| Viking | Mariner 6 & 7 | THEMIS | CRISM |
Mariners 6 and 7 both flew by Mars in the summer of 1969, each returned far and near views of planet. These data represent a snapshot of the position and extent of time variable albedo features on Mars at that time. Additionally the Mariners 6 and 7 images have great historical significance in that they clearly showed that Mars heavily cratered similar to our Moon, but that its surface was also fundamentally different than that of the Moon.
We have restored these data to a useful format to provide ready digital access to these images for researchers, historians, and anyone simply interested in Mars. The first step in restoration was locating the digital data -- this was accomplished with a little detective work by A. Hochstettler-Culver at JPL who located the images on old fashioned 7 track reel-to-reel tape (with no documentation). Working with R. MacKey, also at JPL, the data were transfered to 9 track tapes in their original IBM format. These data were then decoded and brought into a usable modern format as a student project by E. Green and D. Larson under the direction of E. Eliason at the USGS in Flagstaff. Finally, we have converted these intermediate products to ISIS format and in cooperation with Kay Edwards (Q&D Programming) camera pointing was restored that allows the images to be transformed into a map product and used for scientific interpretation. A laborious process of manual ground control point and least squares fitting was utilized to navigate the images by J. Edmonds and M. Robinson (Northwestern University). For details concerning these images and referencing use of image products please refer to 2003 LPSC abstract (direct link to pdf version).
More information concerning the Mariner 6 and 7 missions may be found in The Mariner 6 and 7 Pictures of Mars, NASA SP-263, 1971, by Stewart A. Collins, and Mariner 6 and 7 Photographic Data, NSSDC 71-09, March 1971.
A summary of the images recovered to date are presented in the form of thumbnails (below). Think of these as similar to photographic contact sheets. A data table listing the parameters for all the far encounter images is available here in pdf format.
Mariner 6 Far Encounter Thumbnails (page 1)
Mariner 6 Far Encounter Thumbnails (page 2)
Mariner 7 Far Encounter Thumbnails (page 1)
Mariner 7 Far Encounter Thumbnails (page 2)
Mariner 7 Far Encounter Thumbnails (page 3)
Mariner 7 Far Encounter Thumbnails (page 4)
MARINER 6 AND 7 NEAR ENCOUNTER IMAGES
Below are all the Mariner 6 and 7 Near Encounter Images that we were able to recover from the 7 track tapes. In some cases there were 2 versions of an image and they are indicated with a _2 after the name. Below each image is link to an ascii file containing the parameter data contained in short headers found with each image. A complete description of the images and parameters can be found in The Mariner 6 and 7 Pictures of Mars, NASA SP-263, 1971, by Stewart A. Collins, and Mariner 6 and 7 Photographic Data, NSSDC 71-09, March 1971.
NEAR ENCOUNTER THUMBNAIL Pages
Mariner 6 Near Encounter Thumbnails (page 1)
Mariner 7 Near Encounter Thumbnails (page 1)
Mariner 7 Near Encounter Thumbnails (page 2)
MARINER 6 NEAR ENCOUNTER FULL RESOLUTION IMAGES
Click on the icons to get full resolution images.
MARINER 7 NEAR ENCOUNTER FULL RESOLUTION IMAGES
Click on the icons to get full resolution images.
UNIX compressed tar file of Mariner 6 near encounter images. Same images as those above, but all in one tar file for those wanting to grab all at once (15 Mbytes).
UNIX compressed tar file of Mariner 7 near encounter images. Same images as those above, but all in one tar file for those wanting to grab all at once (20 Mbytes).
UNIX compressed tar file of raw data as cloned from 7 track tapes, probably not useful to most users (untar: tar -xzvf RAW.tgz). To download this file click your right mouse button, then select the "Save Link as....". WARNING: This file is 102 Mbytes.