Our First View of the Surface of Mars

“Touchdown, we have touchdown!” At 5:12 a.m. PDT, July 20, 1976, mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory erupted in cheers as they learned that the Viking 1 lander had survived its descent through the thin Martian atmosphere.

Forty minutes later, the lander’s first image began to appear on their monitors, slowly forming line by […]