#Mars76 #NASA #Viking_1 #ScientificAmerican
➖@Physics_Revives➖
First NASA's Viking 1 lander made it down to the surface, followed a couple of weeks later by Viking 2 on August 7th. In the meantime the Viking 1 and 2 orbiters set up shop high above the planet.
Both landers were equipped with what were, at the time, pretty special cameras. These used a mirror to 'scan' a vertical slice of the terrain, digitizing the light with a photodetector. By rotating the mirror slightly and taking another vertical scan an image was slowly built up and transmitted back to Earth.
➖@Physics_Revives➖
➖@Physics_Revives➖
First NASA's Viking 1 lander made it down to the surface, followed a couple of weeks later by Viking 2 on August 7th. In the meantime the Viking 1 and 2 orbiters set up shop high above the planet.
Both landers were equipped with what were, at the time, pretty special cameras. These used a mirror to 'scan' a vertical slice of the terrain, digitizing the light with a photodetector. By rotating the mirror slightly and taking another vertical scan an image was slowly built up and transmitted back to Earth.
➖@Physics_Revives➖
Scientific American Blog Network
Mars '76
Images from the first successful landers on Mars are still worth looking at