Transcripts For CSPAN3 NASA Viking Mission To Mars 20160828

Former langley historian. He spent some time year before we set him to jpl, and then our last panelist, glenn bugos, currently with ames. And with that, lets go to dr. Bill barry. Hes going to moderate our panel and begin give us the beginnings of some great stories. Thanks, bill. [applause] bill thanks, walt. Good afternoon, everybody. This is a great opportunity, what happened 40 years ago today and tomorrow. I would imagine that 40 years ago today, the 19th of july, 1976, there was a lot of nailbiting and concerned going on around here. For good reason. Getting to mars is hard to do. No one had done it before successfully. Not that people had tried. The soviets had made at least six attempts to land something on mars until that point. None of them had been successful. They did get something on the surface but it lasted for about 40 seconds of data transmission. So mars 3 not a great success. Folks here were understandably nervous. The spaceage have been going on for since 1957. Getting to the moon in the first 12 years, but getting to mars was harder. And as many of you in the room as i guess from the looks at things might have been involved in that project, or were younger and were not there, but it was an exciting time, reaching out to try to take a big leap in terms of understanding if there was life on mars. It was a big, difficult step. Now, tomorrow on the anniversary, theres going to be a symposium all day that will show how policy connects to what we did in the past. But today, our objective today is to get a historical dig into the background of the viking program. To think about the big pictures and take an angle on some of the stories that i think you will find very interesting that our three panelists, our distinguished nasa historians and other historians are going to talk about. But before we get there, for those of you who were not there, i have a video that my friends at nasa tv put together about the anniversary of viking, and i would like to show it to you. It is about 4. 5 minutes long. For those of you who know about viking will probably see some familiar faces in the video, and we are going to show that here right now. [video clip] announcer in exploration, there are great moments of success and moments of setback. Lasting memories forever in our combined experience that forges stronger resolve to reach new heights and explore the unknown. As we gaze off into the solar system, something in our humanity pushes us to move forward. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars. The atlas five, with curiosity. The puzzle about life on mars. Nasa has been on a journey of exploration for more than half a century. A journey to mars. From mariner to phoenix and to maven and beyond, we have ingenuity on and around the red planet. 40 years ago, nasas viking project found its place in history. July 20, 1976. Viking 1 was the first human probe to land on the surface, return images and data, and conduct science experiments on mars. Viking was a bold step for its time and a huge undertaking for nasa. Nasa employees, contractors, and industry across the country designed elements of this project. Viking consistent of two consisted of two identical spacecraft with a payload of a lander and an orbiter each. Viking 1 and 2 were launched in august and september 1975. Each orbiter lander flew together and entered the mars orbit, and it dissented to the then separated and ascended to the descended to the planets surface for their planned 90 day missions. Viking 1 was originally targeted to land on july 4, 1976, our nations bicentennial, the images from the orbiter showed the planned landing site to be too rocky. After reconsidering the options, a new site was selected, and viking 1 touchdown on july 20, seven years to the day after the apollo touchdown on the moon. The lander sent photographs and collected data on the martian surface. The Scientific Consensus from the viking experiments was that mars was self sterilizing due to the solar ultraviolet radiation, extreme dryness of the soil, and the oxidizing nature of the soil chemistry. This search for life on mars came up empty, but valuable data about mars, both from the surface and from the orbit, was gathered. The orbiter lander duos outpaced their durations, two to six years. The final transmission to earth on november 11, 1982. Today, our orbiters and rovers have changed the ways we look at mars and continue to make unprecedented discoveries, while also answering longheld answers questions about our solar system and beyond. We are working hard to develop the systems and technology humankind will one day used to live and work on the red planet and safely return home. If i have seen further, it is by standing up on this shoulders of the shoulders of giants. The eventual first human footsteps on mars have as their steppingstones the vital robotic explorers that paved the way for our journey to mars. [end video clip] bill so a snapshot of viking, the images and the story. There is so much more to tell about viking. We will hear about some of that tomorrow and details of that, but today, our three panelists are going to talk about the three aspects of exploration that i think you will find fascinating. We will start with roger, comparative climatology, to set the stage for mars and what the objective is there. All three of these are good friends of mine. Walter introduced who they are and where they are from. Of course, roger was the chief historian two folks before me, so the chief historian at nasa from 1990 until 2002, until he got pushed away by the smithsonian. A nasa historian emeritus. And then our second speaker today will be erik conway, as you know, formerly the historian at langley, and he will be talking about that nexus actually, the connection between viking, jpl, and langley and how all of that played out and how it went from pasadena to hampton, and then finally, we will close out the presentations today talking about the science experiments on viking. As you know, glenn is a historian out at ames. All three are friends of mine, and i know they will give you a million presentation today, and so i will turn it over to roger to get started. [applause] figuring out which one is yours. Roger here we are. I am at the national air and space museum, which i am certain is the Favorite Museum of anyone in this room. Am i correct . Notwithstanding the aerospace center, and i do have to start with a little bit of a plug. We have just reopened to our milestones hall, the building, the big central hall. It has been undergoing renovation. We have moved in and out, and we in and out several object. We have displayed them again in unique and exciting ways. The viking lander has been conserved and put into an exhibition to tell the story in a wonderful way, so please, and please, come and visit. It would be a pleasure to show you around. What i want to do today is talk about venus and mars, the three venus, earth, and mars, the Three Sisters when we talk about life in the solar system, and notwithstanding possibilities of around jupiter and saturn. I want to take you back to the 19th century to begin with, and just to emphasize, venus and mars have both been places where we have fantasized that might be too strong a term at least, we have speculated that life could have existed there. Venus in chanted us in all kinds chantedanted us and enchanted us in all kinds of ways. It is our closest neighbor. It is the closest in size, and then that sheet of clouds around it gave it an aura of mystery