disassem-
bled, carefully packed, and loaded on moving vans. On September 11, 1964,
a f t e r a four-day journey, the last van reached the Air Force Eastern Test
Range, Cape Kennedy, Florida.
Here each spacecraft was carefully inspected and retested. There were
spare parts for the individual plug-in units of the Mariner spacecraft. The
calendar and the high quality standards would allow no tinkering o r repair Nose f a i r i n g 13 5 M f t diameter
in t h e conventional sense : replacement of modules, if necessary, should Weight about 350 I spacecraft inside

solve faulty-parts problems.

A t the Cape, two 100-foot-high AtlasIAgena D rockets were waiting,
each standing in its own launch complex. The engineers could select either
one for the first launch, and could launch the two missions as close a s two
days a p a r t if desired.
Spacecraft and launch vehicles were given separate system tests, assur-
ing t h a t each would function in every phase of its role in the mission.
The mechanical, electrical, and radio compatibility of spacecraft, vehicle,
ground equipment, and tracking system were tested. Finally, a t the begin-
ning of November, the Mariner I11 spacecraft and launch vehicle stood on
the pad, going through a dress rehearsal. The actual Mars launch period
opened on November 4 and lasted for only about a month.
Atlas D main s

bout 130 tons

Int erplanet ary Navigation
15
Unlike a conventional aircraft, a spacecraft spends most of its time
falling. The first few minutes of the flight, and then, a day or a week later,
a few more seconds, a r e all the powered flight it ever has. Accordingly, its
captain must plot his course before the ship leaves p o r t ; the charting is
more gunnery than navigation.
Every planet of the Sun travels an ellipse, a closed curve which resem-
h!es 8 circle stretched nfit ir, o ~ dimefisinn.
e The S u n i s a t one fociis of the
ellipse, not a t the geometric center. As the planet comes closer to the Sun,
i t speeds up ; as it goes outward, i t slows.
An interplanetary spacecraft is a s subject to these laws a s a r e the
planets. It must be given the correct velocity-speed and direction-so
t h a t i t will arrive a t the intersection of its orbit with t h a t of the planet
j u s t as the planet gets there. Most of the necessary velocity can be picked
up from Earth-which orbits the Sun a t a n average of 66,600 miles per
hour-but the rest must be provided by the booster vehicles.
 The velocity required to reach Mars is lowest, and within reach of
present-day rocket power, when the E a r t h launch and the Mars arrival
occur almost on opposite sides of the Sun. Such conditions prevail only for
a few weeks every 25 months, limiting the practical launch periods to
those times. The absolute minimum velocity would be needed when the
injection point, the Sun, and the arrival point form a straight line but,
because of the tilt of Mars’ orbit plane relative to Earth’s, this coincidence
hardly ever happens.
Xear Earth, the entry point of the Earth-to-Mars ellipse is relatively
fixed in space. Since the Earth turns under this point, it is within the safe
firing angle (24 degrees south from due East) for Cape Kennedy for only
a few hours per day; as the injection point sweeps from East to West,
the rocket must be guided to meet it. Using the Atlas/Agena D, the tech-
nique is to launch into E a r t h orbit, coast until the injection zone is almost
reached, and then restart the Agena to transfer from E a r t h orbit to solar
orbit.
Several thousand Mariner Mars trajectories were calculated, accom-
modating the changing relationship of the planets day by day, and the
changing angles near E a r t h from minute to minute. They took into account
not only Earth, Sun, and Mars, but the perturbing effects of the Moon and
the planet Jupiter, and the pressure of light from the Sun. The latter would,
over the course of the mission, push Mariner about 10,000 miles away from
the Sun.

Mariner 111: Nine Hours

Mariner I11 was launched toward Mars about midday on November 5.

