Mariner-Venus 1962: Final Project Report

NASA SP-59, prepared under contract for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, and issued by NASA’s Scientific and Technical Information Division, Washington, D.C., 1965. Foreword by W. H. Pickering, Director of JPL, calling Mariner “the first interplanetary spacecraft” and looking ahead to planetary orbiters and landers.

Covers the Mariner R (1962) project’s history of knowledge about Venus, project organization and management, the space vehicle system’s design and testing (including the Mariner R-3 backup), and the trajectory and orbit design that carried Mariner 2 past Venus in December 1962, humanity’s first successful planetary flyby.