Viking 1 landing in Chryse Planitia

Viking 1 · 1976 CE – 1982 CE · Mars

Viking 1 landing in Chryse Planitia — Viking 1 · 1976 CE – 1982 CE · Mars — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Land safely on Mars, photograph the surface and test the soil for life.

Historical context

The Viking programme was the most expensive planetary mission ever flown, and its central instrument was a chemistry set built to ask one question. Viking 1 landed on the seventh anniversary of Apollo 11 and worked for six years on a plain swept clean by ancient floods. It answered the question ambiguously, and the argument has never quite closed.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Descent to Chryse

    20 July 1976

    The lander separated from the orbiter, fell through the thin air behind a heat shield, opened a sixteen-metre parachute and switched to rockets.

  2. The first picture from the ground

    1976 CE

    Twenty-five seconds after touchdown the camera began scanning, and four minutes later Earth had a sharp view of a footpad on stony ground.

  3. Three tests for life

    1976 CE

    Soil was fed nutrients, watered, and warmed. Gas came off vigorously, exactly as living cells would have made it come off.

  4. A pin in the arm

    1977 CE

    A locking pin jammed the soil sampler for five days, until the arm was shaken hard enough to drop it onto the surface.

  5. Years of weather

    1979 CE

    Day after day the lander logged pressure, wind and temperature, and watched the atmosphere thicken and thin as the polar caps breathed.

  6. Mutch Memorial Station

    11 November 1982

    The lander fell silent on 11 November 1982 after six years and three months, a record for a Mars surface mission until Opportunity.

Outcome

Six years of pictures, weather and soil chemistry, with no clear sign of biology.

Viking 1

First spacecraft to work successfully on the surface of Mars, from July 1976 to November 1982.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

Continue exploring