The Voyager Mars Program was a planned series of uncrewed

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

probes to the

planet A planet is a large, Hydrostatic equilibrium, rounded Astronomical object, astronomical body that is generally required to be in orbit around a star, stellar remnant, or brown dwarf, and is not one itself. The Solar System has eight planets b ...

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

. The missions were planned, as part of the Apollo Applications Program, between 1966 and 1968 and were scheduled for launch in 1974–75. The probes were conceived as precursors for a crewed Mars landing in the 1980s. Originally, NASA had proposed a direct lander using a variant of the

Apollo Command Module The Apollo command and service module (CSM) was one of two principal components of the United States Apollo (spacecraft), Apollo spacecraft, used for the Apollo program, which landed astronauts on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. The CSM functi ...

launched atop of a Saturn IB rocket with a

Centaur A centaur ( ; ; ), occasionally hippocentaur, also called Ixionidae (), is a creature from Greek mythology with the upper body of a human and the lower body and legs of a horse that was said to live in the mountains of Thessaly. In one version o ...

upper stage. With the discovery by

Mariner 4 Mariner 4 (Mariner C-3, together with Mariner 3 known as Mariner-Mars 1964) was the Mariner program, fourth in a series of spacecraft intended for planetary exploration in a flyby mode. It was designed to conduct closeup scientific observations ...

in 1965 that Mars had only a tenuous atmosphere, the mission was changed to have both an orbiter and lander. This required the use of a

Saturn V The Saturn V is a retired American super heavy-lift launch vehicle developed by NASA under the Apollo program for human exploration of the Moon. The rocket was human-rated, had multistage rocket, three stages, and was powered by liquid-propel ...

to launch two probes at once. The orbiter would have been a modified Mariner probe identical to that employed for Mariner 8 and

Mariner 9 Mariner 9 (Mariner Mars '71 / Mariner-I) was a robotic spacecraft that contributed greatly to the exploration of Mars and was part of the NASA Mariner program. Mariner 9 was launched toward Mars on May 30, 1971, from Spaceport Florida Launch Comp ...

, while the landers would have been Surveyor moon probes modified with the use of aeroshells and a combination parachute/retrorocket landing systems. Funding for the program, like that of the entire AAP, was cut in 1968 and the mission itself was cancelled entirely in 1971, mainly on the grounds that launching both probes on a single rocket was both risky and expensive. Voyager was the first major space science project to be cancelled by the U.S. Congress. Despite the cancellation, the planning and development of the Voyager Mars program was eventually carried out by NASA's

Viking program The ''Viking'' program consisted of a pair of identical American space probes, ''Viking 1'' and ''Viking 2'' both launched in 1975, and landed on Mars in 1976. The mission effort began in 1968 and was managed by the NASA Langley Research Cent ...

in the mid-1970s. Cheaper and simpler than the Voyager Mars program (using the same Mariner 8/9 design for the orbiter, but with an automobile-sized lander with a very expensive microbiology lab), the Viking 1 and Viking 2 probes were launched to Mars on separate Titan IIIE/

rockets in 1975 and reached Mars in 1976. After the cancellation, the "Voyager" name was recycled for the Mariner 11 and Mariner 12 probes to the outer planets, with the latter probe, ''Voyager 2'' (Mariner 12), completing another ambitious post-Apollo project, the " Grand Tour". The Saturn V had also been planned at one point as the launch vehicle for an upscaled probe for this mission.Cortright Oral History (p31)
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References

External links

Voyager 1973 at Astronautix.com
* NASA program documentation ** ** ** ** ** ** {{Use American English, date=January 2014 Missions to Mars NASA programs Cancelled spacecraft

See also

References

External links