Viking 2 Lands on Mars
Next: September 3, 2027
Postcards from a plain called Utopia.
The story
Where it comes from
This Story marks the anniversary of 3 September 1976, when NASA's Viking 2 lander touched down safely on Mars. Its orbiter had reached the planet on 7 August, and photographs showed the first chosen site was too rough, so mission planners picked Utopia Planitia, a northern plain near the edge of the polar ice cap, where the chances of finding signs of life seemed better. It landed about 6,460 kilometres from Viking 1, which had made the first successful Mars landing that July, and kept working until 11 April 1980.
How it's celebrated
There is no formal observance. NASA keeps the Viking pictures online, including the rocky panorama Viking 2 took just after touchdown, its horizon dipping only because the lander was tilted by 8 degrees. It is a good day to look at those first views of Utopia Planitia, and to remember that every Mars lander and rover since has followed where the two Vikings went first.
Did you know
- On 18 May 1979 Viking 2 photographed a thin coating of water frost on the rocks and soil around it, almost exactly one Martian year after frost had first appeared there.
- Neither Viking lander found signs of life, but they did find all the elements essential to life on Earth: carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen and phosphorus.
- On 15 May 2021 China's Tianwen-1 mission landed in southern Utopia Planitia, the same vast plain, and a week later its rover Zhurong drove down onto the surface.
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