Forty years ago today (July 20), NASA's Viking 1 Mars lander became the first American spacecraft to touch down safely on the Red Planet.

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.

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.

On this day in tech history, the Viking spacecraft passed through superior conjunction at Mars, where it could be used in an experiment to test general relativity.

PASADENA, Calif — In the early summer of 1976, the engineers and scientists of NASA's Viking mission hoped to do something no one had ever done before: land a fully operational spacecraft on Mars.

Before launching the Viking spacecraft, the researchers tested the experimental protocol on a wide variety of terrestrial soils from harsh environments, from Death Valley to Antarctica.

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 ...

Viking Data Lives 40 Years LaterForty years ago, NASA’s Viking mission made history when it became the first mission to successfully land a fully operational spacecraft on Mars. This mission ...

On Aug. 7, 1980, NASA's Viking 1 spacecraft ended its epic and historic mission on the Red Planet. Viking 1 was the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars. It was one of two Viking missions ...

All the Latest Game Footage and Images from Redgar: The Space Viking An explosive, story-driven top-down shooter with vibrant pixel graphics and a pumping soundtrack. Fight your way through ...

When NASA's Viking 1 lander made history as the first spacecraft to touch down on Mars on July 20, 1976, it sent back images of a landscape no one was expecting.