Centaurs, Soviets, and Seltzer Seas: Mariner 2’s Venusian Adventure (1962)

Mariner 2. NASA

Hydrogen is the most common kind of normal matter in the universe. Perhaps the universe is trying to tell us something, for the most common chemical element makes an excellent energetic rocket fuel. That does not mean, however, that it is easy to manage.

Odorless and colorless hydrogen gas becomes liquid, and thus dense enough to pour into rocket tanks, only by cooling it to a temperature of of minus 253° Celsius (C) or less. At that temperature, hydrogen causes almost any material to crack at a microscopic level; this means that liquid hydrogen can damage components in rocket engines, some of which – for example, spinning turbines – operate under great stress even at room temperature. Hydrogen also gradually escapes as a gas from almost any tank, potentially creating a fire and explosion hazard.

In the late 1950s, the U.S. Air Force and NASA contracted with the Convair Division of General Dynamics, makers of the Atlas missile, to build the Centaur, the world’s first hydrogen/oxygen rocket stage. By 1960, the dual-engine Centaur had become central to planned U.S. robotic lunar and planetary programs such as Mariner and Surveyor. It also became a propulsion development test-bed for large hydrogen-fueled Saturn and Nova rockets. After President John F. Kennedy’s 25 May 1961 “moon speech” before Congress, Centaur development became a pacing item in the U.S. piloted lunar program.

Development of Centaur did not, however, proceed as smoothly as was hoped. In January 1961, Pratt & Whitney, developers of Centaur’s twin RL-10 engines, stopped testing after repeated engine test-stand explosions. In early February 1961, NASA and contractor officials met at NASA Headquarters in an urgent effort to sort out Centaur’s problems.

On either side of the Centaur meeting, the Soviet Union launched Venus flyby probes from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Central Asia. The first, launched on 4 February 1961, was designated “Heavy Sputnik” to hide its true nature after its upper stage failed to boost it from low-Earth orbit. The second, designated Venera 1, lifted off and left Earth orbit as planned on 12 February 1961. The 644-kilogram probe subsequently failed to make a scheduled transmission to Earth; the precise date of the communication failure remains unclear, though in March 1961 the Soviet news service TASS dated it to February 27 and most sources now agree that it took place between 17 and 22 February. In May-June 1961, in collaboration with Soviet scientists, the Jodrell Bank radio observatory in Britain unsuccessfully sought signals from Venera 1 as it was due to fly by Venus.

Venera 1. TASS

Opportunities for Earth-Venus transfers occur every 19 months. Both U.S. and Soviet engineers meant to launch Venus probes during the next Earth-Venus opportunity, which would span from 18 July to 12 September 1962. In the U.S., the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) continued work on the roughly 500-kilogram Mariner-A flyby probe it hoped could be dispatched to Venus on an Atlas-Centaur rocket.

Centaur, meanwhile, suffered more setbacks. In August 1961, NASA tasked JPL with examining whether it could launch a Venus probe on an Atlas-Agena B rocket during the July-September Earth-Venus transfer opportunity. The Agena upper stage, which burned hypergolic (ignite-on-contact) propellants, had first flown successfully in May 1960. NASA had tapped Atlas-Agena B to launch the Ranger probes, the first of which – Ranger 1, a Block I design intended to gather data on cislunar space – left Earth on 23 August 1961.

The Atlas-Agena B was not as powerful as Atlas-Centaur was planned to be, so the 1962 Venus Mariners could weigh no more than about 200 kilograms each, or less than half as much as the Mariner-A design. Atlas-Agena B had its share of reliability problems: Ranger 1 became stranded in low-Earth orbit after its Agena B refused to ignite a second time.

Block I Ranger spacecraft. NASA

Mariner 1/2. NASA

After a study lasting barely three weeks, JPL engineers told NASA that a lightweight Venus probe could indeed be made ready for the July-September 1962 Earth-Venus transfer opportunity. To save time, they based their probe design on Block I Ranger. The Pasadena, California lab dubbed its makeshift interplanetary spacecraft Mariner-R. NASA approved JPL’s design and, on 28 September 1961, told the world that it would launch a flyby Mariner to Venus in the July-September 1962 period atop an Atlas-Agena B rocket.

The major goal of the Mariner-Venus 1962 mission would be to scan the planet using a a pair of radiometers to try to settle the contentious question of Venus’s surface and atmosphere temperatures. The spacecraft would include no camera; most scientists thought it unlikely that it could glimpse the planet’s surface through the thick Venusian clouds. At its extremely low transmission rate – just 8.3 bits per second – the spacecraft would need weeks to stream even a few images back to Earth.

JPL built the Mariner-R spacecraft against a backdrop of high-profile failures in the Ranger program. On 20 November 1961, in a near-repeat of the Ranger 1 experience, Ranger 2’s Agena B stranded it in low-Earth orbit. On 31 December 1961, NASA announced that it would launch twin Mariners to Venus to help to ensure mission success. On 26 January 1962, Ranger 3, a Block II design intended to deposit a spherical balsa-cushioned capsule on the lunar surface, missed the moon by about 37,000 kilometers after a series of malfunctions and errors during launch and Earth-orbit departure. Ranger 4 struck the moon on 26 April 1962, becoming the first U.S. spacecraft to touch another world; it returned no data, however, because it failed to deploy its electricity-generating solar arrays and ran down its batteries soon after launch.

On 22 July 1962, Mariner 1 stood ready in pre-dawn darkness atop its Atlas-Agena B launcher at Launch Complex 12 on Florida’s Cape Canaveral. The Atlas lit up its engines and began to climb. The rocket soon began to maneuver strangely. A little less than five minutes into the Mariner 1 mission, with just six seconds to go before the spacecraft would separate from the Atlas atop its Agena B stage, the Range Safety Officer pressed the destruct button. Mariner 1 emerged from the explosion fireball largely intact and transmitted until it splashed into the Atlantic Ocean 64 seconds later. The malfunction was quickly traced to a self-reinforcing combination of a single missed symbol in the rocket’s guidance computer code and poor communication between rocket and ground.

Mariner 2 lifted off from Pad 12 on 27 August 1962. Its Atlas-Agena B rocket performed as planned. Immediately after the Agena B stage shut down for the second time, 211-kilogram Mariner 2 separated, hinged open its twin solar arrays, and, using 10 nitrogen-propellant attitude-control thrusters, pointed them at the Sun. The Agena B, meanwhile, turned 140° and slowed itself by venting unused propellant so that it would not follow Mariner 2 to Venus. A week later, the spacecraft pointed its dish-shaped high-gain antenna at Earth.

Meanwhile, in Central Asia, Soviet engineers readied three 1962 Venus probes. The first, launched 25 August, and the second, launched 1 September, were designed to release spherical capsules that would enter the Venusian atmosphere and, it was hoped, survive to touch down on the planet’s surface. Upper-stage failures meant that neither left low-Earth orbit. The first burned up in Earth’s atmosphere the day after Mariner 2 left Earth; the second met the same fate on 5 September, two days after Mariner 2’s high-gain antenna locked on Earth. The third, a flyby Venera, was launched on 12 September at the close of the 1962 Earth-Venus transfer opportunity. Its launch vehicle exploded, destroying it.

