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Science / Space Race

[August 8, 1969] Two by Four (Mariners 6 and 7 go to Mars)

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photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Into the Wild Black Yonder

Ten years ago, when we started our planetary series of articles, none of other worlds in our solar system had been explored.  Since then, five intrepid spacecraft have toured two planets.  Mariner 2 and Mariner 5 probed Venus, returning the revelation that the shrouded world is a seething cauldron.  Mariner 4 returned the first pictures of the Red Planet, shocking humanity with images of Moonlike craters and reports of a vanishingly thin atmosphere, dashing forever the vivid, science fictional conception of Mars as an inhabitable world.

Now, twin Mariners 6 and 7 have flown by Mars, dramatically increasing what we know about the fourth planet.  While we'll never get back that fantasy so elegantly woven by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Leigh Brackett, the new Mars is also not a blasted husk either.


Distant views of Mars, as seen by Mariner 7 as it approached the planet

The Next Generation

Despite the blow to morale given by Mariner 4, Mars still seemed like the most hospitable place for life to have arisen apart from Earth.  After all, are there not microorganisms living in the harsh environments of Antarctica and at the bottom of the sea?  Even though the Martian atmosphere is just 1% as thick as that of Earth, this is still plenty dense compared to, say, the Moon.  Moreover, Earth's atmosphere is just 1% that of Venus.  Who's to say when an atmosphere is "thick enough"?

So, just a few months after Mariner 4 flew past Mars, Mariners 6 and 7 were authorized.  At first glance, they look a lot like their predecessor, but the differences are profound—both internally and externally.


From top to bottom: Mariners 2, 4, 5, and 6/7 (note the family resemblance of the last three—Mariner 5 was actually a modified Mariner 3/4 backup!)

First, the insides: the new Mariners are the first spacecraft made only to examine their target planet.  All of the prior Mariners had experiments for monitoring the interplanetary environment—solar wind, magnetic fields, that sort of thing.  Mariners 6 and 7 carry two TV cameras (one narrow, one wide-angle), an infrared radiometer (to measure the temperature of Mars), and ultraviolet and infrared spectrometers (to determine the chemical makeup of the Martian atmosphere and surface).  That's it.

As for the outsides, since 1965, when Mariner 4 passed by the Red Planet, there has been a revolution in communications technology.  Not only do the new Mariners carry more powerful transmitters and antennas, but with the construction of the new 210 foot antenna at Goldstone, supplementing the old 85 footers, data can be transferred between the spacecraft and Earth at a rate more than 2000 times the 8.33 bits per second speed of Mariner 4.  It also helps that Mars is closer to Earth this time around, and that the rocket carrying Mariners 6 and 7 is the beefy new Atlas Centaur, which can loft more weight than the old Atlas Agena so the onboard electronics can be heftier and thus more capable.


The 210' "Mars Dish" at Goldstone, California

What this means for us on the ground is that instead of sending back just 22 images of Mars, the new Mariners could transmit hundreds of pictures, all while returning real-time spectrographic and radiometer data.  All of this aided by the installation of the first computer equipped on an interstellar probe, capable of remembering 128 "words" some 22 characters in length.  And that computer can be reprogrammed on the fly from Earth!

On their Way

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the same folks who built the other Mariners, assembled four spacecraft for the mission.  The first was a stay-at-home test model, the second a source of spare parts.  The other two were redundant probes—an understandable precaution given the loss of Mariners 1 and 3.  However, the twin ships weren't entirely redundant; Mariner 6 was targeted to fly over the Martian North Pole while #7 was aimed over the South Pole.

Problems with the spacecraft began before liftoff.  Mariner 6's Atlas rocket, which maintains its structure through internal fuel pressure, sprung a leak and began to deflate like a balloon.  It had to be replaced with Mariner 7's rocket, and a new one ordered from Convair.  This did not delay the launch, however (which had to go at a set time to reach Mars with a minimum of fuel use), and Mariner 6 blasted off on February 24th.  Mariner 7 took off on March 27, but because of its course, was set to reach Mars just five days after its sister.


The launch of Mariner 7

Both rockets performed beautifully, requiring only minor mid-course corrections early in the flight to ensure they zoomed close by the fourth planet.  There were some minor technical problems: The radio on Mariner 6, used to determine range from Earth, kept locking on its own signal rather than Earth's, making it useless.  It fixed itself later in the flight, however.

Similarly, the star tracker designed to keep Mariner positioned properly lost sight of Canopus.  After weeks of engineers scrambling to find an alternative guiding star (they even tried the Large Magellanic Cloud, but the galaxy was too diffuse to be useful), that system fixed itself, too.  Finally, the onboard solar sensors that told how much sunlight was hitting Mariner 6's power panels, began reading too low.  Was the Sun going out?  No.  The sensors had just drifted out of calibration.

Mariner 7's only issue was a radio receiver that dropped to about 20% of its sensitivity, apparently due to cold.  Ground controllers switched it to high power, which warmed the thing up and fixed it.

Thus, its vexing teething pains dealt with, NASA now had, for the first time, two fully operating probes with which to explore Mars.

The Great Galactic Ghoul

On July 29, even as Mariner 6 was finishing the transmission of 33 low-resolution approach images, Mariner 7 suddenly began spinning wildly, all of its scientific data telemetry channels scrambled.  Had an asteroid hit the spacecraft?  Had there been an instrument explosion or some kind of short circuit?  Was there some kind of Great Galactic Ghoul guarding the Red Planet?  No answer was quickly forthcoming.


Collage of Mariner 6 images as it approached Mars

Nevertheless, engineers raced to salvage the mission—with Mariner 7 arriving shortly after its sister, and from a more favorable angle, the JPL science team wanted the spacecraft's experiments all in working order. 

Cautiously, computer engineers went over every bit of code and methodically tested all of Mariner 7's instruments.  They were in working order, but because of the accident, uncalibrated and useless.  How to get real data points to use to base the radiometer and spectrometer data against?


Engineers at the Mariner control center at JPL

As it turned out, the two TV cameras on board were in good order and unaffected.  By pointing them at Martian targets and using the data they returned, it was possible to calibrate the other experiments.  And so, just in the nick of time, Mariner 7 was ready, come close encounter time, to do some real science.

Exploring Barsoom

So what did the two probes find as they whizzed past Mars, almost grazing it from a scant few thousand miles away?

Well, at first they seemed to confirm Mariner 4's findings.  There were all the craters in stark detail.  There was no evidence that there had ever been widespread water—absent was the erosion one would expect from oceans or even rivers.


A lunar landscape, courtesy of Mariner 7

On the other hand, if Mars wasn't Earth's twin, neither was it sister to the Moon.  As each Mariner went behind the planet, beaming radio signals through the Martian atmosphere, it was confirmed that surface pressure was around 7 millibar—a refinement rather than a revelation.  But they did determine that carbon dioxide makes up a greater percentage of the air than even on Venus.  Nitrogen was completely absent, which was a surprise.  So was ozone, which means that the surface is fairly baked by ultraviolet—again, a strike against life on the planet.

The Red Planet is not quite geologically moribund, however.  The vast Hellas region, smooth of craters, and a region of convoluted terrain akin to the American Badlands, suggests some kind of volcanic activity in comparatively recent times.

