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Mission record

Mariner 1

Also known as Mariner1

NASA-Office of Space Science Applications · Launched

Explore trajectory

Failed · Failure

The first Mariner mission, intended to perform a Venus flyby, and destroyed by the Range Safety Officer 293 seconds after launch when it veered off course. NSSDCA attributes the failure to a combination of two factors: improper operation of the Atlas airborne beacon equipment, which lost the rate signal from the vehicle for prolonged periods, and the omission of a superscript overbar when the handwritten guidance equations were translated into coded computer instructions, which allowed incorrect guidance signals to be transmitted while the beacon was inoperative.

Destinations
Launch vehicle
Atlas-Agena B
Launch site
Cape Canaveral, United States
Countries
United States
Mission types
Flyby

Chronology

Mission timeline

  1. Mission end

    Destroyed by the Range Safety Officer 293 seconds after launch

    The master catalog records that the vehicle was destroyed by the Range Safety Officer 293 seconds after launch at 09:26:16 UT when it veered off course, that the destruct command was sent 6 seconds before separation, and that the radio transponder continued to transmit signals for 64 seconds afterwards. The launch/orbital information page gives a decay date of 1962-07-22. Recorded at day precision: the day is the decay date that page prints and the time is printed on the other page, whose sentence carries no year, so the two are not combined into a second-precision timestamp.

    Earth

  2. Launch

    Launched from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas-Agena B

    NSSDCA's launch/orbital information page gives the launch date and time as 1962-07-22T09:21:23Z and publishes no trajectory details at all.

    Earth

Mission architecture

Vehicles

  • Mariner 1 · Spacecraft

    Destinations: Venus

Trajectory record

Trajectory dataset not yet available

No verified trajectory dataset is committed for this mission, so Mission Atlas renders no path.

Provenance

Sources

Each source is listed once and labeled with the mission, event, trajectory, or destination/body context it supports.

Data verified through September 3, 2026