hello I'm John Fitch man since the
beginning of time has wondered about the
Stars and the planets our neighbor
planet Mars has intrigued the
imagination of artists and writers some
people think there is life on Mars some
people think there are strange creatures
on Mars
we've been looking at Mars the way
artists and writers imagine it a planet
of jungles and deserts inhabited by
monsters and of course beautiful women
well I'm happy to say that they are
wrong
Mars is far more mysterious than that
and far more surprising this is an
example it's a bit of the Martian
weather that we've reproduced for you
know isn't snow it's a different kind of
weather that scientists have predicted
that we may find on Mars this is the
theory if the Martian atmosphere
contains carbon dioxide and methane and
they are exposed to the ultraviolet
radiation of the Sun they may produce
sugar in other words there may be a
constant sugar fall on Mars
this is not the only reason why the
United States has sent a probe called
Mariner for more than 325 million miles
through space for the first close
inspection of our mysterious neighbor
scientists in the US are launching many
types of spacecraft to collect important
information as their contribution to
world knowledge among them are
scientific satellites which orbit the
earth and deep space probes which the
United States has already launched to
photograph the moon examine the planet
Venus and now to investigate Mars
scientists at the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration who direct
these operations have been seeking
answers to many questions are these
really canals on Mars are the polar caps
frozen water are these dark areas vast
plains of vegetation how thick is the
atmosphere and how hard to the winds
blow does the planet have a magnetic
field so that future explorers compasses
will always point north you notice I
said future the Mars mariner probe is
only the first step in a series of
scientific explorations which have been
planned to answer the most important
question of all is there life on Mars
the first step is always the hardest and
it was an incredibly complex job sending
the Mariner probe to Mars it was a
miracle of engineering skill which is
difficult to understand I think I can
describe it if you'll think of the Mars
probe in terms of something most of us
have done taking an automobile trip the
first thing you do when you plan your
trip is look at a road map say you want
to drive from Columbus to Indianapolis
you have a choice of many routes some
good some bad
American scientists did the same thing
when they planned the trip of the
Mariner probe to Mars this is a space
map of many routes from Earth to Mars
some good some bad
now this one is bad because it would
take too long a spacecraft is like a car
can't go on forever without repairs and
a probe can't live forever in space
Mariners maximum life is estimated at
six thousand hours or 250 days in space
this route is the shortest and the
quickest it's a direct shot at Mars but
it can't be used because it demands too
much power anyone who's ever tried to
ride a bicycle up a steep hill knows
what that means when the hill gets too
steep you just run out of power and this
trajectory is too steep so we pick a
compromise route one that is not too
long and doesn't require more power than
is available the next problem is what do
we take the trip in
this is a model of the spacecraft
designed and built by the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in California the Mariner 4
which has just made its historic
encounter with Mars or translating it
into automobile language it's the
equivalent of the latest sports touring
car light compact and powerful and it
has parallel equipment for instance the
radio on the Mariner Mars probe gas jets
for controlling the probe in space that
is steering it so to speak an optical
system to see where it is solar panels
which collect energy from the Sun and
store it as electric power in batteries
much like the generator and battery in a
car storage space to carry the
scientific experiments which are the
luggage of a space probe in other words
Mariner isn't just going to be first to
Mars it wants to do useful work on the
way and when it gets there and
everything spacecraft and experiments
controlled by a central electronic
system like the dashboard of this car
this gear for maintaining the probe in
space is nicknamed the housekeeping
equipment this gear for maintaining the
probe in space is nicknamed the
housekeeping equipment it must operate
automatically because we can't get an
immediate response when we send it
orders from Earth the Mariner is so far
away that when it reaches Mars it will
take a radio command twelve minutes to
reach it and then we must wait another
12 minutes for its acknowledgment of
that command to reach us that's like a
traffic policeman being forced to wait a
half hour for his signals to be obeyed
in the space left over from the
housekeeping equipment the scientists
packed many experiments thank you
one is the equivalent of a net to catch
and count cosmic dust this will be
important information for engineers
around the world we're planning on
sending men to Mars
they must know if the craft will run the
risk of being punctured in space this is
what the device on Mariner actually
looks like
what's this lunch now magnetic fields
are vital importance to everyday life
can you imagine a ship or airplane
trying to operate with a compass that
doesn't work well there's a magnetometer
on the Mariner probe to check Mars for
magnetic fields this magnetometer is an
electronic compass and is even smaller
and lighter than this ship's compass a
space is not empty it's filled with
burning particles traveling almost at
the speed of light on the Mariner this
is an ionization chamber to measure
high-energy particles in space let me
demonstrate with this child's toy when a
particle passes through the ionization
chamber it is multiplied like this and a
Geiger counter
also counts the particles now this is
extremely important because scientists
must know how much deadly radiation men
will be exposed
