Talk:Mariner 9

Current location?
Where is this probe now? Is it still in Mars orbit?


 * Yes, it is still in Mars orbit, it's orbit is stable until at least 2022.


 * Where did that fact come from? Andy120290 22:13, 22 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't know, but the German website Astronews.com claims it is and will stay in orbit until entering the Martian atmosphere probably in "the next decade". --Roentgenium111 (talk) 14:13, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Found a source. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 14:27, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Photos attributed to Mariner 9 are incorrect
The photos of Scamander Vallis and Warrego Velles are not from Mariner 9. They are MOC images from the Mars Global Surveyor. This needs to be corrected. Schaffman (talk) 22:13, 27 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Done, but you are welcome to be bold to correct obvious mistakes. ChiZeroOne (talk) 22:48, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

External links modified
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Data transmission Error correction clarification
"The data words used during this mission were 6 bits long, which represented 64 grayscale values. Because of limitations of the transmitter, the maximum useful data length was about 30 bits. Instead of using a repetition code, a [32, 6, 16] Hadamard code was used, which is also a 1st-order Reed-Muller code. Errors of up to 7 bits per word could be corrected using this scheme."

Am I reading this wrong? The word length was 6 bits, the ECC could correct up to 7 bits per word. ? Confused.

92.20.159.10 (talk) 18:59, 14 March 2016 (UTC)Sam, UK
 * Out of 32 bits in the word 7 bits could be wrong. The article was correct but poorly worded. I corrected it. Ruslik_ Zero 19:26, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Talk in article and issue with "Error-Correction Code"
Found these lines (under "Error-Correction Codes achievements"), while reading the main article, I am pretty sure shouldn't be there:

''This paragraph needs revision, I have found. Anyway it deserves ongoing investigation (alternatively it may be possible that the Hadamard (32,6,16) method just sequentially processed incoming 6 bits without reference to data type, it would nice for clarity to tidy this issue. The coded data was only used on the science data, coding was one factor that allowed higher data rates (up to 16.2kbit/s) for which the interleaved frame format is described elsewhere within NASA's various reports.''

Written there in 'Revision as of 12:40, 30 November 2017' by RaymondTHill

I decided to deleted it from the main article (and put it out here). Please correct it in case I am wrong and help to resolve or declare this technical issue as template! I am not familiar with (issue and templates)...

--David Schopenhauer (talk) 21:21, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Mariner observations of Phobos & Deimos
Obviously I have no references for this, but ...

I sat enthralled at the Summer Science School at Sydney Uni in 1973 or 74 whilst Frank Drake and Carl Sagan presented the images and data from this spacecraft. Sagan told an amusing story. He had wanted the spacecraft to do observations of Phobos & Deimons, but had been overruled. But, as described here, when the spacecraft arrived, there was a huge dust storm raging on the planet, and the mission effectively had "nothing to do". Therefore, Sagan's proposal for observing the Moons was hurriedly resurrected and the Moons were indeed imaged.