The Viking Mars Missions Education and Preservation Project

The Viking Mars Education and Preservation Project (VMEPP) is focused on preserving the history, artifacts, original documents, and data from the Viking Missions to inspire current and future leaders and thinkers.

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We are pleased to see our honor event for Vikings featured, in an article by the renowned Leonard David who has captured the space eexploration industry for 50 years.It was terrific to have Leonard as a featured presenter for the daytime education outreach event and the evening honor ceremonies!

[studying-engineering]

Productive sunday :) Quite busy cause preliminary examination next week :O 3 quizzes for this week :) Wish me luck!

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Its great to see studying personalized. How do we work, collaborate, innovate! I bet other students are inspired by seeing how you approach your studies. Thanks for sharing and keep up the great work!

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Vikings - The First Mars Makers

The Vikings were the FIRST Mars Makers!

If you want to know how get to Mars, ask the Mars Makers! That's what we are doing, and there is a WHOLE lot of detail to come! With over 82 interviews conducted to date, at least 30 Vikings in queue to interview, and even more we have not yet reached (tell us who you are, please), we have learned A LOT. But we have still only scratched the surface.

So today, to celebrate the September 3, 1976 anniversary of Viking II landing on Mars, we will share a few images and notes from interviews with the FIRST Mars Makers, the men and women who designed and built the Viking Space Craft (among other roles they played that we will cover in a later post).

The first images from Viking II indicated a very rocky surface

Most people think or hear about missions when they launch or land and report data. But the fact is 90% of the mission happens YEARS (even 10-20 years) BEFORE launch! How is that for patience and perseverance!  So what IS that 90%??? Its MAKERS doing what they do best!

BRAINSTORMING - DESIGNING - TESTING - BREAKING STUFF - REDESIGNING - TESTING SOME MORE

Seriously. These days kids are taught "failure is not a option", a misapplied trickle down artifact from the earliest space days. However if you apply that to real life, not some ethereal sound bite that lingers in history, you have to acknowledge that in fact nothing works all the time, EVEN IF, occasionally and against the odds, it does seem to work right the first time. So the tests and failure analysis, that made Viking successful were a critical part of the design phase, and it was ONLY with rigor, research, and "intentionally" breaking things that the Viking was successful. If Viking had been simulated only in a CAD environment, real world scenarios would not have revealed weaknesses in the Viking aeroshell that could have been disastrous had they not been found during testing by dedicated PEIs and Test Technicians, a fate of many Mars missions before and after Viking.

The detailed tests and design process will be covered in the exhibits and digital museum we are building (with your support) as we keep you up to date with high level posts and blogs.

The fact is, Makers of today - Do It Yourselfers (DIYs), hobbyists, engineers, and hacks alike all have something in common with Vikings. They were making it up as they went, figuring out how to solve problems never solved, coming up with problems never even conceived of, and testing all kinds of incredible configurations time and time again, to get it right. But what does it mean to 'get it right'? What is the purpose of the testing and what tests should we do?

First of all the Mars Makers had a few important considerations, not unlike today...

All of you DIYs and Engineers already know that when you are planning on making something, you generally start with an objective and problem to solve. Well, the Vikings began with objectives and problems too. In fact they had two main drivers, and the leadership to keep them focused:

Get there safely

Meet the Science objectives

It  may sound simple, but when you learn more you will realize not just how complicated it was, but how the Viking designed systems, parts, models, and methods made all of the subsequent missions to Mars possible through innovative and rigorous designs, theoretical models, and plain hard work. Of course, as new technology has also been developed, designs and techniques have been modified. But Viking did it first.

These models were built by 5th Graders in 1979, inspired by the 3rd Viking Lander (VL3) during its stay at a Seattle area Elementary School

So, who are the Mars Makers and what did they do? They were the men and women who worked on Viking. That includes ALL the craft: the Titan IIIE, the Orbiters, and the Landers, and all the contributing companies and institutes.

By the way A LOT of people were involved in Viking. Thousands in fact. So many, that we will continue to add new interviews and information for years to come. It will take a while, but we will share it as we go, and we have time, as we are dedicated to including everyone. So be patient please as we focus most of our energy on locating and interviewing Vikings and rescuing archives and artifacts from their demise. That means transcribing, fact checking, cross referencing, and curating a lot of information, so if you aren't included and you participated in Viking, get in touch with us at [email protected] We will get back to you!

But to get started, and in honor of the Viking II landing on Mars, September 3, 1976, lets start with the Landers.

The Primary Contractor for the Viking Landers was Martin Marietta. There is a lot of history on the company, so we are going to stick to the stuff they and the subcontractors MADE rather than history, because this is about MARS MAKERS.

So lets break it down. Diagrams of the Lander show the very basic elements.

 These diagrams show the science instruments, communications, engines, power systems, fuel tanks, and lots of other details, as well as how the internal systems were organized. But remember the first objective is to GET THERE SAFELY.

That requires a lot of different components, including many that are attached to the Lander during flight but eventually are ejected through a variety of pyro "techniques". It also includes the Orbiters themselves and the Communications systems on the Orbiters and the Deep Space Networks earth bound tracking stations. All of these play a role in getting there safely. However, today we are focused on the high level of Lander Capsule and an often overlooked detail.

From a "top down" look, the physical elements of the Viking Lander Capsule include: the Bioshield Cap, the Base Cover, the Lander itself, the Aeroshell & Heat Shield, and the Bioshield Base. Within these elements there are specific systems associated with getting there safely (remember that's Objective #1, as Jim Martin frequently had to remind the science team members who were focused on choosing the best sites to get the most interesting science results, often in conflict with the safest choices). These primary "landing"  elements were: the Guidance and Control Subsystem, the Aeroshell & Heat Shield, the Parachutes, the Terminal Descent Engines, and the Legs and Footpads.  

So lets start there. Think about how you would design a craft that is going to land on the surface of Mars. Well, Viking went through a number of configurations before the "As Built" design emerged after months and years of research and testing, but the first thing to "touch down" were to be the legs (they hoped). This made the legs and footpads a primary factor in a safe landing. Think egg drop in your 4th grade physics class - and remember that the instruments on board were not invincible AND we had no idea what the surface consistency would be. Was it inches of soft dust that the lander might sink into, or was it a hard and unforgiving surface? At that point we didn't know.

