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Science / Space Race

[June 20, 1963] Crossing stars (the flights of Vostoks 5 and 6)

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by Gideon Marcus

Gordo Cooper's 22-orbit flight in Faith 7 afforded America a rare monopoly on space news during the month of May.  Now, a new Soviet spectacular has put the West in the shade and ushered in a new era of spaceflight.

On June 14, Lt. Colonel Valery Bykosky zoomed into orbit atop the same type of rocket and in the same type of Vostok capsule that took his four predecessors to space.  Call signed "Hawk," he circled the Earth for just a hair shy of five days, beating the previous record set by Andrian Nikolayev in Vostok 3 by a few minutes.  Bykovsky conducted experiments, floated unstrapped from his seat a few times, ate, slept, and otherwise did the normal things one might expect of a cosmonaut.  He landed early yesterday morning.

That's not the exciting bit.

Two days after Hawk's flight began, he was joined by "Seagull" in Vostok 6.  As with the twin flights of Vostoks 3 and 4, Hawk and Seagull's trajectories were tailored to overlap so that the two spacecraft could get within hailing distance.  They shared radio transmissions and reported observing each other.  Vostok 6 landed around the same time as Vostok 5.  In most ways, the mission of Hawk and Seagull marked no new ground over the previous joint mission.

Except one: Vostok 6 was crewed by Valentina Tereshkova, a textile worker from Moscow.  She was the first woman and the first civilian in space. 

Let that settle in.  There are a lot of ramifications. 

When Project Mercury was established, NASA solicited applicants with a specific set of talents.  They had to be male military test pilots with thousands of hours of jet experience.  Seven were ultimately chosen, six of whom have flown.

Six Soviets have also flown.  Five were male military test pilots, but the sixth had never enlisted.  Tereshkova's closest relevant experience is that her hobbies included parachuting.  That the Soviet space program anticipated and insisted on including a civilian woman is significant.  Moreover, in her sole space flight, she logged more hours than all previous American astronauts combined.

You can call it a media stunt.  You can sneer that the Vostok capsules are bigger and more automated and therefore Tereshkova's role was limited to that of a passenger, not a pilot.  That's cold comfort, though.  The fact is, the Russians are thinking long-term.  They want to know how space affects men and women because they intend on not just conquering space but settling it.  Furthermore, they are demonstrating that Communism is an equal-opportunity business.  For all of our touting of democracy, America has no plans to let women join the space corps. 

So let's tally where we are in the "manned" space race as of June 1963.  The Americans have just finished the Mercury program, which had six flights, two of them suborbital.  The longest mission lasted a day-and-a-half.  There won't be another crewed flight until late '64, when the two-manned Gemini goes up.

Meanwhile, the Soviets launched six crewed Vostoks over roughly the same period.  But, they got there "fustest with the mostest," (Gagarin went up a month before Shepard), all of the flights were orbital, Vostok has an endurance at least three times that of Mercury, the Soviets mastered the art of double-launching, and, of course, their program is sophisticated enough to accommodate a non-pilot.  America may have been the first to break the sound barrier, but the Communists were the first to break the space gender barrier.

Our one consolation is that the near real-time appreciation of the Vostok flights was made possible by the existence of American communications satellites.  The TV transmissions from Vostoks 5 and 6 were relayed across the Atlantic via Telstar.  That's a pretty weak "yeah, but." 

Here's a better one.  Let's bring women into the astronaut corps.  In fact, there is already a reserve of thirteen woman pilots who have voluntarily subjected themselves to and passed the same test regimen as the Mercury 7.  Led by NASA consultant, Jerrie Cobb, they've been waiting in the wings for three years now.  They are eager and fit to fly — all they need is the green light from the space agency.  Given that the next class of astronauts will include civilians, there should be no barrier to letting one of these qualified women fly in Gemini and/or Apollo.