Mariner 2 thus became the only survivor of five Venus mission attempts of 1962. As the 4.9-meter-wide, 3.7-meter-tall spacecraft fell Sunward toward its rendezvous with Venus, it alternated between sending to Earth engineering data describing its state of health and science data describing conditions in the interplanetary void. For example, a dust detector registered a single impact during the Mariner 2 mission; engineers planning future interplanetary missions breathed a sigh of relief, for this indicated that spacecraft could expect fewer potentially damaging micrometeoroid strikes than previously calculated.

Mariner 2 also encountered a solar flare on 23 October 1962. An ionization chamber and a Geiger counter monitored the flare’s onset, peak, and gradual decline over a period of days. Though scientists admitted that they would need much more data in order to determine the effects of solar flares on piloted interplanetary vessels, their initial assessment was that solar activity would be less of a threat than had been anticipated.

With the voyage of Mariner 2 well underway, the scientific debate over what it might find at Venus reached a new intensity. Measurements made from Earth had indicated that its surface temperature reached at least 342° C, yet the temperature in its atmosphere was a frosty minus 39° C. The atmosphere almost certainly contained carbon dioxide; the jury was still out with regards to the presence of Venusian oxygen and water vapor.

Young professor Carl Sagan, a member of the atmosphere radiometer instrument team, contended that Venus was an inferno, with carbon dioxide gas in its atmosphere acting like the glass of a greenhouse. Others explained away the temperature measurements by invoking a Venusian ionosphere dense with electrons.

Some scientists expected that data from Mariner 2 would indicate that Venus’s clouds were made of dust tossed aloft by violent winds; friction between dust grains, they argued, would heat the planet. Others opted for more traditional Venusian hypotheses: they believed that Venus was covered by a carbonated water ocean, that it was a swamp world like Earth in the Carboniferous era, or that it had seas of bubbling petroleum.

Mariner 2 was a very short mission by modern standards; it encountered Venus after a flight of only 109 days. That 109 days was, however, replete with heart-stopping glitches. For example, a mid-course correction on 4 September, when Mariner 2 was 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, added about four kilometers per hour more than planned to Mariner 2’s speed; this meant that its Venus flyby would occur at a distance of nearly 33,800 kilometers, more than double the hoped-for 14,500 kilometers. This raised fears – happily soon allayed – that the spacecraft might pass too far from Venus to accomplish useful science. The mid-course correction was the first-ever rocket maneuver in interplanetary space.

One of Mariner 2’s twin solar arrays short-circuited and stopped producing electricity, cured itself, then failed for good. Fortunately, the arrays produced more electricity than expected and Mariner 2 was close enough to the Sun that a single array was enough by the time the final failure occurred.

Despite automatic cooling louvers and careful placement of heat-reflective insulation and coatings, Mariner 2 soon began to overheat. Many of Mariner 2’s systems were rated for a temperature no greater than 54° C, but by mid-November had exceeded their maximum by up to 22° C. The spacecraft’s simple onboard computer remained mostly reliable despite the heat until five days before the planned encounter, when it failed to transmit an “update pulse.” Controllers on Earth opted to send Mariner 2 the command that would begin its Venus flyby science program rather than rely on the onboard computer.

Mariner 2 approached Venus from its night side on 14 December 1962 after a voyage of 293 million kilometers. A little more than an hour before closest approach, at a distance of about 40,700 kilometers from the planet and 58 million kilometers from Earth, the atmosphere and surface radiometers detected Venus for the first time. A 42-minute radiometer scanning period then began on the planet’s night side. Forty-four minutes before closest approach, Venus’s dayside came into view of the scanning radiometers.

Mariner 2’s closest approach to Venus – at a distance of 34,773 kilometers – took place over its dayside in the early afternoon on 14 December 1962. The spacecraft reached its closest approach to the Sun – its perihelion – on 27 December at a distance of 105,465,000 kilometers. A week later, on 3 January 1963, Mariner 2 went silent, never to be heard from again.

The mission was judged to be an outstanding success, and went a long way toward settling debates about Venusian surface and atmosphere conditions. If anything, it hinted that Venus was more harsh than had been supposed. Some scientists remained reluctant to embrace the new data; in the Soviet Union in particular, the concept of a more or less clement Venus held on for several more years.

JPL hoped that, following the great success of Mariner 2, it would receive more support for its future plans, which included the advanced Mariner-B landing probe carrier and Voyager, a family of flyby, orbiter, and lander vehicles for exploring Mars and Venus. Unfortunately, the Pasadena lab – and, in particular, its leader, William Pickering – misjudged Mariner 2’s role in the NASA program. Mariner 2 was the first significant U.S. “first” in the space race with the Soviet Union. That first thus accomplished, attention shifted back to Ranger lunar program and Centaur upper stage problems.

On 18 October 1962, as Mariner 2 closed on its target, the Block II Ranger V failed mysteriously after an apparently flawless launch toward the moon. Congress soon grilled NASA officials over weaknesses in the Ranger program, and JPL was soon tasked with preparing Block III Rangers, which would include a completely rebuilt electronics systems. The Block III Rangers represented a climb-down in NASA and JPL aspirations; instead of delivering a package to the moon, they would seek to image the lunar surface close-up using six telescopic cameras as they plummeted toward intentional destruction.

With the race to the moon still NASA’s central focus, Voyager and Mariner B were judged to be of lower priority than fixing Ranger and Centaur and preparing the Surveyor lunar soft-landers. NASA opted to postpone Voyager and Mariner B. This brought to a head growing tensions between JPL and NASA over future lunar and planetary exploration. In such a battle, there could be only one victor.

After a period during which it considered moving Mariner B and Voyager to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center or NASA Ames Research Center, NASA opted to task a somewhat chastened JPL with a pair of upgraded Mariner-R-type Mars flyby spacecraft in 1964-1965. Mariner 3 failed, but Mariner 4 carried out world’s first successful Mars flyby in July 1965. NASA did not explore Venus again with spacecraft until the Mariner 5 flyby of 14 June 1967; when it did, it again judged that an upgraded Mariner-R design could do the job. Soon after Mariner 5, Congress opted to scrap JPL’s Voyager Mars/Venus program entirely. Planetary exploration using robots would not come into its own until after Apollo achieved its goal of beating the Soviets to the moon.

References

Aeronautical and Astronautical Events of 1961, Report of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, 87th Congress, 7 June 1962, pp. 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 26, 50.

“Centaur Slippage Drag on Apollo,” H. Taylor, Missiles & Rocket, 12 February 1962, pp. 13-14.


“Centaur Faces Probe by House Group,” H. Taylor, Missiles & Rockets, 14 May 1962, pp. 13, 38.