This is where all Makers, Engineers, and Problem Solvers really dig in and excel!

The problem was 'How do we design to land on a surface of unknown properties?' 

Hey, that must be one of the Problems we were talking about that went along with Objectives! Yes, it was. So what did the Mars Makers at Martin Marietta do!? They designed and tested for a RANGE of possibilities. Successfully. And this problem was first addressed in a paper on Engineering Surface Properties on Mars, principally authored by Jim Gliozzi, a key Mars Maker, Engineer AND Scientist who worked on Viking. 

Before we examine the leg and footpad designs lets look at the descent requirements

During descent, the aeroshell provided initial braking during entry beginning at 800,000 feet to reduce the speed below MACH 1, in order to deploy the parachute at 19,000 feet, after which the aeroshell was jettisoned. The parachute then reduced the velocity until the terminal descent engines fired up to begin the terminal descent at 4,600 feet which reduced the speed further to an acceptable velocity to allow a soft landing on the legs and footpads. The magic of reducing the speed to acceptable ranges was achieved by throttling the terminal descent engines using the radar altimeter as the guide, which gave real time distance readings to the surface.

The paper, which will be available in the Digital Museum along with thousands of other papers, diagrams, and photos, describes 5 distinct mars models that considered the range of possibilities for the planets surface. Not only did Jim Gliozzi write the models, but like any dedicated problem solver, he was out in the deserts of White Sands doing the unforgiving work of testing the models. Imagine working in your backyard on a difficult large scale project in the heat and moving tons of dirt and rocks. That is what Jim Gliozzi did... and his work paid off! The research and testing by the scientists and engineers from the Space Physics Group in the Planetary Geology Lab at Martin Marietta, and other teams such as their Aerothermal Lab, they resolved a key element in Objective number 1, AND their work has informed next generations of Mars Makers.

So if you want to make stuff like the Viking Mars Makers, keep in touch with us as we post design documents and manuals, and lots of other behind the scenes archives to help you learn from the pros.

Well it is past 3:58pm PDT when Viking Lander II safely landed on Mars. Despite some challenges, and concern at the first image which indicated the Lander was somewhat pitched due to a footpad resting on a rock, the Landing was a success, and we had a new view of Mars from 47.96 deg N 225.77 deg W, and more history was made!

To close this posting, a poem written by a Viking about the landing.

Thanks for joining us to celebrate the Mars Makers and Viking II Landing on Mars!

Preserving Viking history, artifacts, data, science and memories for future generations.

For more information on The Viking Mars Mission Education and Preservation Project visit us at www.thevikingpreservationproject.org and follow our tweets @MarsVikingTeam as we post newly curated items!

[fordlibrarymuseum]

On August 20, 1975, Viking 1 orbiter departed Earth for the first successful U.S. mission to land a spacecraft on the surface of Mars.

NASA’s Viking Project, comprised of Viking 1 and Viking 2, took photographs and collected data on the surface of Mars. They also looked for possible signs of life on the planet. At this time, the Viking Project was the most expensive mission sent to Mars, with the total cost amounting to one billion dollars. It was also a very successful mission. Most of the information known about Mars through the early 2000s was discovered through this program.

Viking 1 and 2 were octagonal shaped orbiters 2.5 meters across. Attached to them were the landers; a six-sided aluminum base with three legs. President Ford received this model of Viking 1 on August 12, 1976, as a gift from James C. Fletcher, Administrator of NASA.  

On the day of the landing of the Viking on July 20, 1976, President Ford called NASA to congratulate them. “I think it’s amazing to think that in the span of a single lifetime, the exploration of air and space has grown from the dreams of a very, very few individuals to such a massive cooperative reality,” he said. “We have gone from a flight of a few seconds and a few hundred feet for a yearlong journey to Mars, crossing some 440 million miles.”

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#MarsVikings #FirstOnMars #JourneyToMars

[marsvikings]

First Successful Mars Landing Mission: 40 Years Since the Launch of Viking 1

By Ben Evans, AmericaSpace

In the second decade of the 21st century, we have grown accustomed to a steady output of scientific data and imagery from our robotic emissaries in orbit and upon the surface of Mars. Spacecraft from the United States, Russia, Europe and India have circled this seemingly most Earth-like of worlds, whilst a flotilla of stationary and mobile landing vehicles have alighted on its ochre-hued plains, revealing tantalizing clues of ancient lakes and oceans, past volcanism and geology which originated in wet environments. Today, in 2015, no fewer than seven spacecraft are operational in orbit around the Red Planet or on its surface. These run the gamut from the oldest to the youngest arrivals—the 2001-launched Mars Odyssey to last year’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) and Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM)—and also encompass the sole remaining Mars Exploration Rover (MER), Opportunity, together with Europe’s hugely successful Mars Express, the Curiosity rover in Gale Crater and the multi-role Mars Reconaissance Orbiter (MRO). Yet 40 years ago, today, the case was quite different. A handful of U.S. and Soviet spacecraft had secured promising results, but repeated efforts to reach the Red Planet met with failure and frustration, and on 20 August 1975 NASA began an audacious attempt to deliver an orbiter and soft-land a stationary vehicle. The findings of Viking 1, and its twin, Viking 2, launched a few weeks later, would literally rewrite the textbooks and reveal Mars in a wholly different light.

The first “clear” image of the surface of Mars, captured by Viking 1 in July 1976. The lander and its orbiter were launched 40 years ago, today, on 20 August 1975. Photo Credit: NASA

Today, these missions are remembered principally for their close-up, clear and in-situ perspectives of the Martian surface, but the twin Vikings—whose orbiters were designed for a 120-day operational lifetime and whose landers for about 90 days’ activity on the Red Planet—endured far longer than intended. Viking 1 became the first spacecraft in history to soft-land on Mars and complete its mission, picking up the baton from the Soviet Union’s failed Mars 3, which had successfully alighted on alien soil in December 1971 and produced a partial, though unintelligible image, before transmission ended and contact was lost. The spacecraft also afforded humanity our best and most complete perspective of the planet for the next two decades and the Viking 1 lander survived for 2,307 days from its touchdown on 20 July 1976 through its End of Mission (EOM) on 11 November 1982. This longevity would remain unbeaten until the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity quietly surpassed the operating duration of its predecessor on 19 May 2010.