Minor launch vehicle difficulties encountered on the first day’s countdown
16 had been solved to the engineers’ satisfaction ; the prelaunch countdown
was normal ; the weather was good. The tall, snub-nosed space vehicle rose
from Launch Complex 13 with an air of confidence.
Nevertheless, within minutes the mission was doomed, though it took
nearly nine hours for it to die. The cylindrical fiberglass-honeycomb nose
fairing, or shield, designed t o protect the spacecraft during the smashing
thrust up through the atmosphere and then to be jettisoned, failed during
the climb through the air. When the time came, i t could not be ejected.
Early indications of trouble came a t the end of powered flight. Because
of the drag of the nose fairing, the velocity was too low. The spacecraft
would not reach its target.
About 5% minutes later, after spacecraft and Agena had separated, the
spacecraft unsuccessfully attempted to deploy its solar panels. Without
solar panels, there was no solar power. Studying the telemetry from
Mariner, building UP piece-by-piece a picture of the trouble, and conduct-
ing failure-mode tests on the proof-test spacecraft, the operations teams
commanded Mariner I11 to conserve power by switching off the scientific
equipment, repeatedly commanded panel deployment, and were in the
process of igniting the spacecraft rocket motor in an attempt to remove
the nose shield by force when, 8 hours 43 minutes after launch, the space-
craft battery r a n out of power.
Mariner’s team wasted no time. The problem was identified, studied,
and solved. A quick, thorough test program detailed and verified the condi-
tions which had caused the failure. Experiments were conducted with
fiberglass nose shields, and a new all-metal shield was designed, developed,
and built in record time by the Launch Vehicle team. A little over three
weeks after the launch of Mariner 111, another Mariner/Atlas/Agena
stood ready on the pad, with the new metal nose shield installed.

Mariner IV: A Good Sendoff

On November 27, the first countdown of the new Mariner was inter-
rupted by radio difficulties. On Saturday, November 28, at 1:37 in the
morning, EST, the launch countdown began for the Atlas and Agena; the
spacecraft was activated at 4 :32 a.m. Launch operations crews went
through the long list, establishing and checking communications, forecast-
ing the flight weather, monitoring spacecraft and launch vehicle condition,
filling the Agena oxidizer tank, and switching equipment into a state of
readiness. At 9 :22 a.m. EST, the clock had counted to zero without a hitch;
the report was “clear to launch.” Liftoff occurred 1.309 seconds later.
As i t rose, the space vehicle rolled to an azimuth of 91.4 degrees, just
South of due East, and began to pitch over from its vertical ascent. Shed-
ding its two massive booster engines, Atlas carried on with the single sus-
tainer. A ground computer fed guidance commands to the vehicle until
the sustainer engine was shut down and the velocity properly adjusted with 17
two small rocket engines. Then the huge, empty Atlas was detached and
Agena took over. Before the Agena engine was started, the aerodynamic
nose cover had to be jettisoned. As designed, it came off easily.
Agena’s 16,000-pound-thrust engine couldn’t lift the weight of the
Agena vehicle and the encapsulated Mariner spacecraft if they were on
the ground. But starting a t a n altitude of 100 nautical miles and a velocity
nf 13,nOn miles per hour, it could and did thrust Mariner to orbital velocity,
about 17,500 miles per hour. The Agena engine then shut off, and the
vehicle coasted for almost 41 minutes. Swinging around E a r t h to bear on
its target, Agena flamed into action again. When Agena shut down for
good, the spacecraft was traveling a t 25,598 miles per hour along a path
that led within 150,000 miles of Mars. The application of one-fifth of the
spacecraft on-board propulsion power would bring that path within the
desired target zone, between 4000 and 8000 miles above the planet’s surface.
Launch operations were described as nominal; it was a good shot.
 1
2

18

6 7
4 5

12

At the Cape, two f l i g h t spacecraft and a

spare were assembled and tested ( 1 ) . Presi-
d e n t L y n d o n B. Johnson ( 2 ) inspected t h e
s p a c e c r a f t during a s s e m b l y ; t h e n (3) M a r i -
n e r IV w a s installed in i t s nose f a i r i n g , r e a d y
f o r the launch vehicle. Meanwhile, t h e A g e n a
D vehicle w a s m a t e d t o the A t l a s D booster
( 4 ) . T h e n t h e encapsulated spacecraft w a s
m o u n t e d ( 5 ) o n t h e lazcnch v e h i c l e ; t h e
assembled space vehicle ( 6 ) w a s tested t h o r -
h
oiighly, while J P L engineers in the spacecraft
building monitored the performance (7). T h e
M a r i n e r IV l a u n c h (8-12) w a s c o n t r o l l e d
f ,-om the spacecraft mission director’s a r e a
( 1 3 ) and t h e launch complex blockhouse ( 1 4 ) .

19

11

13 14
 IN-FLIGHT EVENTS

A minute and a half after entering the path to Mars, Mariner and Agena
passed into Earth’s shadow for a period of almost 12 minutes. There, in
the dark, spacecraft and Agena separated. A three-minute timer was
started, and: simiiltqnen~?s!y,tbc spacecraft radio power was switched up
and the interplanetary scientific instruments were turned on. When the
three-minute timer ran out, electric current was applied across the solar-
panel pin-puller squibs.