There shouldn't be…

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Science / Space Race

[May 22, 1963] Beyond the Typewriter (IBM Computers and how they work)

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by Ida Moya

I was very impressed by this month’s paean to the IBM Selectric Typewriter by traveler Victoria Lucas. Her sensuous love of the very physicality of the thing really got to me. As I mentioned before, knowing how to type is what made me what I am today; I too used this panoply of ever-better equipment, so I really enjoyed her story. The IBM Selectric is an incredibly satisfying typewriter to operate.

The most intriguing part of Miss (Mrs.?) Lucas’ article was her closing question, “What are you going to do to steal my heart next, IBM?  For example, where is this computer thing going? Will it be the next love of my life?”

Answer: The computer will be the next love of your life. (Or maybe your master.)

My place of employ, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL), is a frontrunner in adopting new computing technologies. I have worked in different capacities as LASL moved from calculating equipment that ran with hand-propelled gears and ratchet wheels, to things electrically controlled by mechanical switches, to those using electomechanical relays. (The IBM Selectric uses yet another kind of electromechanical switch, though since it is not properly a computer I won’t address it now.) The height of switching technology was until very recently vacuum tubes, which are now being by supplanted by transistors. Transistors, an amazing miniaturized technology, are much smaller than vacuum tubes, work faster, and don’t get as hot.

With computers, there are a lot of viewpoints from which one can focus. I think of computers more from the perspective of an operator: making software programs run on the computers, and producing and analyzing the results. Other people think about computer architecture — how does the data flow in and out of the computer, and what happens when the information is processed inside.

Here is a picture of one of the three vacuum tube-based IBM 704 computers at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. One of my colleagues, a computer operator, is shown opening the front door of the IBM 729 tape drive. As you can see, no special protective gear is required, and she doesn’t even have to wear a hair net. This is from just a few years ago; the computers we have now are even faster and more sophisticated.

The way we get a program into the computer is to punch the program onto cards, then use the card reader (the low piece of equipment in the center of this photograph) to transfer the program onto magnetic tapes. From the tape, the program is read into the computer’s core memory.

Data – for example, parameters for an experimental design study for a thermonuclear warhead, something you want to calculate over and over again with different settings — is then punched onto another set of cards, and read directly into the core memory. The program is transferred yet another time, to the CPU, the Central Processing Unit. There, the program acts on each of the data points in the core as appropriate. The results are printed out onto greenbar paper by the printer, which is the rightmost piece of equipment.

IBM produced this nifty card to illustrate the wonderful equipment they have to punch, sort, and interpret the cards.

We even have this little slide rule, which managers use to calculate how long it will take for keypunch operators to do a job. This little rule is our master – woe betide you if you cannot keep up!

I’m not sure what computing establishment this picture below is from, but here are a bunch of gals using IBM 026 card punches, very much like here at LASL. It’s nice to have a job and be a part of something important. But this windowless room jam packed with keypunch operators is depressing. Imagine how loud it is in there for these women. (Mary Whitehead tells me that when they were using calculators Weapons Research Establishment in Salisbury, Australia, they had carpeting in the room and egg crates lining the walls to attempt to absorb some of the sound. Not so lucky here.)


From Wikipedia

And heaven help them if they ever have to use that fire extinguisher. The cords on the floor look like a real trip hazard. However, most of these gal are just working for a year or two before they get married and become housewives, so it doesn’t pay to make the conditions any better. Me, even though my husband works at the Santa Fe Railroad, we don’t have that luxury. We both have to work in order to make ends meet and raise our wonderful children. I suspect more and more women are going to join the workforce permanently in the coming years, and these conditions will become a lot more humane for all of the future computer workers.

Another perspective from which to understand computing is the physical components inside the computer that come together to make a larger whole. For example this IBM Field Replaceable Unit (FRU), pictured below. On top of the unit are several vacuum tubes, while the rest of the contraption consists of resistors, diodes, and other discrete components. Electrons flow through this and, ingeniously, compute the Boolean logic of ands, ors, and nots.

