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Star Stuff: An Exploratory Case Study of the Cosmos Television Franchise

Viking 1's 30th!

20 July 2006 Viking 1 landed 30 years ago today, on 20 July 1976. It was the first U.S. landing on Mars and a very exciting time for Mars exploration. Since that time, four additional spacecraft have successfully landed on Mars and conducted their science investigations. Today, new missions to the martian surface are in the works, with landings expected in 2008 (Phoenix) and 2010 (Mars Science Laboratory). The Viking 1 lander is difficult to see in Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) images. The western Chryse Planitia landing site is often obscured by dust hazes and occasional storms, especially during northern winter, which would otherwise be the best time to look for the lander from orbit because the sun casts longer shadows in winter. When the atmosphere is clearest, in portions of the spring and summer, the sun is higher in the sky as seen from MGS's orbit. The spacecraft always passes over the landing site region around 2 p.m. in the afternoon. The suite of pictures shown here describes the best MOC view of the landing site. These were previously released in May 2005, but the MOC team felt that 20 July 2006 is an appropriate time to review this story. The first figure (left) visually tells how the lander was found. The initial observations of the location of Viking 1, as originally determined by members of the Viking science team based on sightlines to various crater rims seen in the lander images (black lines), did not show the detailed features we knew from the lander pictures (middle) to be in the area. Using geodetic measurements, the late Merton Davies of the RAND Corporation, a MGS MOC Co-Investigator, suggested that we should image areas to the east and north of where Viking 1 was thought to be. Timothy J. Parker of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, California), using sightlines to crater rims seen in the lander images (white lines), deduced a location very close to that suggested by Davies. The MOC image of that location, acquired in 2003, showed additional near-field features (rocks associated with a nearby crater) that closely matched the Viking 1 images (center and right frame, where B denotes "Volkswagen Rock"). The inset (upper right) is an enlargement that shows the location of the Viking 1 lander. The MOC image of the Viking 1 lander site (right) was acquired during a test of the MGS Pitch and Roll Observation (PROTO) technique conducted on 11 May 2003. (Following initial tests, the "c" part of "cPROTO" was begun by adding compensation for the motion of the planet to the technique). The PROTO or cPROTO approach allows MOC to obtain images with better than its nominal 1.5 meters (5 ft) per pixel resolution. The image shown here (right) was map projected at 50 centimeters (~20 inches) per pixel. The full 11 May 2003 image can be viewed in the MOC Gallery, it is image R05-00966. In addition to celebrating the 30th anniversary of the first U.S. robotic Mars landing, we note that 20 July is also the 37th anniversary of the first human landing on the Moon, on 20 July 1969. There are two dates that are most sacred in the space business (three, if you count the 4 October 1957 launch of Sputnik 1). The other date is 12 April, which celebrates the 1961 launch of the first human in space, and the 1981 launch of the first space shuttle orbiter.

