All language subtitles for Americas Secret Space Heroes Series 1 6of6 Viking Mars 1080p

♪ ♪

GENTRY: They told us we
couldn’t possibly succeed!

NARRATOR: At the
end of the 1960s

NASA starts work on its
most daring planetary mission.

Placing two spacecraft on
Mars -- to search for life.

DUKE: To say that
that was an easy process

would be a huge mistake.

NARRATOR:
Project Viking will challenge
engineers to the extreme.

Not to build big --
but to build small.

ANDY: You’re talking
about a biological laboratory,

and you’re shrinking it down
to a box one foot on each side.

GENTRY: Who were we
kidding, it would never work!

TOM: I’d say it almost
brought us to our knees.

NARRATOR:
To succeed requires a spacecraft
that must work by itself

millions of miles from earth.

MATT: And if any of that
goes wrong, it’s game over.

NARRATOR: As mankind plans
a return to the Red Planet --

this is the story
of the unsung heroes

challenged to make the first
successful landing on Mars.

[♪ theme music ♪]

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: July 20th, 1976.

The Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, California.

Project manager Jim Martin
and his team of engineers

are on the verge
of making history

by safely landing the
Viking spacecraft on mars.

Almost 200 miles
above the surface,

Viking 1 begins
its critical descent.

[Radio chatter]

MATT: This must have been one
of the most anxious experiences

one can imagine.

MISSION CONTROL: 59,000 feet...

NARRATOR: Every engineering
device must work perfectly.

MATT: Your heat shield has to
come off at the right moment,

your parachute has to
deploy at the right moment...

MISSION CONTROL: Lander
confirmed, parachute deploy.

ANDY: And then that last descent
coming down to the surface.

MISSION CONTROL:
Parachute separation...
177 feet per second.

HOWARD: We were
at a critical stage!

[Phone ringing]

NARRATOR: Suddenly,
Jim Martin’s phone rings.

HOWARD: Jim got a
call from President Ford.

NARRATOR: The President’s on the
line -- and he wants an update.

MISSION CONTROL:
Good roll, altitude hold.

HOWARD:
He told him he couldn’t talk
to him now, he was too busy.

And he hung up on him.

NARRATOR: After
seven years of planning,

all Jim Martin and
his team can do...

MISSION CONTROL: 73
feet per second... come on.

NARRATOR: ... is hope Viking
makes it safely to the surface.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: The story of Project
Viking begins in the 1960s.

With the success of its
first manned moon landing,

NASA starts planning an
ambitious planetary mission.

The destination -- Mars.

Although smaller and further
from the sun than the Earth,

our neighboring planet has
some startling similarities.

ANDY: It has
seasons like the Earth,

its day is roughly 24
hours long like the Earth.

It even has ice
caps like the Earth.

NARRATOR: The planet’s
likeness to ours is so strong,

NASA designs Project
Viking with one goal in mind.

JOEL: One of the overarching
questions in all of science is,

is there life outside the Earth?

And that’s the
unique thing about Viking.

Viking was a
science-driven mission.

NARRATOR: At over
200 million miles away,

the search for life on Mars will
test engineers to the extreme.

JOEL: To think we could do
this was an absurd assumption.

TOM: We knew nothing about
Mars at the scale of a lander

or nothing about what it
was really like on the surface.

JOEL: We didn’t know whether
Viking would sink in the dust,

we didn’t know whether
we would hit a mountain.

NARRATOR: During the 1960s one
reason Mars remains enigmatic

is the challenge in reaching it.

The Soviets and Americans
launch numerous missions --

many ending in disaster.

ANDY:
Mars is much tougher because
it’s so much further away.

You have to be incredibly
precise, the targeting,

the navigation through
millions of miles of space.

NARRATOR: For Gus Guastaferro --

Viking’s deputy
project manager --

it’s a journey full of unknowns.

GUS: Therefore we
were gonna write a spec

that had a lot of TBDs in it

and we are gonna have to
get these TBDs answered.

And you know what TBD
is, it’s to be determined.

NARRATOR:
The best way to search for
life on Mars is to land there.

How to do that safely

is one of the
engineers’ biggest challenges.

They must choose
one of two options.

MATT: Option A was to send a
lander directly to the planet

and have it land
without going into orbit first.

NARRATOR: It’s
called direct entry.

On arriving at Mars a flyby
module releases the lander,

which descends straight
to a predetermined location.

