The Mariner 6 and 7 Pictures of Mars, NASA SP-263

The official photographic volume presenting the final, computer-processed results of the Mariner Mars 1969 television experiment, prepared at JPL under Stewart A. Collins with a foreword by Henry J. Smith, NASA’s Deputy Associate Administrator for Science.

Mariner 6 and 7 flew past Mars in successive weeks of July–August 1969, following up Mariner 4’s cratered 1964 flyby with over 200 far- and near-encounter television frames, all reproduced here without the detailed scientific interpretation reserved for the companion Television Experiment Team supplement in the January 1971 Journal of Geophysical Research.

The far-encounter sequence (Chapter 3) captures Mars as a shrinking disk over several days, with global sketches keying features such as Syrtis Major, Hellas, Sabaeus Sinus, and the North Polar Hood to frame numbers like 7F0, 7F25, and 7F33; the near-encounter sequence (Chapter 4) closes to high-resolution strips revealing the actual Martian South Pole in frame 7N17, unusual raised knobs south of the pole in 7N16, the floor of the Hellas basin in 7N28–30, and a crater-density comparison between dark Sabaeus Sinus and light Deucalionis Regio in 6N21–22 that found no significant difference between the two albedo regions. Appendices give far- and near-encounter photoreference tables and a NASA Mars map.