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1. A NEW VIEW OF MARS NASA MARINER & VIKING MISSION PROMOTIONAL FILM 59074 This 1970's NASA movie shows the results of the Mariner 9 mission -- which produced hundreds of photographs of the planet's surface, creating a new understanding of the planet's geography and atmosphere. At 7:30 , the film discusses the 1976 Viking mission including the dropping of a lander onto the planet's surface. The film speculates that the lander could find life on Mars, and shows at 8:00 possible types of Martian life that could be encountered, including creatures that extract water from rocks, or microscopic organisms. Mariner 9 (Mariner Mars '71 / Mariner-I) was an unmanned NASA space probe that contributed greatly to the exploration of Mars and was part of the Mariner program. Mariner 9 was launched toward Mars on May 30, 1971 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and reached the planet on November 14 of the same year, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit another planet – only narrowly beating the Soviets' Mars 2 and Mars 3, which both arrived within a month. After months of dust storms it managed to send back clear pictures of the surface. Mariner 9 returned 7329 images over the course of its mission, which concluded in October 1972. The Viking program consisted of a pair of American space probes sent to Mars, Viking 1 and Viking 2. 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 III-E rockets with Centaur upper stages. Viking 1 entered Mars orbit on June 19, 1976, with Viking 2 following suit 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, and was joined by the Viking 2 lander on September 3. The orbiters continued imaging and performing other scientific operations from orbit while the landers deployed instruments on the surface. The project cost roughly 1 billion USD in 1970s dollars, equivalent to about 11 billion USD in 2016 dollars. It was highly successful and formed most of the body of knowledge about Mars through the late 1990s and early 2000s. We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting? Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example: "01:00:12:00 -- President Roosevelt is seen meeting with Winston Churchill at the Quebec Conference." This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
2. Viking 1 Launch
3. Plains West of Viking Lander 2 Image PSP_001435_2280 was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft on November 16, 2006. The complete image is centered at 47.7 degrees latitude, 134.0 degrees East longitude. The range to the target site was 316.0 km (197.5 miles). At this distance the image scale is 31.6 cm/pixel (with 1 x 1 binning) so objects ~95 cm across are resolved. The image shown here has been map-projected to 25 cm/pixel and north is up. The image was taken at a local Mars time of 3:11 PM and the scene is illuminated from the west with a solar incidence angle of 49 degrees, thus the sun was about 41 degrees above the horizon. At a solar longitude of 136.2 degrees, the season on Mars is Northern Summer. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment is operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson, and the instrument was built by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corp., Boulder, Colo.
4. Viking 1's 30th! 20 July 2006 Viking 1 landed 30 years ago today, on 20 July 1976. It was the first U.S. landing on Mars and a very exciting time for Mars exploration. Since that time, four additional spacecraft have successfully landed on Mars and conducted their science investigations. Today, new missions to the martian surface are in the works, with landings expected in 2008 (Phoenix) and 2010 (Mars Science Laboratory). The Viking 1 lander is difficult to see in Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) images. The western Chryse Planitia landing site is often obscured by dust hazes and occasional storms, especially during northern winter, which would otherwise be the best time to look for the lander from orbit because the sun casts longer shadows in winter. When the atmosphere is clearest, in portions of the spring and summer, the sun is higher in the sky as seen from MGS's orbit. The spacecraft always passes over the landing site region around 2 p.m. in the afternoon. The suite of pictures shown here describes the best MOC view of the landing site. These were previously released in May 2005, but the MOC team felt that 20 July 2006 is an appropriate time to review this story. The first figure (left) visually tells how the lander was found. The initial observations of the location of Viking 1, as originally determined by members of the Viking science team based on sightlines to various crater rims seen in the lander images (black lines), did not show the detailed features we knew from the lander pictures (middle) to be in the area. Using geodetic measurements, the late Merton Davies of the RAND Corporation, a MGS MOC Co-Investigator, suggested that we should image areas to the east and north of where Viking 1 was thought to be. Timothy J. Parker of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, California), using sightlines to crater rims seen in the lander images (white lines), deduced a location very close to that suggested by Davies. The MOC image of that location, acquired in 2003, showed additional near-field features (rocks associated with a nearby crater) that closely matched the Viking 1 images (center and right frame, where B denotes "Volkswagen Rock"). The inset (upper right) is an enlargement that shows the location of the Viking 1 lander. The MOC image of the Viking 1 lander site (right) was acquired during a test of the MGS Pitch and Roll Observation (PROTO) technique conducted on 11 May 2003. (Following initial tests, the "c" part of "cPROTO" was begun by adding compensation for the motion of the planet to the technique). The PROTO or cPROTO approach allows MOC to obtain images with better than its nominal 1.5 meters (5 ft) per pixel resolution. The image shown here (right) was map projected at 50 centimeters (~20 inches) per pixel. The full 11 May 2003 image can be viewed in the MOC Gallery, it is image R05-00966. In addition to celebrating the 30th anniversary of the first U.S. robotic Mars landing, we note that 20 July is also the 37th anniversary of the first human landing on the Moon, on 20 July 1969. There are two dates that are most sacred in the space business (three, if you count the 4 October 1957 launch of Sputnik 1). The other date is 12 April, which celebrates the 1961 launch of the first human in space, and the 1981 launch of the first space shuttle orbiter.