Mariner’s four solar panels a r e folded for launch.

A squib is a small, electrically fired explosive charge attached to

’ a cylinder-piston arrangement, enabling a one-stroke internal-dombustion
engine to open or close a bolt or valve. These mechanisms would be used
later to turn the propulsion system on and off and to release the scanning
platform carrying the TV camera. Eight pairs of squibs (they a r e usually
mounted in pairs for increased reliability) were mounted on the spider-
like legs which held up and steadied the four solar panels during launch.
Now they fired, pulling the pins and releasing the panels.

Power From the Sun

Under spring tension, the panels hinged away to the deployed position.
At the end of each opening panel, a silver fan unfolded and spread. These
fans are solar pressure vanes, a new attitude-control trim device in a first
flight test ; they were designed to balance the spacecraft against the endless
pressure of sunlight, saving attitude-control-jet gas and permitting a longer
stable flight.
Now the spacecraft came back into the sunlight, and, the attitude-
control system having already been switched into a Sun-seeking operation
by the central computer and sequencer, Mariner turned toward the Sun.
Usually called CC&S, a central computer and sequencer serves as com-
bination brain and alarm clock for the Ranger-Mariner family. It provides
the master synchronization for spacecraft operations, the rhythm for telem-
etry transmission and command interpretation, and a number of set com-
mands (such as Sun search, s t a r search, and midcourse maneuver), and ,
TOWARD MARS
conducts complex maneuvers in accordance with instructions sent from
Earth.
Searching f o r the Sun consists of placing the pitch and yaw control
systems under the command of the Sun sensors. The spacecraft is treated
a s though i t were a ship or aircraft traveling in the direction in which the
solar panels face : yawing moves the prow o r nose to the left or right, pitch-
ing moves i t up or down, and rolling spins the ship around. Mariner left
this mode of travel behind with the launch vehicle, and normally moves
almost at right angles to the “nose” direction, but the names stuck. I n
Mariner’s cruise mode, pitching or yawing means rotating around one or
the other pair of solar panels, and rolling means turning like a propeller.
There a r e Sun sensors on Mariner’s upper and lower decks ; their output
signals drive control-amplifier chains, which use puffs of nitrogen gas from
paired jets on the tips of the solar panels to t u r n the spacecraft until the
panels face the Sun, and to stop i t in that position. This process took
12 minutes.
Now Mariner’s 28,224 solar cells were converting sunlight into 700
watts of raw electrical power, which, in turn, was converted to various
forms to run t h e spacecraft and recharge the battery. A t Mars’ distance
from the Sun, the spacecraft would still generate 300 watts, leaving a good
margin in case of solar cell damage in the space environment.
Like a big jewelled windmill, the spacecraft rolled slowly through space
f o r the next fifteen hours; the known roll rate was used to calibrate the
magnetometer, one of the interplanetary sensors, so t h a t the spacecraft’s
own magnetic field could be subtracted from the magnetometer readings.

Lock on Canopus

Imagine a weight suspended from a single long cord : i t spins and spins.
A second cord, approximately a t right angles, will steady i t in a moment. A 21
line of sight on the s t a r Canopus, second brightest in the sky, and located
near the ecliptic south pole, was to be Mariner’s second stabilizing cord.
Mariner Mars was the first space mission using o r needing a s t a r a s a
reference object ; earlier missions, remaining near E a r t h or traveling
to Venus, had sighted on the home planet. But during this flight, E a r t h
c-
would transit across the face of the Sun, and through much of the flight
TO
:+ ..7,..,,l,a
v v u u i u appcui an 2 1,I c i ~t
nnnnnr n” :
.
- crescent. A bright r e f e ~ e n c cSGUYCC,
,L i v c ld~ i i ~

at a wide angle away from the Sun, was necessary. Canopus filled the
requirements f o r such a reference source.
Mariner’s Canopus sensor is mounted on the shady side of the space-
craft ring, pointing outward a t a n angle, so t h a t its field of view covers
a n area in the shape of a shallow cone. As the spacecraft moves around the
Sun, the angle between the Sun line and the Canopus line changes slowly ;
one of the tasks of the CC&S is to alter the sensor’s angle four times during
[r;
< ,
TO CANOPUS

\ I

the flight to keep the s t a r in view.