“Centaur Troubles Explained,” Missiles & Rocket, 21 May 1962, p. 7.

Press release, “Mariner Spacecraft,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 19 July 1962.

Press release, “Mariner Scientific Experiments,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 19 July 1962.

“Mariner I Poised for Venus Shot,” Missiles & Rockets, 23 July 1962, pp. 32-33.

“Mercury, Jupiter Probes Planned If Funds Permit,” Missiles & Rockets, 26 November 1962, pp. 122-129.

Press release, “Venus Encounter,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 14 December 1962.

Press release, “Mariner Radiation Experiments,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 28 December 1962.

“JPL faces Mission Curtailment,” H. Taylor, Missiles & Rockets, 7 January 1963, p. 14.

“Mariner Unlocks Venusian Mysteries,” Missiles & Rockets, 7 January 1963, p. 16.

“After Venus Report. . .New Mariner Planning Pushed,” H. Taylor, Missiles & Rockets, 4 March 1963, pp. 12-13.

Aeronautical and Astronautical Events of 1962, Report of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, 88th Congress, pp. 78, 108.

Venus Space Probes, Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, 1979, pp. 1-12.

“The Venus Mission: How Mariner 2 Led the World to the Planets,” Franklin O’Donnell, 2012.

Centaurs, Soviets, and Seltzer Seas: Mariner 2’s Venusian Adventure (1962)

Mariner 2. NASA

Hydrogen is the most common kind of normal matter in the universe. Perhaps the universe is trying to tell us something, for the most common chemical element makes an excellent energetic rocket fuel. That does not mean, however, that it is easy to manage.

Odorless and colorless hydrogen gas becomes liquid, and thus dense enough to pour into rocket tanks, only by cooling it to a temperature of of minus 253° Celsius (C) or less. At that temperature, hydrogen causes almost any material to crack at a microscopic level; this means that liquid hydrogen can damage components in rocket engines, some of which – for example, spinning turbines – operate under great stress even at room temperature. Hydrogen also gradually escapes as a gas from almost any tank, potentially creating a fire and explosion hazard.

In the late 1950s, the U.S. Air Force and NASA contracted with the Convair Division of General Dynamics, makers of the Atlas missile, to build the Centaur, the world’s first hydrogen/oxygen rocket stage. By 1960, the dual-engine Centaur had become central to planned U.S. robotic lunar and planetary programs such as Mariner and Surveyor. It also became a propulsion development test-bed for large hydrogen-fueled Saturn and Nova rockets. After President John F. Kennedy’s 25 May 1961 “moon speech” before Congress, Centaur development became a pacing item in the U.S. piloted lunar program.

Development of Centaur did not, however, proceed as smoothly as was hoped. In January 1961, Pratt & Whitney, developers of Centaur’s twin RL-10 engines, stopped testing after repeated engine test-stand explosions. In early February 1961, NASA and contractor officials met at NASA Headquarters in an urgent effort to sort out Centaur’s problems.

On either side of the Centaur meeting, the Soviet Union launched Venus flyby probes from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Central Asia. The first, launched on 4 February 1961, was designated “Heavy Sputnik” to hide its true nature after its upper stage failed to boost it from low-Earth orbit. The second, designated Venera 1, lifted off and left Earth orbit as planned on 12 February 1961. The 644-kilogram probe subsequently failed to make a scheduled transmission to Earth; the precise date of the communication failure remains unclear, though in March 1961 the Soviet news service TASS dated it to February 27 and most sources now agree that it took place between 17 and 22 February. In May-June 1961, in collaboration with Soviet scientists, the Jodrell Bank radio observatory in Britain sought signals from Venera 1 as it was due to fly by Venus.

Opportunities for Earth-Venus transfers occur every 19 months. Both U.S. and Soviet engineers meant to launch Venus probes during the next Earth-Venus opportunity, which would span from 18 July to 12 September 1962. In the U.S., the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) continued work on the roughly 500-kilogram Mariner-A flyby probe it hoped could be dispatched to Venus on an Atlas-Centaur rocket.

Centaur, meanwhile, suffered more setbacks. In August 1961, NASA tasked JPL with examining whether it could launch a Venus probe on an Atlas-Agena B rocket during the July-September Earth-Venus transfer opportunity. The Agena upper stage, which burned hypergolic (ignite-on-contact) propellants, had first flown successfully in May 1960. NASA had tapped Atlas-Agena B to launch the Ranger probes, the first of which – Ranger 1, a Block I design intended to gather data on cislunar space – left Earth on 23 August 1961. The Atlas-Agena B was not as powerful as Atlas-Centaur was planned to be, so the 1962 Venus Mariners could weigh no more than about 200 kilograms each, or less than half as much as the Mariner-A design. Atlas-Agena B had its share of reliability problems: Ranger 1 became stranded in low-Earth orbit after its Agena B refused to ignite a second time.

After a study lasting barely three weeks, JPL engineers told NASA that a lightweight Venus probe could indeed be made ready for the July-September 1962 Earth-Venus transfer opportunity. To save time, they based their probe design on Block I Ranger. The Pasadena, California lab dubbed its makeshift interplanetary spacecraft Mariner-R. NASA approved JPL’s design and, on 28 September 1961, told the world that it would launch a flyby Mariner to Venus in the July-September 1962 period atop an Atlas-Agena B rocket.

The major goal of the Mariner-Venus 1962 mission would be to scan the planet using a a pair of radiometers to try to settle the contentious question of Venus’s surface and atmosphere temperatures. The spacecraft would include no camera; most scientists thought it unlikely that it could glimpse the planet’s surface through the thick Venusian clouds. At its extremely low transmission rate – just 8.3 bits per second – the spacecraft would need weeks to stream even a few images back to Earth.

JPL built the Mariner-R spacecraft against a backdrop of high-profile failures in the Ranger program. On 20 November 1961, in a near-repeat of the Ranger 1 experience, Ranger 2’s Agena B stranded it in low-Earth orbit. On 31 December 1961, NASA announced that it would launch twin Mariners to Venus to help to ensure mission success. On 26 January 1962, Ranger 3, a Block II design intended to deposit a spherical balsa-cushioned capsule on the lunar surface, missed the moon by about 37,000 kilometers after a series of malfunctions and errors during launch and Earth-orbit departure. Ranger 4 struck the moon on 26 April 1962, becoming the first U.S. spacecraft to touch another world; it returned no data, however, because it failed to deploy its electricity-generating solar arrays and ran down its batteries soon after launch.

On 22 July 1962, Mariner 1 stood ready in pre-dawn darkness atop its Atlas-Agena B launcher at Launch Complex 12 on Florida’s Cape Canaveral. The Atlas lit up its engines and began to climb. The rocket soon began to maneuver strangely. A little less than five minutes into the Mariner 1 mission, with just six seconds to go before the spacecraft would separate from the Atlas atop its Agena B stage, the Range Safety Officer pressed the destruct button. Mariner 1 emerged from the explosion fireball largely intact and transmitted until it splashed into the Atlantic Ocean 64 seconds later. The malfunction was quickly traced to a self-reinforcing combination of a single missed symbol in the rocket’s guidance computer code and poor communication between rocket and ground.

