Dispatch from Mars Society Arctic Expedition Robert Zubrin July 20, 2001
Today was the 25th anniversary of humanity’s first successful attempt to land a
robotic probe on Mars. On this day in 1976, the Viking 1 spacecraft set down on
Chryse Planitia. It was also the anniversary of another occasion. On this day in
1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their Apollo 11 spacecraft on the
Moon.
It would be a disservice to human memory to allow an occasion of this magnitude to pass unnoticed and uncelebrated. What to do? We wrestled with ideas. Finally we hit on a good one. We sent our EVA team roaring through base camp on ATVs like a bunch of Hell’s Angels flagging signs reading, in French and English, “Happy Anniversary Viking,” and “Viking, We are Here!” It was a lot of fun. We took the whole camp by surprise, and CNN and Discovery Channel turned out to film the ruckus. Then the team, consisting of Charles, Brent and I, sped off towards the Von Braun Planitia to do some science.
On our way north across the barren plain, we were greeted by a strange sight; the Hyperion robot. The Carnegie Mellon University machine had passed its initial tests with flying colors but was dormant now, just as Viking 1 is. We approached it gingerly. As we did, the thought struck me; someday a team of astronauts traveling across Mars will also encounter a robot standing motionless in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps it will be Viking 1.
I used to work for the Martin Marietta Astronautics company, which built the Viking spacecraft and helped fly the mission. I was not there when the mission was flown, but I was a member of the unit that had done the job, and many of my co-workers had worked on it. For most of them, Viking was proudest and profoundest experience of their professional lives. I have heard many Viking stories, and I feel I kind of know about it in the same sort of way I know about my uncle who died fighting in France 8 years before I was born. So encountering Hyperion frozen still out on the planitia was more than a little but eerie. I felt like I was meeting a ghost.
We traveled across the plain to a large rock formation, which towered perhaps 100 ft above the surrounding level plain. This contained exposed bedrock, which is what Charles was looking for, so we stepped to explore for a while. Poking among the stones, I came across a rock with an oddly curved back and wavy striations along its edges. I pulled it out and called Charles for his opinion. No doubt about it; it was a stromatolite, and a big one. Stromatolites are fossils left by colonies of bacteria, and as such are the most likely form of fossilized evidence of past life that we can hope to find on the surface of Mars. Once again, one of our EVA sorties had managed to find them on Devon.
Then, while Charles collected rock, soil and water samples for Christine to analyze back at the hab, I climbed the rock formation. It was only 100 ft gain, but the way was steep and covered with large sharp rocks. No robot could have climbed it, but I managed it well enough in a spacesuit simulator. It was worth the effort. Von Braun is flat enough that the elevation gave me a magnificent view, extending at least 10 miles in almost every direction. I called to Brent and Charles to join me, and we spent some time exploring the top of our little peak.
It should be noted that the ability of a human explorer climb up boulder-covered slopes to attain an elevated position has more than aesthetic value; it offers scientific payoff. A camera that can be brought to a position on top of even a 100 ft peak by human explorers will return far more information than a robotic eye moving along slowly a foot or two above the ground.
Then we started to head back. I broke simulation to go to camp to do an interview with CNN, as they wanted me for part of their 25th Viking anniversary show. It was kind of goofy, standing there before their camera, clad in spacesuit sans helmet, answering questions relayed to me by satellite phone from an interviewer in Atlanta. But this was a special day, so I did it. As I did so, Brent and Charles continued the EVA, exploring and climbing the interesting stark rock formation near camp known as the fortress.
Returning to the hab, we stopped to monitor the status of Cathrine’s magnetic dust properties experiment. Then we entered, debriefed, and composed, taped, and transmitted a report to Mission Support. Then we settled down to dinner. Tonight it was Christine’s turn to cook. The menus was mixed (canned) salmon with (canned) spinach and rice. I don’t know what to call the stuff, but was pretty good.
I have been thinking since then about this Viking and Apollo anniversary business. It is true that we must celebrate the great deeds of the past, but this celebration has a bitter edge. After all, it is tragic that a generation after these missions, no human being has ever flown further than Apollo and no more capable spacecraft than Viking has ever landed on Mars. We recall these missions almost in the same way as a 7th century citizen of ruined Rome might look at the leftover monuments of Imperial glory, wondering; “We once built that?”
Memorial day was originally set up to honor the Union victory in the Civil War, and Memorial Day 1965 was its 100th anniversary. On that occasion, I, a lad of 13, witnessed a veterans parade honoring the event. Of course the vets I saw marching were not Civil War veterans. By and large they were World War II veterans, and while honoring the 100th anniversary of the victory of Union arms, they were also celebrating the 20th anniversary of the triumph of their own.
It would have been a very sad thing if, 100 years later, the most recent victory the US Army could claim was Appomatox.
Today was the 25th anniversary of Viking 1, July 20, 2026 will be the 50th. I’ll only be 74 then, so there’s a good chance that I will still be alive on that day. But I don’t want to spend it honoring the 50th anniversary of Viking. I want to spend it celebrating the 15th anniversary of the first human footsteps on the Red Planet.
Because if we do not through our own actions carry forward the pioneering spirit of Viking and Apollo, those missions will have been flown in vain.
