Tag Archives: mariner 2

Science / Space Race

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

1 Comment


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.)]

1 Comment Leave A Comment
Science / Space Race

[March 24, 1963] Bumper Crop (A bounty of exciting space results)

5 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

February and March have been virtually barren of space shots, and if Gordo Cooper's Mercury flight gets postponed into May, April will be more of the same.  It's a terrible week to be a reporter on the space beat, right?

Wrong!

I've said it before and I'll say it again.  Rocket launches may make for good television, what with the fire, the smoke, and the stately ascent of an overgrown pencil into orbit…but the real excitement lies in the scientific results.  And this month has seen a tremendous harvest, expanding our knowledge of the heavens to new (pardon the pun) heights.  Enjoy this suite of stories, and tell me if I'm not right…

How hot is it?

Mariner 2 went silent more than two months ago, but scientists are still poring over the literal reams of data returned since its rendezvous with Venus.  The first interplanetary mission was a tremendous success, revealing a great deal about the Planet of Love, whose secrets were heretofore protected by distance and a shroud of clouds. 

Here's the biggie: Preliminary reports suggested that the surface temperature of "Earth's Twin" is more than 400 degrees Fahrenheit.  It turns out that was a conservative estimate.  In fact, the rocky, dry landscape of Venus swelters at 800 degrees — possibly even hotter than the day side of sun-baked first planet, Mercury.  It's because the planet's dense carbon dioxide atmosphere acts like a heat blanket.  There's no respite on the night side of the hot world either; the thick air spreads the temperatures out evenly.

Thus, virtually every story written about Venus has been rendered obsolete.  Will Mariner 3 destroy our conception of Mars, too?

Just checking the lights

On February 25, the Department of Defense turned little Solrad 1 back on after 22 months of being off-line.  The probe had been launched in conjunction with a navigation satellite, Transit, back in June 1960.  For weeks, it had provided our first measurements of the sun's X-ray output (energy in that wavelength being blocked by the Earth's atmosphere and, thus, undetectable from the ground).  DoD has given no explanation for why the probe has been reactivated, or why it was turned off in the first place.  Maybe there's a classified payload involved?

Radio News from the Great White Spacecraft

Last September, the Canadians launched their first satellite — the "top-sounder," Alouette, whose mission was to measure the radio-reflective regions of our atmosphere from above.  The results are in, and to any HAM or communications buff, its huge news.

It turns out that the boundaries of the ionosphere are rougher at higher latitudes than at lower latitudes.  Moreover, Alouette has determined that the Van Allen Belts, great girdles of radiation around our planet, dip closer to the Earth at higher latitudes.  This heats up the ionosphere and causes the roughness-causing instability. — the more active the electrons, the poorer the radio reflection.  Now we finally know why radio communication is less reliable way up north.  The next step will be learning how to compensate for this phenomenon so that communication, both civil and military, can be made more reliable.

Sun Stroke Warning

After a year in orbit, NASA's Orbiting Solar Observatory is still going strong, with 11 of 13 experiments still functioning.  The satellite has probably returned more scientifically useful data than all of the ground-based solar observatories to date (certainly in the UV and X Ray spectra, which is blocked by the atmosphere).

Moreover, OSO 1 has returned a startling result.  It turns out that solar flares, giant bursts of energy that affect the Earth's magnetic field, causing radio storms and aurorae, are preceded by little microflares.  The sequence and pattern of these precursors may be predictable, in which case, OSO will give excellent advance warning of these distruptive events.

Tax money at work, indeed!

Galaxy, Galaxy, Burning Bright

In the late 1950s, astronomers began discovering some of the brightest objects in the universe.  It wasn't their visible twinkle that impressed so much as their tremendous radio outbursts.  What could these mysterious "quasi-stellar sources" be?

Now we have a pretty good guess, thanks to a recent scientific paper.  Cal Tech observers using the Mt. Wilson and Mt. Palomar observatories turned their gaze to object 3C 273, a thirtheenth magnitude object in the constellation of Virgo.  It turns out that 3C 273's spectrum exhibits a tremendous "red shift," that is to say, all of the light coming from it has wavelengths stretched beyond what one would expect.  This is similar to the decrease in pitch of a railroad whistle as the engine zooms away from a listener.