ANDY: You don’t
go into orbit first.

You just come
screaming in and you slow down,

you get to the surface.

So with direct entry
you’re gambling big time.

You’re just coming in
and hoping for the best.

NARRATOR: The
alternative -- option B --

involves an orbiter
that carries the lander.

On arrival they both go
into orbit around Mars.

The lander then separates
and descends to the surface.

It’s called the
out of orbit mode.

For Viking design
manager Norm Crabill,

option B has one big advantage.

NORM: If you do out of
orbit, you establish an orbit

and take advantage of that
and do some reconnaissance

and decide can I go
in where I wanted to

or do I have to
go someplace else.

GUS: And there is no better
redundancy than reconnaissance

before the attack.

NARRATOR: Option B
plays it safe with an orbiter

but adds an extra $70 million

to NASA’s most expensive
planetary mission to date.

At the end of the 60s,
fighting the Vietnam War

means America’s
debt is spiraling.

An expensive mission to
Mars is hardly a vote winner.

Congress slashes NASA’s budget,

making the cheaper
option A the obvious choice.

MATT: It was, in
fact, quite surprising

to many of the
people involved in Viking

that NASA chose
option B over option A.

NARRATOR:
What’s more, the agency
requires engineers to build

a second identical spacecraft,
Viking 2, as a backup.

TOM: The rationale is that
projects like Viking are rare,

and when you do them
you should do them right.

NARRATOR: To pay for it NASA
must spread the enormous cost

over more years -- delaying the
launch to Mars from 1973 to ’75.

For mission designers like
Gentry Lee, it’s a godsend.

GENTRY: After we first
started the Viking project,

Jim Martin and all
the rest of us knew that

we had bitten off
more than we could chew,

but we didn’t really want to go
to Congress or to the President

and say, "I don’t think
we’re gonna get there by 1973."

NARRATOR:
Viking’s complexity means
every second will be needed

to design and
build the spacecraft.

Searching for life on Mars

will stretch those
involved to the breaking point.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Spring 1970. Engineers
on Project Viking start

the challenge of constructing
America’s first spacecraft

to land on Mars.

At the Smithsonian’s
National Air and Space Museum,

it’s possible to see
the finished lander,

designed to search for
life on the Red Planet.

MATT: So, as you can see,
the lander is quite large,

it weighs about half a ton,

and it carries a pretty
robust instrument package.

It has a high-gain
antenna for sending signals

directly back to Earth.

It also has two cameras
that scanned the landscape

and, probably most
importantly, a biological

experimental package
for analyzing soil samples.

NARRATOR: If
life exists on Mars,

scientists expect it
to be found in the soil.

But that begs an
all-important question.

ANDY: How do you look
for life on another planet

when you have no idea
what that life is like?

You start with the assumption
that at some basic level

it’s going to be
similar to life on Earth.

NARRATOR: On Earth
the simplest lifeforms

are microscopic organisms.
They’re also the most abundant.

Viking will search for similar
microbes in Martian soil --

by looking for
traces of gas produced

as they live and breathe.

To do this the
landers will carry three

life-stimulating experiments.

A lamp will warm Martian soil

in the hope any
organisms will react to light.

Another adds varying
mixtures of water and nutrients

encouraging
microbes to exhale.

The third adds drops
of liquid nutrient --

nicknamed "chicken soup" --

coaxing any microbes
to feed and metabolize.

If Martian life exists,

Viking will hopefully detect any
gases the microbes produce --

proving their
existence in the soil.

But engineering
these experiments

is a phenomenal challenge.

ANDY: You’re talking about a
biological laboratory, you know,

something that would take up
a significant amount of space

in a scientist’s lab,

and you’re
shrinking it down to a box

that’s one foot on
each side, a foot cubed.

NARRATOR: Restricted
by size and weight --

engineering Viking’s
biological experiments requires

miniaturization on
an unprecedented scale.

ANDY: And the thing is jammed
with, you know, valves and pipes

and miniature ovens
and Geiger counters.

It’s diabolical to even
think of trying to do that!

And doing it on a timetable.

NARRATOR: 1972.

With three years till launch,
keeping Viking on schedule

is the job of Jim Martin.

TOM: Jim was an extraordinarily
demanding project manager;

nothing short of excellence
was good enough for Jim.

NARRATOR: Jim runs a
military-style operation,

devising a notorious strategy
to deal with the challenges.