 An electronic “logic” in the attitude-control system was set to respond
CANOPUS
GAMMA-VELA
1 to any object more than one-eighth as bright as Canopus. Including
Canopus, there were seven such objects visible to the sensor as Mariner
REGULUS - i wAy2,0j swung around in the search mode; it was no surprise when the system
acquired one of the other six. The engineers had prepared brightness charts,
corresponding to star maps of the ribbon of sky the star tracker would
inspect, and the stars were recognized as they came around. It took more
ALUtHAMJN t , h m a day of star-hopping to find Canopus.

MARKAE 4

Trajectory Adjustment
1 ROLL
SEARCH
A lunar or planetary mission has too great a range and too small a
- 00- target to be accurately guided from the brief initial powered flight. Thrust
BRIGHTNESS 4
must be applied later, in what has come to be called the “midcourse cor-
rection” maneuver-a double misnomer, in that it occurs earlier than the
midpoint of the flight, and, rather than correcting a mistake, increases the
possible accuracy. All members of the Ranger-Mariner family used essen-
tially the same type of small rocket engine to apply this thrust. Mariner
IV’s propulsion system was modified so that i t could be used twice if neces-
sary, and its thrust was calibrated so accurately that the resulting change
of velocity could be metered by the burning time alone.
After about a week of tracking to determine the flight path and Mars
arrival time, the thrust maneuver was scheduled for December 4. All
the necessary ground commands had been received by the spacecraft, when
it suddenly “lost lock” with Canopus, though Sun lock was not disturbed.

22

F l i g h t t e l e m e t r y is m o n i t o r e d
closely before midcourse maneuver.
Since the spacecraft had no baseline from which t o orient its rocket motor,
the maneuver was postponed with another ground command until Canopus
lock could be re-established.
It was theorized that a dust particle of pin-point size, floating a few
feet from the Canopus sensor and shining fiercely in the sunlight, might
have so increased the brightness registered in the attitude-control system
that the spacecraft released its lock on Canopus and began to track the
dust particle. As the particle drifted out of the field of view of the sensor,
the spacecraft was left in a star-searching mode. After several days of
observation - the phenomenon repeated itself a number of times - the
excessive-brightness reaction was removed by ground command. The reac-
tion had been intended to prevent Earth-lock, and Earth was moving well
out of the way.
On December 5, the thrust maneuver was successfully carried out.
Three quantitative commands from Earth had the CC&S store in its elec-
tronic memory the dimensions of the required maneuver, which were a
negative pitch t u r n of 39.16 degrees, a positive roll turn of 156.08 degrees,
and a thrusting time of 20.07 seconds. Then three direct commands told
the spacecraft t o cock the system, take off the electrical safety catch, and
ignite the engine. Since the motor was initially pointed almost along the
L
direction of flight, the turns aimed it back in the general direction of E a r t h
but high above the plane of the orbit. The pitch and roll were performed
with better than 1 per cent accuracy, the velocity change with about 2%
per cent accuracy. As planned, the angle of flight was changed less than
% degree, and the velocity was increased a little more than 37 miles per
hour. Mariner was headed straight for its target.
M idcourse motor

23

21- meziver successfully completed!

 ‘ .

LONG-DISTANCE COMMUNICATION

A fundamental characteristic of the Mariner class of mission is the

physical separation of the spacecraft performing the flight from the oper-
ators who conduct it. Uniuue to Mariner IV is the extent of the separation
-up to 150 million miles. This great distance imposes, a t encounter, a com-
munications delay of about 1219$ minutes each way. In spite of the delay,
the spacecraft must be able to maneuver, to switch from one operational
sequence or equipment chain to another, and to interrupt or cancel a n
operation on command from its “crew” on Earth. Furthermore, details of
its operating performance and condition, its precise position and motion,
and the outputs from its scientific equipment must be readily and frequently
available to the operating team. This vital function is carried out by the
telecommunications subsystems of the spacecraft and, on the ground, by a
worldwide network of tracking stations and a complex of computers, data
displays, and other equipment.