The only way an object could have such a redshift is if it were of galactic proportions and receding from us at nearly 50,000 km/sec.  This would place it almost 200,000,000 light years away, making it one of the most distant (and therefore, oldest) objects ever identified.

At some point, astronomer Hubble's contention that the universe is expanding is likely to be confirmed.  These quasi-stellar objects ("quasars"?) therefore represent signposts from a very young, very tiny universe.  What exciting times we live in!

Five years of Beep, Beep

St. Patricks Day, 1958 — Vanguard 1 was the fourth satellite in orbit, but it was the first civilian satellite, and it is the oldest one to remain up there.  In fact, it is the only one of the 24 probes launched in the 1950s that still works.

What has a grapefruit-sized metal ball equipped with a radio beacon done for us?  Well, plenty, actually.  Because it has been tracked in orbit so long, not only have we learned quite a bit about the shape of the Earth (the variations in Vanguard's orbit are due to varying gravities on the Earth, the measurement of which is called "geodetics"), but the satellite's slow decay also tells us a lot about the density of the atmosphere several hundred miles up.

So, while Sputnik and Explorer might have had the first laughs, Vanguard looks likely to have the last for a good long time.

Telstar's little brother does us proud

RCA's Relay 1, launched in December, is America's second commercial communications satellite.  It ran into trouble immediately upon launch, its batteries producing too little current to operate its transmitter.  Turns out it was a faulty regulator on one of the transponders; the bright engineers switched to the back-up (this is why you carry a spare!), and Relay was broadcasting programs across the Atlantic by January.  660 orbits into its mission and 500 beamed programs later, NASA announces that Relay has completed all tests. 

Nevertheless, why abandon a perfectly good orbital TV station?  Relay will continue to be used to transmit shows transcontinentally, especially now that Telstar has finally gone silent (February 21).  There is even talk that Relay could broadcast the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, if it lasts that long!

In a sea of Blue, a drop of Red

On March 12, 3-12 at the Spring Recognition Dinner of Miracle Mile Association, in Los Angeles, Cal Tech President, Lee DuBridge, noted that the United States has put 118 probes into space, while the Russians have only lofted 34 (that we know of).  He also pointed out that virtually no scientific papers have resulted from the Soviets' "science satellites." 

As if in reply, on March 21 the Soviets finally, after 89 days without a space shot, launched Kosmos 13.  (To be fair, it's been kind of quiet on the American side, too).  The probe was described as designed to "continue outer space research."  No description of payload nor weight specifications were given.  Its orbit is one that allows it to cover much of the world.  While it may be that some of the Kosmos series are truly scientific probes, you can bet that, like America's Discoverer program, the Kosmos label is a blind to cover the Russians' use of spy satellites.  Oh well.  Turnabout is fair play, right?

[Next up, don't miss Mark Yon's spotlight of this month's New Worlds!  And if I saw you at Wondercon, do drop me a line…]

5 Comments Leave A Comment
Science / Space Race

[January 15, 1963] Venus' true face (Scientific Results of Mariner 2)

3 Comments

[if you’re new to the Journey, read this to see what we’re all about!]


by Gideon Marcus

Remember five years ago, when Explorer 1 was launched?  At first, the big news was that America had answered Sputnik and joined the Space Age, but it soon became clear that the flight had larger significance.  For Explorer discovered the giant bands of hellish radiation that girdled the Earth, particles trapped by the Earth's magnetic field.  Until 1957, these "Van Allen Belts" had been virtually unsuspected.  With one flight, our conception of the universe had drastically changed.

It's happened again.

Mariner 2 is humanity's first successful mission to another planet, and the scientific harvest is absolutely enormous.  Moreover, thanks to recent changes in policy, the initial results of this harvest were released unprecedentedly quickly (scientists are now reporting upon submission and acceptance of papers rather than publication).  Just one month since the probe's encounter with Venus, the flood of information has been almost too much to parse; nevertheless, I think I've gotten the broad strokes:

Getting there is half the fun

Before I talk about Mariner's encounter with Venus, it's important to discuss what the spacecraft discovered on the way there.  After all, it was a 185 million mile trip, most of it in interplanetary space charted but once before by Pioneer 5.  And boy, did Mariner learn a lot!

