![]() ![]() The bit rate meant that it took 10 hours to relay a single image back to Earth. The machine converted the camera’s analog signal into a digital format and slowly transmitted the data back to Earth at a rate of 8 1/3 bits per second. The spacecraft carried the first digital imaging system used outside of Earth. ![]() Mariner 4 flew 6,118 miles (9,845.5 kilometers) above the Martian surface on the night of July 14, capturing 22 images of the planet. And the highest-resolution image was captured by an Earth-based telescope in 1956. The best map of Mars at the time was from the late 1800s and came from Percival Lowell’s observations, made using his private Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. ![]() Interest in obtaining images of other planets from space was part of the space race of the 1960s for a reason. With a quickly redesigned shroud, Mariner 4 launched three weeks later on November 28 before going on a 228-day trip to reach Mars.Īttached to the spacecraft was a television camera to reveal how the planet looked at close range from a spacecraft, along with six science instruments to study the Martian surface and atmosphere. Mariner 3 launched on November 5, 1964, but it lost power just eight hours later when the payload shroud didn’t jettison and its solar panels never unfurled. Mariner 4 was the first satellite to take the first up close pictures of another planet. It was one of a twin set of spacecraft designed to take images of Mars, and the first one failed. There was a lot riding on the Mariner 4 mission. The milestone encouraged NASA engineers to push ahead with an even more ambitious project: capturing photos of planets from space. In 1962, Mariner 2 became the first spacecraft to visit another planet when it flew by Venus. “It’s just this object of curiosity and wonder. “The first time I encountered this was almost right when I started working here at JPL, which was 17 years ago,” said David Delgado, cultural strategist in The Studio at JPL. While the actual photo was also released, the hand-colored image continues to captivate all who see it at JPL. Mariner 4’s historic encounter with Mars was just the beginning of a series of missions that changed the way we see our planetary neighbors. Instead, it’s a “color by numbers” representation of data, which was captured and sent to Earth by NASA’s Mariner 4 spacecraft on July 15, 1965, as the probe made its closest approach to Mars. The groundbreaking image is part of a small exhibit tucked away in a corner of the second floor of the Spacecraft Assembly Facility on the campus of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.īut the depiction, which represented the first photo of another planet taken from space, isn’t a photo at all. Just steps away from High Bay 1, where many of NASA’s pioneering robotic missions have been assembled, is the first image of Mars ever seen on television, broadcast in 1965. ![]()
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