#viking2 — Public Fediverse posts

50 Years Later: The First Photo Ever Taken on Mars https://petapixel.com/2026/07/24/50-years-later-the-first-photo-ever-taken-on-mars/ #50thanniversary #firsteverphoto #historic #history #martian #science #viking1 #viking2 #viking #Space #space #News #mars #NASA

At right in that image is a larger area of the surface showing the surface eroded by the landing thrusters. Mosaics like this are much easier to make today with modern image processing software than in the Viking period when they were constructed from printed images. This image shows the approximate location relative to the surface imaged directly by the cameras.
#mars #viking2

If you look back to Viking 1:

https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke/115376798213914717

you will see a bit about the mirrors mounted on the arm housing on each Viking lander. The mirrors reflected an image of the surface just under the lander. By moving the arm slightly the reflected area could be changed and a mosaic could be constructed. Here are two mosaics for Viking 2, one from each mirror. At left a bit of the lander near the front left footpad shows a temperature sensor.
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And the same content in panorama geometry, as before.

There is not much more to say about Viking 2 but I do have one last treat for tomorrow.
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After that the arm was parked and not used again. This map shows the sample area at the end of the mission.
#mars #maps #viking2

Continuing from yesterday's post, those physical properties activities did various things. I don't know the purpose of Phys. prop 4, but it dug up fine-grained material and one buried rock. PP 6 at the bottom was supposed to measure surface strength but the result was lost somehow, not downlinked. PP 8 dug soil which was used to make Conical Pile 4. PP 9 was a surface strength test again and the scoop with its temperature sensor was left in the soil for a full day.
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The sol 522 touchdown was done to... actually I don't know why it was done. The sol 559 touchdown was an attempt to chip Mr Mole - but it didn't, indicating that it was fairly hard. Nearby on sol 595 was a Physical Properties touchdown - the scoop was pressed down to test the bearing strength of the surface. Look at the result - the surface is not dusty but breaks up into platy chunks, probably cemented by salts left by evaporating water. They called it duricrust at the time.
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We are coming to the end of Viking 2 activities with the arm. This set of before and after image pairs shows rather small events. First, on sol 502, a backhoe touchdown. The backhoe was a plate protruding under the scoop, which could be pulled through the soil to dig a trench like Deep Hole. It had a magnet on it which was imaged now and then to look for magnetic particles stuck to the magnet. This touchdown was one of those attempts to pick up particles.
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This is the same content as in the map just posted but shown as a panorama.
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This map shows the Viking 2 sample field after 500 sols. Digs at the near end of Deep Hole which we have already seen happened after sol 500 so they are not shown. I quite like being able to see the sampling area evolving like this.
#mars #maps #viking2

Here are some more activities at the Viking 2 site on Mars. At top, we see the arm moving a rock called Snow White, scraping the surface in the process. Then a sample is taken from the scuffed area for analysis. Next we see a conical pile of soil formed on top of a rock (this was dug out of the Phys Prop 2 trench from the previous post). Finally a 3rd conical pile was made near that same rock. We saw more of these at Viking 1.
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Physical properties could cover a lot of things including bearing strength of the soil and sizes of particles. The next Phys Prop dig on sol 595 was dumped nearby to make a conical pile of soil. It would be imaged at intervals over several years to monitor wind erosion. The last 2 frames show another Phys Prop sample being dug to make another conical pile which we will see soon. Viking wasn't just about the obvious things, the chemical analysis and biology experiments.
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Another set of Viking 2 arm activities. Because I collect them spatially they are only chronological within a spatial set... if you see what I mean. The first 4 here are at the extreme right end of the sampling area. The scoop backhoe touched the surface and then dug a sample. On sol 479 it dug a sample for 'Physical Properties' - in this case sieving out the fine material and dropping the coarse material to see how many small rocks were in it (not many).
#mars #viking2

Arm work with Viking 2 resumed after the winter slow period. Here we see a 'deep hole' being dug, as with Viking 1. The area is the same as in the previous two arm action images a couple of days ago. Multiple strokes of the arm were used to move material aside, trying to get deeper material, with XRFS samples picked up after trenching each time. 100 sols after each dig, more samples were taken at the near end of the hole.
#mars #viking2

During the period we have just covered, winter for Viking 2, the lander took its first pictures of frost on the surface. We don't see many pictures like this because most landers have been at lower latitudes. Phoenix is the obvious exception, but Viking 2 did it first. These links show 2 images - but from later in the mission, the second winter.

https://www.planetary.org/space-images/viking2_frost_stryk

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/viking-lander-image-of-ice-mars/
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And the same content represented as a panorama.