that we were not able to know too much about. Mars, of course, is part of this long believed that there might be life there or past life, something that we are exploring today, and it was not until we were actually able to send robotic explorers there in the space age that we began to see that these two world were slightly different than what we anticipated. I do not want to dwell on this particular picture but it is , basically the goldilocks. Venus is too hot. Mars is too cold. Earth is just right that is sort of what we know about it. There is more complexity, but thats one explanation that makes sense. But venus has always been one also in which we thought there would be the possibilities of life, and there are fascinating theories that circulated both in the 19th century as well as into the 20th century. That hope of life has always been present there. I love this quote from an astronomer in 1911. We have reason to believe it is habitable, for the conditions we name as central to live. Life. Air, liquid, and a temperature, ll undoubtedly realized. Guess how wrong he was . He is not the only one in that category, and he was a serious astronomer. There was a popular theory that existed and i remember reading , Science Fiction as a kid that sort of took this further, that the sun is gradually cooling, and at least for the terrestrial type planets, as it has done so, each of the planets have been in the socalled goldilocks zone, so mars at one time or is now a dying planet. Earth is flourishing, and venus is probably a precambrian type of experience, probably with dinosaurs underneath that cloud cover. That was a very common theory. That theory had currency up until the early 1960s. And in a jpl book, the first few pages of the book talk about that particular theory, and they were going to try to either confirm or disprove it. Of course, they disprove it very graphically, but that was a serious issue. I always like to mention this guy, because he was also a believer in venus and life existing there. Now, that is 1918. Obviously, there is a lot learned since that time, much of it coming with the ability of nasa, and to a lesser extent the soviet union who sent probes to mars. Venus. There are still some of those ideas that exist. I do not need to talk about this particular slide. Obviously, we know about the runaway greenhouse effect that was postulated and turned out to be really correct. Planetary reconnaissance was something that made it possible for us to come to grips with this question of life beyond earth. We mostly as humans want to believe it is there. In fact, i could take a poll in this room. In fact, i will. How many of you believe that life exists somewhere outside of the planet . How many do not believe . Nobody is willing to raise their hand. Ok, there is a couple. [laughter] i ask that a lot, and overwhelmingly, people say yes. I believe it is out there. Me, too, by the way, and then i ask the next question, do we have any evidence of it, and we do not. Not yet. Maybe we will find it. Theres no question. We want to believe it is there, and we have always looked at these planets of venus and mars as sites where this might exist. Well, planetary reconnaissance became possible with the birth of Space Science in the early 1960s. Caltech convened a planetary atmospheres conference, a carl sagan was a coorganizer with will kellogg. They looked at a number of questions they might be able to explore as they moved to be on this planet to undertake a wreck annoyed or of venus and mars reconnoiter of venus and mars. This would follow throughout the 1980s and even beyond. There has been a variety of missions to venus. There is a long list of them here. I do not need to read them for you, but i will simply say it has characterized that particular planet as one in which we are reasonably confident, reasonably that life does not exist, at least not life that is beyond a microorganism stage, although there has been some recent developments in the last 20 years or so that suggested there might be traces of water molecules in venuss atmosphere. What does that mean . We are not sure, but there is still that potential out there, and there are those that hold onto that hope, that maybe we will be able to determine something more authoritative and the possibility either in the past or even presently existing. It is clearly not going to be dinosaurs, which was an earlier concept, but something out there. Mars has always been a place we thought it was there. We truly did. There has been a longstanding Public Interest in mars. We have been observing it for centuries, and astronomers and the general public has developed this whole iconography about what mars is and what we could expect when we got there. In the latter part of the 19th century, Giovanni Schiaparelli ,specially, Percival Lowell talked about the canals on mars and postulated that this was the creation of an advanced civilization. It had to be an advanced civilization, one that was technologically sophisticated or , they would not have been able to build those canals to move water from the can of the planet. Lowell also wrote a book in which he speculated on the nature of all of the activities on mars, but something he thought was based on Scientific Data about what civilization on mars might be like. He did not take very long, for novice, especially hg wells, to novelists especially hg , wells, to come up with their own and turn it into stories, and war of the worlds was a great example, and by the way, from cosmopolitan in 1908, when it ran a serialization of the war of the worlds novel by hg wells, and this is a representation of what they envisioned martian civilization to look like. Since it has lower gravity, they were probably birdlike creatures with feathers. Maybe they can fly. There is all kind of weird speculation that result from this. First halfed a whole of the 20th century, enthusiasm for the potential for life on mars. And it was real. It was not just fake stuff. There were scientists who were engaged in this, including a including Percival Lowell, a gentleman scholar, not a trained academic. There he is there. You can see on the left the map of mars that he created based on his observation. You can also see very clearly these canals, long, Straight Lines that he believed would deliver water from places that were barren or desert like. And only in a hydraulic society. It can only exist if you have got a strong centralized, probably worldwide structure of organization, and that is the story that came down, so if you came down. So, if you ever read any of the boroughs or john carter stories about barsoom or saw that horrible film called john carter of mars, that was the kind of stuff that was being speculated about. It did not take long to send probes to learn that it was strikingly different. I love this particular picture. Its was a cartoon from the this was a cartoon from the Washington Post of lyndon desk in sitting at his the oval office. They are showing him pictures from mariner 4, which reached mars, and his question is, are these of mars or vietnam . Those of you who are a little older may get the joke. Those of you who are not, it may who are younger, may not. Vietnam was a major conflict of the 1960s in which there was a lot of loss of life and destruction, and he is characterizing something he did not think he would find on mars, craters that were not anticipated at all, and, indeed, i can recall as a kid in Grammar School in the mid1960s, the textbook that we used in science class talked about how they knew there was life there. There