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30th Anniversary of Viking Landing on Mars
ewhac writes "30 years ago today, mankind paid our first visit to Mars. Viking 1 made its powered landing on the red planet on 20 July 1976 at 05:12 after an 11-month flight. Images and data from the probe were soon seen all over Earth as we got our first close-up look at our planetary neighbor. Viking 2 landed a few weeks later. Like the Pathfinder rovers that followed in 1997, Viking was expected to last but a short time -- only three months -- but instead continued to gather and return data for six years."
Those vikings! First they colonized North America. Now we find out they went to Mars too! They were one tough bunch! Masters of intergallactic navigation.
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Why? Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Pssh that wasn't even real!
In fact, it's cold as hell.
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
And there's no one there to raise them, if you did.
You know the ads are bogus script tricks when a Google search turns up an ad that says, "Compare prices on Viking Mars Landers and save!". For NASA, it is a little too late to think about that.
Table-ized A.I.
To get the funding, NASA had to tell congress that it was actually an invasion mission in which the Lunarian race would be freed from the evil Man in the Moon.