TOM: And his concept
was a top 10 problem list,

and so top 10
problem list became

very much a part of
the culture of Viking.

Sometimes the top 10
list had 11 items on it.

And I mean, it
was almost depressing

as to how challenging
some of these things were.

ANDY: And the biology
experiments were on that list

for a very long time.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Incredibly, 40,000
parts are crammed into a space

not much bigger
than a briefcase.

ANDY: I’m sure the engineers
were tearing their hair out.

TOM: I’d say it almost
brought us to our knees.

NARRATOR: But the task is
about to get harder still:

combating an invisible threat
-- biological contamination.

ANDY: In order to prevent
any terrestrial bacteria

from going along on the trip,
the lander had to be sterilized

before it was put on the launch
vehicle and sent to Mars.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Earth microbes
can create a false reading

and wreck the
biological experiments.

Worse still, they
can contaminate Mars --

irreversibly
changing the planet.

To sterilize the
half-ton lander,

Deputy Project
Manager Gus Guastaferro

turns to a profession that
kills microbes for a living.

GUS: We looked at
the medical practice;

how they sterilize
the equipment they have

that might touch the human body.

Why not use the same
thing on electronic parts

and materials that
we’re taking to the planet?

NARRATOR: During
construction both spacecraft

are repeatedly disinfected
with anti-microbial fluids.

But to be certain it’s sterile

the team makes a
radical decision

to copy another
hospital procedure.

GUS: And so we stole
from them the idea of

baking our whole
spacecraft in a big oven.

NARRATOR: Each lander
is cocooned in a bio-shell

and placed in a 30-foot
oven where nitrogen gas --

heated to around 240
degrees Fahrenheit --

bakes them for almost 2 days.

ANDY: I mean, you can imagine
these engineers, okay, they...

they’ve gotta design things that
have never been built before,

and now somebody
comes along and says,

"Oh, by the way,
everything you build

has to withstand
this baking in an oven

of 240 degrees for 40 hours."

And they must’ve just said,
"You’ve gotta be kidding me."

TOM: Think about putting your
camera or iPad in your oven

and turning up the temperature

and leaving it to sit
there for a few days.

That is what we
did with the lander.

We couldn’t think of any
other way that guaranteed

that we weren’t taking
any Earth life to Mars.

NARRATOR: Over five years,
every element of the spacecraft

is designed and tested --

hopefully ironing out
each engineering pitfall.

Now, with Viking built,

it’s time to put the
engineering to the test.

♪ ♪

Summer 1975.

Viking 1 and 2 will be
launched on twin Titan rockets.

The responsibility
falls to Andy Stofan.

ANDY: I launched
rockets for NASA for 20 years.

It’s a strange job because
it either blows up in your face

or it’s 100% successful.
There is no in-between.

NARRATOR: Placing the spacecraft
on a precise trajectory to Mars

means both rockets must launch
within a narrow time frame.

ANDY: I was well
aware of the importance

of the Viking mission,
so anything that went wrong

with the vehicle would
then lessen the probability

of getting the two Vikings off.

NARRATOR: August 20th --
Viking 1 gets away on time.

But technical
problems delay Viking 2

to the last possible
launch day -- September 9th.

Then something even the
engineers can’t control

threatens to intervene.

[Thunder strikes]

ANDY:
The weather became marginal
from a safety point of view,

that’s the worry of
getting struck by lightning,

either on the pad
or during the launch.

NARRATOR: Project
Manager Jim Martin

consults local meteorologists
and makes a call --

stop the countdown and wait

for their
predicted lull in the storm.

With just hours of the
launch window remaining,

it’s an incredible gamble.

♪ ♪

Thankfully, the weathermen’s
anticipated gap in the clouds

passes right over the cape.

[Engines firing]
MISSION CONTROL: 1, 2, 3...

Viking 2 is launched -- with
less than 5 minutes to spare.

ANDY: To the great
sigh of relief of myself

and the Viking spacecraft people

who were sitting
there biting their nails.

NARRATOR: The
Vikings are on their way.

Now the team must
wait almost a year

to get a shot at
making history --

attempting the first
successful landing on Mars.

June 19th, 1976. A
defining day for the engineers.

Viking 1 arrives
safely in Martian orbit.

At over 200 million
miles, sending communications

takes around 20
minutes -- each way.

So when the lander
makes its rapid descent,

it must be able
to think for itself.