I took this module as a souvenir from our IBM 704 system when it was decommissioned. Unlike the computers built as one unique unit, like say the one-off computers ENIAC or MANIAC, the 704 is constructed of a small number of modules. If a component in one of these modules goes bad, the individual module is removed and quickly replaced with a new module – then the computer works again. The bad module can be tested and repaired at a more leisurely pace.  These computers are expensive to own and run; keeping them “up” as much as possible, for all three shifts, is imperative.

The IBM 7030 Stretch was also designed with modularity in mind. Instead of tubes, the Stretch uses transistors, as you can see on this Standard Modular System (SMS) card below. This particular module, about the size of a playing card, is a “two-way AND,” a particular kind of Boolean logic gate. SMS cards were first developed for the Stretch, and are also used in the brand new IBM 7090, 1401, and other super-fast IBM computers and peripherals of today.

If you look closely at the transistors, which are the metal cans, you can see the Texas-shaped brand mark of Texas Instruments. This American company has learned how to mass-produce transistors. Inside this can is a teeny little piece of germanium crystal, a “semiconductor,” with some probes attached. (And by attached, I mean soldered together by women using binocular microscopes and steady hands, jammed together in another terrible windowless room). Manipulating and transforming the way electrons flow through these cans is, ultimately how the computer does our bidding. Interestingly, computer operators don’t need to know about this in detail; we can leave it to the expert computer engineers and technicians.

IBM is not the only company using a modular strategy. For example a few days ago the traveler showed a brand-new Siemens 3003 computer system. I don’t have a parts book for this German company, so I don’t know what this particular module does, but you can see in the picture below there are two silver can-shaped transistors, plus some other colored packages of components.


(Courtesy of The Living Computer Museum

So, Miss Lucas, there is plenty to love about computers. Don’t get stuck just being a typist, and join us in the transistorized revolution!

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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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Science / Space Race

[Apr. 29, 1963] When a malfunction isn't (the flight of Saturn I #4 and other space tidbits)

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by Gideon Marcus

Baby's first step… Take Four

Out in Huntsville, Alabama, Von Braun's team is busy making the biggest rockets ever conceived.  The three-stage Saturn V, with five of the biggest engines ever made, will take people to the Moon before the decade is out.  But NASA's is justifiably leery of running before walking.  Moreover, there is use for a yet smaller (but still huge!) rocket for orbital Apollo testing and, also, practice building and launching Saturn rocket components.

Enter the two-stage Saturn I, whose first stage has eight engines, like the Nova, but they are much smaller.  Still, altogether, they produce 1.5 million pounds of thrust — that's six times more than the Atlas that will put Gordo Cooper's Mercury into orbit next month.  The Saturn I's second stage will likely also be the third stage on the Saturn V.

The Saturn I has had the most successful testing program of any rocket that I know of.  It's also one of the most maddeningly slow testing programs (I'm not really complaining — methodical is good, and it's not as if Apollo's ready to fly, anyway). 

The fourth in the series lifted off March 28, and they still aren't fueling the second stage.  They've essentially all been tests of stage #1.  This particular test was interesting because they shut off one of the engines on purpose during the flight to see if the other engines could compensate for the loss.  SA-4 continued to work perfectly, zooming to an altitude of 129 kilometers.

SA-4 was the last of the first-stage-only tests.  Henceforth, we'll get to see what the full stack can do. 

A breath of very thin fresh air

We tend to ignore most of the atmosphere.  After all, the air we breathe and most of the weather are confined to the first few kilometers above the Earth.  But the upper regions of the atmosphere contain the ozone layer, which shields us from deadly radiations; the ionosphere, which bounces radio waves back to Earth; beautiful and mysterious noctilucent clouds, only visible after sunset; and of course, spacecraft have to travel through it on their way up and down.  Knowing the makeup of our atmosphere gives us clues to understand climate, the history of the Earth, the interaction of our planet and the sun, and much more.

