If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
Nasa's Mariner 4 completed the first successful flyby of Mars in the summer of 1965. The spacecraft had a camera onboard to capture Martian vistas, but transmitting all the data to Earth was slow, taking 19 days. So while waiting for Earth-bound electronics to convert the data into fully processed images, Richard Grumm of the nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory decided to take matters into his own hands. He stapled strips of paper with incoming pixel brightness values onto a wall and then hand-colored the numbers with corresponding pastels. When Grumm was finished, the lighter zone filling most of the frame (above) showed the bottom edge of Mars fading into the darkness of space. The paint-by-numbers panel became the first image of Mars based on data collected by an interplanetary probe, as well as the first close-up image of the planet broadcast on television. In total, the mission delivered 21 complete images of the planet. This month marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of the Mariner 4 spacecraft, which took place on November 28, 1964.
It’s Time to Stand Up for Science
If you enjoyed this article, I’d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.
I’ve been a Scientific American subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.
If you subscribe to Scientific American, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.
