Space Exploration: The Full Picture from Mars

Mariner IV, the agile U.S. spacecraft designed to take the measure of Mars, has lived up to every expectation. At Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory last week, the last worries vanished; there was no longer any concern that the ship's tape recorder might have gone haywire during part of its historic pass at the red planet. As soon as the eleventh picture came through, JPL monitors knew that all was well. Mariner got all the 21 pictures it went after—plus a bonus: 22 lines of a 22nd picture, which might show the dark edge of Mars.

Although the first three pictures have already been released, no decision has been made on the publication of the rest of the shots. Under extremely close security, JPL picture experts are now poring over the fine print of the digital data and putting each picture through five or six different processes to accentuate whatever features showed up. To make doubly sure that they have extracted all possible information, JPL scientists may let Mariner retransmit all its picture signals for comparative study.

After that, the distant ship should be able to send additional scientific measurements from the uncharted reaches beyond Mars.