ANDY: To do that was a
whole new engineering challenge

of creating an electronic brain

that could carry out all
of those things on board.

NARRATOR: In the
1970s, computer code

is typically
stored on plastic tape.

But sterilizing Viking at
over 200 degrees Fahrenheit

creates a burning issue.

DUKE: Had we
heated the spacecraft,

that much magnetic material
would have melted away,

along with the tape
and the storage system.

NARRATOR: Engineers
require a radical rethink.

Viking sequencing expert Milton
Holt thinks there’s a solution.

MILTON: And it looked like,
hey, this is the way to go.

NARRATOR:
It’s a metal storage device
designed for the military.

It’s called plated wire memory.

ANDY: So on these strands
of wire were the instructions

that would get the lander
to do everything it had to do.

MILTON: It can
withstand the sterilization

and it shouldn’t be too
difficult to manufacture.

As we thought at that time.

NARRATOR:
In fact, engineers face a
painstakingly intricate task.

MILTON: It took 3,000
wires laid up by hand,

and the intersection
of each of these wires

had to be totally in place

within the width of
less than a human hair.

ANDY: This was like some kind of

old-world handcrafted
creation, very precise work.

You could not
afford to screw that up.

NARRATOR: The
finished computer contains

all the information needed
to land Viking on Mars --

with a memory a
hundred thousand times smaller

than today’s desktop computers.

ANDY: This is going to
sounds unbelievable today,

but that computer had
18,000 words of memory,

and they sweated blood to
get every one of them on there.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: July 1976. Now in
orbit, Viking 1 uses its cameras

to give the team
their first detailed view

of its preselected landing site.

TOM: And the first
pictures were alarming,

and I really mean alarming.

NARRATOR: The landing sites
were chosen from pictures taken

almost five years earlier,
when the Mariner 9 spacecraft

orbited Mars.

ANDY: The Viking Orbiter
pictures were a factor of 10

better in resolution. And the
change was just astonishing.

NARRATOR: What appears
smooth in the Mariner images

now looks decidedly dangerous.

ANDY: There were features that
looked like giant fingernails

had scraped across the surface.

MATT: There were huge boulders,
trash bin-size boulders

that could potentially kill the
spacecraft if it landed there.

ANDY: I mean, this was
not the place that you

wanted to throw a half a billion
dollars’ worth of lander at.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: But luckily, the
original decision to orbit Mars

rather than head
straight to the surface

buys time to
search for a safer site.

MATT: But they still had
some time pressure on them.

Viking 2 was on its way, and
also the nation was watching.

ANDY: As the new
pictures would come in

the scientists would
look at them closely

and try to figure out, you
know, based on counting craters

how rough is the surface
likely to be in that spot.

DUKE: To say that
that was an easy process

would be a huge
mistake, because it just took

meeting after
meeting after meeting.

GENTRY: First site, rejected.
Second site, rejected.

We rejected the fourth
one, we rejected the fifth one,

it’s now July the 10th
or so and the second Viking

is about to get to Mars,

and we can’t manage
two of them at once.

NARRATOR: After 22
intense meetings, Gentry Lee

and his exhausted team
make the final decision.

GENTRY:
3 o’clock in the morning,
we’re looking at the pictures

of the sixth site,
maybe it was the seventh,

I forgot which one,
and finally Hal Mazursky,

who was one of the
most eloquent spokespersons

for exploration of the planets,

put his head down
on the table and said,

"This is probably as
good as we’re gonna find,

and I’m tired."

And so with that we
decided we would go down.

NARRATOR: July 20th, 1976.
With the landing site chosen,

it’s time to make the descent.

After final checks, the
critical "go" command is sent,

and Viking 1 is
released from its orbiter.

[Radio chatter]

GENTRY: I will never forget the
moment that I first realized

all the intelligence
that we had or did not have

had to be inside that
computer, on board that lander,

heading for Mars.

GUS: And that
separation, you know,

it’s lost its mother so to
speak. It’s by itself.

And it has to get there
through a sequence of events

that are pre-programmed.

NARRATOR: For the
next three hours Viking

is completely dependent
on its on-board computer

to safely reach the surface.

GENTRY: And there was almost
a palpable sigh in the room.

And almost as one, everyone
looked at his or her watch

and started, mentally, counting
down, three hours -- so forth.

TOM: So apprehension, yeah,

I think there is a
lot of apprehension.

