Mariner IHI
ids
By HENRY KEYS
United Preu Internetionsl
Washington - IUPB - When
the tiny, spidery spacecraft
Mariner 2 flashed across the
face of the planet Venus on
Dec. 14 it had accomplished
one of the most exciting voy.
ages of exploration in the his
tory of mankind.
For the first time, man had
reached out into distant space
to unlock some of the secrets
of another planet.
For Dr. William Pickering,
Director of the Jet Propul
sion laboratory at Pasadena,
Calif., and hundreds of fellow
scientists and technicians it
was as if they had been part
ners in a miracle. .
For three long months, ever
since Mariner 2 was flung
into space in late August, thev
had been living in a state of
high tension, filled with real
fears and anxieties that Mar
iner might not make it. From
time to time, things did go
wrong, some strange and in
explicable. An American Epic '
The story of Mariner's 182-million-mile
flight to its ren
dezvous with the evening star
as told by Pickering and col
leagues Is an American epic.
Pickering is a slight, small
boned man with lively, laugh
ing eyes who revels in the in
tellectual excitement of his
trade and talks of Mariner in
terms that any layman can
understand.
A New Zealander by birth,
Pickering came to the United
States at age 16 to continue
his education at the Techni
'cal Institute of California
(Cal Tech). He has remained
here ever since and become
an American in the process.
As Director of Cal. Tech's
JPL laboratories he is the
man primarily responsible for
Mariner's flight. He talks of
it as if it is indeed part of
him. All spacemen chained to
the laboratories do that, of
course. But when Pickering
says "we're 37 million miles
out today? you feel that he
is in heart and spirit out there
with Mariner racing toward
the searing embrace of the
sun.
The day before Mariner's
successful probe of Venus,
men walked around the lab
oratory not because they were
going anywhere but just to
be doing something. Others
sat quietly doing nothing -just
"sweating it out." The
stress showed on everyone. -Call
Feared ,
Every time a telephone
rang heads would jerk around.
The man answering it would
seem to freeze before he pick
ed it up, fearing it might be
a call from the Goldstone
Tracking Station, or someone
In the lab reporting something
wrong with Mariner.
"The telephone b e c a me
such a 'thing' in people's
mind that when the project
manager. Jack James, called
me up one day his first words
were, 'don't worry
Pickering said with a laugh.
One of the tense moments
of Mariner's three - month
space voyage came with the
turning on of the Earth Lock.
As Pickering described it,
Mariner was slowly rolling
round in space. To stop it,
a pre-arranged signal had to
go to Mariner's tiny, Earth
seeking telescope instructing
it to stop rolling, find the
Earth and lock on to it. Mar
iner's Sun Sensor, of course,
was pointed at the Sun vir
tually from the beginning as
this was essential for .Marin
er's Solar plates to gather
and store electrical energy
irom the Sun. But the space
craft had to line up on Earth,
too. Otherwise it would not
beam its space reports back,
or, for that matter, carry out
its program.
"It was a fairly complex
operation," Pickering said.
"We were eight days out and
a million miles off in space.
We knew when it should hap
pen, but we could not help
worrying whether it would.
Everybody seemed to be
Vtanding around, waiting.
Sure enough, right on time,
it did."
From the time Mariner's
biult-ln electronic brain and
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masterlock, the central com,
puter and sequencer (CCS) in
itiated the signal it took half
an hour for Mariner to settle
down, locked on Sun and
Earth.
"But the really big event
was the mid-course maneu
ver," Pickering said.
The midcourse maneuver
was necessary to correct the
path of Mariner's flight. If it
continued on the course it was
on at launch it would have
missed Venus by a quarter of
a million miles . The mid
course correction was aimed
at bringing Mariner to with
in 21,000 miles of Venus.
In essence, Mariner, on in
struction from Earth, had to
turn itself around, turn on a
tiny rocket engine, run it for
27 seconds and turn it off
again. It then had to find the
Sun and the Earth again.
To enable the rocket engine
to fire, Pickering explained,
the high gain antenna (used
to beam Mariner's messages
back to Earth) had to move
out of the way, out of the line
of fire of the rocket engine,
and then, when the maneuver
was over, move back into pos
ition. Tense, Exciting
"It was tense and exciting.