For instance, it has finally been confirmed that the sun does blow a steady stream of charged particles in a gale known as the "Solar Wind."  The particles get trapped in Earth's magnetic field and cause, among other things, our beautiful aurorae. 

Mariner also measured the interplanetary magnetic field, which is really the sun's magnetic field.  It varies with the 27-day solar rotation, and if we had more data, I suspect the overall map of the field would look like a spiral. 

Why is all this important?  Well, aside from giving us an idea of the kind of "space weather" future probes and astronauts will have to deal with, these observations of the sun's effect on space give us a window as to what's going on inside the sun to generate these effects. 

One last bit: along the way, Mariner measured the density of "cosmic dust," little physical particles in space.  It appears that there's a lot of it around the Earth, perhaps trapped by our magnetic field, and not a lot in space.  It may be that the solar wind sweeps the realm between the planets clean.

Unattractive planet

Given how magnetically busy the Earth is, and since Jupiter fairly crackles on the radio band thanks to its (likely) magnetic dynamo, one would expect Venus to impact its local space environment.  Nope.  In fact, Mariner 2 flew past the second planet without detecting a trace of Venusian magnetic field, nor any concentration of space dust around the planet.  Now, it's possible that Venus has a weak field, or that its field is so oddly shaped that Mariner just hit a low patch, but the simplest explanation is usually the right one — Venus has no magnetic field.

Taking her temperature

Right up until December 14, some scientists (and many writers!) had held out hope that the thick clouds of Venus hid a reasonably hospitable surface, potentially teeming with life.  Earth-based sensors had indicated that the Venus was unbearably hot, but such could be explained by an unusually active Venusian ionosophere.  But as Mariner 2 turned its microwave and infrared radiometers across the face of Venus, it was clear that the edges of the planet were cooler than the center.  This is what one would expect from a hot surface, cooler atmosphere; the reverse would be expected of the "hot ionosphere" model.

So how hot is Venus?  At least 400 degrees Kelvin (260 degrees Fahrenheit), and probably a lot more.  There's no way there is any liquid water under that hellish greenhouse of carbon dioxide.  Moreover, it's not any nicer at night time.  There appears to be no real difference in temperature between the illuminated and dark halves of Venus, probably for the same reason the Earth's oceans run a fairly consistent temperature – Venus' atmosphere is thick enough for efficient distribution of warmth. 

Amtor dispelled

Mariner 2 and terrestrial radar have determined that the Venusian day incredibly long (~250 days, backward with respect to the other planets), but the Venusian winds blow across the planet far faster than the planet rotates; clouds have been seen racing around the disk of Venus in just 4-5 days.  Recent radar observations indicate that Venus's surface is smoother than that of the Earth or the Moon. 

This, then, is our new picture of Venus.  It is a truly hellish place, more worthy of its less common moniker, Luciferos — a bleak, half-lit world scoured by hurricane-strength sandstorms hot enough to melt lead.  Bradbury's All Summer in a Day, not to mention Burroughs' "Venus" series', will need some serious revision. 

Details, details

One of the nice things about sending a probe far from Earth is it allows for more accurate measurement of basic units – like the distance of the Earth and Venus from the sun.  This will help in future expeditions, manned and unmanned.  Another bit of bounty from Mariner's flight is a refinement of the mass of Venus.  It is 81.485% that of Earth – one of the few ways Venus remains "Earth's Twin."

What's next?

Opportunities to explore Venus occur every 19 months, when the second and third planets of the solar system are aligned in their orbits for easy travel.  Mariner 2 was so successful in its mission that NASA has canceled plans for a repeat flight in 1964.  Rather, the space agency will focus on Mars that year and follow up with Venus later, perhaps 1965. 

One reason to launch a new probe to Venus sooner rather than later is, despite the wealth of information passed back by Mariner 2, we did not get a single photograph of the planet.  That's because the spacecraft was too small to carry the transmitting equipment required to send back pictures from so far away.  But by '65, the new Centaur booster stage will have replaced the weaker Agena, which will allow a beefier payload. 

