A "real-time data translator" machine converted Mariner 4 digital image data into numbers printed on strips of paper. Too anxious to wait for the official processed image, employees from the Voyager Telecommunications Section attached these strips side by side to a display panel and hand colored the numbers like a paint-by-numbers picture. The completed image was framed and presented to JPL director, William Pickering.

Mariner 4 was launched on November 28, 1964 and journeyed 228 days to the Red Planet, providing the first close-range images of Mars. The spacecraft carried a television camera and six other science instruments to study the Martian atmosphere and surface. The 22 photographs taken revealed the existence of lunar type craters upon a desert-like surface. After completing its mission, Mariner 4 continued past Mars to the far side of the sun. On December 20, 1967, all operations of the spacecraft were ended.