Interplanetary Travel

Educating children about the milestone of NASA’s Mariner II

“For science classrooms, a bulletin-board chart dealing with the voyage of spacecraft Mariner II to the planet Venus.” [Verso]

This informational diagram was published in 1964 by Scott, Foresman and Company as part of the firm’s educational ‘Science is Understanding’ series. It provides an easy-to-understand overview of the incredible feat of interplanetary travel achieved two years earlier by NASA’s probe Mariner 2. The historic 42-minute flyby of Venus took place on December 14, 1962. According to NASA’s website;

“During a 42-minute scan of the planet, Mariner 2 gathered significant data on the Venusian atmosphere and the surface before continuing on to heliocentric orbit. The radiometers, in particular, were able to conduct five scans of the night side of the planet, eight across the terminator, and five on the daylight side. NASA maintained contact until 07:00 UT Jan. 3, 1963, when the spacecraft was 53.9 million miles (86.7 million kilometers) from Earth, a new distance record for a deep space probe.”

The primary image shows the orbits of Earth and Venus around the Sun as Mariner II makes its approach over 4 phases (described below). A diagram of the spacecraft can be seen to the lower left while an inset in the upper right illustrates the orbital overlap in further detail. Accompanying text encourages the audience to use the information presented to plot their own spacecraft voyage to Mars!

Source: NASA;