Explore Alliance Presents: How Do You KNOW? – Episode #22: 'The Viking Experiments'

The Viking Experiments

In the early 1960’s, long before humans had left low Earth orbit, NASA was planning a mission to Mars that would soft-land on the red planet. More than 165 science mission proposals were sent to NASA for the lander vehicles, 17 of these focused on looking for life on Mars. Only three of these life-seeking experiments made it onto the lander. There was a fourth experiment selected, this was the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer or GCMS. We will look at all four of these experiments in some detail.

In this episode of 'How Do You KNOW?', Dr. Barth will look at the work of Dr. Gilbert Levin and the Labelled Release Experiment on the Viking Lander, how the detection instrumentation worked, and the discovery of possible life on Mars.