Mariner 10 - Cruise To Venus

Cruise To Venus

A trajectory correction maneuver was made on November 13, 1973. Immediately afterwards, the star-tracker locked onto a bright flake of paint which had come off the spacecraft and lost tracking on the guide star Canopus. An automated safety protocol recovered Canopus, but the problem of flaking paint recurred throughout the mission. The on-board computer also experienced unscheduled resets occasionally, which necessitated reconfiguring the clock sequence and subsystems. Periodic problems with the high-gain antenna also occurred during the cruise. In January 1974, Mariner 10 made ultraviolet observations of Comet Kohoutek. Another mid-course correction was made on January 21, 1975.

Read more about this topic:  Mariner 10

Famous quotes containing the words cruise and/or venus:

    Irishness is not primarily a question of birth or blood or language; it is the condition of being involved in the Irish situation, and usually of being mauled by it.
    —Conor Cruise O’Brien (b. 1917)

    and Venus among the fishes skips and is a she-dolphin
    she is the gay, delighted porpoise sporting with love and the sea
    she is the female tunny-fish, round and happy among the males
    and dense with happy blood, dark rainbow bliss in the sea.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)