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The flight of Mariner II to the planet Venus represents the first time that man has sent his instruments close to another planet and received meaningful data from them back to Earth. The following pages describe the Mariner R project and its problem s, solutions, difficulties, and successes. Perhaps a part of the drama and some of the tensions associated with this kind of mission will be felt and understood. As the days grew into weeks and the distances into millions of miles, the tensions in the control room mounted steadily. Finally, the spacecraft flew past the planet and its instruments made the first closeup observation of Venus. Three weeks later, on January 3, 1963, with the spacecraft 9 million km beyond Venus and 87 million km from Earth, the signals stopped.