had to be life there, because earth observation had seen the pattern changes on the surface, and like you know. Surface and color changes. Like plants dying at the end of the season or Something Like that, and the speculation was, well, it is probably not sophisticated life, probably Something Like a plant life that might be doing this, and this was the mid1960s. Now nevermind the fact that i , did go to Public School in south carolina, so that might have made a difference, but my suspicion is that was a textbook that was used a lot at the time in a lot of different places in that same period. And it was not until nasa began to explore mars in a serious way that we began to learn differently. We have learned a great deal about it. By the way, here is one of the images of mariner 4 to give you an idea of what im talking about. We have had Many Missions to mars, and we have characterized it in ways that probably are not a surprise to those who began the exploration in the 1960s. A series of flybys and some rovers ann landers, as well, and rovers, landers as a. Been remarkably important, a set of developments that change the nature of what we think about mars, but our hope, our desire to believe that there is life there has not abated. Or at the very least past life there has not abated, in spite of the fact that we have failed thus far to confirm any evidence, to uncover any evidence to support that contention. Past life probably may be there. We have not found any ironclad to believe it yet. However, i know some people in the argument audience might want to argue with me. We can do that later, if you wish. But there is no formal, confirming evidence. , of course, is one of the greatest missions nasa has undertaken. That soft landing in 1976 . There is no question about that. It was a remarkable mission. We had technology aboard to try to determine if there might be some sort of support for this contention of life. We did not find anything that at least nothing that was because a consensus account on this. However, we did find from one of these orbiters this picture of a face on mars. Which has been used by the ufo community for years as a reason to believe it is out there. Now, of course, a survey or took my global surveyor took a picture of the same location a number of years later and found that that picture that you see to the right, it is just the show does shadows and the way in which the picture was taken and the time of day that led to that socalled face. Nonetheless, we still see this pop up over and over and over and over. Again, most recently in a really fundamental way and in a feature film that nasa helped with. Called mission to mars, in 2000, i believe, and that become sort of the centerpiece of the end of the story. Oh, my goodness gracious. A bit of a problem. But we have yet to determine whether or not there is life or was life on mars in a definitive way. We have taken lots of pictures. We have been on lots of missions. Most of them have not really been successful. There have been a lot of failures, the u. S. Has had the most successes, and by all means, we should celebrate that, but we also need to recognize that it is hard to go to mars and do anything useful there. Five to 10 missions since 1990 have failed. One only partially successful. I hope we will continue to search for that possibility that life may have existed. Some people have speculated, and i love the wit behind this. When the mars observer disappeared in 1993, en route to mars, there are those that suggested that in the aftermath of the viking landings, the martians created a Global Defense system, and anything that came nearby, they just nailed and took out. And then this google cartoon suggests that particular story. Obviously, it did not happen because we have had a lot of landings and that time, but we continue to be energized by the possibility that life is out there, and nothing says more about that than they mars meteorite, and we all know the story. There was the potential that this meteorite might have had some evidence of ancient martian life a part of it. It was vetted properly, published, and created the greatest furor i think i saw when i was that nasa, and this went down to a president ial press conference with bill clinton, talking about this potential. And while it proved out that there were other explanations that were more consistent with what we ended and about media understand about the media met meet your right eorite and the elements that they found there, it nonetheless incited a lot of attention and has continued to do so. Mostly, i would contend that that is due to the contention for life, because that is really what we want to know as humans. A geologist may not be focused on that, but a lot of the rest of us are, and 2000, and it is time for me to quit. My director is giving me the high sign here. The follow the water scenario has yielded all kinds of abundant evidence about life on mars, but we have yet to confirm that. So, my core question i guess i would ask about all of this is so what . Many think we will still find some evidence of life on mars and maybe even on venus, but there has been a whole succession of inconclusive evidence. Fundamentally, i think we want to believe. And every disconfirming piece of simply to say we have not looked in the right place or asked the right questions or used to write instruments. We can carry on. I like the tagline from the xfiles, i want to believe. So do i. I would like to believe there is life out there. I would like to believe we find it. I hope we do so in my lifetime. The clock is ticking. Thank you very much. [laughter] [applause] now eric conway. Erik for those of you who have not been to the jpl, this is a place. We are heading into another one. It is much browner now. The story i want to tell you is about a mission originally called voyager. This is not the voyager that you are probably used to, the two spacecraft that went to jupiter and saturn, and then one continued on to uranus. This is a later project that you took on the same name. This one is a project that i will talk to about today, started in 19 to two, and it began as a means of developing a means of technology to land on mars. In the early 1960s, jpl was having a lot of torrent having a lot of trouble. Bill mentioned the leader impactors the lunar impactors. They failed to hit the man. Moon. The first mars mission, 1965, and these lander studies are going on this whole time, and there was the little film clip we made that tells a little bit more about voyager here. [video clip] announcer at the beginning of the space race, jpl talk to nasa. Now, jpl knew how hard it really was to reach another planet. Yet, in a reversal of roles, nasa was now pushing the bold missions. The agency wondered, the massive rockets needed to launch astronauts to the moon, they used for Robotic Missions to the planets. The ideas gained favor at National Nasa headquarters to mars. Next mission would be to mars. And that meant that the 575 pounds we were able to send mariner 4 would be succeeded by 50,000 pounds. This is insane. Two large spacecraft with entry capsules. Two of them sat on top of the saturn five. It was monstrous. Announcer landers would search for life on the surface. It was very fortunate for all of us and everybody that that thing got canceled. Erik we make these little films about ourselves, in about the dozen years i have been at jpl in part because they give us the opportunity to digitize old film, to collect and digitize old images and to capture on modern, High Definition video tape, remember