Unlike the Moon, clouds scud across the Martian sky, mostly composed of dry ice.  While it may not rain on the planet, it does frost, and maybe even snow ice and carbon dioxide.  The climate changes with the seasons, with polar (dry?) ice caps spreading and receding.  The tropical highs soar to a balmy 60 degrees, but the polar lows plunge to 240 degrees below zero.


A view of the Martian North Pole, snapped by Mariner 6—note the ice cap

Thus, Mars is an inhospitable place…but it if it lacks biological life, it is nevertheless an interesting living, breathing planet in its own right.

What's next?

Mariners 6 and 7 are still functioning, and their onboard systems should work until at least 1971.  Not only might they return pictures of any asteroids or comets that drift by, they will also constitute an experiment in and of themselves.  As they drift through the solar system, terrestrial scientists will measure variations in the timing of their telemetry signals and use them to prove General Relativity—something that requires great distances to detect subtle theoretical variations.

As for successors, a Martian orbiter is already in the works for the 1971 alignment, and in 1973, a probe will use the gravity of Venus to enable a probe to fly by and then visit, for the first time, Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun.

And also in 1973, the Viking orbiter/lander combo, successor to the overlarge Voyager project, will give Mars a real look.


The 1971 Mars Orbiter

If the 1960s were the dawn of interplanetary science, the 1970s will see its maturity.  I find this as momentous an achievement as footprints on the Moon.

I can't wait to rewrite all of the articles in our solar system series!




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Science / Space Race

[July 20, 1965] No War of the Worlds After All? (Mariner IV reaches Mars)

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by Kaye Dee

Just a few days ago, on July 15, NASA’s Mariner IV space probe made history by being the first spacecraft to successfully reach the planet Mars, capturing images of its surface. These are the first close-up views of another planet in our solar system and the initial pictures suggest that, despite what science fiction would have us believe, Earth won’t have to fear an invasion from Mars any time soon!

The first close-up image ever taken of Mars, showing the limb of the planet and a haze-like feature that might be clouds. The smallest features in this image are roughly 3 miles across, but there's no sign of Martian canals!

The Canals of Mars

Mars has been an object of intense scientific and popular fascination since the last century, when telescope observations first suggested that the planet was potentially Earthlike, since it showed polar caps and surface changes that appeared to represent seasonal variations due to the growth and die-back of vegetation. Then, in 1877, the Italian astronomer Schiaparelli observed what he called “canali” on Mars. He apparently meant grooves or channels on the Martian surface, but his work was translated into English as “canals” and some astronomers took this literally to mean that he had observed structures that were the work of intelligent beings.

A section of one of Percival Lowell’s maps of Mars, published in his 1895 book Mars. The complete map depicted 184 named canals marked on it using numbers.

By the end of the 19th Century, the idea that there is intelligent life on Mars had taken hold, thanks particularly to the writings of American astronomer Percival Lowell (the same Percival Lowell who is also associated with the discovery of the Planet Pluto!) He believed in a Martian civilisation that had constructed vast networks of canals to bring water from the planet’s poles and wrote several books and innumerable newspaper articles detailing his observations of canal systems on the Red Planet. Science fiction stories like H.G. Well’s War of the Worlds, first published in 1897, and Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Barsoom" series further encouraged popular belief that there was intelligent life on Mars and generated something of a ‘Mars mania’ that has grown across the 20th Century.

Cover of the August 1927 issue of Amazing depicting the iconic Martian machines from Wells' War of the Worlds. This powerful story has been re-interpreted on radio and film and has had a tremendous influence in shaping popular perceptions of life on Mars.

The Mars Race

Most scientists have accepted for a decade or more now that modern telescope observations indicate that it is unlikely that higher forms of life will be found on Mars after all. Yet the fascination with Mars has been so strong that it’s not surprising the planet became an early target for space exploration, after the Moon. The Soviet Union started the race to Mars in October 1960, with “Marsnik” 1 and 2. We don’t know much about these probes, but it seems they both failed even to reach orbit. The USSR’s Mars 1 flew past Mars in June 1963, but it had stopped sending back data in March. Sputnik 22 and Sputnik 24, both launched around the same time as Mars 1, are also believed to be elements of a failed Mars mission. Zond 2, launched just 2 days after Mariner IV, is also assumed to be an attempted Mars mission, though it, too, ceased transmitting en route. Clearly, getting to Mars is hard. Mariner IV was meant to be a twin mission with Mariner III, but that mission also failed at launch.

Even though Mars 1 ceased transmitting long before it reached Mars, the USSR still celebrated it as an achievement on its 1964 Cosmonauts Day stamp.

Mariner IV was launched on an Atlas Agena rocket from Cape Canaveral at 12:22 GMT on November 28, last year. It has an octagonal magnesium frame, 50 inches across the diagonal and 18 inches high, which houses the electronic equipment, propulsion system and attitude control gas supplies and regulators. Four solar panels, containing a total of 28,224 solar cells, are attached to the top of the frame. They are able to generate 310 watts of power at the distance of Mars from the Sun. Mariner also has two antennae for transmitting data back to Earth: An elliptical high-gain parabolic antenna and an omnidirectional low-gain antenna, mounted on a seven-foot, four-inch-tall mast next to the high-gain antenna.

Mariner IV is an incredibly sophisticated space probe for its size, packed with scientific instruments, plus its television camera system. Its design is a radical departure from the conical design used for the Ranger Moon probes and NASA's successful Mariner II mission to Venus.

Deep Space Laboratory

For its relatively small size, Mariner IV is a spacegoing scientific laboratory, designed to measure the conditions in deep space between Mars and the Earth and in the vicinity of Mars itself. Its scientific instruments include a helium magnetometer to measure the characteristics of the interplanetary and planetary magnetic fields; an ionization chamber/Geiger counter, to measure the charged-particle intensity and distribution in interplanetary space and in the vicinity of Mars; a cosmic ray telescope, to measure the direction and energy spectrum of protons and alpha particles; a solar plasma probe, to measure the very low energy charged particle flux from the Sun, and a cosmic dust detector, to measure the momentum, distribution, density, and direction of cosmic dust. Although the Geiger counter failed in February and the plasma probe's performance is degraded, the other instruments are all working well.

Mariner IV's 'endless loop' magnetic tape recorder. Its 330ft of tape has a storage capacity of 5.24 million bits – right at the cutting-edge of recording technology!

Probably the most important instrument on Mariner IV, and certainly the one of the most interest to the public, is its television camera, designed to obtain close-up images of the Martian surface. The camera is mounted on a scan platform at the bottom centre of the spacecraft and consists of 4 parts: a Cassegrain telescope with a 1.05° by 1.05° field of view; a shutter and red/green filter assembly with 0.08s and 0.20s exposure times; a slow scan vidicon tube which translates the optical image into an electrical video signal, and the electronic systems required to convert the analogue signal into a digital signal for transmission. During the fly-by of Mars, all the television images and the data gathered by the scientific instruments were stored on an ‘endless loop’ four-track magnetic tape recorder for later transmission back to Earth. 

First Pictures from Another World

On July 15 Mariner 4 passed within 6117 miles of Mars, spending just 25 minutes doing visual observations of the planet’s surface. During that brief time, its television camera captured 21 full pictures and part of a 22nd, the first ever close-up images of the surface of another planet. Each photo covers an area of about 77 square miles. It takes about 10 hours to transmit each image back to Earth and each picture is being transmitted twice to ensure that all the data is correctly received.

