Viking 1 made the first successful US landing on Mars
On this day · 20 July 1976
On July 20, 1976, a NASA lander settled onto a Martian plain and beamed back the first photos ever taken from the surface.
On July 20, 1976 — by coincidence the seventh anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing — NASA’s Viking 1 lander separated from its orbiter and touched down at Chryse Planitia, settling onto the red plain at 11:53 UT. It was the first U.S. spacecraft to land and operate on the surface of Mars.
Within minutes it returned the first close-up images of another planet’s ground: a field of soil and scattered rocks beneath a dusty sky. Onboard experiments scooped and chemically analyzed the soil to search for signs of life; the results were famously ambiguous.
Viking 1 kept working for over six years, far outliving its planned mission.
Its longevity record on the Martian surface stood until the Opportunity rover surpassed it in 2010.
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