Episode 2: On Depth

JPL and the First Image of Mars, 1965 

In 1965 engineers working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory received the first transmissions of images in the form of raw numerical data from the Mariner 4 spacecraft orbiting close to the surface of Mars. Having yet to develop the software to process this data, engineers printed these numbers using a stock ticker on thin strips of paper, assembled them with tape, then hand colored the numbered data with pastels. What resulted was something novel, a “picture” of a place unseen by the human eye, depth flatten horizontally along with its recording artifacts on a paint-by-number surface. While images like this of the far reaches of the outerspace, gathered and processed, are now familiar parts of the public imaginary, this image made by hand, and connected materially to the economies of our planet remains a unique reminder of the reification our constructed view of the expanded universe.