Viking 1 makes the first successful landing on Mars

What happened

Viking 1's lander separated from its orbiter and touched down on Mars on 20 July 1976, exactly seven years after the Apollo 11 Moon landing, becoming the first American spacecraft to land successfully on another planet. It set down on the western slopes of Chryse Planitia, or Golden Plain, and began transmitting the first photograph of its landing site within five minutes. Viking 1 carried three biology experiments built to search for signs of microbial life in Martian soil, along with a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer to analyze samples for organic compounds. The lander went on to operate on the surface for more than 2,300 days, over six years, the longest extraterrestrial surface mission until Opportunity's rover broke the record in 2010.

How we know

NASA's history office account documents the landing date and site coordinates; NASA Science's own mission overview independently corroborates the landing site and the biology and mass-spectrometer experiments carried aboard.

Sources

• NASA History Office. 45 Years Ago: Viking 1 Touches Down on Mars · Primary source (author-declared)nasa.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
• NASA Science. Viking 1 · Primary source (author-declared)science.nasa.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)