Mariner 9 Stories

On Nov. 13, 1971, Mariner 9 entered orbit around Mars, the first spacecraft to orbit another planet. Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, Mariner 9’s primary 90-day mission included mapping up to 70% of Mars and recording…

Following the successes of the Mariner 6 and 7 fly-bys of Mars in 1969, NASA’s next goal in Martian exploration involved placing spacecraft into orbit around the Red Planet. The Mariner-Mars 1971 project, managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in…

In today’s digital world, we take downloading images quickly and easily for granted. Just a few decades ago downloading images from our spacecraft was not quite so simple. Before there were computers and software that could stitch together digital images,…