when they make their trip to Mars
sometime in the future one of the most
interesting experiments is the plasma
probe which is the electronic version of
this radiometer did you know that
there's such a thing as a solar wind
well when your radio television and
telephone communications break down
it's usually the result of solar wind
activity the Sun boils off huge amounts
of radiation that blow out through the
solar system like a hurricane
I'll show you David do you think you
could switch on those lights without
trigger than anything else sister
well now the radiometer on Mariner
responds to the light pressure which
presses against the vanes and makes them
spin now watch what happens when I
expose them to strong light this is a
miniature version of the solar wind
multiply it by the size and energy of
the Sun and you have a hurricane of
light and high-energy particles blowing
out into space all right you can switch
off the lights now you may not think
that radiation is important to space
travel but if the experts at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory hadn't allowed for
light pressure the Mariner 4 would have
been pushed off its course by 10,000
miles this is very difficult concept to
realize that light pressure will be as
important to factor in the space travel
of the future as ocean currents are in
navigation today and the most dramatic
experiment of all television this is a
studio TV camera I don't think that will
fit into the car but this TV camera
onboard the Mariner is much smaller it
will take about 21 pictures will show
you the kind of job it was capable of
performing as soon as we launch our
space probe oh no I'm sorry
no passengers on this trip you have to
wait your turn until about 1980 this
time we're just going to launch the
probe
this is the actual launch of the Mariner
Mars probe from Cape Kennedy in November
1964 the craft was boosted up into a
parking orbit by the Atlas Agena rocket
at precisely the right moment the probe
was inserted into trajectory and its
eight-month voyage began it was tracked
by an international network with
stations in South Africa Australia and
California launching a spacecraft is a
lot more complicated than starting a car
that better tell you something about the
ballistic skill required of engineers to
send a probe to Mars most people think
it's like shooting a gun you take aim
and fire it's not as simple as that
Engineers had to do two things first
they had to boost the craft into an
orbit that circled the earth
spaceman call this the parking orbit
then at precisely the right moment the
second stage rocket was ignited to
insert the Mariner into its trajectory
for Mars it was very much like a tennis
service watch first you loft the ball
into the air
that's the boost then oops well try it
again the boost with the Atlas rocket
once more now when the ball reaches the
top of the toss that's the parking orbit
now boost and there you see the racket
hit the ball and drove it into its
course that was the Agena second stage
rocket inserting the craft into
trajectory but it isn't over yet now the
tension and the suspense set in we still
don't know whether the probe is exactly
on course if it's off course by as
little as one inch in a mile it will
miss its target by 6,000 miles engineers
and scientists must wait while stations
around the
world tracked the probe they wait at
Cape Kennedy at control centers in the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California
and at the Goddard Space Flight Center
in Maryland they wait hour after hour
day after day while the radar trackers
and computers report on the course of
the spacecraft and analyze it until they
know precisely how the course must be
altered to put the probe squarely on
target and now the delicate mid-course
maneuver must be performed the gas jets
and the rocket engine on board the
Mariner must be activated by a radio
command so that they may steer the probe
they may thrust at just the right angle
for just so many split seconds or the
entire mission will fail engineers and
scientists compute angles and thrust the
data is punched into a command the
command is sent a million miles through
space to the probe and then they wait
again five and a half seconds for the
radio signal to reach the Mariner and
then another five and a half seconds for
the reply to return to Earth this is the
mid-course maneuver one of the biggest
challenges of space travel
listen did you hear that that's the
voice of the Mariners speaking to us
from a deep space telling us that the
mid-course maneuver was successful
engineers had prepared for a second
manoeuvre if the first failed but the
first was so accurate that a second will
never be needed meanwhile the Mariner
has been sending back vital data on
cosmic rays magnetic fields solar plasma
that's the solar wind radiation and
cosmic dust the data goes into the
computer and comes out on this printer
this information is made available to
scientists all over the world and they
can read it whether they're English
Spanish French or any other nationality
because the u.s. shares an international
language with them mathematics now did
you hear that short first well that was
a command from Earth for the television
camera onboard the Mariner to prepare to
take pictures the probe is closing in on
Mars for the encounter it won't land on
Mars it will sweep around at a distance
of about six thousand miles while it's
camera takes 21 pictures now this is the
way the moon has looked demands since
the beginning of time
it still looks the same to us today but
now we know what all those markings are
which mystified our early ancestors
because 350 years ago Galileo looked at
the moon with his primitive telescope
and saw this the markings were revealed
as craters and mountains it was one of
the biggest breakthroughs in the history
of science and scientists are still
benefiting from Galileo's great
discoveries today this is the way
earth-based telescopes see the planet
Mars our best telescopes can't see Mars
any better than the naked eye can see
the moon and were as mystified about the
markings on the planet as men were about
