63 Years Ago Today: Mariner 2

Where were you on this date 63 years ago in 1962?  Some of you were only a “twinkle in your old man’s eye”, if that, and not yet breathing.  I was a 7-year-old boy looking forlornly the end of summer vacation and at school about to start again in Willowick, Ohio, a bike ride from Lake Erie.

I would be entering second grade at Royalview Elementary, a few blocks from we lived off East 305^th Street, only 305 city blocks from downtown Cleveland, Ohio. 

School started after Labor Day back then so, I was looking at the school train’s headlight quickly growing in size and speeding irreversibly down the tunnel toward me.

I don’t remember much of those years, childhood amnesia still clouding my memories, but I do remember a sense of already missing the freedom of summer vacation, unlike my mom who couldn’t wait for that train’s cowcatcher to catch me and sweep me off to school.  We walked to school in those days, even as first graders as my brother was then, hand-in-hand.

So, I don’t remember the launch of Mariner 2 being a “thing” in my second grader’s brain.

But it was a “thing”…and a big thing…if not in my amnesiac brain, then in aviation and space history.   

On this day in space! Aug. 27, 1962: Mariner 2 launches to Venus

By Hanneke Weitering 

According to Space.com and downloaded today from: https://www.space.com/39251-on-this-day-in-space.html?utm_term=80CFE072-3D22-4ED3-B366-38D5778C5AB2&lrh=979456b06da101021af8477d820fe42a8b8fac61060c8f48a99307e6facca454&utm_campaign=58E4DE65-C57F-4CD3-9A5A-609994E2C5A9&utm_medium=email&utm_content=7ED581D5-0C00-45C9-A0BF-ABF1CA2E7452&utm_source=SmartBrief,

“On Aug. 27, 1962, NASA launched to Venus with Mariner 2, the world’s first spacecraft to successfully visit another planet. Mariner 2 flew by Venus after a 3.5-month voyage through space.

A model of the Mariner 2 spacecraft (Image credit: Eric Long/Smithsonian)

“The mission launched just one month after the Mariner 1 mission failed during launch. After departing from Cape Canaveral, Florida, Mariner 2 almost met the same fate when an electrical problem with the Atlas-Agena rocket caused it to start rolling, which made it unable to respond to any guidance commands from mission control.”

Onward and upward!  And a sad end to summer vacation to the kids…a happy one to the moms and dads!

Sources:  Space.com/Smithsonian Institution