"The Mariner-Mars 1969 mission was undertaken to enhance man's knowledge of the surface and atmosphere of Mars and to provide a firm basis for an imaginative, long-range program of Martian exploration."1
This quote from Mariner-Mars 1969: A Preliminary Report simply describes the mission profile for Mariners VI and VII. Mariner IV opened a window on a virtually unknown world, inspiring and intriguing scientists with its wonders. Mariners VI and VII returned to the red planet to obtain basic information on the planet's surface structure, atmospheric composition, and temperature profile. The two identical spacecraft carried identical instrumentation to accomplish this goal, including two television cameras, an infrared spectrometer, an ultraviolet spectrometer, and an infrared radiometer. Satellite trajectories also revealed information on celestial mechanical properties as well as allowing an S-band occultation experiment to be conducted. These experiments were conducted by the scientists in Table (1).
This mission profile posed the unique challenge of returning the most scientific information as possible. To accomplsh this task, the engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory provided some major engineering advances in spacecraft design, fabrication, and testing. During the design phase of Mariner 1969, some noteable improvements were made over the Mariner 1964 design. These include the introduction of two-degree of freedom scan platform, a data storage system with thirty-five times the capacity of its predecessor, a three channel telemetry system, and a central computer and sequencer (CC&S) that could be reprogrammed in flight. Out of all of these advances, the CC&S proved the most important. Mission control used data from Mariner VI to reprogram the CC&S on Mariner VII to best collect data on the second flyby.
The General Layout of the Mariner 1969 Spacecraft
The Mariner 1969 design was visibly very similar to the Mariner 1964 design. Both designs used an octagonal base structure with compartments to hold instrument electronics. In both cases, a four panel solar array was used in conjunction with a silver-zinc battery to power the spacecraft. Passive Cooling was used, implementing reflective paint, louvers, and thermal blanketing. Both a low gain and a high gain antenna were present in both designs. This, however, was where the similarity ended. Improvements on the majority of components led to the vast increase of data return by the Mariner 1969 spacecraft.
Sunday, 01-Aug-2004 00:36:47 CDT
CSR/TSGC Team Web