Mariner 2 lifted off from Pad 12 on 27 August 1962. Its Atlas-Agena B rocket performed as planned. Immediately after the Agena B stage shut down for the second time, 211-kilogram Mariner 2 separated, hinged open its twin solar arrays, and, using 10 nitrogen-propellant attitude-control thrusters, pointed them at the Sun. The Agena B, meanwhile, turned 140° and slowed itself by venting unused propellant so that it would not follow Mariner 2 to Venus. A week later, the spacecraft pointed its dish-shaped high-gain antenna at Earth.

Meanwhile, in Central Asia, Soviet engineers readied three 1962 Venus probes. The first, launched 25 August, and the second, launched 1 September, were designed to release spherical capsules that would enter the Venusian atmosphere and, it was hoped, survive to touch down on the planet’s surface. Upper-stage failures meant that neither left low-Earth orbit. The first burned up in Earth’s atmosphere the day after Mariner 2 left Earth; the second met the same fate on 5 September, two days after Mariner 2’s high-gain antenna locked on Earth. The third, a flyby Venera, was launched on 12 September at the close of the 1962 Earth-Venus transfer opportunity. Its launch vehicle exploded, destroying it.

Mariner 2 thus became the only survivor of five Venus mission attempts of 1962. As the 4.9-meter-wide, 3.7-meter-tall spacecraft fell Sunward toward its rendezvous with Venus, it alternated between sending to Earth engineering data describing its state of health and science data describing conditions in the interplanetary void. For example, a dust detector registered a single impact during the Mariner 2 mission; engineers planning future interplanetary missions breathed a sigh of relief, for this indicated that spacecraft could expect fewer potentially damaging micrometeoroid strikes than previously calculated.

Mariner 2 also encountered a solar flare on 23 October 1962. An ionization chamber and a Geiger counter monitored the flare’s onset, peak, and gradual decline over a period of days. Though scientists admitted that they would need much more data in order to determine the effects of solar flares on piloted interplanetary vessels, their initial assessment was that solar activity would be less of a threat than had been anticipated.

With the voyage of Mariner 2 well underway, the scientific debate over what it might find at Venus reached a new intensity. Measurements made from Earth had indicated that its surface temperature reached at least 342° C, yet the temperature in its atmosphere was a frosty minus 39° C. The atmosphere almost certainly contained carbon dioxide; the jury was still out with regards to the presence of Venusian oxygen and water vapor.

Young professor Carl Sagan, a member of the atmosphere radiometer instrument team, contended that Venus was an inferno, with carbon dioxide gas in its atmosphere acting like the glass of a greenhouse. Others explained away the temperature measurements by invoking a Venusian ionosphere dense with electrons. Some expected that data from Mariner 2 would indicate that Venus’s clouds were made of dust tossed aloft by violent winds; friction between dust grains, they argued, would heat the planet. Others opted for more traditional views: they believed that Venus was covered by a carbonated water ocean, that it was a swamp world like Earth in the Carboniferous era, or that it had seas of bubbling petroleum.

Mariner 2 was a very short mission by modern standards; it encountered Venus after a flight of only 109 days. That 109 days was, however, replete with technical challenges and heart-stopping glitches. For example, a mid-course correction on 4 September, when Mariner 2 was 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, added about four kilometers per hour more than had been planned to Mariner 2’s speed; this meant that its Venus flyby would occur at a distance of nearly 33,800 kilometers, more than double the hoped-for 14,500 kilometers. This raised fears – soon allayed – that the spacecraft might pass too far from Venus to accomplish useful science. The mid-course correction was the first-ever rocket maneuver in interplanetary space.

One of Mariner 2’s twin solar arrays short-circuited and stopped producing electricity, cured itself, then failed for good. Fortunately, the arrays produced more electricity than expected and Mariner 2 was close enough to the Sun that a single array was enough by the time the final failure occurred.

Despite automatic cooling louvers and careful placement of heat-reflective insulation and coatings, Mariner 2 soon began to overheat. Many of Mariner 2’s systems were rated for a temperature no greater than 54° C, but by mid-November had exceeded their maximum by up to 22° C. The spacecraft’s simple onboard computer remained mostly reliable despite the heat until five days before the planned encounter, when it failed to transmit an “update pulse.” Controllers on Earth opted to send Mariner 2 the command that would begin its Venus flyby science program rather than rely on the onboard computer.

Mariner 2 approached Venus from its night side on 14 December 1962 after a voyage of 293 million kilometers. A little more than an hour before closest approach, at a distance of about 40,700 kilometers from the planet and 58 million kilometers from Earth, the atmosphere and surface radiometers detected Venus for the first time. A 42-minute radiometer scanning period then began on the planet’s night side. Forty-four minutes before closest approach, Venus’s dayside came into view of the scanning radiometers.

Mariner 2’s closest approach to Venus – at a distance of 34,773 kilometers – took place over its dayside in the early afternoon on 14 December 1962. The spacecraft reached its closest approach to the Sun – its perihelion – on 27 December at a distance of 105,465,000 kilometers. A week later, on 3 January 1963, Mariner 2 went silent, never to be heard from again.

The mission was judged to be an outstanding success, and went a long way toward settling debates about Venusian surface and atmosphere conditions. If anything, it hinted that Venus was more harsh than had been supposed. Some scientists remained reluctant to embrace the new data; in the Soviet Union in particular, the concept of a more or less clement Venus held on for several more years.

JPL hoped that, following the great success of Mariner 2, it would receive more support for its future plans, which included the advanced Mariner-B landing probe carrier and Voyager, a family of flyby, orbiter, and lander vehicles for exploring Mars and Venus. Unfortunately, the Pasadena lab – and, in particular, its leader, William Pickering – misjudged Mariner 2’s role in the NASA program. Mariner 2 was the first significant U.S. “first” in the space race with the Soviet Union. That first thus accomplished, attention shifted back to Ranger lunar program and Centaur upper stage problems.

On 18 October 1962, as Mariner 2 closed on its target, the Block II Ranger V failed mysteriously after an apparently flawless launch toward the moon. Congress soon grilled NASA officials over weaknesses in the Ranger program, and JPL was soon tasked with preparing Block III Rangers, which would include a completely rebuilt electronics systems. The Block III Rangers represented a climb-down in NASA and JPL aspirations; instead of delivering a package to the moon, they would seek to image the lunar surface close-up using six telescopic cameras as they plummeted toward intentional destruction.

With the race to the moon still NASA’s central focus, Voyager and Mariner B were judged to be of lower priority than fixing Ranger and Centaur and preparing the Surveyor lunar soft-landers. NASA opted to postpone Voyager and Mariner B. This brought to a head growing tensions between JPL and NASA over future lunar and planetary exploration. In such a battle, there could be only one victor.

