This 1966 color film, directed by Mauri Goldberg for National Educational Television documents and dramatises the process by which a camera system was designed and installed in NASA’s Mariner 4 Rocket, producing the first photographs of the surface of planet Mars (TRT: 29:23).
Opening titles: “Net Science Presents” (0:09). NASA’s Mariner 4 rocket preparing for launch (0:19). Two engineers. The launch of a Mariner rocket. Opening titles, “The Story of A Scientific Search Told by Don Herbert” (0:27). A blurry photo of Mars, as seen through a telescope (1:01). Our host introduces himself, with a corkboard holding the photo (1:34). Robert Leighton of the California Institute of Technology speaks with contemporaries from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of Pasadena. CalTech’s Dr. Robert Sharp and Bruce Murray in conversation. Richard Sloan and JPL’s Al Herriman. Denton Allen, the mission’s camera designer (2:30). Dr. Leighton draws on a chalkboard (3:34). Denton Allen exits the meeting (4:53). Smoking a Pipe, Allen works in his office. He draws a rectangle, labeled, “telescope.” The diagram continues, showing “camera controls,” a shutter, a “vidicon” and “data processing” units (5:40). Our host returns, showing a standard cathode ray tube. A burst of light leaves a shadow of his handprint on the tube (6:37). Working in a lab, Allen works to assemble the breadboard for the slow scan vidicon tube needed on the mission. An engineer solders resistors and amplifiers into place (7:31). A halftone photo of a tennis ball in extreme closeup (8:47). A scale of grey tones is numbered from 0 to 63. A corresponding bank of lights illustrates how individual dots in a matrix making up a photographic image are recorded and reproduced (9:24). Assembly of the imaging system continues (10:55). Photographing a test pattern successfully (11:16). Testing the various components, looking for extraneous parts (12:36). Reviewing with Dr. Leighton (13:10). A telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory produces a vidicon image of the moon’s surface (13:22). Testing continues. The fragile device is shaken. A blank photo is produced (13:52). The tube’s foam padding from its original shipping container is examined and incorporated into the design. After much shaking, a test photo is successfully produced (15:15). The finished camera system is assembled (16:04). At Cape Kennedy, the imagining system is installed into Mariner 4 (16:19). Closeup on the camera system’s mechanical, solenoid-powered shutter device, as it takes exposures through red and green filters (16:47). A Mariner rocket prepared for launch. NASA engineers at mission control (17:23). Blastoff of Mariner 4 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 12 (17:48). Our host returns (18:22). Engineers review data transmitted from Mariner 4 (19:02). Extreme closeup on the shutter solenoid. The team reviews the plan at a chalkboard. Mission control. Project Managers Dan Schneiderman and Bill Collier. Spaceflight Operations Manager Ted Douglas (20:15). A satellite dish antennae and more shots of the team (22:11). A numeric readout (23:54). Watching in anticipation. Success. (25:04). The printed numeric readouts are pasted onto a board and colored with red chalk (25:44). The first pictures of Mars are flipped through. Blurry black and white craters are examined (26:27). A visualization of the area of Mars’ surface that was photographed. End credits: Produced and Directed by Mauri Goldberg; Executive Producer: Don Herbert; Written by Fulvio Bardossi and Don Herbert; Record footage courtesy of JPL. The film was produced under grants from the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. (27:55).
The camera system depicted consisted of a television camera mounted on a scan platform at the spacecraft’s bottom, which consisted of a Cassegrain telescope, a slow scan vidicon tube, and electronic signal-conversion systems.