The second Mariner IV image released by NASA shows the border of Elysium Planitia and Amazonis Planitia. Taken from around 9,940 miles, the picture is about 310 miles across and 560 miles from top to bottom because the surface is curving away. North is up and the sun is illuminating the area from the southeast.

Only three of the Mariner Mars images have so far been released, but already they have disappointed scientists and the public alike by putting an end to any hope of finding intelligent life on the Red Planet. What they have so far revealed is a world that looks more like the Moon than the Earth, with no signs of water, vegetation or animal life. When this is coupled with the findings of the scientific instruments, which show that Mars has an atmosphere of carbon dioxide with only a very low atmospheric pressure (only a fraction of that found on Earth, which was quite a surprise to scientists), a daytime temperature of -148 degrees F and no magnetic field (meaning that the surface of the planet is bombarded by the solar wind and cosmic radiation), it means that the prospects for any kind of life on Mars are very small indeed. However, Mariner’s images only cover just 1% of the Martian surface, so perhaps we should not entirely give up hope that future missions will find Mars more exciting and scientifically interesting than it seems right now. After all, the pictures have not yet revealed the cause of the apparent seasonal changes observed from Earth….

The third image we have seen so far shows the Orcus Patera region in western Amazonis Planitia. It was taken with the sun only 13 degrees from vertical, so the topography is hard to make out, although some raised areas can be seen at upper left. The image is 202 miles across and 319 miles from top to bottom. The resolution is about 1.9 miles and north is up.

Australia Plays Its Part

Australia has played a crucial role in the Mariner IV mission, with its first images being received at the Tidbinbilla tracking station outside Canberra. NASA’s second Deep Space Network station in Australia, Tidbinbilla became operational in December 1964 so that it could support the Mars mission. As the signal from Mars is very weak, the station asked the civil aviation authorities to divert any aircraft that might interfere with the reception of the signals from Mariner at the time of the fly-by. This resulted in an amusing incident: at the critical time, just when Mariner 4 had gone behind Mars, the direct phone from Canberra Airport rang and the station was asked if it was experiencing interference from a UFO! It now seems that the offending object was a weather balloon and not a Martian saucer come to check on what the Earthmen are up to.


Nestled in a secluded valley, for protection from radio interference from nearby Canberra, NASA's Tidbinbilla Deep Space Network Station received the first images of Mars from Mariner IV. Australia is host to a growing number of NASA tracking stations covering all its space tracking networks.

A Role for a Radio Telescope

Australia’s Parkes radio telescope, the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world, also played a role in receiving Mariner IV’s Mars images. NASA is basing the design of its new 210 ft antennae for the Deep Space Network on that of the Parkes telescope. As a demonstration of its tracking capabilities, Parkes has also tracked Mariner IV and received some of its images from Mars. Its greater antenna size, and therefore better reception capabilities, mean that its images will be more detailed than those received by the 85 ft dishes at Tidnbinbilla and other NASA stations and they will enhance the overall quality of Mariner IV’s Mars pictures when the Parkes and Tidbinbilla images are combined. I hope that NASA will release the rest of the Mariner images soon: even if they have dashed almost a century of Martian fantasies, they are revealing a planet that is very different from what we have expected and I wonder what further surprises might be in store for us as we explore more of Mars and the rest of the Solar System….

The world-leading radio telescope developed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia's national civil scientific research body. Located near Parkes, New South Wales, this astronomical instrument is also proving its value as a space tracking facility and I'm sure that NASA will call on it again in the future for further tracking support




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Science / Space Race

[February 20, 1965] Twice as nice (Ranger 8)

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by Gideon Marcus

Last time, I talked about how America's space program has reached a level of reliability that you can…well…rely on!  Three days ago, at 1:05 PM EST, February 17, 1965, the eighth in the Ranger moon probe series took off successfully from Cape Kennedy.

Really, a Ranger has three launches.  First, the Atlas-Agena launched Rancher from the surface to a "parking orbit" 115 miles above the Earth.  Fourteen minutes after that, the Agena upper stage fired again for 90 seconds, changing Ranger's orbit such that its trajectory would intersect with the Moon.  Finally, the next day, Ranger executed a mid-course burn, firing its onboard engines for 59 seconds.  Now, instead of missing the Moon by 1,136 miles, it was set to hit Mare Tranquilitas at 4:57 AM EST, February 20.

That target, one of the darker areas of the Moon known as a "sea", was not easily decided upon.  Since Ranger 7 had impacted the Sea of Clouds, some scientists wanted Ranger 8 to hit a different kind of lunar terrain, perhaps the highlands further north.  Others were keen on exactly duplicating Ranger 7's mission so as to have two sets of data they could compare.  Ultimately, however, program manager George Mueller chose a target that would be support the Apollo mission — a flat area close to the equator.

Ranger 7 had started started its footage just ten minutes before impact.  Ranger 8, on the other hand, started shooting 23 minutes before the crash so that its first images would match the resolution that could be gotten from the best Earth-based cameras.  The moment of truth was a tense one — Ranger 6 had died right at the moment it turned on its TV cameras.

But Ranger 8 performed beautifully, taking a broader swath of photos than its predecessor and revealing an unprecedented wealth of information on the lunar surface before it kamikazed into the Sea of Tranquility at just under 6,000 mph.  Before its demise, it had returned 7,000 photos of the lunar surface.

At first blush, it doesn't look like we've learned much new.  The pictures Ranger 8 returned might well be swapped with those from Ranger 7 and none would be wiser.  On the other hand, it is nice to know that the Seas of the Moon are consistent.

What we still don't know is how safe the Moon is to land on.  Drs. Urey, Kuiper, and Whitaker all believe the lunar soil will hold a spacecraft, the latter two saying that the Ranger data say the Moon's dirt is something like crunchy snow in texture.  But it won't be until the soft-landing Surveyors start going to the Moon next year that we'll have real answers.

Originally, there were going to be up to seventeen Rangers.  However, the lack of success of earlier missions, and the fact that new spacecraft in the form of Lunar Orbiter and Surveyor will be online shortly, has reduced the remaining Ranger missions to just one.

As a result, it is likely that Ranger 9 will be given a more purely scientific mission, perhaps to some place no Apollo crew will visit.  Either way, given America's current track record, and that of Ranger, specifically, we can all hope it will be a crashing success!




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Science / Space Race

[February 18, 1965] OSO Exciting!  (February 1965 Space Roundup)

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by Gideon Marcus

Remember the early days of the Space Race, when launches came about once a month, and there was plenty of time to ruminate over the significance of each one?

Those days are long past, my friends.  Like every other aspect of this crazy modern world we live in, the pace of space missions is only accelerating.  Just look at this grab bag of space headlines, any one of which might have been front page news just a few years ago:

Staring at the Sun

Three years ago, NASA launched the first of its "Observatory Class" satellites, the 200 kg Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO).  Its mission was unprecedented: to get the first long-term observations of the Sun in all of the frequencies of the electro-magnetic spectrum, not just the narrow windows visible from the Earth's surface.

For two years, OSO gazed at the Sun with its thirteen instruments, dutifully reporting its findings to the ground.  The observatory revolutionized our understanding of our neighborhood star, particularly in finding the correlation between solar flares and the little microflares that precede them. 

OSO 1 went silent last May.  Like nature, NASA abhors a vacuum — at least one without satellites floating through it!  So on February 3, 1965, OSO 2 sailed into orbit to pick up where its predecessor had left off.

