Mission Atlas
← Mission directory

Mission record

Mariner 8

Also known as Mariner-H, MARIN-H, PL-712A, Mars '71

NASA-Office of Space Science Applications · Launched

Explore trajectory

Failed · Failure

Mariner-H, also commonly known as Mariner 8, was (along with Mariner 9) part of the Mariner Mars 71 project. It was intended to go into Mars orbit and return images and data: the project consisted of two spacecraft, Mariners H and I, each of which would be inserted into a Martian orbit and would perform a separate but complementary mission, orbiting Mars a minimum of 90 days and covering approximately 70 percent of the planetary surface. The Centaur upper stage began to oscillate in pitch and tumbled out of control, and the spacecraft fell into the Atlantic Ocean. Some of the objectives of the Mariner-H mission were successfully added to the Mariner-I (Mariner 9) mission profile.

Destinations
Launch vehicle
Atlas-Centaur
Launch site
Cape Canaveral, United States
Countries
United States
Mission types
Orbiter

Chronology

Mission timeline

  1. Mission end

    Centaur tumbled and the spacecraft fell into the Atlantic

    The main Centaur engine was ignited 265 seconds after launch, but the upper stage began to oscillate in pitch and tumbled out of control. The Centaur stage shut down 365 seconds after launch due to starvation caused by the tumbling. The Centaur and spacecraft payload separated and re-entered the Earth's atmosphere approximately 1500 km downrange and fell into the Atlantic Ocean about 560 km north of Puerto Rico.

    Earth

  2. Launch

    Launched on an Atlas-Centaur SLV-3C (AC-24)

    NSSDCA's launch/orbital information page gives the launch date and time as 1971-05-09T01:11:00Z and a decay date of 1971-05-09, and prints no trajectory details. Mariner 8 was launched on an Atlas-Centaur SLV-3C booster (AC-24).

    Earth

Mission architecture

Vehicles

  • Mariner 8 · Orbiter

    Destinations: Mars

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 2, 2026