MARINER MISSION TO VENUS This book describes one phase of the U. S. civilian space program-the journey of the Mariner spacecraft to the vicinity of Venus and beyond. It reports upon the measurements taken during the "flyby" on December 14, 1962, when Mariner reached a point 21,598 miles from the planet, and 36,000,000 miles from Earth (communication with the spacecraft was continued up to a distance of approximately 54,000,000 miles from Earth). The Mariner mission was a project of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, carried out under Contract No. NAS 7-100 by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology.