from the experiments were not quite right. They ascended too quickly, and then decayed in an odd set of timings. Whatever was in the soil was responding all right, but not in the way predicted. It could be life, or…
After much head scratching, soul searching, and in-the-trenches analysis, a less appealing picture emerged. The final straw was that the gas chromatograph had not demonstrated anything organic in the release. It appeared that some kind of raw chemical reaction was taking place and mimicking life. All indications were that there was some kind of nasty oxidant in the soil (which was later confirmed to be a high level of perchlorate), which was reacting with elements of the experiments to provide false andmisleading readings. Of course, not being there to look more closely, and to take samples into the lab and work them over with more sophisticated equipment, team members could only guess.
The team split into the “life” and “soil-chemistry” camps, with ill-defined lines between them. Some seemed certain; more straddled the divide. To this day there is a “we found life” camp, surrounded (and outnumbered) by a “we found chemistry in the soil” camp. The debate goes on, and will not be resolved until—possibly—the mission of the Mars Science Laboratory, now planned for a 2012 landing.
Then, one by one, the machines of Project Viking died. Working well beyond their predicted life spans, time and wear caught up with the spacecraft and they surrendered to Mars. First, the Viking 2 orbiter suffered a propellant leak and was deactivated by JPL controllers just twelve days shy of its two-year operational anniversary. Then the Viking 2 lander suffered a power failure and was unable to continue operations, ending its three-year, seven-month career. The Viking 1 orbiter met a more respectable demise: it lasted four years and two months on the job before depleting its maneuvering fuel. Then, unable to reorient itself to continue full operations, it was deactivated by JPL controllers.
But it is the Viking 1 lander's story that touches the heart. This plucky outpost was the last survivor of the quartet, and after almost six and a half years of operations, was at the time the grand elder of all things earthly on Mars. It had even been fondly renamed the Thomas Mutch Memorial Station, after a much-beloved member of the Viking team who had recently died in a mountain-climbing accident. But its long run ended in November 1982. Still sending back weather reports like a lone observer in a distant posting, it was due for a software update. With its plutonium power supply, it should have been good for many more years. But there was an error in the last batch of code sent by JPL; somewhere in the copious binary, there was an errant command that caused its radio dish to rotate down toward the sands below.Like a loyal servant, it complied, and contact with Earth was lost. Despite diligent efforts from JPL, there was no further contact, and that was that. Nobody knows how long Viking 1 continued to “stare” into the cold desert wastes of Mars, awaiting another command that would never come. There may well be some electrical current flowing in its nuclear heart to this very day….
Despite this unfortunate end, the science and discoveries of the Viking program would benefit future missions and fuel the next giant leap in Mars exploration: wheels.
T he year was 1936. The first episode of The Green Hornet was heard on WXYZ radio in Detroit. The first radioactive element was produced synthetically. Adolf Hitler announced the first Volkswagen Beetle®. And Norman Horowitz arrived at Caltech in Pasadena, California. It was the beginning of an auspicious career at both Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He was a biologist by training, but his eyes was trained on the stars…and in particular, the planet Mars.
“By 1959, it was definite that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was going to be a planetary science lab,
After much head scratching, soul searching, and in-the-trenches analysis, a less appealing picture emerged. The final straw was that the gas chromatograph had not demonstrated anything organic in the release. It appeared that some kind of raw chemical reaction was taking place and mimicking life. All indications were that there was some kind of nasty oxidant in the soil (which was later confirmed to be a high level of perchlorate), which was reacting with elements of the experiments to provide false andmisleading readings. Of course, not being there to look more closely, and to take samples into the lab and work them over with more sophisticated equipment, team members could only guess.
The team split into the “life” and “soil-chemistry” camps, with ill-defined lines between them. Some seemed certain; more straddled the divide. To this day there is a “we found life” camp, surrounded (and outnumbered) by a “we found chemistry in the soil” camp. The debate goes on, and will not be resolved until—possibly—the mission of the Mars Science Laboratory, now planned for a 2012 landing.
Then, one by one, the machines of Project Viking died. Working well beyond their predicted life spans, time and wear caught up with the spacecraft and they surrendered to Mars. First, the Viking 2 orbiter suffered a propellant leak and was deactivated by JPL controllers just twelve days shy of its two-year operational anniversary. Then the Viking 2 lander suffered a power failure and was unable to continue operations, ending its three-year, seven-month career. The Viking 1 orbiter met a more respectable demise: it lasted four years and two months on the job before depleting its maneuvering fuel. Then, unable to reorient itself to continue full operations, it was deactivated by JPL controllers.
But it is the Viking 1 lander's story that touches the heart. This plucky outpost was the last survivor of the quartet, and after almost six and a half years of operations, was at the time the grand elder of all things earthly on Mars. It had even been fondly renamed the Thomas Mutch Memorial Station, after a much-beloved member of the Viking team who had recently died in a mountain-climbing accident. But its long run ended in November 1982. Still sending back weather reports like a lone observer in a distant posting, it was due for a software update. With its plutonium power supply, it should have been good for many more years. But there was an error in the last batch of code sent by JPL; somewhere in the copious binary, there was an errant command that caused its radio dish to rotate down toward the sands below.Like a loyal servant, it complied, and contact with Earth was lost. Despite diligent efforts from JPL, there was no further contact, and that was that. Nobody knows how long Viking 1 continued to “stare” into the cold desert wastes of Mars, awaiting another command that would never come. There may well be some electrical current flowing in its nuclear heart to this very day….
Despite this unfortunate end, the science and discoveries of the Viking program would benefit future missions and fuel the next giant leap in Mars exploration: wheels.
T he year was 1936. The first episode of The Green Hornet was heard on WXYZ radio in Detroit. The first radioactive element was produced synthetically. Adolf Hitler announced the first Volkswagen Beetle®. And Norman Horowitz arrived at Caltech in Pasadena, California. It was the beginning of an auspicious career at both Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He was a biologist by training, but his eyes was trained on the stars…and in particular, the planet Mars.
“By 1959, it was definite that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was going to be a planetary science lab,
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