Costing around $1 billion (or $3.8 billion today), the Viking program was the most expensive U.S. mission yet sent to Mars. It followed on the heels of several highly successful voyages, including Mariner 4, which had become the first human-made machine to fly past the ochre-hued world in July 1965, and Mariner 9, which became the first to enter orbit around another planet in November 1971. Original NASA plans foresaw the launch of “Project Voyager”—not to be confused with the twin-spacecraft program which explored Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune—as soon as 1969, atop a Saturn IB/Centaur booster to map the surface from orbit and deposit a stationary lander onto the surface. According to NASA, it would “be capable of more difficult missions than Mariner, carry more scientific instrumentation, collect and return more data and have a longer operational lifetime”. However, when Mariner 4 determined that Mars’ atmosphere was thinner than anticipated, planners recognized that a rocket-propelled braking element would need to be implemented, which increased Voyager’s complexity and weight. Coupled with the October 1965 cancelation of the Saturn IB/Centaur program, this forced a shift of Voyager’s stationary lander onto another vehicle. This produced two options: the hugely expensive Saturn V, whose 39,680-pound (18,000 kg) payload capacity rendered it 6.6 times too powerful to deliver Voyager or the new Titan III-Centaur, whose lifting capability of 2,800 pounds (1,270 kg) was less than half that of the Saturn IB-Centaur.

Two nuclear-powered NASA Viking soft-landers touched down on Mars in the summer of 1976. Photo Credit: NASA Langley Research Center

In the meantime, a Voyager orbiter, planned for 1971, was canceled as steadily tightening budget cuts took their toll. The option of using the grossly overpowered Saturn V correspondingly led to the development of a pair of Voyagers to fly aboard the same vehicle, both of which would deliver orbiters to Mars and despatch large landing capsules to the surface to investigate the possibility of extant or ancient life. However, in December 1965, NASA announced that this expanded Voyager mission would occur no sooner than 1973, forcing the program onto a back-burner. Always considered a “second-class” endeavor, behind Project Apollo, the program had suffered severely as monies originally baselined for the space sciences were instead diverted to support the effort to land a man on the Moon. Coupled with the ongoing bloodbath of Vietnam—itself responsible for swallowing around $2 billion each month during this period—Voyager received a $21.5 million cut in June 1967 and finally succumbed to the budgetary ax later that fall.

Had it borne fruit, Voyager’s 2,400-pound (1,100 kg) orbiter would have established itself into a 12-hour circular path around Mars, whereupon it would have entered “site-certification” operations to scour the surface for an appropriate spot to deposit its lander. Protected during the early stages of its descent by a cone-shaped aeroshell, the 13,000-pound (5,900 kg) lander would have entered the Martian atmosphere and employed on-board engines and parachutes to accomplish a soft landing on the Red Planet. Descending at a rate of between 460 feet (140 meters) and 1,100 feet (335 meters) per second, depending upon local atmospheric density, the lander would be slowed by a system of braking rockets and steered towards its touchdown point by an inertial guidance system and radar altimeter. As it neared the surface, its aeroshell would have been jettisoned, by which time its rate of descent would have slowed substantially to a sedate 5 feet (1.5 meters) per second. The engines would have shut down at 10 feet (3 meters) above the ground, allowing the lander to alight gently onto Mars.

It was anticipated that the lander would perform up to two days of science-gathering operations, with subsequent missions—also lofted atop Saturn Vs during subsequent Mars “launch windows” in 1975, 1977 and 1979—expected to include surface rovers. In the meantime, the orbiter would spend at least six months performing topographical mapping, analyzing global temperature profiles, conducting geological and gravitational measurements and examining daily and seasonal surface changes.

“At first glance, it would appear that the Voyager project…was just another project that never progressed beyond the drafting table, but it was more than that. Voyager, with thousands of man-hours of work behind it, performed by dozens of specialists and costing many millions of dollars, helped to refine our understanding of the best approaches for a combination orbiter-lander investigation of Mars. Upon the solid foundations laid by Voyager personnel, the Viking team that followed them could construct a successful mission. The story of Voyager’s troubles is essential to an understanding of Viking’s accomplishments.” 

-- Edward Clinton Ezell and Linda Neuman Ezell in their NASA History tome On Mars: Exploration of the Red Planet 1958-1978.

Within weeks, in November 1967, that foundation was exploited by NASA’s Office of Space Sciences and Applications (OSSA), which proposed a broader Mars exploration strategy, two key elements of which were a $395 million twin orbiter/“hard-lander” concept (“Titan-Mars ’73 Orbiter and Lander”), boosted by a pair of Titan III-Centaurs in 1973, followed by the more advanced “Voyager-Mars ’75”, despatched two years later, atop a Saturn V, to deliver an orbiter and a stationary surface laboratory to the Red Planet. Under the early plans, the 800-pound (365 kg) Titan-Mars ’73 landers would “transmit limited imagery and measure atmospheric temperature, pressure, wind, soil composition and subsurface moisture”, but subsequent evolution favored a soft-lander over a hard-lander, dependent on whether the problem of contaminating the landing site with retrorockets could be overcome. It was recognized that a soft-lander could carry a more viable scientific payload for a more realistic mission than a hard-lander.

Artist’s concept of the deployment of the aeroshell-enshrouded Viking lander from the orbiter. Image Credit: Don Davis

Early proposals were twofold, focusing on either a direct-entry hard-lander and flyby spacecraft or a soft-lander, delivered to the surface from Martian orbit, together with an instrument-laden orbiter. By the late fall of 1968, the project had received a new name—Viking—and the idea of delivering a pair of landers to the surface from fully-instrumented orbiters had gained much support. Achieving a soft landing on the Martian surface was a critical prerequisite before human visitors could be sent to the Red Planet, with atmospheric “entry science” considered a “new frontier” and lander science accorded high priority. Correspondingly, the desire to avoid contamination of the surface and effecting a wide range of experiments made the soft-lander concept preferable to the hard-lander.

