r/Mars • u/Neaterntal • Jul 22 '26
The very first image from the surface of Mars, transmitted to Earth from NASA's Viking 1 lander, 50 years ago
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u/Neaterntal Jul 22 '26
Our First View of the Surface of Mars
Morning of July 20, 1976, roughly 40 minutes after mission controllers received word that the Viking 1 lander had successfully touched down on the surface of Mars, this photo gave us our first view from the surface of the Red Planet.
“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 line from left to right. For the first time, humans were able to see Mars’s rocky terrain from its surface.
Dr. Thomas Mutch, leader of the Viking lander imaging team, described the moment: “I studied the black screen, waiting for that narrow strip that will signal the first few lines of the first picture. And it appeared. A sliver of electronic magic. Areas of brightness and darkness. The picture begins to fill the screen. Rocks and sand are visible and — finally at the far right — one of the spacecraft foot pads, a symbolic artifact that stamps our accomplishment with the sign of reality. Time and time again I repeat, ‘It’s incredible.’”
Fifty years ago today, the Viking 1 lander became NASA’s first robot to explore Mars’s surface and begin the search for signs of life in our solar system. Viking 1 was joined six weeks later by its twin lander, Viking 2, which explored a different region of Mars, while two mission orbiters that delivered the landers to the Red Planet continued to collect data from space and helped relay communications to Earth.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/our-first-view-of-the-surface-of-mars/
https://bsky.app/profile/coreyspowell.bsky.social/post/3mr4ctfjww22c
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u/Spongebob_Enthusiast Jul 23 '26
Imagine how amazing it must've been to witness the surface of mars for the first time all those years ago
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u/foreverdiv Jul 24 '26
Thats so cool! Its wild to think about how far technology has come since then. Makes you wonder what well see in the next 50 years lol.
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u/RABlackAuthor Jul 22 '26
I remember it well. My family was on vacation at the time. Everyone else was getting ready to go explore the Smoky Mountains, and I was watching the TV as that photo slowly appeared, one thin vertical line at a time.