.jpg)
Joseph loves Astronomy and they have been talking about the Viking program and the Viking 2, that entered orbit around Mars, on a day like today in 1976.
The Viking program consisted of a pair of identical American space probes, Viking 1 and Viking 2, which landed on Mars in 1976.
Each spacecraft was composed of two main parts: an orbiter designed to photograph the surface of Mars from orbit, and a lander designed to study the planet from the surface. The orbiters also served as communication relays for the landers once they touched down.
The Viking program grew from NASA's earlier, even more ambitious, Voyager Mars program, which was not related to the successful Voyager deep space probes of the late 1970s.
Viking 1 was launched on August 20, 1975, and the second craft, Viking 2, was launched on September 9, 1975, both riding atop Titan IIIE rockets with Centaur upper stages.
Viking 1 entered Mars orbit on June 19, 1976, with Viking 2 following on August 7.
After orbiting Mars for more than a month and returning images used for landing site selection, the orbiters and landers detached; the landers then entered the Martian atmosphere and soft-landed at the sites that had been chosen.
The Viking 1 lander touched down on the surface of Mars on July 20, 1976, more than two weeks before Viking 2's arrival in orbit.
Viking 2 then successfully soft-landed on September 3. The orbiters continued imaging and performing other scientific operations from orbit while the landers deployed instruments on the surface.
More information: NASA
The project cost was roughly US$1 billion at the time of launch, equivalent to about $5 billion in 2020 dollars.
The mission was considered successful and is credited with helping to form most of the body of knowledge about Mars through the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The primary objectives of the two Viking orbiters were to transport the landers to Mars, perform reconnaissance to locate and certify landing sites, act as communications relays for the landers, and to perform their own scientific investigations. Each orbiter, based on the earlier Mariner 9 spacecraft, was an octagon approximately 2.5 m across.
The fully fueled orbiter-lander pair had a mass of 3527 kg. After separation and landing, the lander had a mass of about 600 kg and the orbiter 900 kg. The total launch mass was 2328 kg, of which 1445 kg were propellant and attitude control gas. The eight faces of the ring-like structure were 0.4572 m high and were alternately 1.397 and 0.508 m wide.
The overall height was 3.29 m from the lander attachment points on the bottom to the launch vehicle attachment points on top. There were 16 modular compartments, 3 on each of the 4 long faces and one on each short face.
Four solar panel wings extended from the axis of the orbiter, the distance from tip to tip of two oppositely extended solar panels was 9.75 m.
More information: Jet Propulsion Laboratory-NASA
It is the closest planet that has all the resources needed
to support life and technological civilization.
Its complexity uniquely demands the skills of human explorers,
who will pave the way for human settlers.
Robert Zubrin
No comments:
Post a Comment