NASA launched the Viking 1 Mars mission
On this day · 20 August 1975
A four-ton spacecraft began an eleven-month trek that ended in the first long-lived landing on Mars.
On August 20, 1975, a Titan/Centaur rocket lifted off from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 5:22 p.m. EDT, sending the four-ton Viking 1 spacecraft on a half-billion-mile journey to Mars.
Viking 1 was really two machines in one: an orbiter to map the planet from above and a lander to set down on its surface. After arriving in Mars orbit in mid-1976, the lander separated and touched down on the rusty plains of Chryse Planitia on July 20, 1976 — the first U.S. craft to operate successfully on the Martian surface.
Its cameras returned the first clear close-ups of another planet’s ground, a salmon-pink desert under a dusty sky.
Designed to last just 90 days, the Viking 1 lander kept working for more than six years, hunting for signs of life and reshaping how we picture our neighbor world.
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