NASA’s Viking 1 Orbitersent back a series of images from Mars that would spark one of the most enduring mysteries in space exploration: the Face on Mars. Captured in the Cydonia region, this peculiar ...

New images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show three additional NASA spacecraft that have landed on Mars: the Spirit rover active on the surface since January 2004 and the two Viking ...

New images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show three additional NASA spacecraft that have landed on Mars: the Spirit rover active on the surface since January 2004 and the two Viking ...

In June 1972, NASA's Langley Research Center hired Martin Marietta Corporation to look at using spacecraft based on the planned Viking Mars lander and orbiter designs to explore the tiny martian ...

1976 Viking Orbiter image (left, image #070A13) compared with the 2001 Mars Global Surveyor image (right). The "Face" is 1.5 km across in size.Wikimedia Commons ...

On July 20, 1976, the unmanned Viking 1 lander became the first spacecraft to successfully land and operate on the surface of Mars. More than just a technological achievement, this feat completely ...

Twin missions The Viking 1 and Viking 2 spacecraft — which launched in August 1975 and September 1975, respectively — were both composed of an orbiter-lander pair. As the Vikings closed in on ...

Fully fueled, the orbiter-lander duo weighed about 7,800 pounds. Viking 1's twin, Viking 2, went into space on Sept. 9, 1975. Viking 1's lander was supposed to touch down on Mars on July 4.

On August 20, 1975, NASA’s Viking 1 Orbiter and Lander launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Eleven months and half a billion miles later the Viking 1 lander touched down on Mars and sent home ...

1976: Viking 2, the second mission to Mars, lands on the planet and begins transmitting pictures and soil analyses. The Viking mission went to Mars to look for signs of life, to study the soil and ...

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2005, has also captured images of the Valles Marineris with its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), as did the Viking orbiters in ...