First US attempt to fly by Venus From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mariner 1 was a NASA spacecraft. It was the first spacecraft in the Mariner program. Mariner 1 was planned to do a Venus fly-by. However, it was destroyed by the Range Safety Officer 293 seconds after launch. It was destroyed because the rocket moved off course and was a safety risk. Mariner 1 was followed by Mariner 2.
Launch of Mariner 1 | |
| Mission type | Venus flyby |
|---|---|
| Operator | NASA / JPL |
| Mission duration | 4 minutes, 53 seconds Failed to orbit |
| Spacecraft properties | |
| Spacecraft type | Mariner[source?] based on Ranger Block I |
| Manufacturer | Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
| Launch mass | 202.8 kilograms (447 lb) |
| Power | 220 watts (at Venus encounter) |
| Start of mission | |
| Launch date | July 22, 1962, 09:21:23 UTC |
| Rocket | Atlas LV-3 Agena-B |
| Launch site | Cape Canaveral LC-12 |
The Atlas-Agena rocket was controlled by a hand-written formula:
Which means "the nth smoothed value of the time derivative of a radius R". However, for this mission, an overline (‾) was missing in the formula, which looks something like this:
Because the smoothing function was missing, the rocket became sensitive at minor changes. Then, the rocket became out of control and destroyed by the Range Safety Officer.[1][2][3] Few years later, Arthur C. Clarke wrote that Mariner 1 was "wrecked by the most expensive hyphen in history".[4]
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