The new observatory only has eight instruments, but given that the weight of the craft is similar to that of OSO 1, I have to believe the new load-out is intentional.  Moreover, OSO 2 has some neat developments.  Its Ultraviolet spectrometer, Solar x-ray and UV telescope, and White-light coronagraph are all mounted on the "sail" of the spacecraft, and they can scan the disk of the sun from end to end, like a TV camera.  That should allow for more precision in the measurements.

Also, OSO 2 has a digital telemetry system rather than the analog FM system of OSO 1.  Digital systems are far less prone to error, and more information can be sent over any given length of time.  The new system can dump 3 million bits of data in just 5.5 minutes.

Finally, OSO 2 is smarter — it can accept some 70 commands from the ground instead of just 8.  Just what NASA scientists do with those commands, I don't know.  Maybe OSO brews great coffee.

The most important thing about OSO 2 is the timing of its launch.  Every 11 years, the Sun completes an output cycle, warbling from active to inactive status.  1965 is the Solar minimum, and this year marks a concerted international effort to watch the Sun from many different vantage points to take advantage of the opportunity.

You can bet OSO 2 will have some interesting data for us come 1966!

Requiem for a Vanguard

Hands over hearts, folks.  On February 12, NASA announced that Vanguard 1 had gone silent, and the agency was finally turning off its 108 Mhz ground transceivers, set up during the International Geophysical Year.  The grapefruit-sized satellite, launched March 17, 1958, was the fourth satellite to be orbited.  It had been designed as a minimum space probe and, had its rocket worked in December 1957, would have been America's first satellite rather than its second.  Nevertheless, rugged little Vanguard 1 beat all of its successors for lifespan.  Sputniks and Explorers came and went.  Vanguards 2 and 3 shut off long ago.  Yet the grapefruit that the Naval Research Laboratory made kept going beep-beep, helping scientists on the ground measure the shape of the Earth from the wiggle and decay of Vanguard's orbit.

The satellite's cry had slowly become weaker as its solar cell-charged batteries failed.  Finally, some time last year, Vanguard could be heard no more, though NASA kept listening for several more months.  It's not all sad news, however: Vanguard 1 will remain in orbit for hundreds of years more, and it can still be optically tracked.  That means it still has a long, useful life ahead of it, even now that it is mute.

Whole World in its Eyes

Here's a little TIROS tidbit.  Remember TIROS 9?  The first weather satellite launched into a polar orbit so it can see the whole Earth once a day as the planet rotates underneath?

We now have the very first picture of the world's weather.  It won't be the last:

The joys of being regular

There was a time when space was a hit-and-miss affair.  Seemed every time I opened the paper, there was news of yet another rocket blowing up.  These days, we can practically take success for granted.  Ranger 7 broke a six mission losing streak, the first two Gemini launches went swimmingly, TIROS has gone nine for nine.

Similarly, the Saturn 1 rocket, the biggest booster ever made, has had an impeccable launch record.  The lift-off on February 16 kept the streak going; the eight engine monstrosity delivered what I believe is the biggest satellite ever to be put into orbit.

Called Pegasus, it is an enormous cylinder with giant panels affixed to either side.  The panels occupy some 2300 square feet, and their job is to measure the density of micrometeoroids in orbit over the course of a many-year lifespan.

It sounds pretty mundane when you reduce the mission to its bare essentials.  Pegasus is like a big fly-catcher, spending its orbit running into space rocks.  But it's not the experiment that's so exciting, but the idea that we can now loft giant structures with a single launch.  Imagine that Pegasus was actually a space station module, and that it's wings were solar panels.  Now imagine assembling a few of them together using a maneuverable spacecraft, perhaps a Gemini derivative…

Yes, America is just on the edge of being in the space construction business.

Scenes to Come

Yesterday (February 17, 1965), the eighth Ranger blasted off from Cape Kennedy, destination: Moon.  If we've truly reached an era of reliability, we can expect the craft to hit its target on the morning of the 20th.  Stay tuned — you'll read about it here first!




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Science / Space Race

[November 23, 1964] Let’s Go Exploring! (NASA’s latest Explorer satellites)

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by Kaye Dee

I’ve written before about how much I love satellite spotting and this month has given me three new ‘man-made moons’ to watch out for, with the latest additions to NASA’s Explorer scientific satellite program. Each of the new Explorer satellites is very different and their research tasks are all of real interest to me, as I’m concentrating on space physics for my Masters degree. But before I talk about them, I’m excited to share the most recent news from Woomera.

A Textbook Test Flight

On October 20, the second test flight of the Blue Streak stage for ELDO’s Europa launch vehicle took place. After the problems that occurred towards the end of the first test flight, which led to the rocket’s flight falling short of its intended landing area (see June entry), this latest launch was a complete success, demonstrating that the fuel sloshing issue has been solved. The engines fired for the 149.1 seconds, fractionally over their anticipated performance, and the Blue Streak impacted almost 1,000 miles down range. Everyone at the WRE is really pleased (and relieved) with this textbook test flight, as it means that the Europa development program can now keep moving forward. Can’t wait for the next test flight!


Blue Streak F-2 prepares to blast off at Woomera’s Launch Area 6.

But what has really captured my attention this month are the new missions in NASA’s Explorer program (which I last covered on September 6 and October 16). This series of scientific satellites continues to study the near space environment around the Earth and the nature of the Sun, as well as contributing to astronomy and space physics. 

Taking a Hit for Science

Explorer 23 was launched on 6 November, using a Scout rocket fired from NASA’s Wallops Island facility in Virginia, from which many satellites in the Explorer series have been launched. Also called S-55C, Explorer 23 is the third in a series of micrometeoroid research satellites. Explorer 13 (launched in August 1961) was the first in the series. It was also known as S-55A, following the failure of its predecessor, the original S-55 satellite (the S standing for Science). Explorer 16 (S-55B) was launched in December 1962. The purpose of the S-55 series is to gather data on the micrometeoroid environment in Earth orbit, so that an accurate estimate of the probability of spacecraft being struck and penetrated by micrometeoroids (very tiny pieces of rocks and dust from space) can be determined.


Explorer 13 was the first micrometeoroid research satellite to take a hit for science.

Each of the S-55 spacecraft is about 24 inches in diameter and 92 inches long, built around the burned out fourth stage of the Scout launch vehicle, which forms part of the orbiting satellite. Explorer 23 carries stainless steel pressurized-cell penetration detectors and impact detectors, to acquire data on the size, number, distribution, and momentum of dust particles in the near-earth environment. Its cadmium sulphide cell detectors were, unfortunately, damaged on lift-off and will not be providing any data. Explorer 23 is also designed to provide data on the effects of the space environment on the operation of capacitor penetration detectors and solar-cell power supplies.


(left) An illustration of Explorer 23 in orbit, showing its modified design compared to its predecessors. (right) Part of the backup Explorer 23 satellite.

Two Satellites for the Price of One Launch

November 21 saw the Explorer 24 and 25 satellites launched together on a Scout vehicle fired from Vandenberg Air Force base in California, which will put the satellites in a near-polar orbit. These two Explorers have been launched as part of the research program for the International Quiet Sun Years (IQSY). Just as the International Geophysical Year took place in 1957-58, during a period when solar activity was at its height, the IQSY is focusing on the Sun in the least active phase of the solar cycle, across 1964-65. This makes it possible to compare the data from Explorer 24 and 25 with earlier observations made from orbit when the Sun was more active. Having the satellites in dual orbits also makes it possible to compare the atmospheric density data gathered by Explorer 24 directly with the radiation data from Explorer 25.