After a period during which it considered moving Mariner B and Voyager to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center or NASA Ames Research Center, NASA opted to task a somewhat chastened JPL with a pair of upgraded Mariner-R-type Mars flyby spacecraft in 1964-1965. Mariner 3 failed, but Mariner 4 carried out world’s first successful Mars flyby in July 1965. NASA did not explore Venus again with spacecraft until the Mariner 5 flyby of 14 June 1967; when it did, it again judged that an upgraded Mariner-R design would do the job. Soon after Mariner 5, Congress opted to scrap JPL’s Voyager Mars/Venus program entirely. Planetary exploration using robots would not come into its own until after Apollo achieved its goal of beating the Soviets to the moon.

References

Aeronautical and Astronautical Events of 1961, Report of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, 87th Congress, 7 June 1962, pp. 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 26, 50.

“Centaur Slippage Drag on Apollo,” H. Taylor, Missiles & Rocket, 12 February 1962, pp. 13-14.


“Centaur Faces Probe by House Group,” H. Taylor, Missiles & Rockets, 14 May 1962, pp. 13, 38.

“Centaur Troubles Explained,” Missiles & Rocket, 21 May 1962, p. 7.

Press release, “Mariner Spacecraft,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 19 July 1962.

Press release, “Mariner Scientific Experiments,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 19 July 1962.

“Mariner I Poised for Venus Shot,” Missiles & Rockets, 23 July 1962, pp. 32-33.

“Mercury, Jupiter Probes Planned If Funds Permit,” Missiles & Rockets, 26 November 1962, pp. 122-129.

Press release, “Venus Encounter,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 14 December 1962.

Press release, “Mariner Radiation Experiments,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 28 December 1962.

“JPL faces Mission Curtailment,” H. Taylor, Missiles & Rockets, 7 January 1963, p. 14.

“Mariner Unlocks Venusian Mysteries,” Missiles & Rockets, 7 January 1963, p. 16.

“After Venus Report. . .New Mariner Planning Pushed,” H. Taylor, Missiles & Rockets, 4 March 1963, pp. 12-13.

Aeronautical and Astronautical Events of 1962, Report of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, 88th Congress, pp. 78, 108.

Venus Space Probes, Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, 1979, pp. 1-12.

“The Venus Mission: How Mariner 2 Led the World to the Planets,” Franklin O’Donnell, 2012.

Dystopian Fiction’s Popularity Is a Warning Sign for the Future

Ed Kashi

Dystopian fiction is hot right now, with countless books and movies featuring decadent oligarchs, brutal police states, ecological collapse, and ordinary citizens biting and clawing just to survive. For bestselling author Naomi Klein, all this gloom is a worrying sign.

“I think what these films tell us is that we’re taking a future of environmental catastrophe for granted,” Klein says in Episode 129 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “And that’s the hardest part of my work, actually convincing people that we’re capable of something other than this brutal response to disaster.”

Her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate , argues that only dramatic policy shifts can avert climate catastrophe, and that ordinary people need to speak up and demand emissions caps, public transportation, and a transition to renewable energy. That’s a hard sell politically, which is why dubious measures like geoengineering and cap-and-trade have been proposed instead.

“It seems easier, more realistic, to dim the sun than to put up solar panels on every home in the United States,” says Klein. “And that says a lot about us, and what we think is possible, and what we think is realistic.”

But things are starting to change, with indigenous groups winning lawsuits to block drilling on their land, local communities coming together to ban fracking and establish solar energy grids, and a growing divestment campaign seeking to shame and isolate the fossil fuel industry. Many of these movements are being led by young activists like Anjali Appadurai, who gave a speech in 2010 pointing out that the United Nations has been fruitlessly debating climate change action since before she was born.

“Young people have a critical role to play because they’ll be dealing with the worst impacts of climate change,” says Klein. “And when young people find their moral voice in this crisis, it’s transformative.”

Listen to our complete interview with Naomi Klein in Episode 129 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast (above), and check out some highlights from the discussion below.

Naomi Klein on how the wealthy are preparing for climate change:

“There are a lot of examples of ways that companies are preparing. The most insidious is the way that oil companies—who have been funding climate change denial—are simultaneously exploring all the wonderful extraction opportunities there are because the arctic ice is melting, so they obviously know it’s happening. … After Superstorm Sandy, there was a big uptick in the way that luxury developers in New York and elsewhere started to market themselves as being ‘disaster proof’—having their own generators, having their own ‘moats’ in a way, having their own storm barriers, and basically saying, ‘When the apocalypse comes, you’ll be safe.’ … In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was a company that was launched in Florida called HelpJet. … HelpJet was a private disaster rescue operation that literally had the slogan, ‘We’ll turn your disaster into a luxury vacation.'”

Naomi Klein on geoengineering:

“In general the geoengineering world is populated by very overconfident, overwhelmingly male figures who don’t make me feel at all reassured that they have learned the lessons of large-scale technological failure. When I went to this one conference that was hosted by the Royal Society in England, the Fukushima disaster had just started, and in fact a photographer I was working with—a videographer—had just come back from Fukushima and was completely shell-shocked. And I was surprised it didn’t come up the whole time we were meeting, because it seemed relevant to me. Yeah, we humans screw up. BP had been two years earlier. I have been profoundly shaped as a journalist by covering the BP disaster, the derivatives failure, seeing what’s happened in Fukushima. I’m sorry, but I think the smartest guys in the room screw up a lot. And the kind of hubris that I’ve seen expressed from the ‘geo-clique,’ as they’ve been called, makes me not want to scale up the risks that we’re taking.”

Naomi Klein on our relationship with nature:

“If you go back and look at the way fossil fuels were marketed in the 1700s, when coal was first commercialized with the Watt steam engine, the great promise of coal was that it liberated humans from nature, that you no longer had to worry about when the wind blew to sail your ship, and you no longer had to build your factory next to a waterfall or rushing rapids in order to power your water wheel. You were in charge, that was the promise of coal. It was the promise of man transcending the natural world. And that was, it turns out, a lie. We never transcended nature, and that I think is what is so challenging about climate change, not just to capitalism but to our core civilizational myth. Because this is nature going, ‘You thought you were in charge? Actually all that coal you’ve been burning all these years has been building up in the atmosphere and trapping heat, and now comes the response.’ … Renewable energy puts us back in dialog with nature. We have to think about when the wind blows, we have to think about where the sun shines, we cannot pretend that place and space don’t matter. We are back in the world.”

Naomi Klein on science fiction:

“This boom in cli-fi literature is exciting, but I think it can become dangerous if it isn’t seen as a warning, but just seen as inevitable. I think Margaret Atwood—not to be too Canadian about it—but I think Margaret Atwood’s In the Year of the Flood and that whole trilogy, that whole climate trilogy, is an example of the kind of narrative that really does serve as clarion warning, as opposed to just sort of hopeless ‘we’re on this road, we can’t get off.’ And it’s hard to define what makes something more of a warning than just affirming that sense of the inevitable. I loved Ursula Le Guin‘s acceptance speech at the Booker awards this year. I’m a huge Ursula Le Guin fan, and I think she’s one of the few science fiction writers that has pulled off utopian fiction well. She’s done both. But when she accepted the award she sort of accepted on behalf of the genre, and talked about how important it is to have and nurture voices from people who can imagine different worlds.”

