MARINER
MISSION TO 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 VENUS

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.

FOREWORD

For 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.

MARINERMISSION TO VENUS