A stamp from East Germany highlighting satellite-based research into the Van Allen radiation belts and other aspects of the near-space environment during the International Quiet Sun Years.

Explorer 24: A Balloon in Orbit

Although the two satellites work in conjunction with one another, they couldn’t be more different! Explorer 24 is a 12-foot diameter balloon made of alternating layers of aluminium foil and plastic film. It’s covered all over with 2-inch white dots that provide thermal control. Deflated and packaged in a small container, the balloon was packed on top of the Explorer 25 satellite for their joint launch and then inflated in orbit. A timer activated valves that inflated the balloon using compressed nitrogen. This process took about 30 minutes, after which the satellite was pushed away from the carrier rocket by a spring.


Explorer 24 hitched a ride to orbit on top of Explorer 25, before being inflated in space.

Explorer 24 is identical to the previously launched balloon satellites Explorer 9 (launched in February 1961) and 19 (launched in December 1963). Explorer 19 was also known as AD-A (for Air Density) and Explorer 24 is also designated as AD-B.  All three of the balloon satellites have been designed to provide data on atmospheric density near the perigee (lowest point) of their orbit, through a series of sequential observations as they move across the sky.

Like its predecessors, Explorer 24 will be tracked both visually and by radio, as it carries a 136-MHz tracking beacon. Explorer 19’s tracking beacon failed while it was in orbit, and so it could only be tracked visually by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s network of Baker-Nunn telescope cameras. There is one of these stations at Woomera and my former computing colleagues at the WRE’s Satellite Centre in Salisbury, South Australia, assisted with converting its observations into the orbital calculations that the scientific researchers needed. 

Explorer 25: Studying the Ionosphere

Explorer 25’s primary mission is to investigate the Ionosphere, make measurements of the influx of energetic particles into the Earth’s atmosphere, studying atmospheric heating, as well as the Earth’s magnetic field. It will be magnetically stabilised in orbit through the use of a magnet and a magnetic damping rod and carries a magnetometer to measure its alignment with the Earth’s magnetic field. One of its particularly interesting tasks will be to study and compare the artificial radiation belt created by the Starfish Prime high-altitude nuclear explosion and the natural Van Allen radiation belts.

Explorer 25 is also known as Injun 4 and Ionosphere Explorer B (IE-B). It is the latest satellites in the Injun series, which have been developed at the University of Iowa under Professor James Van Allen, after whom the Van Allen radiation belts are named. Van Allen himself gave these satellites the name Injun after the character Injun Joe in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The first three Injun satellites were only qualified success and were not actually part of the Explorer program. However, as IE-B, Injun 4/ Explorer 25 extends the research being carried by Explorer 20, that I wrote about in September.


James Van Allen (centre) with a replica of the Explorer 1 satellite, for which he provided the scientific instruments that contributed to the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts. With him are William Pickering (left), the Director of the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and (right) Wernher von Braun, whose team developed the Juno rocket that launched Explorer 1.

Explorer 25 is roughly spherical and almost 24 inches in diameter. It has 50 flat surfaces: 30 of them are carrying solar cells that are used to recharge the batteries that power the satellite. The satellite is also equipped with a tape recorder and analogue-to-digital converters, so that it can send digital data directly to a ground station at the University of Iowa.

Science Streaks Across the Sky

It is simply marvelous how rapidly we are expanding our knowledge of the universe above. Just seven years ago, there hadn't been a single Explorer; now there are twenty five! I’m looking forward to spotting all these science gatherers in the evening sky over the coming weeks — and eventually telling you what they find up there!

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Science / Space Race

[Oct. 16, 1964] Three in One (The next leg of the Space Race)

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by Gideon Marcus

A whole new ballgame

It's not often that news of the next stage in the Space Race is eclipsed by an even bigger story.  Yet that's exactly what happened this tumultuous week, a handful of days so crazy that we halted publication ("STOP THE PRESSES!") to keep up with events.

It all started with "Kosmos 47", launched just after midnight (San Diego time) on October 6.  While the Soviets were typically close-lipped about its purpose, from its orbital path, it was suspected that the 24 hour flight was actually an uncrewed test of a new type of Soviet spacecraft.

Sure enough, just six days later, Voskhod ("Sunrise") #1 took off.  On board were three cosmonauts: Commander Vladimir Mikahilovich Komarov, civilian scientist Konstantin Petrovich Feoktistov, and civilian physician Boris Borisovich Yegorov.

This is huge news — both the American Mercury and Soviet Vostok space programs ended more than a year ago.  Those spacecraft only fit one person.  Since then, the United States has been hard at work on both its three-person Apollo lunar craft and its intermediate two-seat Gemini ship.  Although Gemini has already flown once, the first crewed flight won't happen until early next year.

And here are the Soviets, already throwing up a three person spaceship!  Could they be closer to a Moon mission than we thought?

On their eighth orbit, Voskhod's cosmonauts passed over the United States and radioed, "From aboard the spaceship, Voskhod, we convey our best wishes to the industrious American people.  We wish the people of the United States peace and happiness."

Interestingly, a second radio exchange was heard afterwards, during orbit sixteen: the three cosmonauts requested permission to extend the mission beyond 24 hours.  The request was denied, and the flight ended just one day after it had begun.

Why is this strange?  Well, one of the stated goals of the mission was "Extended medio-biological investigations in conditions of a long flight."  And while 24 hours is a long flight by American standards (that of Gordo Cooper in Faith 7 was about a day and a half), the Soviets have been flying day-long and longer missions since Gherman Titov's flight in 1961.  Did something go wrong with the spaceship? 

It turns out the problem was on the ground.  Even as the three cosmonauts were making history in space, the Presidium was holding a vote of no confidence, citing Khruschev's age and health as reasons for his dismissal.  Leonid Brezhnev was elevated to Secretary of the Communist Party and Andrei Kosygin was named Premier.  When the space travelers landed, they were whisked to Moscow where they must have been quite surprised to meet the new leadership!

Still, regardless of who is wearing the crown behind the Iron Curtain, there is no question that Voskhod was a tremendous accomplishment.  The question now is: What will they follow it up with?

Beep Beep, says America

Though perhaps not as impressive to some, the United States maintains the lead in automated space science.  Just this month, we launched the two latest Explorer satellites, 21 and 22.  And while those numbers seem a lot lower than what the Soviet "Kosmos" series has gotten up to, we have to remember that Kosmos conceals a wide variety of satellites, most of which have never resulted in a scientific paper.  They have probably snapped a great many photos of Midwest missile bases, though.

In contrast, the Explorer program is just one of many devoted to returning scientific data from the heavens.  Explorer 21, launched on October 4 (seven years after Sputnik) is the second of its type.  Also known as Interplanetary Monitoring Platform (IMP) B, its job is the same as that of Explorer 18, launched in last year — to measure the magnetic fields, cosmic rays, solar wind, and charged particles far from the Earth.  This helps us understand the physics of the solar system, and it lets us map the electromagnetic "terrain" of the space between Earth and the Moon.  The IMPs are blazing a trail for Apollo, making sure it's safe for people out there.

Unfortunately, the third stage on IMP-B's Thor Delta launch booster fizzled, and instead of soaring 160,000 miles from the Earth, Explorer 21 barely gets to 60,000.  This is within the hellish Van Allen radiation belts, so even though Explorer 21's nine instruments are performing perfectly, the data being returned tells nothing about the universe beyond Earth's magnetic system.