And yet, aside from the TIROS weather satellites, which only study the lowest level of the atmosphere, there has never been a dedicated atmospheric study satellite.  Sure, we've launched probes to detect radiation and charged particles and the Earth's magnetosphere.  Some have investigated the propagation of radio waves through the ionosphere.  But none have gone into space just to sample the thin air of the upper atmosphere and find out what's up there and how much.

Until now. 

Explorer 17 is a big, sputnik-looking ball loaded with a bunch of pressure gauges and other instruments.  Its sole purpose is to measure the the pressure and make-up of the upper atmosphere, from about 170 kilometers up. 

Launched on April 3rd, in its first few days of operation, the probe has more than tripled all previous measurements of neutral gases in Earth's upper atmosphere to date.  For instance, the satellite has discovered that the earth is surrounded by a belt of neutral helium at an altitude of from 250 to 1000 miles, a belt no one was sure it existed.  We suspected it, of course — helium, produced in the Earth's crust by the natural radioactive decay of heavy elements, is very light.  Just as helium balloons go up and up, free helium's normal fate is to eventually escape Earth's gravitational influence, leaving behind the heavier gasses. 

This is the first time this hypothesis had a chance to be proven, and by measuring the density of this helium, we should be able to get an idea of how much helium is generated by the Earth each year.  This, in turn, will tell us something about how much radioactive material is left on Earth.  Isn't that neat?  We send a probe far up into space to learn more about what's going on down here.  Your tax dollar hard at work.

The Cosmos opening up for Kosmos

Pop quiz — what did the Soviets accomplish last year in the Space Race?  Right.  The Soviets made big news with the flashy dual mission of Vostoks 3 and 4.  Anything else?  Can you recall a single space accomplishment for the Communists?  In 1962, the United States launched Telstar, the Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO), three Explorer science probes, three Ranger moon probes, Mariner 2 to Venus, and a couple dozen military satellites, not to mention the orbital Mercury flights of John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, and Wally Schirra.

This year is a different story.  We Americans haven't slackened our pace, but the Russians have finally picked up theirs.  They've got a probe on its way to Mars, as well as a new series of satellites called Kosmos.  This month, they launched three, getting up to Kosmos 16.  They are touted as science satellites, but there has been precious little data from them made public or that's worked its way into scientific papers.  This suggests that the Kosmos program is really a civilian front for a military program.  That's the fundamental difference between the Western and Eastern space efforts.  While the American military takes up its share of the national space budget, we still make sure there's room for pure science.  The Soviets have chosen between guns and science in favor of the former (though, to be fair, if we could only afford one option, would we have made the same choice?)

So why did it take so long for the Soviets to get into the groove after having such a seemingly commanding lead in the Space Race?  And just what are the Kosmos satellites really doing up there? 

According to a NASA scientist, the lack of announced flights doesn't mean the Russians didn't try.  Our Communist friends are notorious for talking only about their successes.  In fact, the Soviets were trying a new four-stage version of the booster that launched Sputnik and Vostok, and the fourth stage kept failing.  There might have been a few failed moon missions in there, too, that we never heard about.  We probably only learned about Luna 4, launched April 2, because it took off just fine — it just missed its target (the Soviet reporting after lunar flyby was notably subdued). 

As for what Kosmos is, Aviation Weekly and Space Report suggests the series is really two types of satellites based on weight and orbital trajectory.  One is a small class of probe that stays up for months.  They could be akin to our Explorers, but again, they don't produce science (whereas ours have revolutionized our knowledge of near-Earth space).  More likely, they are engineering satellites designed to test various components for future missions: communications, cameras, navigation.

The other class is big — as big as the manned Vostoks.  They only fly a few days, too, and their orbits cover most of the globe.  These could be unmanned tests of the next generation of Soviet manned spacecraft.  But they also could be repurposed Vostoks designed to conduct spy missions.  Perhaps the Soviet Union is sending up cosmonauts with camera in hand (as we have done on the Mercury missions).  Sure, it's more expensive than our Discoverer spy sats, but everything's free in a command economy, right?

