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CNN Live At Daybreak

Remembering the Mars Viking Mission

Aired July 20, 2001 - 07:53   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: All week we've been taking you to Canada's Devon Island above the Arctic Circle.

COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN ANCHOR: CNN space correspondent Miles O'Brien has been watching how researchers use the terrain there to study surviving on Mars.

Miles shows us how NASA's Viking explorers ignited interest in Mars more than 20 years ago.

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MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was a giant leap for planetary exploration: the Apollo 11 of unmanned space missions. With footprints still freshly planted on the moon, NASA sent the tenacious twins called Viking toward Mars in 1975, determined to leave footprints of another kind. Each Viking was really two spacecraft: an orbiter and a lander.

In June of 1976, the pair entered the orbit of Mars two weeks apart. Scientists at NASA's jet propulsion lab spent a month looking for the perfect landing site for Viking 1. Then X marked a spot, as if buried treasure awaited them. After all, they were aiming for a place called the Plains of Gold.

On the morning of July 20, 1976, the nation still flushed with a bicentennial afterglow, Viking hit pavement. Two hundred million miles away, in their Pasadena control room, they held their breath for nearly 20 minutes, waiting for the radio waves to wash ashore.

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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Touchdown. We have touchdown.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

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O'BRIEN: The celebration was brief.

Viking and its ground team got to work almost immediately. The images appeared line by line: first, a picture of its foot; then a sweeping panorama. It was alien and yet familiar. Viking 2 landed on the other side of Mars two months later. Together, the landers beamed back 4,500 images before they went silent in 1983. Their orbiters captured more than 55,000 aerial views. It was a scientific slam-dunk -- with one big exception. Scientists had hoped the Vikings would find some proof of life on Mars. But on this visit to the Plains of Gold, the mother load eluded them.

Miles O'Brien, CNN, on Devon Island, Canada.

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