Word: spacecraft
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...five months the little spacecraft sped through the interplanetary void...
Last week, on the 157th day of an arcing, 242-million-mile journey across the solar system Mariner 6 reached its destination. In the closest approach to Mars ever achieved by a man-made object, the U.S. spacecraft flew within 2,130 miles of earth's planetary neighbor...
...technicians explained that the spectrometer, which should be cooled to below - 400° F. to operate efficiently, refused to chill at all. Mariner 7 caused even greater concern at Mission Control when it went off the air entirely for seven hours. Apparently struck by a tiny meteoroid, the spacecraft lost its fix on the star Canopus and its directional antenna spun away from earth. A new roll-and-search command went up from Pasadena. Mariner 7 obeyed, and though performing at less than capacity, its radio functioned again...
...first pictures arrived from Mariner 6 when it was still 771,500 miles from the Martian surface. But by the time the spacecraft's cameras finished their day's work, they had recorded 33 pictures and brought earthly viewers within 453,350 miles of the red planet. None of the initial photographs were particularly startling. But Caltech's Robert B. Leighton, director of the photographic work, noted that at least one picture showed a ragged edge at the south polar cap-"possibly caused by the presence of mountains or craters...
Mariner 6's final photographs did not show any signs of life-but JPL scientists had already warned that even at the spacecraft's relatively close distances, vegetation would be all but unobservable. The two Mariners, moreover, were designed only to determine whether Mars could support life. At week's end, investigators were already mulling over two important observations. Mariner 6 had failed to detect any nitrogen -an ingredient of all earthly life -but it found signs of water in the form of ice in the Martian atmosphere or on the surface...