Today we look at NASA and its many space probe missions as a remarkable success, and for the most part, it really has been. Without robotic craft, our knowledge of so much around our own star would be extremely limited. We have grown considerably in 60 years
The first probes, aside from those in low earth orbit learning about our own planet, and some early Pioneer probes that failed in either lauch or mission, were the Ranger spacecraft. First launched in 1961, this also failure prone probe was designed to impact the moon, take photos on the way in, transmit them back to earth and do a planned impact to determine the stability of the lunar surface, listen with some seismometers, and learn more about any magnetosphere around the moon as well as the dangers of any radiation on a lunar mission. A number of Ranger spacecraft were failures, but overall the mission objective was a success.
Many of the early failures were related to the pesky Atlas launch vehicle. Pairing it up with the Agena 2nd stage only compounded the failure rate. Failure was an accepted risk in early space flight.
After the decision was made to send a man to the moon in May 1961, NASA really got on board with it’s Surveyor and Lunar Orbiter missions. Surveyor was built to soft land on the moon and do some soil sampling, and Lunar Orbiter was built to map the surface for good landing locations and to learn more.
Also during this time, NASA was building probes to explore Mercury, Venus and Mars. The Mariner missions were chiefly built as flyby missions, except for Mariner 8 and 9, which were to orbit Mars. 8 failed during launch, but 9 went into Mars orbit in 1971 and mapped the surface of Mars, as well as the two moons Phobos and Deimos. 100% of the surface was mapped.
In addition, a pair of Pioneer spacecraft, Pioneer 10 and 11 were launched in 1972-73 headed for Jupiter and Saturn. The Pioneer probes opened the door for what was to come later with Voyager 1 and Voyager 2.
In 1976, NASA was able to soft land a pair of Viking spacecraft on Mars. Viking was the coolest thing. It was 2 parts, orbiter and lander. So it could do reconnaissance as well as surface exploration. The orbiter served as a relay for information from the surface. Viking 1 landed on Mars on July 20, 1976, exactly 7 years to the day of the manned moon landing. I think for me personally this was an exciting time to imagine what the future could hold because things were really moving quickly. We had landed on the moon, we had landed on Mars, built space stations, and the Shuttle was under development and testing. The first 20 years had been extremely successful and rapidly evolving in our ability and knowledge of our corner of the universe.
Can you remember the first weather report from the surface of Mars? Temperatures on the surface ranged from -123 F (-86 C) before dawn to -27F (-33C) in the afternoon. It truly was an alien world. The image at the top of this article is from Viking 1 and shows the weather station as well as some of the surface features. One of the first images of the surface of another planet.
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