The Viking Mission was a NASA program that sent two vehicles, Viking I and Viking II, to Mars in 1975. The mission aimed to gather information about the planet’s atmosphere, surface, and potential for life. It also provided high-resolution images of Mars and contributed to future missions. The last component was shut down in 1982.
The Viking Mission was a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) program designed to give the agency more information about Mars. Data from Viking missions continues to be used by researchers to this day, although further missions have yielded even more information and data about the red planet.
The groundwork for the Viking mission was laid in 1968, when researchers began developing the idea of sending probes to Mars for the purpose of gathering information and conducting basic science experiments. Two vehicles, Viking I and Viking II, were sent to Mars in 1975. Each vehicle consisted of an orbiter and a lander. When the vehicles reached orbit in 1976, the orbiters looked for good locations, dropping the landers on the planet.
One of the Viking Mission’s primary goals was to create a series of high-resolution images of Mars. Thousands of images were taken and beamed back, giving researchers a detailed look at Mars. These images revealed details of the Martian terrain, weather systems and other matters of interest, and were also of purely psychological interest, providing Earth’s residents their first close-up look at the neighboring planet.
The Viking mission was also intended to collect specific information about the composition of the Martian atmosphere and surface. The probes collected information that revealed soil mineral content and the gas balance in the atmosphere, and also conducted tests designed to look for signs of life on Mars, another part of the Viking Mission’s goal. These tests were initially positive, but researchers later suspected that a false positive reading had been obtained due to unexpected chemical reactions that had occurred during the test.
Like other NASA-led missions, the Viking Mission was a major public relations coup, as it gave people on Earth something to talk about and connect with when thinking about the space program. The researchers may point to the success of the Viking mission as good justification for the funding used to support the space program, and they have also suggested that such missions have created the basis for future missions to Mars and other planets in the future. The Viking Mission has also contributed immensely to the scientific community with its years of data from the planet’s orbit and surface; the last component was shut down in 1982, after broadcasting for six years.
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