Preliminary results of the Mariner IV OCCULATION measurement of the atmosphere of Mars

The Mariner IV Occultation Experiment (Ref. 2) has been carried out by investigators from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Stanford University, and CorneU University. Previous knowledge of such atmospheric properties as the surface pressure and density, as well as scale height, has been quite poorly defined. The surface pressure, as deduced from recent spectroscopic observations of weak and strong CO, absorption bands, was thought to lie