However, Explorer 22, launched October 10, is doing just fine.  It's the last of NASA's first phase of ionospheric explorers, measuring the electron density in the upper atmosphere.  Before your eyes glaze, that just means it sees how electrically charged the air is in the layer that reflects radio waves.  Such experiments help us better understand how the Sun affects our broadcasts — and allows us to make plans for unusual space weather events. 

The satellite, also known as Beacon Satellite B ("A" failed to orbit on March 29) is also the first of NASA's geodetic satellites, measuring the shape of the Earth with tremendous precision.  What's neat about Explorer 22 is that the spacecraft is actually quite unsophisticated, just three radio beacons and a laser reflector.  More noteworthy are the 80 tracking stations run by 50 scientific groups in 32 countries.  These provide a worldwide web, collecting navigational data on an unprecedented scale.

And since it's a civilian probe, we'll probably even share the information with the Communists.  You tell me who's winning the Space Race…

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Science / Space Race

[May 30, 1964] Every journey begins… (Apollo's first flight!)

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by Gideon Marcus

One Step

Humanity took its first halting steps toward the Moon with the (mostly) successful launch of the first Apollo spacecraft into orbit on May 28, 1964.  Blasting off from Cape Kennedy's Pad 37B, the sixth Saturn I, biggest rocket in existence, carried a boilerplate, non-functional spacecraft. 

The mission marked firsts in several ways.  Whereas the previous five Saturns had been topped with Jupiter-C nosecones, SA-6 was the first to prove the actual Apollo structure.  Less auspiciously, the flight also marked the first malfunction of the Saturn rocket: 122 seconds into its mission, 24 seconds before planned cut-off, engine #8 prematurely shut down. 

But out of the jaws of failure came ultimate success.  The other engines continued to fire an additional two seconds, the four inboards shutting down shutting off 142 seconds into flight, the remaining three outboards going dark at Launch + 148.  Despite these compensations, AS-101 (the name for the spacecraft) was still flying "low and slow"; the second stage then ignited and compensated for the balky first stage, ultimately delivering the Apollo spacecraft almost perfectly into its planned orbit. 


That's Wernher von Braun in the middle; next to him, with the glasses, is George Mueller, who used to run the Pioneer lunar project at STL

Thus, the failure of engine #8 actually proved a blessing in disguise — we now know that the Saturn guidance system works quite nicely.  Moreover, given the excellent track record of the first stage's H-1 engines, I suspect the causes of the shutdown will be determined and remedied in short order.

AS-101 will be in orbit about one more day before it plunges into the atmosphere.  Like the first Gemini mission (last month), the spacecraft will not be recovered. 

SA-7/AS-102 will be a largely identical mission that will test the escape tower, the little rocket that will rescue Apollo astronauts in the event of a launch failure.  It is due to go up at the end of August.  Crewed spaceflights should happen as early as 1966!

No News is…

In other news, there isn't much news.  Since our last update, the Soviets launched Kosmoses 29 and 30 (April 25 and May 18), both of which landed just a week after launch, which suggests they were really spy satellites a la our Discoverer program.  Meanwhile, the United States Air Force lofted two birds of its own, a small one on April 27, and a big one on May 19.  I'd bet the first one was some a traditional film-return spy satellite (the kind that snaps photos in space and then sends the shots down to Earth for development in a little capsule).  As for the second, either it carries multiple canisters, or it's some kind of advanced system — maybe a real-time TV eye in orbit?

By the way, on April 21, I understand an Air Force rocket went boom, and the satellite it was carrying, a navigational Transit was on board.  That'd be no big deal…except this Transit was powered by the radioactive decay of plutonium-238.  I haven't heard much reporting on the subject, but I sure hope the flyboys are more careful next time!

The Soviets did launch Polyot-2 on April 12.  This is a special satellite that is able to change orbits.  That could mean that it's a precursor to the next Communist space vehicle (that's the thought advanced in Martin Caidin's recent novel, Marooned) or it could be a spacecraft designed to intercept missiles or other vehicles in space.  We won't know for a while, if ever.

Coming Attractions

As we head into the summer, it looks like things will remain pretty calm, unless the Russians pull another surprise out of their hats.  The only big event on the horizon is the launch of Ranger 7 in July.  After ten straight failures on the way to the Moon, I can't imagine the betting is particularly good for this flight.

But hope springs eternal…  See you then!

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Conventions/Performances, Magazine, Science / Space Race

December 1, 1963 Last stop (December 1963 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

LosCon in Los Angeles!

It's been an exciting November for the Journey.  After a sad interlude on the East Coast, which saw the untimely death of our President, we flew back to Los Angeles for a small science fiction convention put on by the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society.  It was great fun, a real class act.  Not only did we get to put on a show (in which the assassination, of course, featured prominently), but we also met Laura Freas, wife of Kelly Freas, the illustrator who painted Dr. Martha Dane.  As y'all know, Dr. Dane graced our masthead until very recently, and she remains the Journey's avatar.

And for those of you who missed the performance, we got it on video-tape.

At last, success for NASA

I read an article in Aviation Weekly that noted that 1963 just hasn't been a great year for NASA space shots.  There have only been eight successful missions thus far.  Unlike in the old days (you know, five years ago), when satellites didn't fly because of balky rockets, now missions are more likely to be delayed for lack of funding on the ground or for thorny technical issues as mechanisms get more complicated.

But successes do happen, and on November 27, Explorer 18 soared into orbit.  Also known as the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform (IMP), it is essentially a deep space explorer.  At the closest point in its orbit, it zooms at an atmosphere-scraping 160 kilometers in altitude, but at its furthest, it flies up to a quarter million kilometers out — more than halfway to the moon.

IMP is the first of seven satellites that will monitor the sun's output over a long period of time, measuring its ups and downs over the course of its 11 year activity cycle.  It will also measure interplanetary magnetic fields, the speed and composition of the solar wind, and the strength of the cosmic rays that shower the solar system from intergalactic space.

In many ways, Explorer 18 continues the missions of Explorers 10 and 12, spacecraft that made incredible discoveries about our local space environment.  What makes IMP so special is its size and endurance: it will be in space much longer than its predecessors, and its more advanced instruments are capable of more refined measurements. 

It is also hoped that IMP will be for interplanetary space what TIROS is for Earth — a weather satellite providing up to date information on the environment "up there."  Thus, Explorer 18 will not only expand our knowledge of interplanetary physics, it will also be an early warning system, alerting astronauts as to upcoming solar flares and other potentially dangerous events. 

Pretty neat!

Last magazine of the year

Every month, the Journey does its level best to review every science fiction magazine that gets published.  As far as I can tell, we cover all the regular American ones plus the British New Worlds (only Science Fantasy, also British, escapes our coverage).  By tradition, Analog is the covered last, and thus, the December 1963 Analog is the last magazine of the year.  Once this one is reviewed, we can finally get down to the fun business of determining the stats: which mag had the best stories, the most consistent quality, the most women published, and so on.  Call it SFnal baseball.

So how was this last issue?  Read on!

The Nature of the Electric Field, by John W. Campbell

In addition to a nonsensical editorial, Editor Campbell wastes several oversized pages with the reprint of a century-old treatise on electricity.  I guess it's to show how times change, and therefore, we shouldn't be so quick to denounce things like Dianetics, reactionless drives, psionics, dowsing, and other pseudo-sciences.