Accordingly, NASA decided to pursue the soft-lander route, with an operational lifetime of about 90 days on the surface. “It is a little hard to recapture the mood of the times,” NASA Associate Administrator of the Office of Space Science John Naugle later explained. “But one of the things that figured in my mind was the fact that we were in competition with the Russians. They had a strong program of landers and I felt that we had to establish a good, solid, scientific mission.” Naugle’s words proved somewhat prophetic, for in December 1971 the Soviet Union did soft-land its Mars 3 probe on the surface. However, although it returned a few unintelligible lines of a single image, contact with Mars 3 was lost.

Headed by Project Manager Jim Martin, and with Dr. Gerald Soffen as Project Scientist, the Viking Project Office formally opened in April 1969 and its spacecraft quickly expanded beyond anything previously attempted. In its original incarnation, it was based upon the earlier Mariner series, but it soon became clear that significant structural changes to allow for the mating of the orbiter to the soft-lander would be necessary. Power provision for the lander during the trans-Mars cruise was also acutely required, necessitating the enlargement of the orbiter’s solar arrays from 82.8 square feet (7.7 square meters) to 165.7 square feet (15.4 square meters). “The decision to build a large soft-landing craft, instead of a small hard-lander, led to the requirement for a large orbiter,” noted Ezell and Ezell in On Mars. “The orbiter would not only have to transport the lander, it could also have to carry an increased supply of propellant for longer engine firings during Mars Orbit Insertion.”

However, within its first 12 months of life, Project Viking’s costs began to spiral, from $364.1 million when first presented to Congress in March 1969, to over $606 million by August, to an admission from Naugle by year’s end that $750 million was a more realistic figure. Scathing budget cuts throughout 1970—which notably savaged the Apollo lunar program, forcing the cancelation of two landing missions—ultimately led NASA Administrator Tom Paine to only one viable option: to delay the Viking missions by two years to the summer 1975 Mars launch window. Under this revised architecture, the end-of-conceptual-design Preliminary Design Review (PDR) occurred in October 1971, followed by the Critical Design Review (CDR) in July 1973, leading to the testing and shipment of hardware to the launch site at Cape Kennedy in Florida by February 1975.

The aeroshell for the Viking lander undergoes preparation for flight. Photo Credit: NASA

In their eventual form—whose design had essentially been finalized at the PDR stage—the twin Viking orbiters consisted of octagonal spacecraft “buses”, measuring about 8.2 feet (2.5 meters) across, and equipped with four electricity-generating solar arrays. The later totaled 160 square square feet (15 square meters) in area, with additional power provided by two nickel-cadmium batteries. A dual-propellant system of monomethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide supported a liquid-fueled rocket engine for mid-course correction maneuvers and Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI), with subsequent attitude control achieved by 12 compressed-nitrogen thrusters. Communications were afforded by an S-band transmitter and a pair of dish-like antennas. Meanwhile, the landers traveled to Mars in a “quiescent” state, encapsulated within their aeroshells and attached to the orbiters. Six-sided and three-legged, each lander’s footpads formed an equilateral triangle of more than 7 feet (2.2 meters) when viewed from above. Propulsion during the Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) phase of its mission was provided by hydrazine, with electricity produced by means of a pair of on-board Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs). Aboard each lander was a 200-pound (90 kg) payload, including 360-degree scan cameras, a sampling arm with collector head, a meteorology boom, a seismometer, a biology experiment and Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer to explore Mars’ suitability for microbial life, its chemical composition, weather, seismic nature, magnetic properties and overall appearance. Fully fueled, each orbiter/lander combo weighed about 7,780 pounds (3,530 kg).

Viking 1 roars away from Space Launch Complex (SLC)-41 on 20 August 1975, 40 years ago, today. Photo Credit: NASA

The spacecraft would be launched atop Titan IIIE boosters, supplemented with Centaur upper stages, during August-September 1975. The first Viking flight hardware—in the form of the Titan IIIE core, its strap-on, solid-fueled boosters and the Centaur—arrived in Florida in November-December 1974. This was followed by the delivery of the Viking 1 lander capsule in January 1975, which was quickly subjected to verification checks between its S-band radio transmitter and the Deep Space Network (DSN), and the orbiter in mid-February. These two Mars-bound spacecraft components had been respectively assembled more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) apart and were mated for the first time on 8 March 1975 for their inaugural round of electrical and mechanical interface testing.

The complete Viking 1 orbiter/lander, encapsulated within its payload shroud, was then transferred to Space Launch Complex (SLC)-41 and stacked atop the 157-feet-tall (48.5-meter) Titan IIIE-Centaur for mating tests. It was a troubled time for the Titan IIIE, whose maiden voyage in February 1974 had succumbed to a liquid oxygen turbopump malfunction in the Centaur upper stage and the vehicle had been remotely destroyed by the Range Safety Officer (RSO). Success for the booster had finally come on its second mission in December 1974, when it delivered the joint U.S./West German Helios-A spacecraft aloft, with the launch of Viking 1 slated to be its third operational flight. In total, the Titan IIIE would fly on barely seven occasions between February 1977 and September 1977, with its final pair of missions successfully boosting the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft onto their lengthy voyages of exploration into the outer Solar System and beyond.

Following mating tests, the Viking spacecraft was then de-mated from the Titan IIIE-Centaur stack and returned to the assembly facility for further flight compatibility checks, including a simulated mid-course correction maneuver exercise in mid-April. Despite issues with grounded circuitry, minor communications problems, problematic computer programs and a localized lightning strike, processing continued smoothly, with both Viking 1 and 2 approaching completion of their pre-flight milestones in tandem, allowing either one of them to be launched first. The lightning strike allowed managers to make use of this dual-processing regime, for electrical charges had damaged a pair of pressure transducers inside the Orbiter Propulsion Module, prompting a decision to swap out the Viking 1 unit for that aboard its twin. “The modular approach to building spacecraft had paid off,”explained Ezell and Ezell in On Mars. “To be able to substitute assemblies when required was clearly advantageous.” A backup pressure transducer unit was refurbished, hurriedly upgraded to operational flight unit status and integrated aboard Viking 2.