In the meantime, telemetry is worth a thousand pictures.  For now, let us revel in this scientific bonanza. Venus may not be a great place to live, but visiting has paid off tremendously.


(that's rolls of data, not paper towels)

[P.S. If you registered for WorldCon this year, please consider nominating Galactic Journey for the "Best Fanzine" Hugo.  Check your mail for instructions…]




3 Comments Leave A Comment
Science / Space Race

[December 14, 1962] Hot Stuff (Stop Press report on Mariner 2)

7 Comments

[if you’re new to the Journey, read this to see what we’re all about!]


by Gideon Marcus

The Space Race has given us a lot of firsts to report on in the last five years.  Today marks perhaps the most significant: for the first time, a spacecraft is reporting back to Earth on another world.  Mariner 2, launched on August 27, has traveled 182 million miles to fly by the second planet out from the sun, Venus.

It has been a perilous trip the entire way — even before the spacecraft ever left the ground!  Firstly, the mission almost didn't leave the drawing board.  The original Mariner probe was a robust and heavy craft with a huge panoply of experiments.  But the beefy Atlas-Centaur booster wasn't going to be ready in time for the next favorable orbital alignment of Earth and Venus, such occurring every 19 months.  Unless NASA wanted to wait until 1964…and risk being beat by the Russians, an alternative had to be found.

Luckily, the Ranger series of moon probes, half the size of the original Mariner and designed to fit on the smaller Atlas-Agena, was available.  Two new Rangers were adapted into "Mariner Rs" posthaste to meet the Summer 1962 deadline.  By July, Mariner 1 was on the launchpad.  This is where the second hurdle was met.

On July 22, Mariner 1's Atlas soared into the sky.  93 seconds into the flight, the guidance antenna on board the rocket stopped hearing commands from ground control.  This was not immediately fatal; after all, the Atlas has its own computer with a program designed to keep the booster on course even without external direction.  Unfortunately, something was wrong with the program, too — probably a misprogrammed equation led the Atlas to make increasingly jerky maneuvers on its yaw axis.  Five minutes into the mission, ground control had to send a destruct order, blowing the rocket up in midflight.

A tense month went by.  Would the Russians beat us to the punch?  We'd gotten a reprieve the year before, when the Soviet probe Venera 1 sailed silently past the Planet of Love, its systems having died in flight.  On August 25, there were reports of a Soviet launch but no subsequent announcement of a new Venus mission.  Was it just a false alarm?  Or had our adversaries had troubles of their own?

Then Mariner 2 successfully launched, on August 27.  It made it through a mid-course correction on September 4 that put it on a course with destiny.  Now it just had to survive the journey, longer than any that had been managed before.  Given the track record of the Rangers (0 for 5), the odds weren't good.

In fact, Mariner almost didn't make it.  On Halloween, one of Mariner's solar panels shorted out.  It came back on a week later only to short out for good on November 15.  Still, the crippled ship soldiered on closer to the sun, its remaining panel absorbing sufficient energy to power all instruments.  Mariner 2 set a record en route, continuing to send data past the point that Pioneer 5's transmission faded away two years ago.  As the craft approached Venus, the temperature inside was close to boiling.

Nevertheless, little Mariner pulled through!  Passing just over 20,000 miles over the surface of Venus, Mariner 2 is sending back information, all experiments functioning.  As we speak, JPL engineers are poring through the data.  In just a few short weeks, we will finally have answers to some big questions: Is Venus really a roiling inferno?  How long is a Venusian day?  What is the nature of Venus' magnetic field? 

Humanity has waited 100,000 years to learn the answers.  By January, we should have them.

7 Comments Leave A Comment
Science / Space Race

[August 27, 1962] Bound for Lucifer (the flight of Mariner 2)

2 Comments

[if you’re new to the Journey, read this to see what we’re all about!]


by Gideon Marcus

If familiarity breeds contempt, then enigma must breed fascination.  So it has been with the planet Venus.  "Earth's twin" in size and density, the second planet out from the sun is, in fact, the closest planet to us.  Yet, thanks to its shroud of clouds, very little can be determined of its nature.  At least, such was the state when I wrote my first article on the planet just three years ago.

Things are changing.