Keeping in Touch

Starting before liftoff a t the Cape and throughout its flight mission,
Mariner I V has been and will be sending a steady stream of information
back to Earth. Its radio, putting out about 10 watts of power a t about 2300
megacycles in the “S-band,” has two transmitting amplifiers ( a Mariner-
II-type cavity amplifier and a longer-life traveling-wave tube), and two
antennas : a low-gain, omnidirectional broadcast antenna and a high-gain,
24 narrow-beam elliptical reflector dish. Either antenna can be used for com-
mand reception as well as transmission ; the dish, whose direction is fixed
on the spacecraft, was switched into the transmission link on March 5,
when the range became extreme f o r the “omni” and the E a r t h entered the
narrow beam of the reflector.
The 10 watts transmitted by Mariner IV has shrunk t o a s little as
.0000000000000000001 watt (10 1:) watt) a s measured a t the input to
the receiver. Signals of such low power call for extremely sensitive
receiving equipment on the ground. The Deep Space Stations, spotted a t
about 120-degree intervals around the globe, are equipped with steerable
reflector antennas 85 feet in diameter. The heart of the traveling-wave-
maser receiving amplifier fed by each of these antennas is a synthetic ruby
crystal immersed in liquid helium; this radical design keeps the internal
o r “system” noise low enough that the faint spacecraft signal can be heard.
The direction o r angular position of Mariner in its flight is calculated
from the pointing angles of the narrow-beam ground antennas. The velocity
of the spacecraft is determined by tracking the radio carrier frequency
very precisely and then measuring the amount of “stretching” of the fre-
quency due to the doppler effect. The operating frequency is controlled
either by a n oscillator on the spacecraft or, for more precise determination,
a stable oscillator on the ground, which generates a signal that is trans-
mitted to the spacecraft, multiplied by a known factor (240/221), amplified,
and sent back t o Earth.

Listening Post: Earth

I n 1958 and 1959 the first Deep Space Station was constructed in the
Southern California desert near Goldstone Dry Lake. Its huge 85-foot-
diameter reflector antenna is mounted like a telescope so that it can track
a spacecraft a t planetary distance. This Pioneer Station, modified with the
advances of technology, is in service today, tracking Mariner IV almost 12
hours per day. There are two more stations a t Goldstone now, capable of
handling multiple missions (in February and March, Ranger and Mariner
missions were tracked simultaneously) and carrying out research and
development in telecommunications.
In Australia there are two stations. The one at Woomera tracked
Mariner until it was converted to another frequency t o support two Ranger
flights in February and March. A brand-new station a t Tidbinbilla, near
the capital city of Canberra, stepped into the breach, and has covered
Mariner IV since that time.
The first Deep Space Station t o track Mariner IV was the one near
Johannesburg, South Africa. Johannesburg tracked Mariner 10 hours a
day until the Ranger missions were flown. After the Ranger flights, Johan-
nesburg reconverted to the S-band, and Mariner was again in touch with
E a r t h 24 hours a day. A new station being built in Spain will alleviate such
conflicts in the future,
 The international tracking network is woven together by means of land
lines, undersea cables, and radio links ; at the hub of the net, in Pasadena,
is the Space Flight Operations Facility, whose computers and data-handling
and control equipment support Mariner’s crew. Here operations teams
specializing in the flight path, spacecraft performance, and space science
monitor the information received from Mariner IV and translated by the
computers. From these data the command decisions a r e made. The scientific
.AWL
.Cfi...‘.+:n. IllablW,l is
* concerted into tabdar ani: graphic f o r m for analysis am?
interpretation by the scientists.

L
S F O F computers
Dropping the Lens Cover

One of the major events that took place during Mariner’s flight was
the removal of the television camera lens cover, originally scheduled for
the latter part of the mission. Because of the problem with the Canopus
sensor, the engineers believed that removing the cover might release dust
particles, which, in turn, might drift past the sensor and cause a n abnormal
reaction. To prevent such a n occurrence just before encounter, they decided
to play it safe. By conducting the “clear-for-action” earlier, closer to Earth,
they would gain more time to absorb and rectify any possible after-effects.
The operation was rescheduled for February 11, during the Goldstone
tracking shift. First, a “verification” series of five commands was taped,
proofread, and sent from Goldstone ; the spacecraft’s reaction to each was
carefully monitored before the next was sent. The telemetry mode was
shifted, and power distribution in critical areas was checked. With all
systems g o , the operational series of five commands went off, leaving the
lens uncovered, the shutter closed, and the scan platform aimed in the best
direction for encounter-ready for action.
Space F l i g h t Operations Diyector
26

S F O F Mission Control
 The commands were sent to the spacecraft in the form of binary words,
each word consisting of an arrangement of 26 zeroes and ones (bits). The
command signal was superimposed on the radio-f requency carrier ; when
it reached the spacecraft, it was “demodulated” from the carrier and sent
t o the particular subsystem for which it was intended. By means of elec-
tronic logic circuits, the commands could activate various mechanisms
aboard the spacecraft, and the results could be determined by monitoring
the telemetry signals received back on the Earth.