some of the key actors before they pass along. Since we did this, both of those gentlemen have passed away. What we thought he was jpls perspective on this program, the largescale saturn 5 class mission. They did not think it was reasonable in the 1960s with the facilities, knowledge, manpower, and yet, this went ahead because this is what nasa headquarters wanted, and the viking history in mars, you should see it in the library. It is red, as the planet is. Labeled as dragging feet. Disinterest, wanting to do more modest missions. So there are two perspectives i want you to keep in mind. Because this plays out voyager, the saturn 5 class, jpl, as he saw, was not enthusiastic. You are approaching something of apollo itself, and what brings about its demise in the packaging is actually an error of timing, and now the Johnson Space center part, but what had happened was the congressman, i believe he was the chair of the committee, he was very supportive of voyager. He liked the idea, but from his perspective, the space center put out an rfp, for proposals for a mars sample return, and this was far, far out of what they wanted to do. A manned mission to mars or venus by 1975 or 1987 is now and has always been out of the question. Anyone who persists in this the this mill allocation of is going to be stopped, and in the process of stopping it, voyager went away, too. Now, i am a historian of technology by training, and i mostly like to tell stories about engineering relative to other people. In a sense of project management, voyager is a project of abject failure. It does not go anywhere, but it certainly has an offspring, he gets it served as the umbrella under which a number of Technology Development are undertaken by the Research Center that then makes them the place to go when as a headquarters wants to reformulate a more modest mars mission, so i want to talk about one specific area of that. In the voyager program, jpl led. There were contracts, industry, and design study, and in the process, jpl and langley and industry developed some models. In this case, i chose this. You cannot really read it back there, but it shows three possible entry densities for the mars atmosphere that the lander might have to be designed to. These are necessary for systems. Youre probably all more familiar with the general landing on mars, which came from mariner 4 again, and with a high unknown density variation, so you could not do what is frequently done here in this atmosphere. It is a fixed density. The variation at sea level is 4 . So things do not work as well, and worse, you cannot check your performance as well. So a series of programs to look at, in this case, parachutes is what im going to talk about here. Parachute performance in such rarefied atmospheres deployed at supersonic speed. A planetary parachute program. And i am showing you from one of their tests. One thing i like about this is how slow they do things. We have really changed in the way we think and process imagery, i think, and we began using windtunnel simulations to test potential chutes. This is for mars entries in 1967 and 68. This was october of 1967. It did not go perfectly. But the parachute generally held together. And i think these activities, these engineering activities gave langley the technological edge. And it had another advantage in its performance on its First Space Mission with lunar orbiter. A little bit more about lunar orbiter and surveyor, which was done by jpl. In the early 1960s, jpl was working on both of those, in order to her and a lander. An orbiter and a lander. The idea was to use the same spacecraft, essentially for two different missions. They quickly discovered it would not really worked out. The lander would have to be too different. They were more interested in doing the lunar lander job, and so they kind of dragged their feet on the orbiter parts, and they were not point to do something, and they went looking for someone else. Around about the same time, and the timeframe is a little hard to parse out, rca has developed a Spy Satellite for the cia. This is all very classified and sometime in the 1990s, it became the lunar orbiter. They approached langley about managing it. And that, in essence, is what happened. Langley hired a man by the name of jim martin to manage that program away from the aviation. It went on to great success. I have this poster hanging back in my office when i was asked at at langleys. [laughter] lunar explorer was very successful. Surveyor, on the other hand, got a lesser public reputation, shall i say. It was quite successful, about five of seven landings and an run. Rmous cost over when started, nasa headquarters wanted jpl to handle it with a contractor in carver city. It had a lot of trouble. The management style was eventually reversed. The factory with jpl people, bringing a lot of it back inhouse. There was a Robotic Program before viking, and then it left a bad flavor in their mouth about contract management, and they wanted to go back to doing inhouse builds. The stories also give langley a leg up when it comes to figure out how to repackage voyager. Anyway, some were more successful missions. As i mentioned, this was managed by jim martin. Hired in 1964, he was given the voyager task about two months before, so therefore it became his job to figure out how to fix it. What martin had to do was a little bit different than what langley had traditionally done. As a Research Center, it had done research. It had not done largescale project management. It had not done a lot of contracting, and there were extensive ties to industry because of his work in aviation, and so, he went to work with jp l to reformulate what become s known briefly as titan mars. By may of 1968, his work with jpl had managed to resolve the issue of who would manage this. Initially, jpl was looking at what would be a more reasonable mission but could not check up check off the boxes of understanding all of the things that had to be done for landing, as i understand the story, so it became that jpl would build the orbiters inhouse. The other possibility was what was known as a flyby, what is similar as what was done by mars pathfinder a couple of decades later. It dropped and continued on. And langley Research Center would manage it, which would be contracted to industry. Of course, no facilities for building that kind of thing, and finally, there is a third factor in that the headquarters wanted langley to continue to be a larger player in the space part of the nasa and the prize. Enterprise. That was one of the reasons it wanted them to manage the lunar orbiter. It is important to consider that headquarters wanted someone to do the job, and not jpl. This film, you already saw it before, i clicked it from the same video. It just shows you what they meant by out of orbit insertion because we had not done it, at least not for mars. In december 1968 is when this out of Orbit Mission is chosen, and the name of viking is assigned. This had not actually been langleys recommendation. They had advocated for the flyby because it was simpler, more attractive, and maybe lower cost, but it was not deemed it ambitious enough by the nasa leadership at the time. Not sufficient enough to beat the russians. And i am always exactly on time, because i wanted to leave you at the end of this talk with the vehicles under construction, but as i went around, and understood that jpl never digitized its images, so what i am leaving you with is another task. They built and assembled the dynamic test model of the vehicles, proving the assembly