The Viking 1 landing site. Photo Credit: NASA

In mid-June, the Viking 1 lander capsule was placed into a sterilization chamber, under which it was subjected to extreme temperatures in order to kill all terrestrial organisms and thereby prevent contamination of the Martian surface after touchdown. For more than 43 hours, heated nitrogen gas at a temperature of up to 116.2 degrees Celsius (241.2 degrees Fahrenheit) swirled around the hardware, after which the subsystems were exhaustively tested to ascertain that they had sustained no damage. In the aftermath of this final phase of testing, the Viking 1 lander and orbiter—weighing a combined 7,720 pounds (3,500 kg)—were mated for the final time, ahead of their transfer back out to SLC-41 and integration atop the Titan IIIE-Centaur on 28 July. An operational systems readiness test was concluded the following week and propellants were loaded aboard the booster.

Final countdown operations got underway on 11 August, but the Thrust Vector Control (TVC) valve, responsible for Titan IIIE-Centaur’s directional control, failed to respond correctly during tests and the launch attempt was delayed, then scrubbed. A second attempt on the 14th also came to nothing, following the worrisome discovery that the Viking 1 orbiter’s batteries were producing barely 9 volts—rather than 37 volts—and although it was determined that the problem lay with an external malfunction, it was considered prudent to remove and replace the Viking spacecraft with its twin. “This dual readiness for liftoff,” NASA noted, “prevented a costly delay.” At length, on its third attempt, Viking 1 got underway with a rousing launch at 5:22 p.m. EDT on 20 August and the Titan IIIE successfully delivered its Mars-bound payload into a 102-mile (165 km) orbit, after which the Centaur injected it onto a heliocentric trajectory.

Over the next ten months, Viking 1 journeyed halfway around the Sun. By this stage, its twin, Viking 2, had also been launched, marking the first occasion on which NASA had ever operated as many as four spacecraft—two orbiters and two landers—at the same time, by the same flight control team. Throughout the lengthy cruise, the team and the spacecraft were subjected to exhaustive training tests, including an Uplink Development Exercise in December 1975 to design the primary post-landing mission and several simulated events from February-June 1976 to rehearse everything from Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI) to techniques for sampling the planet’s soil and from the intricately programmed computer sequences dealing with the separation of the lander from the orbiter to its atmospheric entry, descent and touchdown, as well as introducing various anomalies along the way.

By the beginning of June, two weeks before MOI and a month before the descent of the lander to the surface—scheduled for 4 July to coincide with the U.S. Bicentennial—the last full dress rehearsal was conducted flawlessly. On 14 June, the first global images of Mars were returned from the orbiter and, five days later, a perfect MOI burn set the stage for an “orbit-trimming” regime to establish Viking 1 by the 21st into an elliptical site-certification orbit of 940 miles (1,513 km) x 20,500 miles (33,000 km), circling the Red Planet every 24.66 hours. It was the beginning of a spectacular mission, which would see the first Viking soft-lander deposited safely on the equatorial plain of Chryse Planitia somewhat later than intended, on 20 July, kicking off more than six years of uninterrupted operations.

In fact, by the time the Viking 1 lander’s mission ended in November 1982, its on-surface operational record of 2,307 days would remain unbroken for almost three decades, until finally exceeded by NASA’s still-going Opportunity rover in May 2010. In the meantime, from high above, the Viking 1 orbiter imaged the surface at resolutions of between 500 feet (150 meters) and 1,000 feet (300 meters), revealing immense canyons, volcanoes, lava plains, wind-formed features and evidence of ancient surface water. Despite the emphasis upon searching for ancient Martian biology, nothing was found by either the Viking 1 lander or its twin, the Viking 2 lander, which alighted in the vast impact basin of Utopia Planitia. However, these remarkable dual missions—and the four spacecraft which accomplished them—would transform our knowledge of the Red Planet, rewrite the textbooks and provide us with our most complete set of data about Mars for the following quarter-century.

Source/Credit: AmericaSpace | Facebook | americaspace | Twitter

Thank you Ben Evans and the AmericaSpace editorial team for sharing and reflecting upon the #MarsVikings legacy! 

The Viking Mars Missions Education and Preservation Project is focused on preserving the history, artifacts, original documents, and data from the Viking Missions, to inspire current and future leaders and thinkers, and to instill collaboration and equity into missions of tomorrow.

Have a story you’d like to share about the Viking Mars missions? Do you have a favorite Viking moment or discovery? We’d love to hear from you! Tweet to us @MarsVikingTeam or contact us at The Viking Mars Missions Education and Preservation Project.

[marsvikings]

Mars Digital Image Mosaic Globe  |  Viking Orbiter 1

The photomosaic that forms the base for this globe (click here for larger image) was created by merging two global digital image models (DIM's) of Mars-a medium-resolution monochrome mosaic processed to emphasize topographic features and a lower resolution color mosaic emphasizing color and albedo variations.

The medium-resolution (1/256 or roughly 231 m/pixel) monochromatic image model was constructed from about 6,000 images having resolutions of 150-350 m/pixel and oblique illumination (Sun 20 ° -45 ° above the horizon). Radiometric processing was intended to suppress or remove the effects of albedo variations through the use of a high-pass divide filter, followed by photometric normalization so that the contrast of a given topographic slope would be approximately the same in all images.

The global color mosaic was assembled at 1/64 or roughly 864 m/pixel from about 1,000 red- and green-filter images having 500-1,000 m/pixel resolution. These images were first mosaiced in groups, each taken on a single orbit of the Viking spacecraft. The orbit mosaics were then processed to remove spatially and temporally varying atmospheric haze in the overlap regions. After haze removal, the per-orbit mosaics were photometrically normalized to equalize the contrast of albedo features and mosaiced together with cosmetic seam removal. The medium-resolution DIM was used for geometric control of this color mosaic. A green-filter image was synthesized by weighted averaging of the red- and violet-filter mosaics. Finally, the product seen here was obtained by multiplying each color image by the medium-resolution monochrome image. The color balance selected for images in this map series was designed to be close to natural color for brighter, redder regions, such as Arabia Terra and the Tharsis region, but the data have been stretched so that the relatively dark regions appear darker and less red than they actually are.

The images are presented in a projection that portrays the entire surface of Mars in a manner suitable for the production of a globe; the number, size, and placement of text annotations were chosen for a 12-inch globe. Prominent features are labeled with names approved by the International Astronomical Union. A specialized program was used to create the "flower petal" appearance of the images; the area of each petal from 0 to 75 degrees latitude is in the Transverse Mercator projection, and the area from 75 to 90 degrees latitude is in the Lambert Azimuthal Equal-Area projection. The northern hemisphere of Mars is shown on the left, and the southern hemisphere on the right.