In any event, the world once again has two active space superpowers.  What happens next is anyone's guess…




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Science / Space Race

[Mar. 30, 1963] Mercury waltzes Matilda (the tracking and research station at Woomera, Australia)

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by Ida Moya

I’m back from a whirlwind of helping the data analysts at Los Alamos get their FORTRAN formulas running on that balky old IBM Stretch computer. I can see why IBM only made 8 of these things. It is miraculous to have a computer that can fit into a single room, but this stretch (pardon the pun) in computing technology still averages only 17 hours uptime a day — and that’s also a stretch (no more, I promise).

When it breaks, this swarm of white-coated men in ties comes in and fusses around with it with a bunch of special tools, as well as the set of ALDs (Automated Logic Diagrams) that come with every IBM computer. The way those diagrams are produced and updated with punch cards and special line printers is an amazing story, but for another time.

Although we at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory can comfort ourselves that the Stretch is the fastest computer in the world, I’m still envious of the institutions that have the better-engineered IBM 7090 computers. These are being used for calculations for the exciting Mercury program.


IBM 7090 at the Weapons Research Establishment's headquarters at Salisbury, on the northern outskirts of Adelaide in South Australia.

The Mercury spaceships do not have a computer on board – computers are far too heavy – so for figuring out how to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere the astronauts rely on computations sent by radio from the pair of IBM 7090 computers at the Mercury Control Station at Cape Canaveral. It’s an incredible amount of faith to put in one site, so Mercury control has those two redundant IBM computers, plus another set of computers in New Jersey. A third computer gathering information from the flight is on the other side of the globe — in Adelaide processing tracking data collected at at Weapons Research Establishment in Woomera, Australia. There is also another control center at Muchea, in Western Australia.


Control room of the astronaut tracking station at Muchea in Western Australia, part of US Project Mercury

A lot of people haven’t heard of Woomera, so let me tell you a little bit about it. At Woomera, more is being done than track Mercury astronauts. This part's an open secret, but the Brits and the Aussies are working together there on testing (or doing “trials” as they say) on rockets, missiles, and even atomic weapons. That's why they built this testing range in the middle of nowhere, in the outback of Australia.


Woomera Research Establishment Officer’s mess

A few years ago we had a visit from Bill Boswell, the Woomera director, along with a team from Maths Services, and Mary Whitehead, the leader of the Planning and Data Analysis Group. They were visiting various computer installations at Point Mugu, White Sands, and Cape Canaveral. These are all larger-than life place-names, but they really just represent groups of men and women madly making observations, coding the photographs in a way the computer can understand, and using these results to steer the manned spaceships. Mary and I had time to talk about more prosaic things, like her new apartment (or “flat” as they call it down under) in Woomera village, and the troubles of living so far from civilization.


Mary’s new flat at Woomera

Woomera reminds me a lot of Los Alamos. It is a similar purpose-built town, isolated from the surrounding population by remoteness and security. Entire families live there, with houses, apartments, and schools for the kids. There are clubs and mess halls; a bowling alley and community grocery store. The store sells just canned and packaged food; if you want something fresh the closest produce is 50 miles away. The planners made a lot of efforts to plant trees, most of which failed. Honestly, it sounds awful to me. I love the "Land of Enchantment" (New Mexico), where things actually grow. The two science towns also have odd mixed populations – for Los Alamos, it is the influx of American and foreign scientists, local Hispanos, and the San Ildefonso tribe. In Woomera, it is the influx of British scientists, local Aussies, and the aboriginal people. Personally I think Los Alamos does a better job of integrating the native population.


Community store in Woomera

There’s something about space that is so exciting. Space has it all: exploration, discovery, danger, and destiny. There’s so much more to it than my dry work of computers, trajectory calculations, and strangely named groups that I am so mired in. That’s why I am so excited to find science fiction and Galactic Journey’s reviews, which is opening my mind to our real future in space that this work makes possible.




