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U.S. SPACECRAFT 1960s and 70s

1962 MARINER 1 & 2

Mariner suffered a fault and was destroyed in flight.  Mariner 2 was aborted.

MARINER 3

An in-flight problem eventualy caused the mission to be terminated
 
1964 MARINER 4
The vidicon tube shown above is similar to the Mariner 4 vidicon tube and was donated to DigiCamHistory.Com by Jim Janesick.

 




On the left Dr. Pickering, Directlor of JPL, center Jack James, Mariner 4 Project Manager, President Johnson second from the right.


1965 RANGER



The Ranger program was a series of unmanned space missions by the United States in the 1960s whose objective was to obtain the first close-up images of the surface of the Moon. The Ranger spacecraft were designed to take images of the lunar surface, transmitting those images to Earth until the spacecraft were destroyed upon impact.  Note the alignment marks on the front of the tube match those on the picture.   These marks were different from mission to mission, like a finger print.  Vidicon tube photo by James Janesick.  The above vidicon is similar to the Ranger vidicon tube and was donated to DigiCamHistory.Com by Jim Janesick.


1966 SURVEYOR


The Surveyor program was a NASA program that, from June, 1966 through January, 1968, sent seven robotic spacecraft to the surface of the Moon. Its primary goal was to demonstrate the feasibility of soft landings on the Moon. The mission called for the craft to travel directly to the Moon on an impact trajectory, on a journey that lasted 63 to 65 hours, and ended with a deceleration of just over three minutes to a soft landing. The program was implemented by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to prepare for the Apollo program.  Vidicon tube photo by James Janesick.  The vidicon tube shown above is similar to the Surveyor vidicon tube and was donated toDigiCamHistory.Com by Jim Janesick.


1969 MARINER 6 & 7


The vidicon tube shown above is similar to the Mariner 6 and 7 type vidicon tube and was donated to DigicamHistory.Com by Jim Janesick


1975 VIKING 1



FIRST PHOTO FROM THE SURFACE OF MARS - This is the first photograph ever taken on the surface of the planet Mars. It was obtained by Viking 1 just minutes after the spacecraft landed successfully on July 20, 1976.  The Viking Lander camera design was very different from vidicon framing or CCD array cameras. The lander camera was a facsimile camera with a single, stationary photosensor array (PSA), and azimuth and elevation scanning mechanisms. A lander image was generated by scanning the scene in two directions (elevation and azimuth) to focus light onto the photosensor array. The Viking Lander cameras were built by Itek Corp.  Light entered the camera through the windows, reflected off the mirror toward the lens, passed through the lens, and was sensed by one of the photodiodes. The light generated a voltage in the selected photodiode that was digitized by an analog-to-digital (A/D) converter.  The photosensor array consisted of 12 silicon photodiodes (or diodes) sensitive to light between 0.4 and 1.1 micrometers. The diodes were arranged in a 2x6 array.

http://pdsimage.wr.usgs.gov/cdroms/Viking_Lander/vl_0001/document/volinfo.htm

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=2707

 

FIRST COLOR PHOTO FROM THE SURFACE OF MARS - Taken by the Viking I Lander , July 21, 1976.    Lander camera shown on the right.


 

The primary Viking instrument on the Viking orbiter consisted of two vidicon cameras for imaging (shown above). The Viking vidicon tube design presented above is a storage type tube imager where incoming photons generate charge within the front face photoconductor.  Quickly thereafter the photoconductor is then scanned by a beam of low-velocity electrons.  The fluctuating x-y scanning beam current is amplified and displayed on a TV monitor to reproduces the scene that was imaged. The image stored on the photoconductor is automatically erased by the beam of electrons (Vidicon photo taken by James Janesick).  Vidicon tube similar to the Viking Orbiter vidicon tube was donated to DigiCamHistory.Com by Jim Janesick.

 

The orbiter generated tens of thousands of images.  The photo on the left is the famous face image that caused so much public discussion early on.  The middle photo is of Mars' moon Phobos and the one on the right is of Mars' Dromore crater showing clear evidence that water once existed on Mars.  The two orbiter spacecraft were deliberately placed in orbits around Mars where they would remain in space for at least fifty years to kill off any stray microbes to avoid contaminating the planet as the search for life on Mars continues to this day. As far as we know the orbiters still continue to circle the planet.