could actually be done. This image is from november , 1973. Thank you. [applause] for those of you with burning questions in your mind, we will have a question and answer session. It will be after glenn. You will get you set up here, glenn we will get you set up here, glenn. Perfect. Glenn thank you. So if you needed to design a logo to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing, would you pick a blue sky or a red sky . They developed a number of logos that could be used in conjunction with this, and they chose both. As we introduce our talk, so the events surrounding the week of july 20, 1976, were incredibly exciting. When the lander landed, it was almost powered up, and they had programmed in two photographs to be taken so that they could be delivered fairly quickly, and for nasa to be able to confirm that the lunar had landed on mars. The image you see was the first image to come through. Smaller focus, directly making sure that the pad, had, in fact, touched the ground, that the the ground. That it was solid. The camera was a facsimile. For those of you do not know about fax machines, it scanned scanned it scanned from left to right. Strips of the photograph would appear. This is as it came through, about 5 00 in the morning, half an hour after it had landed. It was a stunning experience, i am sure, for everyone in the room. A couple of hours later, the second image appeared, higher resolution, showing a panorama of the landscape. Again, very exciting for those on the team, able to describe what mars might actually be like and the prospects of whether or not the mission would find biological life. Now, a day after that, communication was improved with the lander, and they decided to use the landers to take a color picture. They had that capability, putting the image through a three color lens. The image that came back was the one that the nasa imaging Team Released to the public, and in doing so, the team said this is a wonderful depiction. We all now know that mars is not just a red dot in the sky. We can actually see it as a planet. It almost looks like it could be a Western Desert with the red rocks and the blue sky, and jim pollock, on the imaging team, the atmosphere he said, wait a second. This guy really should be red. And everybody thought about that for a minute, and they went back to their computers, recalibrated the image and realized that all that time they had spent interpreting the image that had appeared so quickly that they made a mistake in calibrating the colors, so wanting to be careful, a few days later, july 26, they released a corrected color image of mars, which shows the sky to be red. And now we know that mars can be either color, depending on the atmosphere conditions, depending on when in the day you take the picture. A few weeks after this, the imaging team took a picture of mars at sunset, which saw that blue tent that that blue tint. Describing the second biological experiment, reflecting back on the blue sky, it is a good way to start. The first lesson to be learned is that everybody in this room needs to get a good night sleep. Mistakes. That was the first thing that everybody on the project learned. The second thing is that working inside a fishbowl is very different, and the viking really was a fishbowl as the apollo was. The results came back quickly. The results took some time to interpret. It was going to be the case that the scientists expected it would take some time to figure out what was going on. That was on how the press reported events. Not how the press reported events. It took a lot of time to explain some of the misconceptions that had been out there about what the situation on mars was. It also turned our attention to seen it is oksm to look at mars in terms of what we know about the earth, but we also need to be open to the possibility that things could be very different, simply because you expect the sky to be blue, it does not mean that you should not question that, and check your data. So in terms of putting the biological experiments into historical context, something youre going to hear a lot about from people who will talk tomorrow. Everybody that i have spoken with reflects tremendous excitement about everything they were learning about mars, very quickly, and trying to make sense of that. The history of viking is usually history in academic the context of exobiology, the search for life. This is basically the talk roger was giving. If you want to read a book about it, another former nasa historian has written about it from that perspective, and to his mind, it focuses to understand the connection between life and atmospheres, and to some degree, that is how a lot of people understand the viking experience. It to some degree brought an end to our search for life on mars. Two different topics. Intelligence, looking for organics, looking at astro chemistry and carbon molecules, planetary space, looking at exit planets, the type of organisms we find here on earth, but what i would like to do in the short time i have is to look at this, and here the history is not as well developed. Probably the best history is done by the nasa History Program soon after the nasa dust viking program ended, and it is a tremendous amount of work that the people put into making it a success. If you want to look at the jpl history, it picks up later. Eric has just come out with a book on trying to understand the engineering required to get to mars and to understand it. What i would like to do, to a degree, the viking program it did not happen for 17 years, but a lot of what was learned in viking made that possible, and expansion of the engineering model, which is basically how scientists understand the planet to be so they can develop technology to land there. Another reason for a precursor, if you look at the Lunar Program you have got the orbiters that , eric talked about. Because of the differences and expense, the viking program combined the two and gave us a more complete, combined picture of what mars was, the data we had in order to make sense of what mars was like. Here is a very quick rundown of science returns from viking. There is a lot more going on with viking than just the biological experiments. The orbiter, of course, was primarily for imaging. The imaging was incredibly important. It increased the resolution of the photographs we have, and 10 showed to the degree we had that had not realized the effects of water on the surface. There was an infrared spectrometer that showed the water vapor in the atmosphere. When the lander separated from the orbiter and went through the atmosphere, there were instruments on that, and that was probably the biggest contribution that it may to the made to the mars engineering model. We are all very well aware of the challenges of coming through the atmosphere of mars. This was the first time it had been done and the first of we got good, solid data. And what is going on in the upper atmosphere, the ionosphere , then, the atmosphere structure , once it separated, we were able to see how slowly it was moving through the atmosphere. The density, the temperature returning, we can understand how to make it better. Once the lander was on mars, there is what i would call some incidental data discovery. Simple operations of the spacecraft returned some data about what the soil looked like. The particles, to see whether they stuck together, to give us some sense of what we needed to do to do the landing better. It returned some very interesting information about the iron content of the soil. Of course, there were imagers, two