 Target Name:  Mars  Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)  Mission:  Viking   Spacecraft:  Viking Orbiter 1  Instrument:  Visual Imaging Subsystem - Camera A   Product Size:  11649 x 5721 pixels (w x h)   Produced By:  U.S. Geological Survey   Addition Date:  2000-11-10   Primary Data Set:  Viking EDRs   

Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS

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Today marks the 40th anniversary for the launch of the Viking 1 lander/orbiter to Mars in 1975, which set the stage - err, launch pads - for subsequent flyby, orbiter, lander, and rover missions. 

Although some of these missions are marked as “failed” attempts, an engineer or flight controller would dismiss this classification, as data from every mission parleyed information for the next. Failures? No. More like “growing pains” in our spacefaring adolescence. 

The year 2015 marks another noteworthy anniversary to which the Viking program laid the foundation for our curiosity and present trajectory for NASA’s #JourneyToMars. 

This wonderfully produced video from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) conveys the breadth of vision and the excitement from, among every aspect of each robotic mission, successfully received data! 

Enjoy, and continue the journey with us as we work to preserve the legacy of the Viking program with The Viking Mars Missions Education and Preservation Project, the #FirstOnMars! 

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How Viking 1 Won the Martian Space Race

Forty years ago today, NASA launched the Viking 1 spacecraft to Mars, where it would become the first probe to achieve a soft landing on the Martian surface. The touchdown was a major milestone in the exploration of Mars, providing the first images and data from the red planet, which had been obsessively studied from afar for centuries.

"The excitement was overwhelming!" said Viking mission director Tom Young in a 2006 retrospective of the landing. "People were hugging each other, jumping up and down—doing all those things you do when an extraordinary event has taken place.”

Viking 1 went on to become one of the most productive landers ever deployed on Mars, operating for 2,307 days before it finally shut down on November 13, 1982. It held the record for the longest Martian surface mission for decades, until the Opportunity rover finally beat it out in 2010 (and that little trooper is still going, by the way).

Because it was the first lander to study Mars from the surface, practically everything Viking 1 did resulted in surprising discoveries. For example, apparently it was something of a public sensation when Viking images revealed that Mars's skies aren't blue.

The lander also widely sampled the planet's volcanic soil to learn its chemical composition, and rooted out evidence that rivers and lakes had once flowed at the landing site. It ran numerous tests to search for life, the results of which are still contested today. And it took lots of pictures—about 1,400.

Moreover, on a geopolitical level, NASA’s success with Viking 1 was kind of like winning the Martian Triple Crown against the Soviet space program. Over the course of the 1960s and early 1970s, the USSR desperately tried to get a jump on NASA with regards to Mars exploration, and launched well over a dozen flyby, orbiter, and landing attempts.

These missions failed hard and often. Just check out the below table of the first attempted Mars encounters.

NASA, meanwhile, launched fewer spacecraft, but invested a lot more energy into its missions—a quality over quantity approach. In this way, they nabbed the first successful flyby of Mars with Mariner 4 in 1964, and followed it up with two more lucrative Mariner flybys in 1969.

In response, the Soviets gave up on Mars flybys altogether to focus on orbiters and landers instead. But there, too, it struggled, and NASA eventually secured the title for first successful Mars orbiter with Mariner 9 in 1971. The USSR was able to pull off the first hard landing (read: crash) on Mars the same year, but gave up on exploration of the planet after Viking 1 touched down.

Given how sophisticated the Soviets were in other areas, like Venusian exploration, it’s strange that it simply could not get the hang of Mars missions.

Even weirder is the fact that the problem still persists. All four of Russia’s attempts to visit Mars post-Viking have also failed, most recently the 2011 Phobos-Grunt mission. NASA, meanwhile, has been more or less nailing it with powerhouses like the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, the MAVEN orbiter, and Curiosity—the most sophisticated rover yet.

Fortunately, other nations are also pioneering their own Martian missions—most notably the European Union and India—so the future of the planet’s exploration is already shaping up to be a lot more diverse.

But all of these missions stem from the success of Viking 1 (and its companion Viking 2), which gave humanity its first glimpse of the harsh, beautiful Martian landscape, and emboldened NASA to explore it more fully. Though the lander itself is long dead, its legacy as a pivotal early victory in Martian exploration is alive and well, 40 years on.

Source: BECKY FERREIRA, MOTHERBOARD.VICE; Images Credit: NASA

Related: The Viking Mars Missions Education and Preservation Project

@MarsVikingTeam  ||  #MarsVikings  ||  #FirstOnMars

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Viking Orbiters: The Dynamic Duo of Mars Exploration

The Viking Mars Education and Preservation Project (VMMEPP)

August 7, 2015

We don't hear about Orbiter missions too often. The news headlines and sound bites grudgingly relinquished to space missions these days are generally relegated to the more "dramatic" launches and descents; and frequently, only those launches that by mathematical inevitability don't reach their destination or even exit the atmosphere.

First, let's reflect for a moment on the odds versus success rates of launches. We have an incredible track record with successful launches if we pause and recognize the multitude of mishaps avoided by the hard work and dedication of design engineers, test technicians, materials experts, assemblers and managers. In fact, if we had the recalls that autos do these days, or the deaths due to design or manufacturing errors, we wouldn't have an aerospace program. So, before we get to the Orbiters, let's congratulate the individuals and institutes for all their achievements, and be thankful their success rates are definitively set apart from, well, any industry, ever. And a special shout out to the men and women of Martina Marietta, who worked on our own Titan III-E with Centaur, that safely bore our science labs through the earth atmosphere and to their destination, Mars. We will share more on the men and women of Titan in a dedicated post!

Now that's done, imagine trying to write a letter to your favorite Aunt in New York City without an address, but aware that she lives in the region. You send the letter anyway and hope it gets to her. Most would equate this kind of communication attempt with sending a message in a bottle! 

