NASA's Viking 2 was a joint orbiter-lander mission that saw the second U.S. landing on Mars on Sept. 3, 1976. Viking 2's lander touched the Red Planet just weeks after its sibling, Viking 1.

Forty years ago today (July 20), NASA's Viking 1 Mars lander became the first American spacecraft to touch down safely on the Red Planet. Skip to main content. Open menu Close menu ...

Viking 2 was launched on September 9, 1975, less than a month after Viking 1, which landed on Mars on July 20, 1976. The Viking spacecrafts consisted of an orbiter and a lander, which separated after ...

In fact, Schulze-Makuch believes NASA may have already detected life on Mars with its Viking landers in the 1970s. As microbial life in the Atacama Desert dies when exposed to too much water, the ...

Viking 1 launched 48 years ago this week and made history when it became the first spacecraft to land safely on Mars' surface and send images back to Earth.

Life on Mars may have been found -- before it was accidentally destroyed during a prior NASA mission, one scientist has suggested. In 1975, just six years after Apollo 11 touched down on the moon ...

NASA’s Viking 2 lander probably discovered quakes on Mars almost 50 years ago, but this has only just been confirmed thanks to data from the more recent InSight probe.

The Viking 2 lander is still visible on the surface of Mars -- a souvenir of a program that NASA says cost approximately $1 billion. There were disappointments, of course.

NASA’s Viking program sent two identical probes, Viking 1 and Viking 2, to Mars. Both of these consisted of an orbiter to take photographs of the planet, and a lander to conduct experiments on ...