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On 1 July 1976, Viking 1, just arrived at Mars, played a crucial part in the opening of the brand new Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.

“With perfect timing, Viking had reached Mars and sent a signal which operated a replica of the lander’s mechanical arm to cut the ribbon,” says Margaret Weitekamp, lead space curator for the revamped Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall at the museum.

This was pretty smart tech 40 years ago – but despite this, says Weitekamp, “I’m told that there were a couple of museum staff behind the curtain with scissors in case of emergencies”.

Since then, more people have passed through the doors than those of any other museum, apart from the Louvre. Now, at the age of 40, its galleries are newly revamped and, fittingly, the Viking lander takes a key plinth in the front lobby – with the new flight hall also containing the likes of Apollo 11 and the Spirit of St Louis.

OK, so the lander is not the one that sent the signal: obviously the originals never returned from Mars. But it is real, one of only three Viking landers, and the only one still on this planet.

“It’s the flight spare, which was identical and used for testing – nothing is missing,” explains Weitekamp. “Remember, it was fewer than 20 years since humans put a satellite into Earth’s orbit. We were on another world, sending real information back. Viking’s legacy has been lost somewhat, but putting the lander at the forefront of the new exhibition will remind people what an achievement it was.”

Compared to today’s Mars landers, Viking lacked sophistication. Once it had touched down, it couldn’t move. And when its arm fully extended, what it grabbed was all you got. “If there was something interesting farther away, then tough,” says Weitekamp. “But to be able to scoop up soil and send results back from so far away in 1976 was astonishing.”

Rocks and streaks

And those results were eagerly awaited. Could Mars host life? US cosmologist and astrobiologist Carl Sagan was very interested in Viking’s abilities to discover organisms, explains Weitekamp.

But she says Sagan realised the vehicle had limits, referring to a famous episode when he released a rabbit and tortoise nearby during testing. “The rabbit moved so quickly and the tortoise so slowly that the latter shows up in photos as a lump of rock and the former as a couple of streaks,” she says. “Viking wouldn’t spot Martians unless they stood still and waved.”

Of course, it wasn’t mammalian-type life that Viking was really searching for but other forms such as bacteria, perhaps in the soil. Was there disappointment when this wasn’t found? “I don’t think the science community was surprised,” says Weitekamp. “Maybe the public was more hopeful.”

Interestingly, Viking wasn’t the first Mars lander. The Soviet Union had sent Mars 2 and 3 to the planet in 1971. Both stopping working early, although the second managed to return 18 seconds of data. For the US to have the first genuinely successful mission in 1976 was a coup.

So what is Viking’s legacy? “Well it showed we could move successfully from manned missions such as Apollo to planetary unmanned missions,” says Weitekamp. “It was the first step in a model we still follow today – a vessel into planetary orbit and a lander to the surface.”

And she says that compared to the cost of keeping a person safe, Viking provided a lot of bang for its buck, as something the size of a golf cart in an era when people could hardly envisage a mainframe computer less than the size of a room. “More information, less outlay,” she says. “Viking was the beginning of discovering how humans might be able to explore without having to send a person with a radio and binoculars to report back. That’s Viking’s legacy.”