Although we have sent subsequent spacecraft without dedicated Orbiters successfully following Viking, in 1975 the image data from Mariner missions was still low resolution - at 1000 meters - and the atmospheric data incomplete enough to be extremely risky, financially and technically. But the Viking Orbiters revolutionized this; and one could say, saved the Viking mission when we reflect on the fact that we had to do a second site certification when the Orbiters arrived. The Viking Orbiter images improved resolution by a factor of ten (we are getting closer to Aunties house now), and with the new images, we were able to reevaluate and select safer sites for landing. 

This didn't make it a sure thing though. Remember, very little was known about the topography and meteorology until Viking successfully built that baseline information, which has since served every subsequent Mars mission...

The Viking Orbiters were our guideposts, beacons, and messengers that made it possible to reduce the risk for the Viking Landers, though it was still an incredibly suspenseful endeavor (think 20 minutes of terror, not 7!)

Even Vikings themselves (team members of the mission) have remarked in recent interviews with the Viking Mars Missions Education and Preservation Project (VMMEPP) that aside from exceptional planning, engineering, luck was also a factor in missing the boulders that could have penetrated the underside of the Landers had they touched down a few feet closer to such geologic objects as Big Joe.

Of all Orbiting planetary science missions, the Viking Orbiters were the most crucial toward advancing Orbital insertion, planetary science, and robotics while further expanding our presence on a new world that so happened to be our neighboring planet! 

There were a few different mission plans considered initially, but a dual Orbiter / Lander mission was the final decision. 

But the key roles the Orbiters played was at the time overshadowed by the Landers; and indeed, the "search for life" was the often repeated headline of the day.

But just as you are not likely to take an obviously blind chance that your Aunt might get her unaddressed letter, the Mission Design Team opted for Orbiters to build in redecisioning opportunities (such as those excersized when the Orbiters arrived) and it was determined not only were the original sites not satisfactory, but the established landing date of July 4th would not be kept either.

Despite Presidential "encouragement" and public opinion to land on Independence Day, the ever level and resolute leader Jim Martin, made the call to postpone and reconsider landing sites for Viking. But the decision to delay the mission was also risky, as the window and periods to decide were narrow, and the hero on the last day, was the Orbiter. Or more accurately the men and women (many, students and interns), working like mad with exactos and tape, hand stitching images from the Orbiters together to map the surface of target areas and count boulders with the new higher resolution Orbiter cameras.

And yes, they actually hand-counted boulders (Viking Intern Jayne Aubele above) from photos received from the data sets the Orbiters communicated to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Target landing areas were examined extensively to extrapolate to determine the likelihood of boulders large enough to caution or damage the en route Landers' undercarriage.

Today we have extraordinarily pristine images and have fully mapped the surface of Mars (in some cases up to 1 meter resolution), courtesy of NASA’s currently active HIRISE / MRO missions (below). 

Victoria Crater (above) via the HiRISE and MRO data sets (NASA/JPL, University of Arizona)

But then, the imaging technology was not as good and the planet not yet fully mapped. Add to that the limited time to decide where to land, and you have a phenomenal task (considering that even today we build a few years into mission planning for site certification). After all, we aren't just there to take pretty pictures, we had a fully equipped lab aboard Viking, and we were there to do science!

The Leadership of Henry Norris and his Orbiter team, Hal Mazursky and Norm Crabill leading the cross functional team in the first site certification, and the final decision just before descent, including Tim Mutch and his Imaging Group, the Orbiter Scientists, Hugh Kieffer PI of the Infrared Thermal Mapper (IRTM), FPAG and LPAG Teams and many others that stayed up night after night as the window narrowed (while reviewing hundreds of images, listening to countless debates from each science team weighing in to optimize the results for their experiments), and the punch card operators and DSN technicians in Canberra, Madrid and Goldstone tracking Viking carefully while informing G&C teams that kept the craft on path, and countless others... 

That level of focus, and dedication during the second en route site certification, made for a LOT of heros. And the Orbiters made that possible.

(Above image is Mike Carr, Planetary Geologist on Viking working in the Viking Orbiter Lab at JPL) Because of these men, women AND the Orbiters, the very landing itself was successful, along with some incredible engineering design by the Martin Marietta folks (but you'll have to follow us to get that nitty gritty in another post!)

What made the Orbiters so important?

Many things, including their own science, which will be shared in a later post. But a mission critical element was the safety of the Landers, which required knowledge of what was on the surface and that was limited in previous missions to 1000 meters with Mariner 9. 

Viking Orbiters improved dramatically with new camera technology with the aid of Ball Brothers Research Corporation imaging experts, who continued to improve the art of imaging in space with later missions. The above image of symmetrical dunes was photographed from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona).

In addition to mapping the entire surface of Mars at better resolution, the Viking Orbiters began preliminary mapping of Mars’ natural satellites: Phobos and Deimos! 

What was learned by those focused on the Martian moons from Viking Orbiters were the first significant data sets.

The other critical function of the Orbiters was to communicate between the Landers and Earth. The S-band antennae were the primary link for data, as limited to low bandwidth communications would not have been sufficient to meet the science and imaging needs of the mission. (Are we really loving our Orbiters now!?)

August 7, 1976 celebrates the anniversary the Viking Orbiter II, and the extraordinary achievement for humankind and the developing familiarity with the solar system we inhabit.

The Viking Mars Missions Education and Preservation Project is focused on preserving the history, artifacts, original documents, and data from the Viking Missions, to inspire current and future leaders and thinkers, and to instill collaboration and equity into missions of tomorrow.

@MarsVikingTeam  ||  #MarsVikings ||  #FirstOnMars

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S/O to Robert Zubrin @TheMarsSociety for supporting the @MarsVikingTeam!

#MarsVikings  #FirstOnMars

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“The Viking Lander is a superbly instrumented and designed machine. It extends human capabilities to other and alien landscapes. By some standards, it’s about as smart as a grasshopper, by others, only as intelligent as a bacterium. There’s nothing demeaning in these comparisons; it took nature hundreds of millions of years to evolve a bacterium, and billions of years to make a grasshopper. With only a little experience in this sort of business, we’re getting pretty good at it.”

-- Carl Sagan (Cosmos: A Personal Voyage)

#MarsVikings

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Viking 1 reached orbital entry June 19, 1976, landing on Mars July 20, 1976.