NARRATOR: To successfully
land, Viking’s key components

must each work perfectly --
starting with the heat shield.

ANDY: You’re screaming in
at thousands of miles an hour,

and you hit this
very thin atmosphere,

but you hit it
at very high speed.

It’s got to be able to
withstand that intense heat

of that deceleration.

NARRATOR:
Next -- still traveling faster
than the speed of sound --

Viking must deploy a
giant 52-foot parachute.

ANDY:
So for the first time we’ve
gotta supersonic-parachute,

which is a whole
design challenge in itself.

NARRATOR: A challenge
Paul Siemers wrestled with

during Viking’s development.

PAUL: The first thing
we did with the parachute

to qualify it for
Viking’s flight was,

we put a model of
it in the wind tunnel,

and we had a big surprise,

and that surprise was the
parachute got torn to shreds.

This turned out to be one of
the worst days of my career,

’cause I had to
phone home to Langley

and tell them I had
just failed a parachute.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Paul’s team discovers
that at supersonic speeds,

turbulent air behind the lander

is too violent for
the chute to survive.

The failure means
instant promotion...

onto Viking Manager Jim
Martin’s infamous top ten list.

PAUL: We made the top of
the top ten problem list,

how about that one?
[chuckles]

NARRATOR: Paul and the
team must find a solution.

They realize that by
unfurling the parachute further

from the lander, it experiences
less destructive turbulence --

and remains in one piece.

Now, back on Mars, the
parachute works flawlessly,

decelerating Viking to
around 130 miles an hour.

But a safe landing depends on
overcoming one final challenge.

Designing Viking
five years earlier,

engineers decide to
use three retrorockets,

slowing the lander to under
5 miles an hour at touchdown.

But they discover a major flaw.

TOM: The tests were
basically catastrophic.

The propulsion system
created so much disturbance,

it would have
compromised the science.

HOWARD: If there was any life
there, the heating was such

it would cook it,
literally kill it,

so we couldn’t
detect it if it was there.

NARRATOR: For engineers
it’s back to the drawing board.

Instead of three
large retrorockets

with damaging exhaust,
they replace them with

a cluster of smaller ones --

with exhaust plumes that
won’t cook the Martian surface.

PAUL: It
resembled a shower head.

There were 18
nozzles on each engine,

and that solved that problem.

[Radio chatter]

NARRATOR: But has it worked?

Have the years
of engineering toil

finally placed Viking 1
safely on the surface on Mars?

For everyone on the team,

the moment of truth
is about to arrive...

MALE: 73.3 feet per second.

MISSION CONTROL:
ACS is close to vertical.

MALE: Come on...

♪ ♪

NARRATOR:
Jim Martin and the team at
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

count down the minutes to hear

if Viking 1 has
landed safely on Mars.

Intern Andrew Chaikin
witnesses the drama unfolding.

ANDY: And you know we were
waiting and waiting and waiting,

because those radio
signals were still en route

in that 20-minute delay
from Mars to the Earth.

GUS: It’s like waiting for the
bride to come down the aisle.

MISSION CONTROL:
ACS is green. 1.5 degrees
per second max, .2 Gs.

NARRATOR: Finally,
after 20 agonizing minutes...

MISSION CONTROL:
Touchdown, we have touchdown...

Fantastic!

ANDY: It was almost so fast that
you couldn’t take it all in.

MISSION CONTROL: We have a
touchdown time of 12 hours,

12 minutes, zero 7
decimal one second.

[Cheers and applause]

JOEL: And
everyone started clapping,

and a great sigh of relief,

and it was just elation
through the whole room.

NARRATOR:
Seven years to the day after
America lands men on the moon,

engineers successfully place
the first spacecraft on Mars.

GUS: My father,
he was born in 1896

before the airplane and
the automobile were invented,

and he’s here,
excuse me for choking up,

seeing his son enjoy landing
a spacecraft on another planet.

It was just remarkable.

I would have given up all
the money I have ever made

for that moment.

HOWARD: I think people
just had to take a short time

to breathe in and out
that we had actually made it.

NORM: They were
passing out champagne,

and I had my first and
only drink of champagne.

TOM: It’s hard to
state the feeling.

I mean, it’s a feeling of
combined relief and excitement.

TOM [Archive]: A
job very well done.

I’m assuming that we must
be sitting right on the X,

so everybody just did fabulous
and couldn’t be more pleased.

