More Mariners To Fly To Mars

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31780, 10 September 1968, Page 21

More Mariners To Fly To Mars

Some details have come to hand concerning the statistics and experiments to be under taken by the two new Mariner spacecraft which will be dispatched to Mars early next year.

The first will be launched sometime during February and the second could be as late as mid-April. The Mariners will arrive at Mars during the first half of August. To minimise communication difficulties during the period of their encounter with Mars the dates of arrival will be arranged to be no closer together than five days. Even so, the second Mariner will cover the distance to Mars much more rapidly than the first.

Both Mariners will fly past Mars at a minimum distance of 2000 miles, compared to Mariner 4’s closest approach of 6000 miles in 1964. Each spacecraft will carry two cameras—wide angle and narrow angle—and their pictures will be sent back to earth by a slowed-down television technique as was done by Mariner 4. Instead of the narrow band of Mars photographed by Mariner 4, the new Mariners will provide pictures of the whole disc of Mars as they approach. During this time the normal rotation of Mars on its axis will bring all parts of the planet into view. As the Mariners pass close by Mars the area covered by each camera will shrink but the detail will improve to the point where features less than 1000 yards will be visible in the narrow angle camera. In some pictures it is quite possible that one of the two tiny moons of Mars will appear. Each Mariner should provide at least 33 pictures and it will be very interesting to see how well the

large-scale distribution of j Martian craters will fit with the geographical (I should -say “areographical”) features which have adorned the maps iof Mars drawn by terrestrial observers. The new Mariners will be the first launched by AtlasCentaur rockets. The Atlas Centaur was used with great success in the Surveyor programme. Use of the Atlas Centaur rather than the Atlas Agena will allow each Mariner to weigh 9001 b instead of the 5751 b which Mariner 4 weighed. Again it is likely that the Soviet Union will send at least one spacecraft to Mars next year. Possibly it will make a landing. Maybe there will be another race as close as that between Venera 4 and Mariner 5 to Venus last year.