On the 28 September 1976 episode of The Sky at Night, Patrick Moore took a look at the twin Viking probes that had recently become the first spacecraft to successfully set down on the planet Mars.
Viking 1 and 2 used their colour cameras to transmit the first images of the Martian surface, revealing a rusty red landscape underneath a butterscotch sky. A meteorological suite measured the local weather, while seismometers listened for marsquakes. The most publicised experiments, though, were those looking for signs of biological activity.
Using its robotic arm, Viking delivered soil samples to three experiments. Two fed the sample with nutrients to look for a reaction, while the third flooded the chamber with carbon-14-tagged carbon monoxide to see if it metabolised into carbon dioxide. The experiments were…
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BBC Sky at Night United Kingdom (Digital) - 1 Issue, September 2024