While You Were Offline: 30,000 People Buy Bull Poop, George R.R. Martin Freaks Out Over The Interview

Nick Briggs/HBO

It was tempting, admittedly, to just put one story in the column this week, and retitle it “Yes, Sony didn’t release a James Franco movie because of terror threats and the need to fulfill a 30 Rock punchline from five years ago,” but apparently that’s “too easy” and “unprofessional.” Go figure. Here, then, are some other things that happened on the Internet this week.

(Although, really, can we talk about that weird 30 Rock thing? Even stranger, it’s the second time in the last month it’s been revealed that the show accurately predicted future events. Who knew Tina Fey was a modern Nostradamus?)

George R.R. Martin Isn’t Happy Sony Pulled The Interview

What Happened: The Song of Ice and Fire writer was not happy with Sony deciding that The Interview was too hot to handle.

Where It Blew Up: Blogs, Twitter

What Really Happened: Like many, George R.R. Martin was appalled at the decision not to release Seth Rogen and James Franco’s The Interview in any format after terrorist threats led major US theater chains to pull the movie. Also like many, Martin took to the Internet to complain about the decision. Unlike many, he’s George R. R. Martin.

Calling it “a stunning display of corporate cowardice,” Martin wrote on his Livejournal that the decision had been made by companies that “could buy North Korea with pocket change,” adding that “it’s a good thing these guys weren’t around when Charlie Chaplin made The Great Dictator … It astonishes me that a major Hollywood film could be killed before release by threats from a foreign power and anonymous hackers.”

Nobody tell Martin that it was actually more than one Hollywood film; future Steve Carell project Pyongyang was dropped by studio New Regency as well, and screenings of 2004’s Team America: World Police—which also featured the death of a North Korean leader—were cancelled by Paramount.

Martin made an offer to those involved with The Interview: If Sony is down, he’ll screen it at the Jean Cocteau Cinema, the New Mexico theater he personally owns. “Come to Santa Fe, Seth, we’ll show your film for you,” he wrote.

The Takeaway: Yes, Sony choosing not to release The Interview is a bad move on multiple levels (not least of all because it might mean an end to edgy satire if others follow the lead of the hackers responsible for closing this movie down), but throwing “Well, I’ve got a movie theater and I’ll show it” tantrums may not be the answer.

Cards Against Humanity Is Selling You BS (Literally)

What Happened: Cards Against Humanity sold actual boxes of bullcrap for Black Friday. Amazingly, 30,000 people bought them.

Where It Blew Up: Blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: Protesting the materialism that is Black Friday for the second year running, the people behind Cards Against Humanity decided that they’d sell crap for the corporate holiday this year, and people bought in. Enough people, it turns out, that the crap sold out in less than two hours. On his blog, CAH co-creator Max Temkin explained the thinking behind the stunt. “I see these pranks as a kind of improv where the public is our scene partner,” he wrote. “Together, we create a spectacle that is simultaneously funny and real.”

The company made 20 cents on each of the 30,000 poop boxes sold (each box cost $6 to the customer); the profits will be donated (appropriately enough) to Heifer International.

The Takeaway: People will apparently buy anything if it’s branded properly (the packaging was made by the same company that creates Apple’s packaging). Whether or not those who bought the crap were true improv partners remains unclear; this Jezebel post sums up the response of many, we suspect.

Movie Studios Versus The Internet: The Inevitable Sequel

What Happened: Hey, remember the Stop Online Piracy Act? Turns out, it might not be as dead as it seemed.

Where It Blew Up: Blogs, Twitter, media think pieces

What Really happened: Hidden in the gossip and bad email etiquette of the leaked material released as a result of the Sony hack was something called “Project Goliath,” which appeared to be a collaboration between Universal, Sony, Fox, Paramount, Disney, and Warner Bros. to create a new push against web piracy. Unnamed in the leaked “Project Goliath” files was a company the studios believed would push back against any efforts, referred to only as “Goliath,” but believed by many to be Google.

On Thursday, Google responded. “We are deeply concerned about recent reports that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) led a secret, coordinated campaign to revive the failed SOPA legislation through other means, and helped manufacture legal arguments in connection with an investigation by Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood,” a statement by the company’s SVP and General Counsel Kent Walker stated. “While we of course have serious legal concerns about all of this, one disappointing part of this story is what this all means for the MPAA itself, an organization founded in part ‘to promote and defend the First Amendment and artists’ right to free expression.’ Why, then, is it trying to secretly censor the Internet?”

Shots, as they say, fired.

The Takeaway: There’s some snark to be made here about it being unsurprising that movie studios would go for an unnecessary sequel to an unpopular campaign, but considering the widespread backlash to the original SOPA, it might be time to brace yourself for a second round of the Secret Wars Behind The Internet in 2015.

J.K. Rowling Reveals That Hogwarts Was As Inclusive as Any Fictional School Could Be

What Happened: J.K. Rowling continues to return to the scene of her most lucrative crimes, sharing new facts about the world of Harry Potter on Pottermore and Twitter alike.

Where It Blew Up: Blogs, Twitter

What Really happened: As Rowling finishes up her work on the Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them screenplay, she continues to spill new beans about the ephemera of Hogwarts and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. This week, she confirmed that everyone is welcome at Harry Potter’s school:

Not everyone appreciated the after-the-fact inclusiveness, however; Time‘s Daniel D’Addario complained that the author should leave well enough alone. “The Harry Potter books are objects that are sold individually, without a packet of disclosures, revisions, and rethinkings from Rowling; she owes it to her creations to allow them to stand or fall on their own,” he wrote. “The more Rowling calls attention to what in her books is missing, the more attention she takes away from what’s actually in her books.”

The Takeaway: Remember when it seemed like we’d have to say goodbye to Harry and Hogwarts? Who could have imagined there would come a time when people would ask Rowling to just shut up already?

Serial Ends, Internet Looks to Uncertain Future

What Happened: Serial, the true crime podcast that broke into the mainstream, finished its 12-week debut season. (Spoilers: the crime remained unsolved, with no last-minute confession on behalf of any of the participants.)

Where It Blew Up: Blogs, Twitter, media think pieces

What Really happened: We all knew the end was coming—although it was only the previous week when we realized that it was quite so close. The final episode of Serial answered few of the long-standing questions listeners longed for. (No, really, there were a lot of questions people wanted answers for. Like, a lot. Maybe a stupid amount.) But it did bring some sense of closure to the series, if not the events that were being investigated.

Response online to the final episode was mixed, and the same was true of the prospect of life without the show. Some suggested different podcasts to fill the void the show leaves behind, while others refused to say goodbye altogether, choosing to keep the magic alive via music. (See also: this and this.)

