Engineering Pathway "Today in History" Blog: Mariner 4 launched as first probe to fly by Mars
by Alice Agogino
closeAuthor: Alice Agogino
Name: Alice Agogino
Email: agogino@berkeley.edu
Site: http://www.me.berkeley.edu/faculty/agogino/
About: Alice M. Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and is affiliated faculty at the Haas School of Business in their Operations and Information Technology Management Group. Her research interests include: community-based design; sustainable engineering; intelligent learning systems; information retrieval and data mining; multiobjective and strategic product design; nonlinear optimization; probabilistic modeling; intelligent control and manufacturing; sensor validation, fusion and diagnostics; wireless sensor networks; multimedia and computer-aided design; design databases; design theory and methods; MEMS/NEMS synthesis and computer-aided design; artificial intelligence and decision and expert systems; and gender/ethnic equity.
She has served in a number of administrative positions at UC Berkeley, including Chair of the Faculty Senate, Associate Dean of Engineering and Faculty Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost in Educational Development and Technology. Prof. Agogino also served as Director for Synthesis, an NSF-sponsored coalition of eight universities with the goal of reforming undergraduate engineering education, and continues as PI for the NEEDS (www.needs.org) and SMETE.ORG digital libraries of courseware in science, mathematics, engineering and technology.
Prof. Agogino received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico (1975), M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (1978) from the University of California at Berkeley and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University (1984). Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she worked in industry for Dow Chemical, General Electric and SRI International. She has authored over 150 scholarly publications; has won numerous teaching, best paper and research awards; and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). At NAE she served on the Committee on Engineering Education, working on the Technologically Speaking and the Engineer 2020 projects. She is currently a member of the National Research Council's Board on Education and the Women in Academic Science Engineering Committee. She has supervised 66 MS projects/theses, 26 doctoral dissertations and numerous undergraduate researchers.See Authors Posts (387) · November 28th, 2007 · Add a Comment
Today in History – November 28, 1964 – Mariner 4, was launched and became the first successful mission to Mars. Reaching Mars on a flyby on July 14 and 15, 1965, it was the first spacecraft to return close-up images of the surface (center image above) and lasted three years in solar orbit. In Mariner 4′s 21 pictures, the images showed a planet that was barren and riddled with craters, contrary to the fanciful science fiction images of the Red Planet that portrayed it as inhabitable and full of life. Mariner 4 also carried instruments to study cosmic dust, solar plasma, radiation belts, and magnetic fields. Lessons learned from the Mariner 3 (which failed) and the Mariner 4 were vital for future unmanned space missions under NASA’s Mariner mission program to explore the inner solar system. The Mariner 10 (being assembled in right-most image above) was launched on November 1973 and during its two year mission transmitted over 12,ooo images of Mecury and Venus until March 1975.
For more information, see the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on Mars and space exploration. For related educational resources, visit the Aerospace Engineering Education Community site.
Its interesting to view recent space exploration with that of Portuguese mariner and explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who reached the Pacific Ocean on this date centuries earlier in 1520. Magellan, with the crew of three ships, were the first documented Europeans to travel across the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. It does make wonder whether exploration is a fundamental part of human destiny.
Tags: Aerospace Engineering · Electrical Engineering · General Engineering, Engineering Science · Materials Engineering · Mechanical Engineering · Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering · Ocean Engineering
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