cameras, and a lot of information came from that. Information about the surface of mars also a reference for the , experiments that they were preceding. And then there was a lot to be gained from the radio science. Looking at the shift in the radio, to understand how quickly moving rotationally and within the orbit. And then there were the more active instruments, the more complicated instruments. There was a seismology instrument that said something about the structure of the core. That was the only instrument that did not work properly. It failed to deploy. We did not get the network information. There was a meteorology station, basically a weather station that recorded temperatures, wind direction, wind speed. Viking lasted for greater than five years. Two different places on the planet. Tremendous data that we got about whether patterns weather patterns on mars. Again, certainly the weather was very different from earth, but being able to talk about martian weather was something to do on a regular basis. The xray fluorescence spectrometer was a fairly standard instrument at the time. It was basically to describe the composition of major mineral elements and organic elements in the martian soil. And instrument a big instrument was the mass spectrometer. It basically allowed nasa scientists to explore the possibility of molecular organic material on mars. Significantly, that showed there were no carbon molecules. There was no organic material from which would develop. We sort of set the tone for everything to happen in a biology experiment package. Now, the biology experiment package was a big deal. The instruments had been in development for almost a decade. They were not extensive until the became part of viking, and then they became very extensive, in the fact there is a sealed container about the size of a gallon milk jug. It had to be very light. Many hundreds of thousands of parts, hundreds of things that needed to operate, many different types of sensors, so it was a very complex piece of machinery. That said, it worked perfectly from an engineering perspective. There was one issue with a soil sample had been documented correctly but other than that, everything on the machine work ed as it should have. This is something i might nasa has ever done before in the sense of an experiment. And this is something that nasa had never done before in the sense of an experiment. The pressure within the vessel, time for the samples to be incubated, such that we learned an enormous amount about the surface chemistry of mars. And my time is running up, but this is a picture of how complicated the biological was. Biological experiments was. The top shows an image of all of the different parts of the machine that had to be put in there. Below that is a picture of the valid experiment package, getting a sense of how small it was to do, how much it did, and they got an exchange experiment, a laboratory, very heavily tested, very heavily calibrated. These machines were taken to all sorts of potential sites around the earth to see if they could detect life there in those extreme environments. At the bottom, we see two people, to degree polar opposites of the biological experiment. In the back is richard young, at the Biology Program office. He basically encouraged them to come up with machines that could automatically, remotely, without human intervention, identify the possibility of microbial life. He represented in the telling of the story the sort of enthusiasm of the possibility of finding life on mars and developing a Robotic Laboratory that could, in fact, do that. Now, i do not have time to go into all of the nuances, but the basic outline of the story is very quickly, they loaded soil into the equipment and a few , days after that, all three of the biological experiment packages returned something that looked like signs of life, but not exactly. In trying to find out how it did not fit the model, the scientists involved in the program, and at that point scientists around the world, they started to explore whether or not these could be biological effects or whether or not they were chemical effects from the oxidizers on the surface. Unfortunately, we did not know at that time a lot about oxidizing minerals on the surface. Since then, we have learned a tremendous amount. Is the front of the picture, and he is one of the heroes of this history. He pieced together very complicated Life Sciences that served as the fundamental research organization, not just at exobiology, but it was to come up with a consensus of scientific opinion on what the results showed. It was his job within the fishbowl very much like the viking program to explain to the press that there are these results and it will take a long time to figure out what exactly is going on. We think a lot of it has to do with the surface chemistry of mars. We just have to go back and even if nasa does not have the ambition, wherewithal, funding for another experiment that would allow the detection of life, we could at least go back with the Precursor Mission to allow us to understand more about mars. That is why i think viking is so historically significant. Not simply sending the life science package up there and making some ambiguous statement about the presence of life but , rather starting a final process. [applause] walt all right, we have some time for some questions and answers, and i will be moderating the questions. Please make your way if you have a question to the microphone. We will endeavor to answer your questions from a historical perspective. And while people are making their way to the microphone, let they take the moderator privilege and throw the first question out. Viking landing on mars and then , there is a long gap in exploration. What is the story behind that . Do you want to take a shot at it, erik . You need a microphone, as well. Erik ok. Ok. This actually goes into change, 1978, 1979. Andadministration comes in they would never get the planetary findings. That went on for a couple of years, and then mars observer. And it turned out that mars observer worked, but there are political reasons why there is no funding for Planetary Science in that time other than galileo. Another part of the store has do with the results from the science experience spearman. I was probably the biggest question that nasa could have answered, and the results were null, but it did not return the absolutely yes answer that would have driven funding for the mars mission almost instantaneously. Instead, it became a time of a long time where people were trying to make sense of the data that was returned, and it was not as interesting or compelling as the story had been up to then. Walt thanks. I think we have a question now. I have a question about the role of ed cartright. I understand he may have been working on voyager, the program you described, and then he came down here or Something Like that . Maybe you could elaborate more . Erik the story that ed told me when i interviewed him probably about 1999 or 2000 was that he was sent down here to make sure that viking was completed successfully, but also, as i mentioned in my talk, to help further push langley being more into this space and nasa business. There was a great deal of resistance to that within the population here. Langley was a Research Center. They had aerodynamicists. They wanted to do research. It was a place of strength for decades. And it is very hard to switch tracks entirely and to go into this kind of substantial project management. So that is a quick story that ed told me. He did not tell