the moon four centuries ago but we're
about to come as close to Mars with a
television camera as Galileo came to the
moon with his telescope three and a half
centuries ago the technical skill
required to transmit these pictures back
to earth was truly impressive each
picture consisted of 200
each made up of 200 dots much like the
halftone photographs that are
transmitted by wire photo and published
in newspapers each dot is radioed back
as a number
each number runs from 0 to 63
designating varying shades of blackness
transmitted as bits of information 6 - a
dot the numbers look like this when they
come in and it takes 8 and a half hours
per picture at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory a computer takes this
information and working with sheets such
as this reconstructs the picture dot by
dot this is man's first close-up
photograph of another planet scientists
who have examined Mars through
telescopes are praising them for their
clarity these are 30 times better than
any photograph yet taken looking north
from the Martian equator it shows a
bright 200 by 600 mile area on the
rounded edge of the planet the lofty
clouds at the upper-right are believed
to be dust whipped up to extraordinary
heights by the violent Martian winds
this picture on the western edge of the
Amazonas desert is still clearer and
shows physical features down to 2 miles
in length the crater light object at the
center is about 12 miles wide
when picture number 7 came in it was a
dramatic moment for the Mariner
scientists for the first time craters as
well as other variations on the surface
were legible on Mars the discovery of
craters on Mars was the big surprise of
the picture the scientists confess to
being shocked beyond belief picture
number 11 has been called one of the
most remarkable scientific photographs
of this age and was the pinnacle of the
picture experiment it resembles the
moon's surface so much that the
scientists now believe Mars in its
evolution is more like the moon than the
earth the largest crater you see is 75
miles across and like other Martian
surface features is now estimated to be
very ancient up to five billion years
old all the evidence indicates that the
craters were created by impact rather
than by volcanic action and there are an
estimated 10,000 craters on Mars
compared to a handful on earth the long
rim like feature you see in picture
number 13 could be the edge of the
largest crater revealed by
Mariner it is thought to be 13,000 feet
high and it's eroded rounded shape is
comparable to the moon craters because
these features of the Martian surface
are thought to be largely unchanged
since Mars was formed scientists have
come to another conclusion they believe
there hasn't been enough free water on
Mars since the planet was born to have
rivers and oceans for if there were that
much water Mars would be more heavily
eroded just as the earth is note the
white rings around the craters probably
Frost the surface of Mars is very cold
the same white rings which appear on
picture 14 of the sequence may be more
frost and the white patches could be
small Peaks covered with frost the frost
incidentally would be of no help to
plant life for plants to grow need free
water and there seems to be none on Mars
the absence of mountains and continents
on Mars say the scientists shows the
interior of Mars has long been inactive
Earth having a dynamic interior produces
the same features by stress and
deformation from within but Mariner 4
would have made history even had it sent
no pictures from its experiment
scientists are able to leave speculation
behind and to construct on the basis of
hard information what they know about
Mars they know now that the planet is
even more inhospitable more desolate
compared to earth than it was thought to
be as Mariner flew by radio signals
passing through the Martian atmosphere
established that the air pressure on its
surface is about two percent that of
Earth so thin as this atmosphere that
breaking Rockets very large parachutes
or both will have to be used in a Mars
landing at the same time this highly
thin air must blow with terrifying force
to cause the dust storms that
periodically seemed to cover much of
Mars and because of the thin atmosphere
astronauts on Mars will have to wear
spacesuits just as they will on the moon
the scientists know now that Mars has no
significant radiation band around it
like the Earth's Van Allen belt that it
is ringed by no belt of cosmic dust nor
by a shock wave caused by solar wind the
upper layer of electrons that make
possible shortwave radio communication
on earth is twice as low on Mars man on
Mars will not be able to navigate with a
magnetic compass the lack of a magnetic
field suggests that Mars unlike earth
does not contain a molten core the
thinness of the air and the absence of a
magnetic umbrella above the planet means
that Mars is bombarded with more
radiation than Earth about 50 times more
but not so much that an astronaut
couldn't explore it for brief periods
the scientists who have examined
Mariners pictures are not yet willing to
identify any of the controversial canals
these and other conclusions about the
planet's surface will have to come later
is there life on Mars if there is it
will have to be the kind that could
survive on a platform 20 miles up from
Earth where the atmosphere resembles
that of Mars a final answer will have to
wait on instrumented landings by Voyager
spacecraft in the 1970s more information
is still to come
but Mariner 4 is already the most
successful and important feat of the
Space Age as well as one of the most
brilliant engineering and scientific
achievements of all time this is not the
end of Mariner for Mars it will head
into permanent orbit around the Sun
three years from launch date November
1964 Mariner will again come close to
Earth American scientists will then
attempt to contact Mariner once more as
for Mars one of the Mariner 4 scientists
observed Mars was so distant but now
that we have reached the planet it seems
to be part of us this is only the first
look at one of our sister planets
you