Still, at least we know that Sarah Koenig enjoyed putting the last episode together…

Dystopian Fiction’s Popularity Is a Warning Sign for the Future

Ed Kashi

Dystopian fiction is hot right now, with countless books and movies featuring decadent oligarchs, brutal police states, ecological collapse, and ordinary citizens biting and clawing just to survive. For bestselling author Naomi Klein, all this gloom is a worrying sign.

“I think what these films tell us is that we’re taking a future of environmental catastrophe for granted,” Klein says in Episode 129 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “And that’s the hardest part of my work, actually convincing people that we’re capable of something other than this brutal response to disaster.”

Her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate , argues that only dramatic policy shifts can avert climate catastrophe, and that ordinary people need to speak up and demand emissions caps, public transportation, and a transition to renewable energy. That’s a hard sell politically, which is why dubious measures like geoengineering and cap-and-trade have been proposed instead.

“It seems easier, more realistic, to dim the sun than to put up solar panels on every home in the United States,” says Klein. “And that says a lot about us, and what we think is possible, and what we think is realistic.”

But things are starting to change, with indigenous groups winning lawsuits to block drilling on their land, local communities coming together to ban fracking and establish solar energy grids, and a growing divestment campaign seeking to shame and isolate the fossil fuel industry. Many of these movements are being led by young activists like Anjali Appadurai, who gave a speech in 2010 pointing out that the United Nations has been fruitlessly debating climate change action since before she was born.

“Young people have a critical role to play because they’ll be dealing with the worst impacts of climate change,” says Klein. “And when young people find their moral voice in this crisis, it’s transformative.”

Listen to our complete interview with Naomi Klein in Episode 129 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast (above), and check out some highlights from the discussion below.

Naomi Klein on how the wealthy are preparing for climate change:

“There are a lot of examples of ways that companies are preparing. The most insidious is the way that oil companies—who have been funding climate change denial—are simultaneously exploring all the wonderful extraction opportunities there are because the arctic ice is melting, so they obviously know it’s happening. … After Superstorm Sandy, there was a big uptick in the way that luxury developers in New York and elsewhere started to market themselves as being ‘disaster proof’—having their own generators, having their own ‘moats’ in a way, having their own storm barriers, and basically saying, ‘When the apocalypse comes, you’ll be safe.’ … In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was a company that was launched in Florida called HelpJet. … HelpJet was a private disaster rescue operation that literally had the slogan, ‘We’ll turn your disaster into a luxury vacation.'”

Naomi Klein on geoengineering:

“In general the geoengineering world is populated by very overconfident, overwhelmingly male figures who don’t make me feel at all reassured that they have learned the lessons of large-scale technological failure. When I went to this one conference that was hosted by the Royal Society in England, the Fukushima disaster had just started, and in fact a photographer I was working with—a videographer—had just come back from Fukushima and was completely shell-shocked. And I was surprised it didn’t come up the whole time we were meeting, because it seemed relevant to me. Yeah, we humans screw up. BP had been two years earlier. I have been profoundly shaped as a journalist by covering the BP disaster, the derivatives failure, seeing what’s happened in Fukushima. I’m sorry, but I think the smartest guys in the room screw up a lot. And the kind of hubris that I’ve seen expressed from the ‘geo-clique,’ as they’ve been called, makes me not want to scale up the risks that we’re taking.”

Naomi Klein on our relationship with nature:

“If you go back and look at the way fossil fuels were marketed in the 1700s, when coal was first commercialized with the Watt steam engine, the great promise of coal was that it liberated humans from nature, that you no longer had to worry about when the wind blew to sail your ship, and you no longer had to build your factory next to a waterfall or rushing rapids in order to power your water wheel. You were in charge, that was the promise of coal. It was the promise of man transcending the natural world. And that was, it turns out, a lie. We never transcended nature, and that I think is what is so challenging about climate change, not just to capitalism but to our core civilizational myth. Because this is nature going, ‘You thought you were in charge? Actually all that coal you’ve been burning all these years has been building up in the atmosphere and trapping heat, and now comes the response.’ … Renewable energy puts us back in dialog with nature. We have to think about when the wind blows, we have to think about where the sun shines, we cannot pretend that place and space don’t matter. We are back in the world.”

Naomi Klein on science fiction:

“This boom in cli-fi literature is exciting, but I think it can become dangerous if it isn’t seen as a warning, but just seen as inevitable. I think Margaret Atwood—not to be too Canadian about it—but I think Margaret Atwood’s In the Year of the Flood and that whole trilogy, that whole climate trilogy, is an example of the kind of narrative that really does serve as clarion warning, as opposed to just sort of hopeless ‘we’re on this road, we can’t get off.’ And it’s hard to define what makes something more of a warning than just affirming that sense of the inevitable. I loved Ursula Le Guin‘s acceptance speech at the Booker awards this year. I’m a huge Ursula Le Guin fan, and I think she’s one of the few science fiction writers that has pulled off utopian fiction well. She’s done both. But when she accepted the award she sort of accepted on behalf of the genre, and talked about how important it is to have and nurture voices from people who can imagine different worlds.”

While You Were Offline: 30,000 People Buy Bull Poop, George R.R. Martin Freaks Out Over The Interview

Nick Briggs/HBO

It was tempting, admittedly, to just put one story in the column this week, and retitle it “Yes, Sony didn’t release a James Franco movie because of terror threats and the need to fulfill a 30 Rock punchline from five years ago,” but apparently that’s “too easy” and “unprofessional.” Go figure. Here, then, are some other things that happened on the Internet this week.

(Although, really, can we talk about that weird 30 Rock thing? Even stranger, it’s the second time in the last month it’s been revealed that the show accurately predicted future events. Who knew Tina Fey was a modern Nostradamus?)

George R.R. Martin Isn’t Happy Sony Pulled The Interview

What Happened: The Song of Ice and Fire writer was not happy with Sony deciding that The Interview was too hot to handle.

Where It Blew Up: Blogs, Twitter

What Really Happened: Like many, George R.R. Martin was appalled at the decision not to release Seth Rogen and James Franco’s The Interview in any format after terrorist threats led major US theater chains to pull the movie. Also like many, Martin took to the Internet to complain about the decision. Unlike many, he’s George R. R. Martin.

Calling it “a stunning display of corporate cowardice,” Martin wrote on his Livejournal that the decision had been made by companies that “could buy North Korea with pocket change,” adding that “it’s a good thing these guys weren’t around when Charlie Chaplin made The Great Dictator … It astonishes me that a major Hollywood film could be killed before release by threats from a foreign power and anonymous hackers.”

Nobody tell Martin that it was actually more than one Hollywood film; future Steve Carell project Pyongyang was dropped by studio New Regency as well, and screenings of 2004’s Team America: World Police—which also featured the death of a North Korean leader—were cancelled by Paramount.

Martin made an offer to those involved with The Interview: If Sony is down, he’ll screen it at the Jean Cocteau Cinema, the New Mexico theater he personally owns. “Come to Santa Fe, Seth, we’ll show your film for you,” he wrote.

