Mars and the History of Antacids

An anonymous reader writes "NASA's retrospective today on the 1976 Mars Viking mission describes the first probe to orbit another planet, and the first biology experiments based on soil sampling. Program managers maintained a dynamic 'worry list', which included a 1970's computer that opened like a wireframe book. The all-important biology experiments could not be tested prior to launch, then lightning struck the probe components (at Kennedy's Explosive Safe Area Building)."

Comments

Re:very short article

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a serialized version of a 500 page book. Not sure a single one-page mission summary in one chunk would load in your browser all at once...They say it is introductory, with no yay-team in 'not testable'

Re:Not very lucky

[Professor D]

Read the article carefully. Lightning struck the _building_. The area around Kennedy is pretty much flat IIRC, with just NASA buildings standing up tall in the middle of nowhere. I imagine lightning strikes are not uncommon.

I'm surprised they dont' have massive faraday cages around certain areas in those buildings though. The idea of having a multi-billion dollar experiment ruined by EMP from a close-call stray bolt of lightning would scare me more than the bolt itself.

Re:Not the first

[Anonymous Coward]

Anderson accepted, to a degree, that 'one can argue that the first mission to Mars should have biological emphasis,' but the realities were 'that the biological and organic experiments were not ready when the payload was selected, are not ready now, and probably will not be ready in 1975.' First here

Biology platform was not tested!

[SysKoll]

The one really interesting item in this otherwise mundane article is the revelation that the biology experiment platform was delivered too late to be adequately tested.

This gives a new credibility to the scientists that are challenging the results of the Viking lander biological experiments. Basically, we cannot even be sure these instruments were performing as designed.

So if the ESA and NASA probes send results that contradict Viking's in some way, nobody should be surprised.

Little green men haven't been ruled out yet! -:)

-- SysKoll

Re:Not very lucky

[Dun Malg]

EMP from a close-call stray bolt of lightning

EMP's (such as those from nuclear weapons) can cause fairly dangerous inductive currents in metal objects. Electrical arcs through the air (lightning) cause very little EM radiation, which in turn causes negligible inductive currents. Notice how lightning causes just a little pop on an AM radio? That's the EMP from the lightning amplified and it's barely audible, much less dangerous.