Soaring through space nearly a million miles from the earth, Mariner 5 responded smartly last week to signals radioed from Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, thereby ensuring that its Oct. 19 date with Venus would be as intimate as intended. The spacecraft pitched, rolled and fired its rocket engine for 17.66 seconds, giving the spacecraft a 36-m.p.h. boost and arcing into a trajectory that should carry it past Venus at a distance of only 1,250 miles.
Mariner had company on its 216 million-mile journey. Relatively near by was Russia's Venus 4, launched only two days before the U.S. craft and also...
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