The Viking program was the first successful interplanetary landing mission, forever altering history with its ‘Genealogy of Influence’ impacting engineering, science, operational models, computing advancements, as well as significant cultural and economic impact.

(Above) A panoramic view of the surface of Mars was photographed by Viking Lander 1 in 1976. The world science community anxiously waited as the first photographs were processed at JPL. Part of the Lander's meteorology boom, which supports a miniature weather station, is visible in the center of this picture. Source: Goldstone DSN/NASA/JPL

"Simply put, Viking laid the foundation for our planetary programs. Not just where we have the ability to go, and not just where we should land, but what kind of things we should be looking for once we do."

-- Daniel S. Goldin, NASA Administrator during Mars/Viking 25th Anniversary

Viking was unique for a variety of scientific reasons, operating in a state of many unknowns, informed only by poor images from earth telescopes, Mariner 9 and previous flybys, providing very little hard data with which to plan and execute this complex mission. Vikings’ journey from concept and design to implementation and achievement set a precedent for future Mars missions and contributed to technology development outside of the aerospace sector due to the design/engineering of both aerospace elements and instrumentation that resulted in catalysts for new technologies which have influenced and aimpacted various industries.

Successful beyond expectation, the Viking program provided the basis for continued examination of both engineering solutions and scientific results that 40 years later are still driving mission planning, the search for extra-terrestrial organics as well as the learnings that came from the instrumentation, computing designed for Viking, and the mission operations models that were developed to address the “firsts” of the mission.

(Above) A view of the rocky Martian topography from Viking. Source: NASA/JPL

As the aerospace industry is steadily shifting from government funded, collaborative academic efforts to commercial sector entities with rapid global acceleration and shorter development cycles, it is important to understand the history of these successes and to integrate their lessons into future missions. Ultimately, this knowledge is vital in order to build a workforce that has the mission critical decision-making and problem-solving capabilities; and the root science, computing, engineering and mission operations skills to navigate the planning and implementation of a mission in a global collaborative environment.

"The Viking mission looms like a legendary giant; an incredible success against which all present and future missions will be measured."

-- Doug McCuiston, Mars Exploration Program Director, NASA

Currently there are 4 Viking Lander vehicles on display, but only one (VL3) is flight ready. Built by Martin Marietta, saved from scrap and owned by Rachel Tillman (Founder of The Viking Mars Missions Education and Preservation Project). The VL3, along with the unprecedented collection of archives and artifacts, constitute the most robust body of Viking work and data that span the sciences, instrument design, engineering, computing, organizational management, missions planning, and personal history of Viking.

Despite the models and test units at the other facilities (JPL, Smithsonian, CA Science Center) there is no in-depth public education on Viking, though there are small collections of oral histories only of the upper management roles, as well as some very basic facts distributed throughout numerous agencies and institutes, including NASA. The decentralized and incomplete records of Viking in these various places leads to a superficial understanding of Viking, as well as a gross misunderstanding of the data and history by today’s educators and commentators. This leads to inaccuracies in reporting and gaps in the record of significant data sets and lessons from Viking.

The Viking Mars Missions Education and Preservation Project (VMEPP) is aggregating and protecting Viking materials, artifacts, and conducting oral history interviews with Viking contributors from all NASA Centers and Contractors, with which we will create educational materials and exhibits as well as an Online Viking Library. This collection - and the extensive Oral Histories already and continuing to be conducted - have the potential to demonstrate the historic, scientific, and human achievement impact that Viking has had nationally and globally. It also has the breadth and depth to teach the science, math, problem solving, collaboration and other lessons to supplement schools’ teaching, which represents critical knowledge that has become fragmented since Viking.

“Mathematics, science and logical thought processes are the foundation of engineering, science and technology. A thorough understanding of their fundamentals and interrelationships is essential. Without this understanding, there is little potential for both an informed government, capable of offering reasonable legislative choices, and an educated electorate, capable of understanding the choices and making the wise decisions necessary to ensure a productive and secure future.”

-- James E. Tillman, Program Founder and Viking Meteorology Team Member

(Above) Professor James E. Tillman began inspiring youth in their pursuit of the sciences in the 70s and 80s. He spoke at schools around Washington and other regions, bringing instruments and diagrams of Viking and asking questions to pique the curiosity of his young audiences. The VIking Lander was used as an inspiration to build spacecraft, orbiters, and rovers, as can be seen in these photographs from the 1970s and 1980s. It was the beginning of exploration for many, and from this and other early educational programs, a generation of new explorers evolved. Students were introduced to engineering and science designs and concepts through outreach by James E. Tillman and his daughter Rachel. Source: VMMEPP

One of the centerpiece educational interactive experiences being developed (currently referred to as “The Genealogy of Influence”) reflects the simple but profound message that human development throughout time is influenced by discoveries we make, both accidental and intentional, tools we create, events, and leaders that emerge from inspirations around them. Viking embodied all of these. Along with the history of the mission, we will demonstrate the impact Viking had on the following areas:

Individuals' contributions as Scientists, Teachers, Artists, Philanthropists, Leaders

Bodies of knowledge from scientific discoveries

Instruments, technologies, and products developed for or influenced by Viking

Works of art influenced by Viking and subsequent Mars exploration

Impact to the economy

Models of innovation and collaboration

Viking was a project that involved, inspired and created a legacy of scientific discovery, technological development and entrepreneurial/civic leadership comprised of such leaders as Dr. Carl Sagan, Gentry Lee, Dr. Gerald Soffen, Dr. Gil Levin, Dr. Kenneth Carpenter, Dr. Bruce Jakosky, Jeremy Jaech, Charlie Strauss, and many others to be highlighted in this project.

(Above) Viking Launch Team. Courtesy of Bud Reynolds, NASA Engineering Group Leader, Viking Project Office, KSC. Source: VMEPP

We’d love to hear perspectives from you. Feel free to share what is significant to you about Viking by sending an email to [email protected] and include "Historical Moments" in the header.

Our mission is to preserve the history of the great minds and work of all who’ve contributed to the Viking Missions while sharing it with others to inspire and educate the next generation of leaders and thinkers.

Welcome to the Viking Mars Education and Preservation Project, and thank you for sharing our journey. 

-- @MarsVikingTeam