The Takeaway: Yes, Sony choosing not to release The Interview is a bad move on multiple levels (not least of all because it might mean an end to edgy satire if others follow the lead of the hackers responsible for closing this movie down), but throwing “Well, I’ve got a movie theater and I’ll show it” tantrums may not be the answer.

Cards Against Humanity Is Selling You BS (Literally)

What Happened: Cards Against Humanity sold actual boxes of bullcrap for Black Friday. Amazingly, 30,000 people bought them.

Where It Blew Up: Blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: Protesting the materialism that is Black Friday for the second year running, the people behind Cards Against Humanity decided that they’d sell crap for the corporate holiday this year, and people bought in. Enough people, it turns out, that the crap sold out in less than two hours. On his blog, CAH co-creator Max Temkin explained the thinking behind the stunt. “I see these pranks as a kind of improv where the public is our scene partner,” he wrote. “Together, we create a spectacle that is simultaneously funny and real.”

The company made 20 cents on each of the 30,000 poop boxes sold (each box cost $6 to the customer); the profits will be donated (appropriately enough) to Heifer International.

The Takeaway: People will apparently buy anything if it’s branded properly (the packaging was made by the same company that creates Apple’s packaging). Whether or not those who bought the crap were true improv partners remains unclear; this Jezebel post sums up the response of many, we suspect.

Movie Studios Versus The Internet: The Inevitable Sequel

What Happened: Hey, remember the Stop Online Piracy Act? Turns out, it might not be as dead as it seemed.

Where It Blew Up: Blogs, Twitter, media think pieces

What Really happened: Hidden in the gossip and bad email etiquette of the leaked material released as a result of the Sony hack was something called “Project Goliath,” which appeared to be a collaboration between Universal, Sony, Fox, Paramount, Disney, and Warner Bros. to create a new push against web piracy. Unnamed in the leaked “Project Goliath” files was a company the studios believed would push back against any efforts, referred to only as “Goliath,” but believed by many to be Google.

On Thursday, Google responded. “We are deeply concerned about recent reports that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) led a secret, coordinated campaign to revive the failed SOPA legislation through other means, and helped manufacture legal arguments in connection with an investigation by Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood,” a statement by the company’s SVP and General Counsel Kent Walker stated. “While we of course have serious legal concerns about all of this, one disappointing part of this story is what this all means for the MPAA itself, an organization founded in part ‘to promote and defend the First Amendment and artists’ right to free expression.’ Why, then, is it trying to secretly censor the Internet?”

Shots, as they say, fired.

The Takeaway: There’s some snark to be made here about it being unsurprising that movie studios would go for an unnecessary sequel to an unpopular campaign, but considering the widespread backlash to the original SOPA, it might be time to brace yourself for a second round of the Secret Wars Behind The Internet in 2015.

J.K. Rowling Reveals That Hogwarts Was As Inclusive as Any Fictional School Could Be

What Happened: J.K. Rowling continues to return to the scene of her most lucrative crimes, sharing new facts about the world of Harry Potter on Pottermore and Twitter alike.

Where It Blew Up: Blogs, Twitter

What Really happened: As Rowling finishes up her work on the Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them screenplay, she continues to spill new beans about the ephemera of Hogwarts and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. This week, she confirmed that everyone is welcome at Harry Potter’s school:

Not everyone appreciated the after-the-fact inclusiveness, however; Time‘s Daniel D’Addario complained that the author should leave well enough alone. “The Harry Potter books are objects that are sold individually, without a packet of disclosures, revisions, and rethinkings from Rowling; she owes it to her creations to allow them to stand or fall on their own,” he wrote. “The more Rowling calls attention to what in her books is missing, the more attention she takes away from what’s actually in her books.”

The Takeaway: Remember when it seemed like we’d have to say goodbye to Harry and Hogwarts? Who could have imagined there would come a time when people would ask Rowling to just shut up already?

Serial Ends, Internet Looks to Uncertain Future

What Happened: Serial, the true crime podcast that broke into the mainstream, finished its 12-week debut season. (Spoilers: the crime remained unsolved, with no last-minute confession on behalf of any of the participants.)

Where It Blew Up: Blogs, Twitter, media think pieces

What Really happened: We all knew the end was coming—although it was only the previous week when we realized that it was quite so close. The final episode of Serial answered few of the long-standing questions listeners longed for. (No, really, there were a lot of questions people wanted answers for. Like, a lot. Maybe a stupid amount.) But it did bring some sense of closure to the series, if not the events that were being investigated.

Response online to the final episode was mixed, and the same was true of the prospect of life without the show. Some suggested different podcasts to fill the void the show leaves behind, while others refused to say goodbye altogether, choosing to keep the magic alive via music. (See also: this and this.)

Still, at least we know that Sarah Koenig enjoyed putting the last episode together…

Every Serial-Related Google Image Search You’ve Been Afraid to Do

(Spoiler alert: Many spoilers for the Serial podcast ahead.)

One of the most fascinating things about radio is how it forces your imagination to engage. You have to picture the stories in your mind, along with the places reporters are talking about and the people they are interviewing. You have to imagine the leaves you can hear rustling in the wind, and the desk you can hear someone sorting papers on.

But sometimes your imagination is tired. It’s been a long year, and now the most engrossing podcast of the year has just come to an end and you’re kind of over dreaming up the scenes. You just want to know exactly what everything in the story looks like.

Of course, we’re talking about Serial, the biggest audio-reporting phenomenon of our time, which wrapped yesterday. (If you haven’t listened to Serial yet, you should. If for no other reason than the rest of this piece won’t make much sense until you do.) Not only was it fascinating, it painted a picture unlike any other.

More than nearly all podcasts before it, the tension in Serial was high. The question at its heart asked: Was an innocent man (Adnan Syed) sent to prison for murdering his ex-girlfriend (Hae Min Lee)? Is an innocent man’s life being stolen from him every minute you’re listening to this story? And picturing him stuck in a cell might have been the most nerve-wracking thing a podcast ever made its audience do. Yet, as the weeks went on, listeners knew there would be no real satisfactory resolution.

And there wasn’t. But now that you’re not waiting for the conclusion, you can Google image search all the things about the show you were curious about but didn’t dare look up for fear of being spoiled on Serials‘s outcome. And actually, you don’t even have to, we did it for you.

What Does Adnan Syed Look Like?

Adnan Syed. courtesy Serial

What Did Hae Min Lee Look Like?

A collage of photographs of Hae Min Lee and her friends. Elizabeth Malby/Baltimore Sun/TNS/LANDOV

What Does Sarah Koenig Look Like?

Sarah Koenig. Meredith Heuer, courtesy Serial

What Does Leakin Park Look Like?

This is a wooded area along Franklintown Road in Leakin Park, at the approximate location where Hae Min Lee’s body was discovered in 1999. Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun/TNS/LANDOV

What Does Adnan’s School Look Like?