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."

Comments

Russian probe hard to verify

[Tablizer]

There is no way to verify if Russian probe ever landed. The landing story may have been propoganda or exaggerated. The Soviets had a repution for that. At least Viking sent photos, soil readings, etc. as evidence. If you fake photos and soil chemistry then you could be in deep doodoo when another nation lands and finds something completely different.

Plus, the Soviets tended to use a shotgun approach where they kept sending in volume until something worked. This is kind of cheating in a way. Actually, the Soviets got a little too bold and over-engineered in some cases. One (failed) Mars lander had a micro-rover on a teather. If they kept it simple and simply returned images, they could have sent even more (smaller) probes and had a higher chance of success with evidence to show for it.

Why build a micro-rover when you even have multiple problems just plain landing? For example just put simple probes on big parachutes and let them thunk down with a wire-mess bumper instead of having intricate, timed retro-rockets. (This is sort of what the european Hyugens did, although Titan's atmosphere is thick so only needed a small chute.)

Re:Humans?

[mihaibu]

kids are gay