Wednesday, July 14, 1965: Mariner 4's photos of Mars

Man's first closeup picture of Mars shows a remarkably earth-like desert area -- but gives no hint of an answer to whether they mysterious planet could harbor life. The poorly defined picture snapped as Mariner 4 flew within 10,500 miles of Mars Wednesday was released Thursday night while the U.S. spacecraft was relaying its second picture across 134 million miles of space. Almost half the picture showed only the dark void of space, with but a small portion of the edge of Mars visible in the streaked and smudged frame. (From The Associated Press; full story: @)

     -- Image from NASA; all Mariner 4 photos: @

* "Mariner 4 Makes Flight Past Mars" (The New York Times): @

* Flight details (NASA): @

* "Mariner to Mercury, Venus and Mars" (Jet Propulsion Laboratory): @

* "Mariner 4: First Spacecraft to Mars" (Space.com): @

* "Blast from the past: Mariner 4's images of Mars" (The Planetary Society, 2012): @
* "Looking back at Mariner images of Mars" (The Planetary Society, 2013): @
* Hand-colored image: @ (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and @ (Dan Goods)

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