1976 HUBBLE I


 

Hubble type CCD wafer and Hubble in space.  The above wafer similar to that used in Hubble was donated to DigiCamHistory.Com by Jim Janesick.

 

Kovar (trademark of CRS Holdings, inc., Delaware) is a nickel-cobalt ferrous alloy compositionally identical to Fernico 1, designed to be compatible with the thermal expansion characteristics of borosilicate glass in order to allow direct mechanical connections over a range of temperatures.  Kovar was invented to meet the need for a reliable glass-to-metal seal, which is required in electronic devices such as light bulbs, vacuum tubes, cathode ray tubes, and in vacuum systems in chemistry and other scientific research. Most metals cannot seal to glass because their coefficient of thermal expansion is not the same as glass, so as the joint cools after fabrication the stresses due to the differential expansion rates of the glass and metal cause the joint to crack.  Above photos and CCD imager provided to DigiCamHistory.Com by Jim Janesick.
 
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kovarhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kovar


 

   

WF/PC I used eight 800 x 800 x 15 um pixel CCDs.  Four narrow fields and three wide fields are shown above with associated analog electronics
(the missing wide field has not been installed yet). On its return to Earth, the WFPC was disassembled and parts of it were used in Wide Field Camera 3
 which was installed in Hubble on May 14, 2009 as part of Servicing Mission 4, replacing WFPC2.  Photo on the right is the camera system in its enclosure.
See 1990 page for more Hubble Telescope information.  Photo on the left provided by James Janesick.



Photo is of Jim Janesick and Jim Westphal celebrating the success of the WF/PC camera used on the Hiubble Telescope.
(also see McCord / Westphal 1971 Digital Astronomy Project higher up on the 1970s page).

The Hubble focus problem was not the only problem that Hubble faced.   Because of thinning non-uniformities WF/PC I had this major problem.  . . . . .

The WF/PC-1 CCD's required a UV flood procedure and continuous cold temperatures to avoid QEH (QEH means 'Quantum Efficiency Hysteresis) and hence non-linearity. A UV flood was performed early in the WF/PC-1 mission, but could not be repeated due to problems with the HST magnetometers. This in turn limited the temperature range allowable during decontaminations, since high temperatures would remove the UV flood, which in turn severely limited UV science capabilities.  Some QE instability was also seen, particularly in the B band, due to changes in the UV flood.    Many thought this problem was worse than the focus problem.



See   http://www.stsci.edu/instruments/wfpc2/Wfpc2_hand2/ch1_introduction5.html


    

Left photo above is a group of  CCDs  similar to those made for the Hubble Wide Field/Planetary Camera (WF/PC) Instrument program and donated to DigiCamHistory.Com by James Janesick.  Each is about 1/2-inch square and 800 x 800 pixels (.64 MP).  The photo on the right was taken by Hubble of a small sliver of space that appeared to be entirely empty when viewed on film.  Due to the much greater sensitivity of CCDs versus film, more than ten thousand previously unseen, unknown galaxies appeared.  The total number of visible galaxies now exceeds 200 billion.

1977 VOYAGER 1 & 2 (Mariner 11 & 12)


The above vidicon tube is similar to the one used for Mariner 11 & 12, now called Voyager 1 & 2, and was donated to DigiCamHistory.Com by Jim Janesick.





Explanation of diagrams on recording - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Voyager_Golden_Record_Cover_Explanation.svg

Voices and music recorded - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELnn9V01EiI

TO RETURN TO 1970s MAIN PAGE CLICK HERE

U.S. SPACECRAFT 1980s And 90s CLICK HERE

U.S. SPACECRAFT 1980s And 90sB CLICK HERE

 
U.S. SPACECRAFT 2000 and BEYOND CLICK HERE


FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION CONCERNING SPACECRAFT, THEIR CAMERAS AND IMAGERS SHOWN ON THIS SITE CLICK HERE


FOR INFORMATION ON NON-ASTRONOMY CCDS - COMMERCIAL, INDSUTRIAL, SCIENTIFIC, MEDICAL, ETC. CLICK HERE

TO GO TO JANESICK CONTINUATIONPAGE CLICK HERE