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Science / Space Race

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

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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…]

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Science / Space Race

[February 9, 1963] Do something about the weather… (The State of the Art in Computing)

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[If you live in Southern California, you can see the Journey LIVE at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego, 2 p.m. on February 17!]


by Ida Moya

Let me take you on a little trip, one that starts in wartime and that ends with a peacetime enterprise that increasingly affects all of our lives.  One that I've had the good fortune to participate in (or, at least, on the edges of).  Who knows — you might end up an integral part of it, too!

I'll start with an important but little-known woman scientist, one who was not only representative of the kind of service women have provided for decades, but who was also pivotal in my development.

Charlotte Serber was the first librarian at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. She went to live there with her husband, Robert Serber, at the start of the secret project. Bob was a student of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Oppie, as we all called him, was the charismatic (and later tortured) leader of what we now call the Manhattan Project.


The Library at Los Alamos

I worked for Charlotte, who was the only female section leader of Project Y on The Hill. Like me, she didn’t start as a professional librarian. In fact, one of Charlotte’s first tasks was to organize the maids. Charlotte taught me a lot, and we all worked together to organize the printed materials, borrow scientific books from universities, subscribe to physics journals from all over the world, and endlessly mimeograph things. I didn’t think my hands would ever NOT be blue from that messy ink. We had the only mimeograph machine for a long time, so it seemed everybody would come by to make some copies and share the latest news.

Charlotte and Bob left Los Alamos after the bomb was dropped, but I stayed on. There were a lot of Hispanos like me on The Hill; my cousins and second cousins and of course my husband and family were living and working there too. When my husband moved us to The Hill and started working as a carpenter, they put out a call for wives who could type. That I can type and had the courage to answer that call saved me from what was seemingly my destiny on The Hill — being a maid, or at best, a store clerk. I’m grateful for Charlotte taking a chance on my younger self and letting this Hispano work more seriously on The Hill.

That was then, when computers were people or room-sized tube-packed monstrosities.  The world now is crazier than science fiction dreamed back then, in the middle of which my work has situated me. In fact, my unique position enables me to do research using the resources of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, our sister institution the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the libraries of our managing institution, the University of California. This puts me ahead of the curve in knowing about (and working on the computers involved with) cutting edge developments in science.

Take the weather, for example. The Traveler has recently written about the upcoming launch of the first Nimbus satellite, and the recent launches of three Tiros weather satellites. My interest piqued, I’ve lately been quizzing my colleagues in engineering about how weather prediction via satellite using computers actually works. Fair warning: I might tell you something that is classified, but I will try to keep the classified things secret.

Weather prediction via satellite does not just involve getting the object into space (a big task in itself); there is also a coordinated effort of redundant ground stations to collect the data sent from the satellites. Computers are far too huge and heavy to send into orbit, so the satellites transmit their findings to computers back on earth for further analysis. But what do these computers actually compute?

Predicting the weather has a long history, going back to Aristotle and before. In the modern age, Lewis Fry Richardson is considered the father of using computers to analyze the weather, based on his 1922 book, Weather prediction by numerical process. This book was written before transistorized or tube computers; he was thinking about men and women with electronic hand calculators like the Marchant we used before the IBM computers came to Los Alamos. One much cited quote is his thought experiment describing a “weather theatre” or “forecast factory”:

“After so much hard reasoning, may one play with fantasy? Imagine a large hall like a theatre, except that the circles and galleries go right round through the space usually occupied by the stage. The walls of this chamber are painted to form a map of the globe. The ceiling represents the north polar regions, England is in the gallery, the tropics in the upper circle, Australia on the dress circle and the Antarctic in the pit. A myriad computers are at work upon the weather of the part of the map where each sits, but each computer attends only to one equation or part of an equation.”