The data line was pitching
and rolling, Pickering said,
describing how the signals
from Mariner appeared in the
laboratory. "The whole opera
tion took four hours to do.
We were then out about
million miles. We had to tell
it what engines to turn on,
otherwise we would miss Ven
us by that quarter of a mil
lion miles. We had to wait 18
Science Finds 32
Particles of Use
In Orderly World
Washington -IIM- New lab
oratory devices, new, tech
niques and new avenues of re
search are expected to pro
duce exciting advances in sev
eral scientific fields during
1963.
Among the possibilities:
Physics - Already scientists
have found 32 "basic" par
ticles of the matter which
makes up the universe. They
have found additional parti
cles which may turn out to be
old ones interacting together
in what is called "resonance."
This year may see order be
ginning to develop out of this
chaos.
Atomic Energy - Both. Rus
sia and the United States are
trying to perfect man-made
Plutonium as a fuel for nu
clear power reactors. Success
would , make it possible to
multiply atomic fission re
sources by "breeding" new
fuel out of presently inert
materials. A $34.5 million
Plutonium "breeder" goes into
operation this year at the
U.S. reactor test station in
Idaho. ; .
May Speed Drugs
Radiation-Improved under
standing of radiation effects
and the operation of living
cells may speed progress to
ward development of anti-
radiation drugs.
Water - Several promising
methods of converting sea
water into fresh are being
pushed. They are man's best
bet for preventing a cata
strophic shortage in the next
several decades.
Mantle - This year some 20
nations will embark on a
three year "upper mantle
project" to plumb the hidden
depths of the earth. They hope
to explore the outermost 600
miles of the planet's rocky in
sides. This project, scientists
say, is needed to provide
understanding of the earth's
origin and history.
Lunar Bases - The space
agency contracted for a six
month study in 1963 prelimi
nary to future construction of
observatories and depots on
the moon.
The Sea - Preliminary de
sign is being done on a nu
clear reactor to operate at
the bottom of the sea. It
would supply power to under
sea communities - when and
if such submarine cities are
built to harvest resources on
the ocean floor.
Progress is being made to
ward control of cancer and
cholesterol, and in many an
other field of medicine and
biological research, and to
ward development of robots
with electronic brains which
eventually will do most of
man's work for him.
The greatest challenge, as
some see it, is to develop
means for controlling man
himself. Prof. Thomas Park
of the University of Chicago.
believes man is in danger of
multiplying himself out of
existence.
"One thing is certain," Park
said recently. "If man does
not manage his biology, it will
manage him.".
minutes for the midcourse
motor to operate."
It was a tense 18 minutes
upon which everything hung.
"After it, we actually
watched Mariner pick up
speed, Pickering said. "It was
very complicated and it was
a very satisfying feeling when
it was over."
Pickering and his col
leagues regard the whole of
Mariner's journey as a series
and sequence of miracles, for
Mariner had many hazards to
survive, not the least of them,
collisions with micrometeor
ities. But there was no fluke or
luck about it. A complex ser
ies of 'what-if situations had
been built into Mariner.
Lois of Signal
The next point of crisis was
an unexpected loss of signal.
Mariner was about a month
out when the photocell-telescope
signal faded and JPL
scientists were Mystified.
"The signal got so low it
just disappeared. When you
lose this signal it means Mar
iner has lost Earth," Picker
ing explained.
Pickering said that he was
due to leave for Europe at
this time and was very wor
ried about this situation.
"I was in Munich when one
of the boys phoned me. His
first words were, 'you won't
believe this, but . , . " Pick
ering said. :
The telephone call was to
tell him that the trouble had
righted itself. The signal from
Mariner to Earth came back
to exactly what it should have
been.
"The only , explanation,"
Pickering said, "is that some
where in the telescopic ar
rangement we got a ghost im
age of the Earth and Mariner
was looking at that instead
of at Earth itself. The signal
from a ghost image would of
course be very weak.
On Oct. 31, there was a sud
den failure in the power sup
ply. "The spacecraft was
operating beautifully, but the
measurements from one of the
solar panels had gone bad.
We were very concerned
about this and turned off one
of the experiments to con
serve power. We were about
to take a course of action from
the ground when again the
trouble righted itself," Pick
ering continued.