We will get down to some serious work tomorrow.
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As suggested yesterday, there was not a lot of action for Viking 2 between sols 100 and 300, so this map does not have many changes since the last one. A few sample trenches, basically. Don't worry, that is going to change soon.
#mars #maps #viking2

... direct to Earth communication from the lander. Now it could only communicate via an orbiter. The planet was also throwing dust storms into the story. On sols 165 and 269 dust effects were detected, each time lasting for weeks. The nuclear powered landers were not affected as much as the solar-powered MER rovers were decades later, but it was another complication to consider. Tomorrow we will look at the sol 100-300 map.
#mars #viking2

Today we just have two images, a before and after - so just one event. This was the collection of a sample called Biology 4 for analysis in the suite of biology instruments. Viking 2 didn't do very much for quite a while now. There were problems with the arm which prevented sampling on sol 195. Winter was approaching and Viking 2, further north than Viking 1, had to enter a power-saving mode between sols 220 and 373. Right after that another failure prevented...
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The last 2 images show another XRFS sample collected near Mr. Badger. In all these cases the fine material was delivered to the instrument in the lander for analysis and coarser material was dropped to form a 'rock pile' near the new trenches. There were really very few rocks but a little collection gradually accumulated.
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... but there was no concurrent wind data with this one. However, it occurred at a time of day with little wind. This is not certain but stands as the only likely seismic event detected on Mars until the InSight mission decades later.

After conjunction the arm started work again. Here we see several actions near the rocks Notch and Doc. X-ray fluorescence spectrometer (XRFS) samples were dug out of the previous Biology 3 trench and a new area.
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Viking 2's primary mission ended on sol 60, followed by a blackout period as Mars passed near or behind the Sun and communication was curtailed. The lander continued to collect weather and seismic data, and it was transmitted to Earth after conjunction (after sol 103). A seismic event may have occurred on sol 80 - the only likely one of the entire mission (Viking 1's seismometer failed). Most apparent seismic events coincided with wind gusts and are not counted as 'marsquakes'...
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Here is the same content in the geometry of a panorama. The purge area shown in yesterday's post is near the sol 21 purge area on the map.
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Here is the sampling area map after the primary mission ended. We will see the map change considerably in future. One thing I did not do is actually move on the map the rocks which were moved. I should have. Oddly, I see now that I did reduce the height of the rock Mr. Toad (like I did for Centaur) in the pre-sampling map but not here... consistency often eludes me!
#mars #maps #viking2

... is from late in the mission, showing a few more small changes. There is one big change, existing rocks covered with dust. I labelled it with a query - wind-blown dust? - but it could have been a big purge.

That is the end of Viking 2's primary mission. Tomorrow we will see what the map looks like after all this.
#mars #viking2

The 3 bottom images in the last post show an area close to the lander, too close for the arm to dig, so perfect for dropping debris from the scoop (purging). The first image is the very first picture taken by Viking 2, beginning while some dust was still in the air from the landing (making those streaks). By sol 38 a few small changes are apparent, but very small - a little rock, a dark spot where a soil clod fell. Blinking the images reveals them. The last image...
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This set of images takes us through the last few activities of Viking 2's primary mission (just before conjunction), and shows an area where several scoop purges were done, at different times during the mission. The top 4 frames show an area near ICL rock. First, a physical properties experiment tested surface hardness (and note small rocks dropped in a purge on sol 21). Then two samples were dug nearby for mineral analysis with the X-ray instrument.
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The idea with these moves is to take soil from a place where it has been protected from ultraviolet radiation and maybe cosmic rays, which would destroy organic molecules. The protected samples might contain organics or even life. Notice the purge pile in the bottom middle image - the scoop was emptied of whatever was in it before the biology sample was collected to avoid confusion with material not protected under the rock. We will see more of that tomorrow.
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Now Viking 2 started to get a bit rough with the rocks around it. In the top sequence we see the rock Mr. Badger moved and then a sample taken from underneath it (which action moved the rock again). In the second sequence Bonneville is moved slightly, but it rolls back to its original position. Then we have 4 frames of the rock Notch. It is pushed slightly to test it, then pushed more, and then a biology sample is taken from under its original position.
#mars #viking2

GCMS is the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer instrument looking for organics (carbon compounds) in the soil. They didn't find any. Then they took another sample for the x-ray fluorescence instrument. Finally we see a failed attempt to move a rock called ICL - Initial Computer Load. If commands from Earth were not received the pre-loaded ICL instructions would dig at that (then unknown) location, analyze a sample and transmit results. The arm would have hit the rock and failed.
#mars #viking2