 
I love this little sketch; I’m not sure where it came from. It’s not in Richardson’s book, but it fits his vision. In his thought experiment, Richardson imagined 64,000 human computers, all calculating simultaneous equations for their part of the globe, their pace synchronized by the conductor in the center. Runners would go down the aisles collecting results from sectors where the conductor would shine a light, and take them to a central office to be collated. A crazy idea. Until now, when we have transistorized computers fast enough to potentially run and collate 64,000 calculations at a time.
 
These new computers, aside from calculating nuclear explosions (a thing we at Los Alamos are very familiar with) are being used for weather prediction. In the UK, a Ferranti Mercury computer, known as “Meteor,” was used starting January 1959 at the Met Office to do Numerical Weather Prediction. The Meteor is a vacuum tube computer. Those panels along the right are not just a fancy wall; those are the sides of the frames of the computer! Unlike the women in the bank HSBC wearing spike heels, these computer operators seem to be allowed more practical footwear.
 

 
A transistorized English Electric KDF9 “Comet” is slated to replace this Mercury in another year or so. This is the same type of computer used by HSBC to perform banking operations. All of that blue and silver receding into the background of this photo is the computer. The typewriter-looking thing on the right is used to get results from the computer, while the U-shaped things are high speed paper tape readers used to feed data into the computer. Getting information in and out of these things is turning out to be a limiting factor to their speed. That punched paper tape has to be rewound by hand; a careful task that must be done properly or it will kink and break. The tape is impossible to repair it once it has broken, so there is a lot of cursing and re-punching of tapes when that happens. Also, the tape moves so fast it is like a razor blade, giving the mother of all paper cuts to the incautious.


 
In America, weather prediction is being done at the Joint Numerical Weather Prediction Unit (consisting of the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Weather Bureau. The JNWPU is on their 4th IBM computer, having already used the IBM 701 and IBM 704 (both vacuum tube computers). They then used an IBM 1401 transistorized computer with a high speed paper tape reader. The national weather service then got one of the very first IBM 7090 computers. Each of these computers was about 6 times faster than the one before.
 
The photographs sent from the Tiros satellites is sent in triplicate to Command and Data Acquisition stations in DC and Hawaii. There humans use physical tools, drafting tables and scales, to hand plot the movement of the clouds onto maps. These coordinates are then sent to the NASA Computing Center and the U. S. Weather Bureau, where they are then fed into the computers (using that terrible punched paper tape). The computers use complex mathematical formulas to predict the future movement of the clouds and therefore predict the weather. The output is automatically printed on wide paper by a typewriter-like thing, a Friden Flexowriter. This whole process is managed by teams of technicians, men and women. When it is ready, the printout goes to engineers who study the results.


 
As you can see, the glory is really all on the ground.  To all of you who want to be astronauts, perhaps you might think about the many people who support their flight…and aspire to be one of them instead.

[P.S. If you registered for WorldCon this year, please consider nominating Galactic Journey for the "Best Fanzine" Hugo.  Your ballot should have arrived by now…]




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Science / Space Race

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

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[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…]




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Science / Space Race

[January 7, 1963] From Los Alamos to the Moon (Computing — the State of the Art)

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by Ida Moya

[Meet our newest fellow Journeyer, Mrs. Moya, whose technical background is as enviable as it is fascinating.  Given the whirlwind pace at which computer technology is advancing, I thought our readers would like to get, straight from the source (as it were), an account of Where We Are Today…]

Hello, fellow Travelers. My journey to date has been both a long and short one. Long in that I've come a long way since I first started as a typist at an institution you might have heard of: Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory.  And short in the fact that, well, I'm still here, now employed in the Lab's technical library. I’ve been around these New Mexico labs for nearly twenty years, since they built the first atomic bombs which ended the war.
 