Engineering Telemetry
Goldstone Control
Mariner’s signals back to Earth outnumber Earth’s infrequent words
of command. Exclusive of scientific data (packaged separately by the data
automation system for transmission), Mariner reports almost 90 spacecraft
measurements : temperatures, voltages, currents, pressures, angles, and the
like, described in a seven-bit word each. There are four event counters,
which note receipt of commands and the passage of time. Up to January 3,
the spacecraft chattered away a t 33% bits per second; on that date, the
rate was slowed down by a factor of four, due to the lengthening range to
E a r t h (about six million miles) .
The spacecraft data encoder gathers these measurements into “decks”
of ten measurements, sampling each in turn. Most of the decks are
multiplexed-time-shared, so that they are sampled every tenth, or every
hundredth, or every two-hundredth time rather than each time around.
Some measurements, most of them temperatures, which change very
slowly, may be sampled only every 2y’ hours ;others, more critical or faster- SFO F Space Science Area
changing, come as often as once a minute. These rates are based on the
encounter data rate of 81$ , bits per second.
Spacecraft Analysis A r e a
27
 THE SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS

Mariner IV carries eight scientific experiments, monitored by about two

dozen scientists from ten universities and laboratories. The experiments
are divided into two categories : the interplanetary experiments, which are
performed throughout the entire journey to Mars ; and the planetary experi-
ments, which are expected to increase our knowledge of the planet. The
scientific package consists both of scientific instruments and of auxiliary
equipment required to process the data.

Interplanetary Experiments

Six scientific instruments were turned on a few minutes after the launch
of Mariner last November ; the helium magnetometer, the solar-plasma
probe, the ionization chamber, the trapped-radiation detector, the cosmic-
ray telescope, and the cosmic-dust detector. For the past 7 months, these
A b o v e awd b e l o w : E x p e r i m e x t e r s instruments have been gathering scientific data about the interplanetary
magnetic field, the cosmic dust found in space, the solar wind, solar flares,
and other deep-space phenomena. By the time Mariner reaches Mars, it
will have taken approximately 18 million scientific measurements-enough
to keep scientists busy for the next several years.
The interplanetary experiments will be of special interest as Mariner
approaches the vicinity of the planet ; they may tell us, for instance, whether
Mars is surrounded by a magnetic field like the E a r t h is, and whether there
are intense radiation belts around the planet like the Van Allen belts
28 around Earth.
The plasma probe suffered a component failure in December, 1964,
making its readings unintelligible until the telemetry rate change early in
January, 1965, made a partial recovery possible. Decreasing temperature
slowly made the crippled instrument unreadable again by early May.
The Geiger tube, one of two sensors in the ionization-chamber experiment,
failed after a n apparent overdose of ionizing radiation, and the ex-
periment stopped returning data in March.

Planetary Experiments

As Mariner IV passes Mars, it will attempt to take 18 to 21 pictures

of the surface. The electrical signal, representing 64 different shades of
’ -

black and grey with a resolution about as good as Earth-based telescopes

photographing the Moon, will be recorded on a 300-foot loop of magnetic
tape. Each picture will cover an area approximately 120 miles square.
The occultation experiment is the only experiment on Mariner that does
not use a special scientific instrument. It relies on the telecommunications
system and on the extraordinary accuracy of the flight path. If you imagine
bowling a strike in a bowling alley that reaches from Los Angeles to San
Francisco, you will have a good idea of the pin-point accuracy of Mariner’s
trajectory.
About an hour after coming within 5600 miles of the Martian surface,
Mariner will seem to disappear behind the planet (as viewed from E a r t h ) ,
entering occultation near Mars’ south pole and emerging near the north
pole. As Mariner begins to disappear behind the Martian disk, its radio
signals will pass obliquely through the planet’s atmosphere and will be
attenuated and bent, just as a stick appears to be bent when stuck into a
pool of water. By measuring the changes in the characteristics of the radio
signals, scientists hope to learn more about the composition and density
of Mars’ atmosphere.

Auxiliary Science Equipment

The science data automation system serves as a control center and data
handler for the seven scientific instruments carried by Mariner IV. In the
cruise mode, the science data automation system assembles data from the
six interplanetary experiments, translates the information into constant-
rate form, and transmits it to the data encoder, where it is passed on to
the transmitter, and eventually to Earth. During the encounter, some
\
science data will be sent directly to Earth while the picture data a r e being
recorded. 29

1 2 1 4
INCHES
 MARS A N D AFTER

In mid-July, Mariner IV reaches its destination, and, barring accidents,

i t will carry out the complicated and long-awaited planetary sequence. At
closest approach, it will make the historic flyby traveling at a speed of
66,678 miles per hour relative to Earth or 11,518 miles per hour relative to
Mars. Some time prior to closest approach, the wide-angle sensor located
on the scan platform will begin searching f o r the light of Mars. When the
Martian disk comes into view, the scan platform will stop searching and
the wide-angle sensor will begin to track the planet. Then the large red disk
will come into the field of view of the narrow-angle sensor, which will
trigger the tape recorder to start recording the television pictures of the
surface. The pictures, taken alternately through red and green filters, will
take about 25 minutes to record.