One star.

Cracking the Code, by Carl A. Larson

Larson's article is on DNA and scientists' attempts to understand how a sequence of amino acids can be the blueprint for all of life's manifestations.  It's a subject that would have been better handled by Asimov…or really, anyone else.  On the other hand, some of Larson's poetical turns of phrase are cute, like analogizing cells to an alien race whose environment is so utterly foreign to our ken, and that's why it's taken so long to decipher their language.

Two stars, I guess.

Dune World (Part 1 of 3), by Frank Herbert

I was mistaken when I called this new serial Herbert's first novel.  He had a serial back in 1956 called Under Pressure that I must have read some seven years ago, but I couldn't tell you what it was about if you put a gun to my head.

Anyway, this new one seems to be generating a lot of buzz, and I can see why.  It features Paul, 15 year-old scion to House of Atreides, whose father, the Duke of Atreides, has been granted the fiefdom of Arrakis.  Arrakis — desert planet — Dune.  This barren wasteland, where water is worth its weight in platinum, offers but one export: Melange, the geriatric spice that affords immortality, cures ailments, and tastes really good, too.  As Arrakis is the only source of melange, control of the planet is a sought plum, indeed.

Except, the Duke knows it is a trap set by the planet's former masters, the Barony of Harkonnen.  In collusion with the Padishar Emperor, Harkonnen has hatched a complicated plan to humiliate and discredit (and probably kill) the Duke, a scheme which whose intricacy might even give Machiaveli pause.

There is a lot to admire in this new work.  It's a fresh universe, highly developed, with a lot of attention to detail and inclusion of many foreign cultural influences.  Women play a prominent role, with the genders being apparently somewhat segregated, each having their own spheres of power.  There are at least two important female characters, something I'm always delighted to find in my science fiction.

One of the aspects of Herbert's world is the conscious disdain for, and even ban on, the use of computers.  Instead, human "mentats" have been bred for the ability of calculation.  This not only creates an interesting new class of person, it neatly relieves the author of predicting the development of electronic brains.

Dune Planet is not, however, an unalloyed success.  In the hands of Cordwainer Smith or even Mack Reynolds, folks who have a deep grounding in other cultures as well as the writing chops to convey them, it would be a masterpiece.  Herbert, on the other hand, is a pretty raw writer.  His stuff can be creaky and dull, the viewpoint shifts from paragraph to paragraph, and his use of ellipses dots is…exuberant (they say we hate most in others what we dislike about ourselves; Herbert writes a bit like I did not long ago before certain editors whipped me into shape).

So, three stars so far, but I'm still reading and look forward to more.

Conversation in Arcady, by Poul Anderson

In George Pal's The Time Machine, Rod Taylor arrives at the far future and discovers humanity living under (seemingly) idyllic circumstances.  They no longer need toil for food, shelter, or clothing.  They do not fight each other nor feel the need to rule.  At first impressed, the time traveler is dismayed to find that the desire to advance, the struggle to improve has been lost.  In perhaps the most effective scene of the movie (at least, it was for me), Taylor finds shelves of books that crumble to dust at the slightest touch.

Poul Anderson's latest is a note for note copy of this scene with the exceptions that 1) Anderson's Eloi are not so simple and childlike, 2) there are no Morlocks fattening up people for supper, and 3) the time traveler can see nothing positive about the situation whatsoever.

I think Anderson is trying to say something poignant, that our race is nothing without the need to better itself.  Or perhaps he's striving for a subtler point — that those who only find meaning in struggle can never find peace, and maybe peace isn't a bad thing.  Or maybe he's saying both things at the same time.

I think he was going for just the first, though.  Three stars.

The Right Time, by Walter Bupp (John Berryman)

John Berryman's series is set in the current world but where psionics are common (but secret).  It's a perfect fit for Analog what with Editor Campbell's peculiar pseudo-scientific beliefs, yet somehow Berryman's stories manage to be good.  This one, about a telekinetic precog with the ability to predict and potentially heal a fellow's heart attack, is my favorite yet.  Four stars.

Thin Edge, by Johnathan Blake MacKenzie

Author Randy Garrett is back under the pseudonym he prefers when he writes about life in the asteroid belt.  This latest piece is about a Belter who is killed by Earthers for the secret of the super strong cording used for rock towing, and about the other Belter who comes to Earth looking for revenge.

It's written with some facility, but the Belters are always too clever and the Earthers too dumb.  A low three or a high two, depending on your mood.

All right!  It's time to tabulate the data for December!

Analog finished in the middle of the pack with 2.8 stars, above F&SF (2.1) and Fantastic (2.2), but below Galaxy (3.2), Amazing (3.2), and New Worlds (3.2), not to mention last month's issue of Gamma, which I didn't get to until this month (3.3).

There were 44 pieces of fiction between the seven magazines, four of which were written by women.  9% is fairly standard these days, sadly.  I'm not sure what's causing the decline, though the numbers were never that much better.

Next up, we'll be covering the UK's newest SF TV show, and beyond that, 1963's Galactic Stars!

Stay tuned.

[The party's still going on at Portal 55.  Come join us for real-time conversation!]

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Science / Space Race

[August 29, 1963] Why we fly (August Space Round-up)

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by Gideon Marcus

We've become a bit spoiled of late, what with space spectaculars occurring on a fairly regular basis.  So, I was not too surprised when a friend buttonholed me the other day and exclaimed, "When is the Space Race gonna get interesting again?"  After all, it's been a whole two months since the Vostok missions, three since the last Mercury mission, and even satellite launches have been few lately.

Oh ye of little faith.  The real work doesn't happen when the rockets go up, but after their payloads are aloft.  A lot happened in the arena of space this month — you just have to dig a little to learn about it.  Here are the exciting tidbits I gleaned (and the journos missed) in NASA's recent bulletins and broadcasts:

Bridging the Continents

Communication satellites continue to make our world a smaller place.  Syncom, built by Hughes and launched by NASA late last month, is the first comsat to have a 24-hour orbit.  From our perspective on the Earth's surface, it appears to do figure eights around one spot in the sky rather than circling the Earth.  This means Syncom can be a permanent relay station between the hemispheres.

It's already being used.  On August 4 the satellite allowed Nigerian journalists and folks from two U.S. services to exchange news stories as well as pictures of President Kennedy and Nigerian Governor General Dr. Nnamdi Zikiwe.  Five days later, voice and teletype was exchanged between Paso Robles, California and Lagos, Nigeria.  This 7,700 mile conversation represents the longest range real-time communication ever made.

And, on the 23rd, Syncom carried its first live telephone conversation — between President Kennedy and Nigerian Prime Minister Sir Abubaker Tafawa Balewa, as well as several other official conversations.  One has to wonder if the whole scheme wasn't hatched just so Jack could expand his pen pal list to West Africa…

More comsat news: RCA's Relay 1 is still alive and kicking, having been used in 930 wideband experiments, 409 narrowband transmissions, and 95 demos of TV and narrowband broadcasts.  And in a stunning imitation of Lazarus, AT&T's Telstar 2 came back on-line after having been silent since July 16.  I understand there will be an unprecedented experiment next month: NASA is going to use Relay and Syncom to bounce a message from Brazil to Africa.  Expect that kind of satellite ping-pong to become common in the future.

Finally, NASA's passive comsat, Echo 1, continues to be used for tests.  Come winter, it will be joined by Echo 2.  Because if there's anything space needs, it's more balloons.


