Word: caltech
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...astronaut might some day find life on Mars faded deeper than ever into science fiction when Mariner 4 sent its remarkable snapshots across 135 million miles of space. The bleak, pocked surface of the red planet looked dead indeed. Because they saw no signs of erosion, space specialists from Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratories, who had directed the Mariner voyage, concluded that Mars probably never had any significant amount of life-supporting water. Though they were not quite ready to deny the possibility of Martian life, the JPL men seemed all but certain that what they could...
Astronomers now believe that they have penetrated the veil of clouds enveloping that mysterious lady Venus. In the Astrophysical Journal, a pair of planet watchers using the equipment at Caltech's Owens Valley Radio Observatory announced that they have made what is probably the first direct observations of the planet's surface, and found it, as expected, dry and extremely hot. They measured temperatures up to a maximum of 675°F. at the equator and a minimum of 300° at the poles -far too hot for any known form of life...
...they have studied Venus and not its veil? Dr. Barry Clark of the National Radio Observatory at Green Bank, W.Va., and Dr. Arkady Kuzmin of Moscow's Lebedev Institute of Physics explained that the thermal radiations they observed from Venus seemed to come from a solid surface. Moreover, Caltech's two big-dish antennas found the planet's actual diameter to be less than the 7,655-mile span that is observed optically. As a result, the astronomers assume that they have measured the planet itself and that the dense cloud covering is at least 40 miles...
Mariner IV, the agile U.S. spacecraft designed to take the measure of Mars, has lived up to every expectation. At Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory last week, the last worries vanished; there was no longer any concern that the ship's tape recorder might have gone haywire during part of its historic pass at the red planet. As soon as the eleventh picture came through, JPL monitors knew that all was well. Mariner got all the 21 pictures it went after-plus a bonus: 22 lines of a 22nd picture, which might show the dark edge of Mars...
...Richard Sloan, 34, a Caltech-educated physicist, was in charge of the scientific instruments aboard Mariner IV. Before joining JPL for the Ranger moon shot, he did basic research on low-temperature physics at Caltech. He believes man shows his nobility by action. Says Sloan: "Tears streamed down my face when Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile...