Television Systems and Slow-Scan Vidicons on NASA Space Probes

The television camera was and still remains one of NASA's scientific tools for the exploration of outer space. Unmanned probes have penetrated space to examine the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. As components of their scientific packages, the Ranger, Surveyor, Mariner, Mars Orbiter, and Voyager probes incorporated television subsystems with slow-scan vidicons as their imaging sensors to photograph these bodies. This paper examines the use of slow-scan vidicons and their television cameras on NASA's unmanned space probes in the exploration of our solar system.

Print ISSN

0036-1682

Published

1982-06

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/J00307