Thank you!

[Applause]

NARRATOR: But there’s
little time to celebrate,

as everyone eagerly awaits

Viking’s first
picture from the surface.

TOM:
The anticipation of the first
image coming back from Mars

was extraordinary.

I recall sitting glued to
the screen in front of me.

NARRATOR: With its unique
cameras, it’s hoped Viking

will finally reveal
Mars as never before.

ANDY: It wasn’t like a
TV camera that would take

the whole scene at once.

It would take the scene
line by line with a mirror

that nodded up and down,

and you would build up from
left to right the entire scene.

GENTRY: And so we
waited, and here’s the picture

in front of us, and on the
left-hand side of the screen,

down starts coming pixels.

ANDY:
And all of a sudden 5 lines
of picture came racing down

from top to bottom,
just 5 lines. Like that.

MALE: Here it comes. Yup,
yup, that’s it that’s it. Oh...

But then a few seconds
later, another 5 lines.

MALE: Rocks. That’s beautiful.

ANDY: And then another 5 lines.

GENTRY: And by the
time it got to the footpad,

you could see the rivets,
and I remember screaming,

"Look at those bleeping rivets."
You could see them clearly.

♪ ♪

MALE [Archive]:
It’s incredible to see
that Mars is really there.

DUKE: You know we’re taking
pictures on the surface of Mars.

Nobody has ever
done that before.

GENTRY: There was not
a dry eye in the house.

All of us just burst with joy,

because every single person
on that team had lived in fear

that what we were trying to
do was beyond human capability.

GUS: The damn thing worked!

TOM: We were there. We did it,
and now the science can begin.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: With
Viking 1 safely on Mars,

what could be the most profound
experiment in human history

can start.

The lander will gather
soil to examine it for life,

using its sampling arm.

MATT: At the end of
the arm there’s a scoop.

Once the arm has collected a
sample, it can then be retracted

and turned to
deposit that sample

into the biological
experiment package.

NARRATOR:
The on-board computer commands
the sample arm to unfurl.

But with the engineers
-- and the world’s press --

eagerly waiting,
there’s a problem.

The scoop fails to extend.

GENTRY: Oh, my gosh,
it was a panic time.

After all the glory
of landing safely, would

still not be a success, and
we couldn’t get any material.

NORM: If we
couldn’t get a soil sample,

that would mean that
lander was out of business.

TOM: There was a lot
of apprehension ’cause

we didn’t know why at
first it hadn’t moved.

NARRATOR: The
engineers are dumbfounded.

With the Viking 1
mission in jeopardy,

everyone is scrambling to
understand what’s gone wrong.

GENTRY: And that was when
this young engineer came in,

and he looked at me and he said,

"I just went over the sequence.

Did you have a separate
sequence to unlock the key?"

"Oh, [expletive]," I said.
And I remember that distinctly.

And I said,
"That’s it! That’s it!"

NARRATOR: The team
can’t quite believe it.

A locking pin on the sampling
arm’s protective shroud

has failed to drop free
-- and the arm is stuck.

GENTRY: Any time we
were testing on the Earth,

we never had the locking key in,

so we didn’t have a sequence

that removed the
locking key first.

NARRATOR: Incredibly,
engineers have overlooked

a vital part of the computer
code that helps remove the pin.

The solution is to
write and then transmit

the missing code to the lander.

But with 1970s technology,
that’s easier said than done.

MILTON: Well, the problem was

the way you generated
a computer program was

you had a deck of cards,

and there were holes
punched in these cards,

and the position of
these holes would tell you

what command to
load into the computer.

NARRATOR: Working around
the clock, the punch-card code

must be meticulously checked.

MILTON: You would be
in there early morning,

2 or 3 o’clock in the morning,

you would put your deck in the
computer, and it rejects it.

So then you got to go
through this stack of cards

and try to figure out,
why did it reject this thing?

Where did I make an error?

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Milton and the team
iron out every last glitch,

check the code works on Earth,

and then it’s radioed over 200
million miles to the lander.

Now they must wait.

TOM: The next day when
we got the pictures back,

low and behold, the pin was
lying on the surface of Mars.

And so we knew that
this problem was behind us.

NARRATOR: But Gentry Lee is
not quite off the hook yet.

GENTRY: So, I got to
explain all this to the media,

and, of course, Jim said, "Don’t
embarrass yourself by saying

you just forgot to
unlock the thing."

