11/11/2023 0 Comments Viking mars landingIt has been flown by and photographed at a distance and encircled by both United States and Soviet robot vehicles. Next to the moon, Mars has been the focus of the most attention by space explorers. The flight is being directed here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a NASA center operated by the California Institute of Technology. The project is managed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Langley Research Center at Hampton, Va. The $1 billion Viking project is the nation's most expensive unmanned space exploration effort and was seven years in preparation. 9 and is scheduled to enter Martian orbit Aug. Viking 2, an identical spacecraft, was launched last Sept. 20 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. was launched on its 11 ‐ month, half ‐ billion ‐ mile journey last Aug. “I'm extremely confident we've got a very fine lander,” Mr. It was the first time the lander had been fully checked out by radio commands, since last November. Thomas Young, the mission director, announced that a thorough five ‐ hour checkout of the landing craft, while it was still attached to the orbiter revealed that all its systems were “go” for the landing attempt. Ford called the project a “brilliant unmanned mission to Mars, the most ambitious of all deep space explorations.”Īt a news conference here today, A. In a proclamation issued by the White House, Mr. President Ford, taking note of the two events, proclaimed July 20, 1976, as Space Exploration Day. About an hour after the landing the first pictures should begin taking form on television screens at the control center here at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.īy coincidence, the first American touchdown on Mars is set to come on the seventh anniversary of the July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landing on the moon, the first time men walked on another body in space. The two photographs are to be transmitted from the Lander to the orbiting Viking 1 mother ship, tape‐recorded and then relayed to earth. If the landing is successful, the 1,300‐pound spacecraft will begin immediately to take black‐and‐white pictures of its footpad and then of the surrounding landscape of Chryse Planitia, the so‐called Gold Plain of Mars, one of the smoothest regions on a planet that is otherwise marked by towering volcanic peaks, deep chasms, craters and sand dunes and the meandering channels through which floods of water once must have coursed. It will take 19 minutes for the first radio signals telling the condition of the lander to reach flight controllers here. Project officials reported to night that all preparations were proceeding smoothly toward a touchdown by the unmanned, three‐legged landing craft at 7:53 A.M. PASADENA, Calif., July 19-The exploration of Mars by camera, soil scoop and life‐detection instruments is scheduled to begin early tomorrow when the Viking I landing craft should be settling gently on a broad arid plain of the planet.
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