30 Several hours after it leaves Mars’ vicinity, Mariner will slowly play
back its tape recording through the data encoder, transmitting the pictures
in digital-bit form to the E a r t h at the rate of more than 8 hours per picture.
Intervals of engineering telemetry will be sandwiched between pictures.
The whole picture-and-telemetry series will take almost 10 days to send. The
plan is to repeat the series a second time to ensure receiving every bit on
Earth ; then Mariner will be ordered back to interplanetary investigation.
Coming so close to Mars will influence Mariner’s orbit. The current
prediction for the post-Mars orbit is that it will be longer (in period and
s p a n ) , less elongated, and more sharply tilted relative to Earth’s orbital
plane. Traveling in this far-flung ellipse between Earth’s orbit and t h a t of
Mars, Mariner will be a satellite of the Sun forever.
Next autumn, E a r t h will pass from the beam of the high-gain antenna.
Mariner’s telemetry will go on transmitting-no one really knows how
long-but we shall not receive its signal. Perhaps in 1967, when the space-
craft again approaches Earth, we shall hear from Mariner once more.
 Experiment Data

Description Experimenters

TV subsystem: up t o 21 pictures of Martian surface R. 6. Leighton,* B. C. Murray. and R. P. Sharp, all of CIT,
and R. K. Sloan and R. D. Allen of JPL

E. J. Smith* of JPL,
Helium magnetometer: planetary and interplanetary p, J, coleman J ~ of
, ucLA,
magnetic fields L. Davis Jr. of CIT. and
D. E. Jones of Brigham Young University and JPL

Solar-plasma probe: quantity rate and energy of H. L. Bridge* and A. Lazarus of MIT, and
positive ion “wind” C. W. Snyder of JPL

Ionization-chamberiparticle-flux detector: H. V. Neher* of CIT,

corpuscular-radiation “dose rate” H. R. Anderson of JPL

Trapped-radiation detector: low-energy solar charged J. A. Van Allen,* L. A. Frank, and S . M. Krimijis, all of
particles and planetary “radiation belts” State University of Iowa

31
Cosmic-ray telescope: high-energy charged particles J. A. Simpson’ and J. O’Gallagher of University of Chicago

W. M. Alexander,* 0. E. Berg, C. W. McCracken, and

L. Secretan, all of NASA/GSFC, and 1. L. Bohn, and
0. P. Fuchs of Temple University, Philadelphia

Occultation (no instrument): Martian atmosphere as A. J. Kliore,‘ 0. L. Cain, and G . S . Levy, all of JPL,
deduced from its effect on spacecraft’s signal V. R. Eshelman of Stanford Electronics Laboratory, and
during occultation b y the planet F. Drake of Cornell University

*principal investigator
 . '

Orbit Data
Mariner IV Mariner IV Mariner IV
Earth Mars Mariner 111 after launch after maneuver after encounter

Length of ellipse, miles 195,794,WO 283,090,MH) 214,000,000 231,100,MM 239,640,WO 251,533.N

Perihelion distance, miles 91,342 000 128,330,000 92,0130,M)O 92,180,000 92,230,000 104,557,000
Aphelion distance, miles 94,452,000 1Y,760,000 122,000,000 346,920,0130 147,410,000 146,976,000
Tilt of ecliptic. degrees 00 10 51' 00 8 00 7%' 20 5 8
Period, days 365 687 449 528 529 570
Inclination of roll plane 231%' 24-25" ? 900 900 900
(equator) l o orbit plane
Per!.? e! !O!?!iO" __
77 hr 56 man ?? h! ?! E!" ? ! ! n

MARS AT LAUNCH NOV 28

MARS ORBIT

MARINER ORB11

MIDCOURSE MANEUVER DEC 5

EARTH AND MARINER AT LAUNCH NOV 28

EARTH ORBIT

SUN

Mariner IV positions at 10-day intervals starting Dec. 1, 1964

EARTH AT ENCOUNTER Straight line distance. m i Velocity. m i l h r
Distance traveled
JULY 14. 1965 Date along- tlaiectorv.
. . mi From Earth From Mars From Sun Relative to Earth Relative to M i
-~ ~ ~~ -- ~~ ~

