First TV Image of Mars (Hand Colored)

First TV Image of Mars (Hand Colored)
This hand colored picture represents the first TV image of Mars -- the first image of the Red Planet sent back to Earth by a visiting spacecraft.

A "real-time data translator" machine converted a Mariner 4 digital image data into numbers printed on strips of paper. Too anxious to wait for the official processed image, employees from the Telecommunications Section at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, attached these strips side by side to a display panel and hand colored the numbers like a paint-by-numbers picture. The image data were monochrome -- the colors used here were an arbitrary choice in order to create a color scale.

The completed image was framed and presented to JPL director, William H. Pickering. Mariner 4 was launched on November 28, 1964 and journeyed for 228 days to the Red Planet, providing the first close-range images of Mars.

The spacecraft carried a television camera and six other science instruments to study the Martian atmosphere and surface. The 22 photographs taken by Mariner revealed the existence of lunar type craters upon a desert-like surface.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Dan Goods
1965/07/15.