Opened eyes improve vision of Venus

Until recently, humanity was limited to examining the universe in the narrow band of light frequencies discernible to the eye.  That's actually a tiny portion of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum, which ranges from super-high frequency gamma rays, down through X-Rays, microwaves, and ultraviolet light, passes quickly through the visual light spectrum, and then to the lower-frequency infrared and radio waves.

In the last decade, we have developed ways of probing many of these EM bands from the Earth's surface, and they have begun to reveal Venus' true nature.  For instance, measuring microwave emissions from the planet, we find that the dark side simmers at a whopping 650 degrees Kelvin (710 degrees Fahrenheit).  Radio wave measurements seem to confirm this figure. 

The atmospheric pressure at "sea level" is some 50 times greater than on Earth.  It is not certain what components make up the Venusian atmosphere, but likely gases are Carbon Dioxide, Nitrogen, and water, in order of amount.  This combination is what causes the planet to swelter so – the air creates a greenhouse effect, trapping heat like a blanket.  The surface of Venus is probably like an oven, extremely dry (despite the potential for water vapor in high clouds), dimly lit by a blurry yellow sun, largely windless, and extremely inhospitable.  So much for the jungle-covered Amtor of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Using radar, scientists have learned that Venus is more reflective than the moon (presumably the surface, or whatever the waves are bouncing off of, is smoother).  It has also been determined that Venus, if it rotates at all, does so extremely slowly.  A Venusian day may well be as long as its year: 225 days.  Scientists have used radar observations to confirm the greenhouse atmospheric model over others that had been advanced in the absence of data.  Radar also has given us a better idea exactly how far away the planet is from us, a critical piece of information for plotting the course of investigating spacecraft.  Which brings us to…

Let the onslaught begin

Every 19 months, the Earth and Venus are as favorably aligned in their orbits as they can get; that is the opportunity to send the heaviest spacecraft (i.e. with the most experiments) to investigate.  The first chance of the Space Age to send a probe to Venus took place in summer of 1959 – too soon for either superpower to loft a probe.  The United States did send up Pioneer 5 to the orbit of Venus in March 1960 to test long distance communications, however. 

The next alignment took place in February 1961.  No American probe was ready, but the Soviet http://galacticjourney.org/tag/venera-1/Venera 1 almost made it to Venus before mysteriously going silent. 

19 months have elapsed again, and this time, both major participants in the Space Race are ready.  Just a few days ago, the Soviets launched another Venera.  It failed to depart Earth's orbit and will likely decay in a few days, but I can't imagine it will be their only attempt.  Last month, America's first try, Mariner 1, veered off course and had to be destroyed after only five minutes in flight.

Of course, I wouldn't be talking about this if I didn't have good news.  This morning, a new Mariner rose to the heavens atop an Atlas Agena rocket, and this one is safely on a course for the Planet of Love.

It's a little probe, really a close cousin to the Ranger probes that have had such ill luck with the moon.  NASA had hoped to send a larger spacecraft, but the new Centaur second stage booster isn't ready yet.  So the Agena-propelled Mariner carries just 40 pounds of equipment.  There's no camera onboard, for Mariner lacks the cargo to carry a strong enough transmitter to send pictures. 

But there are several experiments that will be just as valuable.  For instance, there is a pair of radiometers that will tell us, once and for all, just how warm Venus really is.  There are a series of particle counters that will measure radiation both on the way to and in the vicinity of the planet.  This kind of exploration of interplanetary space has only been done once before, and it tells us volumes about the sun and how it affects us.  We will also learn about the fields of electrical force surrounding Venus.

To that end, Mariner 2 also carries a magnetometer, designed to tell us the strength and disposition of Venus' magnetic field.  I've got a personal stake in this little experiment as two good friends, Chuck Sonett and Paul Coleman, are vital members of the team that built it.  These fine fellows worked in the private sector on Pioneer 5, and now NASA has seduced them onto the government payroll.  A win for the United States, I'd say!

So stay tuned.  Mariner will reach Venus in December, and if the probe still be active come then, you can bet there will be a bonanza of scientific results – and you'll be able to read all about it at Galactic Journey!

—

2 Comments Leave A Comment