This is not a NASA Website. You might learn something. It's YOUR space agency. Get involved. Take it back. Make it work - for YOU.
Space & Planetary Science

Cool NASA Mars Symposium That NASA Is Not Talking About

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
June 24, 2016
Filed under
Cool NASA Mars Symposium That NASA Is Not Talking About

Keith’s note: NASA is holding a Viking 40th Anniversary Symposium at NASA LaRC on 19 & 20 July. This event has quite a line up of speakers for something that ought to resonate with #JourneyToMars (their poster even uses the hashtag). So … when are NASA LaRC or NASA HQ going to tell people about this? There is nothing online at NASA LaRC, on the NASA HQ Journey To Mars webpage, or at NASA.gov calendar. I only heard about this via a NIA email notice for the live webcast and agenda.
Keith’s update: PAO tells me that they just got approval to start talking about this event.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

9 responses to “Cool NASA Mars Symposium That NASA Is Not Talking About”

  1. Bob Mahoney says:
    0
    0

    I remember noticing back in the 1990s, during the era of Faster-Better-Cheaper and the Pathfinder mission, that the Viking missions had been seemingly erased from NASA’s public consciousness.

    NO ONE, when they were discussing the potential and then the current discoveries from the new mission, EVER even mentioned the Viking missions in passing. Some phrasing of the commentary even suggested amazing novelties among Pathfinder’s achievements (which weren’t, really) with no acknowledgement whatsoever of just how much the Viking missions contributed to the very foundation of all the supposedly never-been-done-before activities of that 90s mission.

    It really got under my skin, and I’ve always wondered where it came from. It was as if someone on high at NASA had laid down the law: NOBODY is to talk about Viking OR ELSE.

    It is difficult to overestimate how much the Viking missions advanced our understanding of Mars, or the amazing set of technical accomplishments it represented. Shame on those who have chosen to try to bury it, and thank goodness someone is trying to resurrect its importance and validate its legacy. To Jim Martin (RIP) & Thomas Mutch (RIP) and all the rest of you passed & still living, thank you & well done!

    • fcrary says:
      0
      0

      I doubt they had anything against Viking in particular. I’ve noticed a tendency to brag about all the great things the _current_ mission is doing, or what the mission in development will do. That’s often done at the exclusion of what previous missions have done, since that only takes away from image they are trying to create. I’ve personally been criticized for saying a project should do some research before saying they are the first to do something, just to make sure they really were the first. Also, if the PR people don’t know much about a 20-year-old mission, they have no incentive to research it. I think this is also one of the reasons why missions flown by other countries get less attention within the United States.

      • Bob Mahoney says:
        0
        0

        I would easily assign the lack of discussion I perceived to such a tendency if it hadn’t been so 100% absolute. NOTH-ING said, not even in passing.

        And to your point, i.e., the PR people don’t know much about a 20-year-old mission so they’d have no incentive to research it. If the ‘PR people’ aren’t up on the history of their subject matter (i.e., the exploration of Mars), what are they doing being PR people? If such were truly the case, then we are in bigger trouble than I’ve begun to suspect…

        Viking and its discoveries were foundational to the later exploration of Mars. Excluding them from the discussion would be like covering the next human landing on the Moon without MENTIONING the Apollo program.

        I am convinced that something else was going on, and I am as anti-conspiracy-minded as you can get. It may have been an innocent cultural artifact, e.g., intellectual burnout from so much discussion of Viking findings during the 80s, but…at the very least, the accomplishments of the mission merited at the very least a respectful if brief acknowledgement of their substantial foundation-laying for Sojourner & Pathfinder.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
          0
          0

          Most likely it was part of the movement against big flagship missions by Administrator Goldin.

          • Michael Spencer says:
            0
            0

            Makes sense. On the other hand the importance of Viking is well understood by space geeks, but the capability of that machine has been dwarfed.

    • mfwright says:
      0
      0

      “NOBODY is to talk about Viking OR ELSE”

      A shame really because that program was HUGE. New, new, new stuff had to be developed. I think what really “did in” Viking was the objective “Is there life on Mars?” When the answer came back “no” then Mars was abandoned until Pathfinder 20 years later. Ever since, nobody specifies objective “is there life” always something else.

      What I found ***really impressive*** were those pictures! Clear with color that shows Mars as a place. Wow, nobody ever saw something like that (oh wait, there was Surveyor but Apollo astronauts photos surpass those), as soon as Newsweek and Time magazines arrived at the local store, I bought them!

  2. Michael Spencer says:
    0
    0

    I remember visiting JPL during an open house – May, 2001 – there was a full-scale model of Voyager, but nothing about Viking. Just looked through my pics.

  3. ThomasLMatula says:
    0
    0

    What I find interesting is how NASA is honoring the 40th anniversary of Viking 1 while they completely ignored the recent 50th anniversary of Surveyor one. If anything highlights the Mars bias of NASA this does.

    • Michael Spencer says:
      0
      0

      There are so many milestones- Ranger comes to mind, fraught with problems but ultimately successful; Vanguard, Gemini, the unplanned program shoe-horned between Mercury and Apollo; the development and success of Saturn; and of course Hubble, Spitzer and the other great telescopes; Galileo and Cassini; New Horizons– lest we forget, the NASA portfolio is quite rich. So many more, all with un-sung PIs and staff scientists.