Editing Mariner 10 (section)

=== Cruise to Venus ===
[[File:Mariner-10-Trajectory-first half.PNG|thumb|left|The trajectory of ''Mariner 10'' spacecraft: since launch on 3 November 1973, to first fly-by of Mercury on 29 March 1974.]]

Far from being an uneventful cruise, ''Mariner 10''{{’}}s three-month journey to Venus was fraught with technical malfunctions, which kept mission control on edge.{{sfn|Murray|Burgess|1977|p=55}} [[Donna Shirley]] recounted her team's frustration: "It seemed as if we were always just patching Mariner 10 together long enough to get it on to the next phase and next crisis".{{sfn|Shirley|1998|p=91}} A trajectory correction maneuver was made on 13 November 1973. Immediately afterward, the star-tracker locked onto a bright flake of paint which had come off the spacecraft and lost tracking on the guide star [[Canopus]]. An automated safety protocol recovered Canopus, but the problem of flaking paint recurred throughout the mission. The on-board computer also experienced unscheduled resets occasionally, which necessitated reconfiguring the clock sequence and subsystems. Periodic problems with the high-gain antenna also occurred during the cruise. On 8 January 1974, a malfunction thought to be caused by a short-circuited diode occurred in the power subsystem.<ref name=Paul/> As a result, the main booster regulator and inverter failed, leaving the spacecraft dependent on the redundant regulator. Mission planners feared that the same problem could recur in the redundant system and cripple the spacecraft.{{sfn|Dunne|Burgess|1978|p=55}}

In January 1974, ''Mariner 10'' made ultraviolet observations of [[Comet Kohoutek]]. Another mid-course correction was made on 21 January 1974.