me any stories about being fired at headquarters or anything like that but that he had been shipped down here specifically. Walt other questions . These days at langley and throughout the agency we have so , many competing priorities that we are always trying to succeed in multiple arenas and multiple large projects. Was that the case during the viking days, or was truly the entire center and large chunks of the agency pushing towards the success of this one mission . Erik i will let you answer a question, and then maybe i will. Bill all right. [laughter] been theselways competing priorities. That has always been the case. Even in the apollo era, reaching the moon was an overarching objective of nasa. There were other activities that were under way, and they had their priorities, as well. There is a Research Program that is underway. There is lifting body research. There is all kinds of things taking place, all of them there is a good thing and a bad thing about that. If you have a laser focus on one objective, at some level that is good because everyone is try to trying to accomplish the same goal. The downside of that is if you are successful, then what, and i think nasa felt a little bit of that at the end of the apollo era. But the priorities of other missions are also very real, and we cannot minimize those, even though we went through a 30year period of the space shuttle. That was the dominant thing that the public about when they thought about nasa. There are other things that are taking place that were maybe not as visible but just as significant. Do you want to change that answer . Erik there is one thing during the viking program, engine research, very important to making jet aircraft, commercial jet aircraft more acceptable. There had been a lot of resistance outside of the original handful of cities because they were so much louder apparently louder than propeller , driven aircraft, and that was a relatively deal that was related to viking. Walt i would take that as an opportunity for a plug. Vanessa History Program. The book that eric the reprint, mentioned. The book that eric mentioned. The paper one, you can find it in the Langley Library or on the shelf someplace, and this is by ed. This an electronic format on the nasa website. In electronic format on the nasa website. Which brings me around to the nasa website, as well, so feel free to download and read. Lots of depth about the things, and i think as erik mentioned, there was a lot about the langley element of this. And then the centaur. Part of the program you have not talked about with viking. Again, taking privilege of being moderator, a question that addresses all three of you, and that is from and historians an historians prospective historian perspective, what you have told is unique, what lessons might you draw from that for ongoing policy on mars explosion or any other nasa program, for example . We will start with roger here, sort of the larger planetary question. Roger i believe that a lot of the public, anyway, is driven by the sense that they want to know whether or not there is life beyond this planet, and that may be one of the greatest questions of humankind throughout the ages. Are we alone in the universe . And for the first time, we had the potential of coming close to answering the question, and viking, of course, had a very public role in trying to determine whether or not there was some biological material that they might encounter on the red planet. That was a major part of the mission. Not the only part, by any means, and i sure there were people am associated who would say, wow, we were doing all of this other stuff. That is true. From the public perspective, i think the life story is important. It was played up by celebrity scientists, like carl sagan, who thought they were going to find something and they ballyhooed about it on a regular basis like on Johnny Carson at night, and the evidence of that, or the lack of any evidence to support that possibility of life on mars i think did tend to dampen peoples spirits on some of these things. There were debates within the Science Community beforehand. There is famous exchanges between sagan and bruce murray at jpl. Sagan is accused of overselling this as the impetus for the mars mission. And if we do not return results that are what the public wants to hear, they will not be interested in continuing, and at some level, he may have been correct. Not entirely, but at some level. Anybody else want to add . Glenn i think i will approach this as government function. There was no doubt when people started thinking about what a mission to mars might look like, that it should contain a detection experiment to see if there was life there. That was a colossal experiment, a colossal question, something that everybody at the time needed to be addressed. If you are going to mars, surely there is a way to add that experiment to it. And then as the decade went on, and the spacecraft was being pieced together, and costs were an issue as it was ramped up, and they questioned whether or not that was the most important question. Putting a lander on mars to accomplish it, and it turned out in the long history of things, and unexpected answer, that was they could be going to planets and collecting data, which is what the lander did an orbiter. , that wase missions improving the engineering model, collecting data on what sort of minerals were available there, expecting something in the future, someone who is an intern, or somebody who is working for private industry, or somebody working with a space agency that is not a pioneer like the United States has been, is going to use that data to colonize mars or grow plants on mars or do something really unique. You know, the 1960s was a period of optimism in terms of what nasa was doing in being able to pose big questions. People were expected to ask these sorts of things. It was the right thing to do. It has sort of shifted since then. Kepler is the spacecraft up there identifying all of these potential xo planets. It has essentially picked up the mantle of the experiment of viking. It is a small program, but it is asking these fundamental questions. A lot of the data it is getting back is asking these questions. It is not directly about finding an analog to earth. It is about answering and taking an ambitious step and taking asking those questions. So, you know, i think that is a lesson that can be learned. The 1960s were a different time in terms of optimism. I wish you could get back to that time we could get back to that time. Roger it is interesting you brought up kepler, because it is routinely brought up at those by visitors at the air and space museum, and i totally agree with glenn about how we should characterize what we are learning about exoplanets, but what they asked over and over again, have they found earthlike planets . Having found planets we can colonize . Having found planets that could potentially have creatures we could communicate with . That is the beginning and the end of what those people think of when they think of these things. I dont know if we need to manage expectations more effectively or if we need to have a better education system, maybe both. It is an interesting challenge that i see as we are trying to deal with the general public to try to talk to them about these kinds of questions. A question about viking and life on mars, in less than 24 hours at the podium, we will hear the latest chapter of that story, so we can come back tomorrow. Walt absolutely. An advertisement. Sir . By late 2030, i wonder what will be the Biggest Challenges to overcome . Walt so from the historian perspective, humans to mars . Erik i have already said this in print, so i am already in trouble. Is it feasible . Yes. Are we going to have the political will to spend that much money . I dont see it. So that is my answer. It could be done, but i do not think it will be done. Roger i can speak, and i have done this a number of times. The core question seems to be in terms of humans to mars, believe me, i would love to see that happen. It is a large program, and it would be a very large and expensive and timeconsuming program. It would only be able to be accomplished with a major commitment, probably a multinational commitment, but at the very least a major, probably 1 trillion commitment, to do it. If we want to use history as a model, you know, we decided to send humans to the moon in the 1960s for a very specific political to respond to a very specific political crisis, and that was the threat of the soviet union. A way to demonstrate our capabilities, this larger socioeconomic, political, in some cases military confrontation. The question i always have to ask is if it was that kind of confrontation that triggered the decisionmaking process to go to the moon, what would be that trigger mechanism in which the public, the congress, the president , and probably the leadership of other nations, as well all come together and say the answer to that crisis is sending human expedition to mars. I cannot think of one. If you can, i am all ears. But i think it is a real challenge in terms of a mission. Now, if we can find a way to do it within the funding profile of nasa, everyone will cheer, but i have not seen that anywhere. Walt even in the 1960s, and have not seen that anywhere. Those of us who went through the 1960s working as this as a fat, recognize this, the support for the Apollo Program was not wide spread. The opposition emerged soon afterwards. It was already on the fast track. The money was pumping into nasa. It was moving ahead. And it had a certain galvanizing effect. The soviet union doing it was having a galvanizing effect. Mid 60s. But there was widespread opposition to the program. The overall support for the Apollo Program was not that strong, not much above 50 . Even in those circumstances. Erik there is a legend that the Apollo Program was flush with money, but their budget was actually cut every year from fiscal 1965 on. Roger and there was an attack every year in congress, and it was about reducing money spent on apollo. Walt more questions . Sir . How langley got the viking program as opposed to jpl, only focused on aeronautics. I am wondering about it being successful, whether or not . Planetary wise. And jpl. I am wondering what the path was. Many more missions regarding to viking planetary wise . Why did it come about . Walt i think, erik, that is a question for you. Erik i thought i was going to get that question. The answer in the short term was yes, of course. Viking was successful, and in the longer term, no, and what i cannot tell you is why the no comes about. My guess is that it happens every few years with mission reviews and they decided they do not have the funds to continue with the missions at langley, so i think the next fully Orbital Mission langley has is calypso in the late 1990s, i think. And other than that, it provides instruments. It does research. It is a Research Center, after all, but, yes, that effort to shove langley into the Space Business did not last very long. Walt this hints back to the issue i was talking about. It is about the large team effort involved with viking. You have got multiple centers working on programs, a very complex situation. You have got Martin Marietta, and then you have got headquarters and their perspective. Gentlemen, i would like to ask each of you, if you have an opinion on what did we learn from the viking experience about what the proper orientation is of nasa in terms of managing complex programs across multiple centers . Is there a lesson we can draw from viking . Things we should have learned not to do . Are there things we learned we should not do . Erik i keep getting in more trouble. When i roger as a historian i am , forgetting his said this. Somebody commented to me, one of the engineers here, that nasa works best when headquarters pretends to manage the centers, and the centers pretends to be managed, with the emphasis on the pretend. [laughter] so i am not the only one who thinks that the headquarters should stay out of engineering. A general lesson though its hard to draw from viking, because jpl built the orbiters inhouse, like they did for its previous spacecraft, and the contract with Martin Marietta in denver, without, to my knowledge, sending the hundreds of people that jpl had to send tissues over surveyor. Two hughes over surveyor. But that leaves ambiguity, because jpl is doing it in house, which we still do today, and there is a contract management model which is quite not the type of deal that surveyor had at its beginning. It is kind of the all falling in of the contractors underpants that surveyor became. So i think they achieved some sort of a balance with a good project team between the three, which has happened in other times. It seems to be very effective. It also seems very hard to do. Not everyone succeeds at it. Walt glenn . Glenn working on viking, they are very proud of the contributions they have made. Lockheed martin, previously Martin Marietta, is celebrating this week the ballgame viking landing. Very similar to what is happening at langley with the role they played in getting the equipment to work. It was fundamental as what nasa had done in terms of developing specifications and putting the program in order. To answer your question, i do not know what we could say about this contractor network. To some degree, viking is a very underexplored historical topic. There are a few wonderful books out there. You know, langley has not stood up the History Program that would allow them to have a person sitting up here, answering those questions about the role of the center. One man is doing a wonderful job as a history point of contact, but there is no time to explore what is a very complicated question which is the relationship between the organizations and how things toelop from the apollo era the viking era. With that, that does it for time. We thank you all very much. [applause] American History tv airs on cspan tv every weekend. This month, American History tv is in prime time to introduce you to programs you could see every weekend on cspan3. Features include lectures in history, this is to College Classrooms across the country. American artifact takes a look at the treasures of u. S. Historic sites. Railamerica reveals the 20th century through archival films. The civil war were here about the people who shaped the civil war and reconstruction. In the presidency focuses on and firstdents ladies. Learn about the politics, policies and legacies. All this month on prime time on American History tv on cspan3. Acre battlefield is about 45 miles northwest of u. S. Capitol. The National Park Service Opportunity includes the best damage farm built in the 1790s by family of french caribbean immigrants who owned about 90 slaves. Topan met joy billingsley learn how remnants of the 200 year old slave quarters were discovered in 2003. And they were partially excavated in the summer of 2010. We are at the best farm. It is named after the tenants who occupied the farm. What we know today as the best of whatms the 207 acres was really a 740 plantation. The