VENUS SHOT SUCCESS CLAIMED

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29913, 29 August 1962, Page 13

VENUS SHOT SUCCESS CLAIMED

Course Error Can Be Corrected

(N.Z. Preu Association— Copyright} • CAPE CANAVERAL, August 28. The American spacecraft, Mariner 11, speeding on its way towards the planet Venus, is a great guidance success for missile scientists. The instrument-packed spacecraft was launched early yesterday on its 180-million-mile flight to pass within 10,000 miles of Venus and give man his first close “look” at the mysterious planet.

A waver in the Atlas-Agena rocket that carried the spacecraft aloft had led scientists to predict that Mariner II would pass Venus at a distance of 600,000 miles on its nearest approach. But then the jubilant scientists found the error would be only 250,000 miles, and this is correctable by a tiny 37.31 b motor which can increase Mariner H’s speed by up to 120 miles per hour.

The tiny guidance booster, which cannot be fired for eight days until a special hypersensitive directional antenna on Mariner II has locked on to the earth, is capable of making a course adjustment of up to only 500.000 miles, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said. At that rate the closest the spacecraft could have been brought to Venus under the early estimate, would have been some 100,000 miles. It could not have produced much data at that distance. Tracking scientists at the California Institute of Technology laboratory said the new telemetry disclosures premised a “smashing success. All systems on the spacecraft are working normally and telemetry quality is excellent,” they said.

Miariner II is expected to pass Venus in the first two weeks of December, but the exact date cannot be calculated until after the midcourse corrections. The Mariner project manager for the N.A.S.A.’s jet propulsion laboratory, Mr Jack James, said that Should Mariner II pass within 25,000 miles of Venus instruments should provide excellent data about the planet. Mariner II carries four de-

vices for collecting information about radiation, cosmic dust, magnetic fields and solar plasma during the 109day journey to Venus, as well as two devices for collecting data about the planet itself. Venus is screened from direct observation from the earth by its permanent blanket of cloud and it is thought that Mariner II may give support to beliefs that the planet bears no life because of surface temperatures of some 600 degrees Fahrenheit.