I started at Los Alamos as a typist, creating memos and reports for the scientists. I learned how to type in high school, a skill that has taken me a long way. I was on the Hill in the beginning, in 1943, when there were only a couple of hundred people were working there. By 1945, there were over 6000. I’ve done a lot of things in these twenty dusty years at Los Alamos. Most of my work has been in the library, helping the scientists and engineers find the documents and information they need in order to get their work done. I’ve seen a lot over these years, and learned quite a bit about science and computers to better help the scientists get things done.

I can tell you more about Los Alamos and Project Y, which until now have been the hush-hushiest of subjects, because just this year a book came out — Volume 1 of the History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission: The New World 1939-1946.

This blockbuster new report, designed by esteemed colleague Marilyn Shobaken of Penn State, where it was published, has all the science archives in New Mexico and beyond buzzing. She was so involved with the production of this document that her name is even included on the verso, right after the Library of Congress catalog card number 62-14633.
 
That's just background. I promise I will tell you more stories of Project Y and the Hill later, but for now, let me tell you about my current work.  It involves the development of computation and how these new transistorized computers will take us into space. I’m not flying into space myself, but the work I do is helping those brave men get to the moon. This is an incredibly exciting project to be a part of, and I’m glad that NASA is not secret. So let me tell you about some of the competitive scientific and technical developments that Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory is leading.
 
Just last month, on December 7, 1962, the University of Manchester in the UK commissioned the Atlas computer, said to be faster than even the newest IBM computers — the Stretch, the 7090, and the 7094. However, one thing the Atlas computer doesn’t have is an industry behind it. Manchester made this one experimental machine, and have two others in the works; that’s it.

At Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, we acquired the first IBM Stretch computer in 1961. This new transistorized computer was supposed to be 100 times faster than IBM’s previous vacuum-tube based computer, the IBM 704. The Stretch turned out to be only about 35 times faster, so IBM considers it a failure.

Still, the Stretch is faster than the gals in the human computer facilities, pecking away on their baby-blue Marchant electromechanical calculators. I did this for a time before we got our electronic computers; a tiring and thankless job that had to be done accurately in makeshift buildings in the high desert. Now we program our computers in FORTRAN, in air-conditioned rooms. If you have the aptitude, I highly recommend you learn to program computers using this innovative formula translating language. The space race needs more capable computer programmers (and it's not just for women, no matter what the engineers might tell you).

IBM made a few more Stretch computers, all for governmental customers. The National Security Agency has just installed the next one, and others are being prepared for our sister project at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, as well as the Atomic Weapons Establishment in England, and the US National Weather Service. That's about it, though. As I said, IBM deems this marvel a failure.

However, IBM has learned from this exercise, and has turned their considerable manufacturing prowess to the IBM 7090 and IBM 7094 computers. IBM has factories churning these out by the dozen. As I write, two IBM 7090 computers are installed at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, calculating trajectories for NASA’s Mercury program. These 7090 computers are also being used by rocket scientist Wernher von Braun to simulate flight trajectories in aid of the design of the Saturn rocket system, the rocket that is going to take Americans to the moon. Four more IBM 7090 computers are being used by the Air Force for their Ballistic Missile Early Warning System. There is even an IBM 7090 installed at the Woomera Long Range Weapons Establishment, as part of the Anglo-Australian Joint Project, also used to calculate rocket and missile trajectories. America’s industries are not far behind; two more IBM 7090 systems are being used by American Airlines for their forward-thinking SABRE flight reservation system. Imagine, soon even regular people like us will be able to experience the glamour and sophistication of air travel, as new jet and computer technologies put the price of a ticket within affordable reach.

So, Manchester U.K. may have the “fastest” computer in the Atlas, but the United States has the lead in building an entire industrial infrastructure to deploy fast computers all over the country and free world. Healthy competition with our allies is fine, but what we really need to do is win the space race against those godless Russian communists. The American people will prevail in space, in no small part thanks to FORTRAN and IBM computers.

I'm proud to be a part of this adventure, and now, as part of the Journey, I look forward to bringing you along with me!

—

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




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Science / Space Race

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

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[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.

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