Viking 1's Titan III-E rocket roared to life Aug. 20, 1975, as the spacecraft set forth on its nearly 500-million-mile journey to Mars. Fully fueled, the orbiter-lander duo weighed about 7,800 pounds.

On July 20, 1976, the Viking 1 Lander became the first spacecraft to safely touch down on the surface of Mars. brought Mars to life and set the stage for years of Martian exploration.

Ultimately, The Viking team would take a mock-up spacecraft to White Sands National Monument and use a balloon to lift it to an altitude of 100,000 feet.

The Viking spacecraft arrived at Mars in the summer of 1976 and passed through superior conjunction on November 25, as Mars passed directly behind the Sun as seen from Earth. This provided researchers ...

LITTLETON, Colo. (CBS4) - Lockheed Martin is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its Viking lander. Viking 1 was the first spacecraft to land on Mars, and it has influenced almost every mission to ...

In June 1972, NASA's Langley Research Center hired Martin Marietta Corporation to look at using spacecraft based on the planned Viking Mars lander and orbiter designs to explore the tiny martian ...

The first Viking lander touched down on Mars 30 years ago this week. We look back at the Mars Viking missions with Joel Levine, senior research scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center.

(Phys.org)—In 1976, two Viking landers became the first US spacecraft from Earth to touch down on Mars. They took the first high-resolution images of the planet, surveyed the planet's ...

Space. OTD In Space – August 7: Viking 1 Orbiter Shuts Down. Posted: August 14, 2024 | Last updated: July 5, 2025. On Aug. 7, 1980, NASA's Viking 1 spacecraft ended its epic and historic mission ...

Forty years ago, the Viking spacecraft landed on Mars. Now, employees at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, are digitizing microfilm from the mission so that anyone can ...

A new Viking Cruises ship debuting this week in Europe has a surprise feature: A high-tech planetarium. The 26-seat attraction at the top of the 930-passenger Viking Orion had been kept a secret ...