First pass of Echo 1 satellite over the Goldstone

Predicting the Weather

Mariner 2, the Venus probe that encountered the Planet of Love last December, went silent early this year.  Yet its reams of data are still yielding discoveries.  During the spacecraft's long flight toward the sun, it took continuous measurements of the solar wind — that endless stream of charged particles cast off from the roiling fusion reactor of our nearest star.  These measurements were then compared to readings made on Earth and in orbit.  Scientists have now determined that the sun's radioactive breeze blows in gusts from 500 to 1350 kilometers per second, the bursts correlated with expansions in the solar corona.  When a particularly strong stream of electrons and protons, sizzling at a temperature of 500,000 degrees F., slams into the Earth's magnetic field, it causes disruptions in broadcasts and communications.

Closer to home, Explorer 12 soared far from Earth in its highly eccentric orbit, charting long-lived solar plasma streams in interplanetary space.  The satellite determined that these gouts of plasma caused geophysical disturbances more than twenty days after their creation.

One can imagine a constellation of satellites being deployed to provide solar system-wide space weather reports.  Not only would they help keep astronauts safe as they journeyed from planet to planet, but they'd also let radio operators on Earth know when to expect static in their broadcasts.

And speaking of weather forecasts, Tiros 6 and 7 continue to be our eyes in the sky, tirelessly shooting TV of Earth's weather.  They've already tracked the first hurricane of the season, Arlene.  Who knows how many lives and dollars they will save with their early warnings?

Previews of Coming Attractions

The ill-starred lunar probe, Ranger, has failed in all five of its missions.  In fact, NASA is 0 for 8 when it comes to moon shots since 1959.  Perhaps Ranger 6, set for launch around Thanksgiving, will break this losing streak.  It will be the first of the Block 3 Rangers, lacking the sky science experiments that flew on Rangers 1 and 2, and the big seismic impactors carried on Rangers 3-5.  The new Rangers will just shoot TV pictures of potential Apollo landing sites.  This sacrifice of science in deference to the human mission has not gone without protest, but given the dismal track record of the program, the labcoat crowd will have to take what they can get.

A full year after Ranger (hopefully) reaches the Moon, a pair of Mariners will set sail for Mars.  Unlike last year's Mariner 2, Mariners 3 and 4 will carry cameras to provide our first close-up view of the Red Planet.  Let's just hope neither of these upcoming probes meet the same fate as Russia's Mars 1, which died last March.

At some point in the mid-60s, even bigger Mariners will fly to the planets, carried by the big liquid oxygen "Centaur" second-stage.  The first successful test fire took place on August 17 just down the way from my house — at General Dynamics/Astronautics San Diego

And finally, another 271 space candidates applied to NASA this year.  They have been screened to 30, and out of them, 10-15 will be selected in late October to comprise the third group of astronauts.  None of them are women yet, but perhaps there will be some in time for Group Four.


Pilots Jerrie Cobb and Jane Hart testify before the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, July 1962.  That's an Atlas Centaur model next to them.

Who knows?  Maybe you'll be one of them!

[Want to talk to the Journey crew and fellow fans in real-time?  Come join us at Portal 55! (Ed.)]

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Science / Space Race

[May 16, 1963] Going out with style (Gordo Cooper's Faith 7 Mercury flight)

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by Gideon Marcus

Nearly six years ago, the Russians threw down the gauntlet with Sputnik.  Then they upped the ante with the orbit of Yuri Gagarin in April 1961.  It's hard to believe that, in just two years, America has not only answered the Soviet challenge but completed its first manned space program.

For those of us well-heeled in science fiction, the Mercury spacecraft is hardly impressive-looking.  Barely big enough to hold a person (and not a tall one, at that), it is little more than a second space suit with a heat shield and a retrorocket.  And yet, as a first step for America into outer space, its importance cannot be overstated.

For it was those first two Mercury-Redstone flights, Alan Shepard's and Gus Grissom's, which showed that one could survive both the crushing weight of acceleration and the exhilarating freedom from gravity, in close succession, no less.  John Glenn proved an astronaut could orbit repeatedly, and Scott Carpenter demonstrated that spacemen are unflappable when things don't go just right.  Wally Schirra doubled the mission length of his predecessors and perfected fuel conservation and landing accuracy. 

But it was this latest and last Mercury mission, flown by the youngest of the Mercury 7, 36-year old Gordo Cooper, that showed what an astronaut and his spacecraft could really do. 

The original Mercury configuration only allowed for short flights — no more than Schirra's six orbits (nine hours).  Cooper's mission was to get into the endurance range that the Soviet Vostok enjoys — a day and beyond.  That meant more batteries, more water, more oxygen, and more maneuvering fuel.  Some items had to be trimmed, weight being at a premium.  For instance, the largely irrelevant periscope was deleted, saving a precious 76 pounds.  The result was a stocked up, stripped down version of Mercury that Cooper called Faith 7.  NASA was not too happy with this choice, worried about the inevitable headline in the event of mission failure: America Loses Faith.

The flight of Faith was scheduled for April but weather and other considerations pushed the launch back to May.  Finally, early on the 14th, the astronaut suited up and entered his spacecraft.  After many hours of waiting, the flight was delayed until the next day.  There had been a problem with the Bermuda tracking radar.  It does one well to remember that an astronaut is just one of thousands of participants in any given mission, the failure of any one of whom can cause a scrub. 

All systems were go the next morning, however.  After a pleasant two-hour nap in his capsule while the countdown rolled and held without him, Cooper was then pressed into his seat with several times his weight come liftoff time, 8:04 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time.  Less than fifteen minutes later, he became the sixth American to enter Earth orbit.

The flight called for 22 orbits, with go/no-go opportunities after seven and seventeen.  Cooper was the first astronaut who got to sleep in orbit, though he spent the first hour of his designated slumber time snapping pictures of the Himalayas — and astonishing folks on the ground with his visual acuity.  According to the astronaut, he could pick out individual houses and vehicles from orbit. 

Orbit 17 came and went, and Cooper declared himself and his metal steed A-Okay to finish the mission.  But perhaps he had spoken too soon.  Come the 19th orbit, Faith 7 began to fall to pieces.  The cabin temperature rose, instrument readouts became erratic, and the automatic pilot failed completely.  As Cooper approached the end of the mission, he was confronted with a situation no one had ever had to face before: he would return himself from orbit manually.

Of course, that's why NASA hired test pilots for the job.  Cooper was delighted at the opportunity to show his stuff.  His aim and timing of his retrorocket fire was so precise that not only did he make it safely back to Earth, but he came down just a couple of miles from the recovery fleet off Midway Island.  Astronaut Cooper had flown longer and better than an American before him, ending is mission just before 4 P.M. EDT (11 AM local time).

Better still, Cooper had shared none of the deterioration of his spaceship.  Aside from a little pooling of blood in the legs, the astronaut was in good health.  Moreover, he experienced none of the disassociation from reality that psychologists worried would afflict long-term space travelers.  Faith 7 was, despite the breakdowns, a complete success.

In that success, Mercury has signed its own death warrant.  While some have clamored for a multi-day Mercury flight (particularly first astronaut Alan Shepard), the fact is, there just isn't much more to learn with such a minimal craft.  The longer, more involved missions are going to need a more sophisticated spacecraft.  A two-person ship with the ability to maneuver and dock.

It's in development right now, and it's called Gemini.  It flies next year.

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