"The same ' kind of thing
happened a week later. We
worked it out on the ground
that there was a short circuit
in one part of the solar panel
(which traps light from the
Sun and converts it into elec
tric energy to operate Mari
ner's equipment.
'Try)
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"This trouble has existed
today. It is not serious and
has not hurt the operation of
the spacecraft. We started all
experiments up again and we
have not turned any off
since."
The Mariner raced closer
to its encounter with Venus,
the temperatures it was en
countering became higher
than had been planned for.
Tension at JPL soared, too.
"It looked like there might
be a catastrophe," Pickering
said.
Batteryi Problem
Causing the anxiety was a
sealed, liquid-filled battery
which had been designed to
withstand temperatures up to
120 degrees fahrenheit. The
high temperatures threatened
expansion of the liquid so
that there was danger that it
could have blown itself up.
Not even the designer, a
ecreft-.bf Mystery PBouneft
Japanese, could hazard
guess what upper limits of
temperature the battery
would withstand.
"The closer Mariner got to
Venus, the more worried I
got that I would get up one
morning and it would quit,"
said Pickering.
But it didn't. Indeed, Mari
ner raced still nearer the Sun,
in steadily increasing temp
eratures, until Dec. 28 when
Mariner came within 65.5 mil
lion miles of the Sun and then
started to head away from it.
. Mariner is expected to con
tinue transmitting informa
tion about distant space for
the best part of another three
months.
New anxieties developed on
Wednesday, Dec. 12, two days
before the expected encounter
with Venus.
"We detected trouble in the
encounter mode," Pickering
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MEDFORD, OREGON, THURSDAY, JANUARY 17, 1963
said. Signals from the space
craft showed that Mariner
would not work in response to
signals from the CCS.
The job of the CCS on ap
proach to Venus was to give
signals that would automatic
ally set into operation Mari
ner's two radio-meters - a
microwave and an infarcd ra
diometer - which were to
scan Venus during the fly-by
and send back to Earth all the
information which was c
pected of this probe.
The discovery on that
Wednesday that the CCS was
not going to work the radio
meters therefore caused the
gravest anxiety.
It had two opportunities to
function - once at 2:21 a.m.
E.S.T. on Friday. Dec. 14, and
again 3 hours and 20 minutes
later. It failed.
By this lime Pickering was
In Washington - in bed at the
club of the nation's intellec
tuals, the Cosmos Club.
Hear Mariner
At NASA, JPL press officer
Chris Clausen was on an open
line to the laboratories in
Pasadena, listening to the
organ-like chords from Mart
ncr and receiving up to the
minute Information on its
progress.
Periodically, throughout the
night, he would call up Pick
ering and give him the latest
news.
"We were 36 million miles
out in space," Pickering said.
"We had one chance left, to
send from Earth a signal that
should perform the function
that the CCS had failed to
carry out. We had to do this.
"The instructions went out
to Mariner in a long series of
'ones' and 'O's', or dots and
dashes, about 15 of them. It
is the order in which these go
out that tell Mariner precise
ly what to do," said Picker
ing. The command zipped out to
Mariner at the speed of light
- 186,300 miles a second -but
because Mariner was 36
million miles away took 3-'4
minutes to reach it. It took
another 3-U minutes for Mari
ner to signal back that it had
received and acted upon the
signal and that the radio
meters were all set to scan
Venus the moment Mariner
came over the planet's hori
zon. That added up to per
haps the longest 6-Vj minutes
ever for the Mariner team.
Pickering Asleep
And what was Pickering
doing?
"I was sound asleep in the
Cosmos Club. I was pretty
sure it (the signal from Earth)
would work. Before I left
JPL we had 'locked up the
loop,' " He said.
In broad terms, this meant
a check operation had indi
cated Mariner would respond.
"I rather liked J a ck
James's comment that when
it did happen 'out there' he
got 'sort of relaxed,' " Pick
ering said.
As Mariner sped across
Venus the radiometers scan
ned its atmosphere for 42
minutes, nodding backwards
and forwards slowly three
times, sending a wealth of in
formation to Earth in elec
tronic code that will take
JPL's computers some time
yet to work out in detail.
Soon - after the coded data
is deciphered - many secrets
of the mystery planet, Earth's
nearest neighbor in the plan
etary system, will be secrets
no longer.
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