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Sagan’s Work on the Pioneer, Viking, and Voyager Space Probes You are now in the section of this project devoted to Carl Sagan's work on Pioneer, Viking, and Voyager space probes. This work on several of these space probes directly informed the creation of the original Cosmos series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. The first probes we will be discussing here are Pioneer 10 and 11. The spacecraft launched on March 2nd, 1972, and April 5th, 1973, respectively. Their primary mission was to take close-up pictures of Jupiter and send them back to Earth. A journey that would ultimately conclude with them being the first human-made spacecraft to exit our solar system and enter deep space. Thus, Sagan was tasked with creating a golden plaque to be placed on the probes that would communicate their origins in the remote event that intelligent life elsewhere might pick them up. Here's a two-minute interview with Sagan from 1972 discussing the likelihood of life on Jupiter and the creation of the golden plaque.

Though the idea for the plaque was conceived of by Sagan, it was illustrated by his wife at the time Linda Saltzman Sagan, she would also work with Sagan on the Voyager space probes, which will be discussed later in this section. Between the Pioneer and Voyager missions, Sagan also worked on the Viking space probes that were sent to land on Mars and take the first ever photos of the Martian surface. The documentary titled A New View of Mars documents the current human understanding of Mars leading up to that mission. It discusses the legacy of human thinking about Mars, the earlier Mariner 9 mission to circumnavigate it, the possibility of life on the planet, and the plans for the Viking missions that were underway at that time. I have isolated 9 minutes of this documentary. You can watch as much of it as you choose.

After the Viking mission, Sagan was tasked to help create the most elaborate message to intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos yet. That being the golden record that was placed on the Voyager 1 and 2 space probes. The team he assembled included his wife, Linda Salzman Sagan, and Ann Druyan. Sagan and Druyan would fall in love while working on the project and Sagan would later divorce Salzman and marry Druyan in 1981. The record contains several messages that an alien civilization with an understanding of math and physics may likely understand. One notable example that I would like to draw your attention to is the measurements of human brainwaves located in the bottom left corner. Those are Druyan’s brainwaves. She discusses the experience of having them recorded in a section of the Cosmos: Possible Worlds companion book, which I have quoted below.
In 1977, I recorded my own brain waves for a message to any beings in the Milky Way galaxy who might happen upon one of two derelict spacecraft at any time in the next five billion years. It came about when Carl Sagan asked me to be the creative director for an interstellar message of unprecedented complexity to be affixed to the side of NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft. The Voyagers would undertake the first reconnaissance mission of the outer solar system before wandering through the galaxy for the next several billion years. One part of what came to be called the “golden record” consisted of music representing many human cultures, including Delta blues, Peruvian panpipes, Javanese gamelan, a Navajo night chant, Senegalese percussion, Japanese shakuhachi, a Georgian men’s chorus, and much more. Another section of the record was devoted to different kinds of sounds: a newborn’s first cry and her mother ’s soothing murmurs, the roar of an F-111 flyby, a cricket song, a kiss, and greetings in 59 different human languages and one whale language. We had no idea who would ever hear this recording or what it would mean to them, but we knew it was a sacred undertaking. Nothing we had built would ever travel so far and last so long. In 1977, with the Cold War raging, we looked upon our task as building an ark of human culture. Carl and I fell in love that same spring while we were making the golden record. We had known each other for three years as platonic friends and coworkers, each committed to another person. In that other life I had asked Carl if it would be possible for our imagined extraterrestrials to decipher the signals from a recording of a meditation that registered my EEG, EKG, and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Carl replied, “Billions of years is a long time, Annie. Go do it.” The recording session at a New York hospital fell only two days after we had blurted out our feelings to each other in a long-distance phone call and decided to marry. My thought itinerary for the meditation included a broad narrative of the multibillion-year history of our planet. Toward the end of the hour, I permitted myself a personal exploration of the love that I had discovered only hours before. My fresh joy at finding my heart’s true home will endure on those records longer than Earth itself (Druyan, 2020, p. 163-164).
Voyager 2 was the first of these space probes to launch on August 20th, 1977. Voyager 1 would follow on September 5th. A book was co-authored by everyone on the Golden Record team recounting their experiences working on the project. It was titled Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record and it was released the following year in 1978. Here are 7 minutes of a documentary from 1982 discussing Voyager 2’s first photos of Saturn's rings. It also showcases the television studio that had been set up to interview scientists daily throughout the project. After you’re done with the documentary, you can use the blue button below to continue to the section on Cosmos: A Personal Voyage and Sagan’s Antinuclear war activism. You can also select a different section that you are interested in by returning to the homepage or using the drop-down menu at the top of your screen.