The last time a spacecraft visited the surface of Mars,
Jimmy Carter was running for president and Sylvester Stallone
was making his debut as Rocky Balboa. As the last Viking
lander reached the red planet in September, 1976, CBs were
all the rage, cellular phones were unheard of and a
little-known company named Microsoft was just getting
started.
Two decades later, as a man-made spacecraft again heads for
Mars, Carter is an elder statesman, Rocky has retired after
four sequels and cell phones (and Microsoft) are ubiquitous.
While Pathfinder took only seven months to
reach the red planet, the American Viking missions took almost
a year. Viking I, which included an orbiter and lander,
launched on August 20, 1975. The lander arrived on July 20,
1976. Viking II -- also an orbiter and lander -- launched
on September 5, 1975, and landed on September 3, the
following year. The Viking I lander continued to transmit
information from Mars until November 1982, becoming the
longest-surviving laboratory on the surface of another
planet.
The goals of the Viking mission were to map the surface of
Mars, gather information on the Martian surface and
atmosphere and look for evidence of life on Mars.
"Scientists finally concluded that we found no
evidence of life on Mars," Viking Project Scientist Dr.
Gerald Soffen said in an article published on the 20th
anniversary of the mission by the National Space and Science
Data Center. "But this doesn't prove there is not life on
Mars. It simply says that, in the two distinct places on the
planet
that we landed, there are probably no living organisms."
And so it was, until last summer when a NASA research team
announced it had found evidence suggesting that
micro-organisms lived on Mars 3.6 billion years ago, again
renewing the tantalizing search for signs of Martian life.
While Viking was highly successful, Pathfinder has something
Viking lacked -- a rover with the ability to roam the surface
of Mars, meaning that the search for life will not be
limited to what can be observed from the landing site.
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