“If Mars formed life, then life on Earth could have been seeded by life on Mars, making every life form on Earth descended from Martians.”
-Niel deGrasse Tyson
The potential chance of Life on Mars is a topic of enthrallment among the astronomers, astrophile, astrobiologists and so on. The possibility was predicted due to its closeness and similarity with the Earth and some evidence which professed that the surface environment of Mars had liquid water and may have habitable microorganisms. NASA’s Viking Project was the first US mission to touch down a spacecraft successfully on the Red Planet. The prime objective of the Viking Project was to study the Martian atmosphere. The Project consisted of a pair of identical spacecraft Viking 1 and Viking 2 which are lander and orbiter respectively.
Precisely Forty-five years back from now, On 21st August 1975, 2:52 am IST, Viking 1 lander the unmanned planetary probe was launched. The Viking 1 lander landed on the western slope of Chryse Planitia (the Plains of Gold). This mission was scheduled to carry on for 90 days after landing on the Red Planet. But the operation went far beyond the designed lifetime. It continued for four years. Viking Orbiter 1 wrapped up its mission on 7th August 1980 while the Viking Orbiter 2 concluded its mission on 25th July 1978.
Because of the change in accessible sunlight, two of the landers were powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators, these are devices that generate electricity from the heat given off by the natural decay of plutonium. The power source permitted long-term science explorations that otherwise would not have been possible. Viking Lander 1 made its final data transmission to Earth on November 11, 1982. The last information transfer from Viking Lander 2 arrived at Earth on April 11, 1980.
Read about the 43 years of Voyager 2 in Space
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