Viking 1

August 20, 1975 - The Viking 1 spacecraft was launched on this day and began an 11-month journey to Mars.

Viking 1 consisted of an orbiter and a lander, so while the lander checked out the surface, the orbiter studied the planet from above. Together they spent 6 years taking over 50,000 pictures and measuring atmospheric conditions.

The mission beamed all of this amazing data back to earth where it dramatically expanded our understanding of this distant neighbor.

Was Viking 1 able to find any signs of life on Mars? From the evidence collected by Viking 1, that question remained unanswered, but the mission did uncover indicators of ancient water features, like dry riverbeds and telltale signs of massive floods.

After studying all of the information collected by Viking 1, scientists believe the building blocks of life, like carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen do exist on Mars.