Dec I, 1964 525 782 517.870 126 953 200 91 824 713 7 288 61.438
Dec 11 22 649,177 2,203,995 116,862.720 92,624,158 6,973 57,050
Dec 21 40,241,575 3,873,488 106,848,830 94,011,320 6.977 52,869
Dec 31 57,574,471 5,575,079 97,078.054 95.924.270 7,406 48,672
Jan 10 1965 74,583,451 7,450,269 87,615,436 98,281,742 8,586 44.548
Jan 20 91,219,961 9,670,634 78,740.116 100,994,350 10,362 40,573
Jan 30 107,451,878 12.394.127 70,342,943 103,372,235 12,748 36,801
Feb 9 123,261.850 15,769,341 62,528.068 107,131.110 15,561 33,269
Feb 19 138,644,479 19,858,102 55,316,411 110,394,380 18,561 29.996
March 1 153,605,290 24,680,278 48,709,726 113,695,700 21,815 26,987
March 11 168.155.150 30,232,660 42,634,447 116,378,530 25,167 24,243
March 21 182,311,410 36,456,459 37,244,945 120.195.680 28,501 21,759
March31 196,094,740 43,301,215 32.326.122 123.308.240 31,929 19.528
April 10 209,528220 50.705.889 27,835,443 126,284,444 35.320 17,544
April 20 222,636.480 58,579,830 23,904.586 129,038,570 38,621 15,804
April 30 235,445,090 66,823,342 20,315,235 131,719,930 41.944 14,308
May IO 247,980,100 75,427,220 17,042,164 134,151,990 45,190 13,043
May 20 260,267,760 84,264,046 14,044,672 136,371.970 48,342 12,010
May 30 272334,370 93,270,057 11,266,975 138,368.640 51,521 11.202
June 9 284,206,150 102,362,020 8,655,916 140,133,630 54.598 10.608
June 19 295,909,130 111,453,380 6,162,774 141,660,360 57,610 10.206
June 29 307,469,390 120,485.400 3,744,829 142,943,780 60,667 9.971
July 9 313,123,300 123,375,820 1,366,265 143,980,310 63,632 9,872
Encounter
July 14 325,741.140 134.398.880 5,675 144,468,580 66,678 11,518
 The Log of Mariner IV
November 28,1964
1422 :01.39 GMT Liftoff.
1504:28 Space separation.
1510:lO Solar panels deployed.
1531 :04 Sun lock completed.
November 29
0659 :03 Canopus search started.
November 30
1102:47 Canopus lock completed.
December 4
1305-2402 Midcourse maneuver attempted by ground command ; Canopus
lock lost. Maneuver cancelled from E a r t h ; Canopus reacquired
after 7 ground-commanded “star-hops.”
December 5
1305-1658 Successful midcourse maneuver (6 ground commands).
December 6 Component failure in plasma probe ; scientific data unintelligible.
December 7 Canopus lock lost, Gamma-Vela acquired.
December 9 S t a r lock lost, Gamma-Vela reacquired twice.
December 13 Transmitting amplifiers switched (to traveling-wave tube) by
ground command ; star lock lost, reacquired.
December 17 Star lock lost, reacquired. “Star-hop” commanded from E a r t h ;
Canopus reacquired. Star sensor desensitized to excess bright-
ness by ground command.
J a n u a r y 3,1965 Telemetry bit rate switched by on-board command from 33% to
8% bits per second (most frequent readouts every 50 seconds).
Plasma-probe data partly recoverable at new rate.
J a n u a r y 10-13 Johannesburg ground station assigned t o Ranger t e s t 6 W -hour
daily telemetry blackout.
February 5 Solar flare detected by science instruments.
February 7-22 Johannesburg station assigned to Ranger VI11 test flight
mission.
February 11 TV lens cover dropped, planetary science equipment checked
and prepared by 12 ground commands.
March 5 Spacecraft transmission switched from omni t o high-gain
antenna by on-board command.
March 10-25 Johannesburg station assigned t o Ranger I X test and flight
mission.
March 17 Ionization-chamber/Geiger-tube system fails.
April 16 Solar-flare phenomena detected.
May 3 Plasma-probe data below threshold due t o decreasing temperature.
May 26 Solar flare detected.
June 5 Solar flare detected.
J u n e 15 Solar flare detected.
 NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY/CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY