Viking Missions (Caroline Era)

The Viking Missions were a turning point in the history of space exploration. The initial plan had been to send two orbiters, each with a lander, to Mars in order to explore the planet and in particular to determine the presence or absence of life there.

Mission Design
As with most other space missions of the time, the crucial issue was enabling a successful mission with the minimum space and weight requirements. Whereas previous automatic probes had successfully functioned on relatively simple computing equipment, the Viking probes were relatively ambitious and required more complex and therefore larger hardware.