Mariner 1
Mariner 1, built to conduct the first American planetary flyby of Venus, was the first spacecraft of NASA's interplanetary Mariner program. Developed by Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and originally planned to be a purpose-built probe launched summer 1962, Mariner 1's design was changed when the Centaur proved unavailable at that early date. Mariner 1 (and its sibling spacecraft, Mariner 2), were then adapted from the lighter Ranger lunar spacecraft. Mariner 1 carried a suite of experiments to determine the temperature of Venus as well to measure magnetic fields and charged particles near the planet and in interplanetary space.
Mariner 2 engineering model, identical to Mariner 1 | |
| Mission type | Venus flyby |
|---|---|
| Operator | NASA / JPL |
| Mission duration | 294.5 seconds Failed to orbit |
| Spacecraft properties | |
| Spacecraft type | Mariner based on Ranger Block I |
| Manufacturer | Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
| Launch mass | 202.8 kilograms (447 lb) |
| Start of mission | |
| Launch date | July 22, 1962, 09:21:23 GMT |
| Rocket | Atlas LV-3 Agena-B |
| Launch site | Cape Canaveral, LC-12 |
Mariner 1 was launched by an Atlas-Agena rocket from Cape Canaveral's Pad 12 on July 22, 1962. Shortly after liftoff, errors in communication between the rocket and its ground-based guidance systems caused the rocket to veer off course, and it had to be destroyed by range safety. The errors were traced to a mistake in a specification of the hand-written guidance equations which were then subsequently codified in the computer program.