So I made up a
perfectly honest story

that made it sound
much more complicated.

I said, "These instruments
on Mars are very complex,

and you have to study the
sequences very carefully,

and we found that we had made a
slight error in the sequence."

That was true!

NARRATOR: Less than
two weeks later, Viking 2

also makes it safely to surface.

Both landers sample Martian
soil in their on-board labs.

What they find
remains one of the most

contentious results in
planetary exploration.

♪ ♪

The Viking
cameras give scientists

their first close-up
look at the surface of Mars.

But now all eyes
are on the results

of the biological experiments

to see if they will detect
microbes living in the soil.

JOEL: There were
three experiments.

Two of the
experiments gave results

that were not
consistent with life.

NARRATOR: That
leaves one last experiment.

Adding nutrients to coax
any Martian microbes to feed.

What’s detected
comes as a shock.

JOEL: The third experiment,

called the Labeled Release
experiment, gave results

that in 1976 indicated
there was life on Mars.

NARRATOR: But this positive
result is controversial.

On analyzing the soil further,
Viking is unable to find

any organic material -- the
stuff that life is made of.

Creating a dilemma:

If there’s life on Mars --
where is the organic material?

GENTRY: One newspaper
would say Viking found life,

and another one would say
Viking did not find life,

and as a result
everybody was confused.

NARRATOR: To confirm
life, the science community

requires more robust evidence,

as planetary
scientist Jim Green knows.

JIM: If each and every
one of those instruments

gave us a positive indication
that a reaction could occur

that was biological
that they were measuring,

then we could be
assured that it was life.

NARRATOR: But Viking
provides ambiguous results.

JIM: Now that means
the scientific community

couldn’t get behind the idea
that life exists on Mars today.

NARRATOR: Even now the Viking
results are hotly debated,

and the question remains
-- does life exist on Mars?

JIM: Well, we
wanna find that out.

NARRATOR: Beginning in 1997,
NASA returns to the Red Planet

with a series of rovers,
studying the environment.

Their results have
added to the speculation

Mars might be able to
support microbial life.

JIM: So now we want to go back

and we want to attack
it in a different way.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: At the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory

the latest generation of
engineers like Matthew Robinson

are designing a bold new
mission -- with a twist.

MATTHEW: We want to return
the samples back to Earth

so that we can process
those samples with instruments

that have much more precision
and much more capability

than what you can send to Mars.

NARRATOR: NASA plans
to bring back to Earth

Martian soil and
rock samples to analyze

for evidence of both
present and past life.

Helping design the
vehicle that’s going to select

the samples is Mars
rover veteran Rob Manning.

ROB: Now we are building a
new rover to land in 2020.

However, it does something that
no other rover has done before.

JIM: It has the
capability of drilling rock,

creating about a chalk-size
sample full of history of Mars.

This is an enormous
engineering challenge.

NARRATOR: Matthew and
the team are experimenting

how to extract a sample.

MATTHEW: The way that we acquire
samples is using a coring bit

much like a drill that you would
get from a hardware store.

NARRATOR: The drill will be
able to extract core samples

from soft sandstone
to the toughest granite.

MATTHEW: Once we core into a
rock, the robotic arm moves up

and it goes over to the rover.

ROB: This core sample will
then be very carefully put

in a container that will then
be left on the surface of Mars,

along with many
other core samples

which will later be
collected by a future mission

that will bring
those cores back to Earth.

JIM: And that means a whole
new generation of engineers

are going to
tackle this problem now.

But they have
one major advantage.

They have the knowledge that
has been given to them by the

Viking engineers demonstrating
how we can do this.

NARRATOR: It’s a lasting
testament to the Viking team

that their
technical achievements --

made almost half
a century ago --

allow missions to
land on Mars today.

ROB: It’s amazing
and mind-boggling

that they were
able to pull that off

at such an early time in
human engineering history.

JIM: It’s like a
symphony in many ways,

and each of these
individuals played their part.

GENTRY: All I
could think of was --

and I hugged the people around
me -- "We did it! We did it!"

NORM: We did the
impossible. This is a symbol.

This is my Mars ’76 buckle.

It was the biggest thing I
have ever been involved with,

and it worked like I expected.

TOM: I have to confess I’ve
got a real feeling of pride

of having being a part of it,

and the emotional
feeling is still there.

That is everything I
know, more than I know!

[Laughing]