To this 'Viking' daughter, missions to Mars represent sacrifice and determination

On July 30, 2020, NASA launched its Mars Perseverance Rover.

Its mission?

Seek signs of life on the red planet and collect rock and soil samples to bring back for a potential return to Earth.

Today you can track the Perseverance Rover online while it trundles around Mars, see images of the planet taken by the rover, and even see the rock samples it has collected so far.

Perseverance is the latest in a line of NASA probes expanding our understanding of our neighbor in the solar system — but it all started with Viking.

Viking 1 launched 48 years ago this week and made history when it became the first spacecraft to land safely on Mars' surface and send images back to Earth. For NASA, Viking 1 and its successor program, Viking 2, were a historical step in the agency’s journey to find signs of life on another planet.

A camera crew captured the eruption of cheers from the scientists diligently monitoring the mission from the control room when Viking 1 touched down on Mars.

Soon after, the first images of the planet began to come in. The moment left a big impression, even on the youngest of spectators.

"I touched the monitor, because that was the closest I could get to touching Mars," said Rachel Tillman, the founder and executive director of the Viking Mars Missions Education and Preservation Project.

Rachel's dad, James E. Tillman, worked on Viking 1 and 2 and was a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington.

Today, Rachel Tillman works to preserve the history of the missions by interviewing Viking scientists and researchers, publishing documents related to the programs online, and sharing the stories of Viking 1 and 2 with students around the country.

She said she grew up surrounded by Mars-related data.

"We had stacks and stacks of printout paper all over the house that were piles of real data that was processed from the Viking landers on atmospheric sciences tests that had been done on the Viking lander by my father," Tillman said.

She said she remembers that some of those stacks of papers were OK to draw or doodle on. But others were off-limits because of the precious information they contained.

One of the main objectives of the Viking missions, Tillman said, was to characterize the surface of the red planet, and determine the mineral elements and makeup of the surface of Mars. At the time, those things were a complete mystery.

"It was called at the time 'the search for life,'" Tillman said. "The real objective was to understand if there were indicators of biologic organics on or near the surface."

At the time, Viking scientists determined that, due to the lack of supporting evidence from several scientific investigations, the search for life on Mars was inconclusive. But the media at the time reported that the results were negative.

"And as a result of really pitching Viking to the public as a search for life mission, NASA got a pretty big black eye for that," Tillman said.

James E. Tillman went on to convince NASA to transfer the mission over to The University of Washington, where he ran the Viking Computing Facility until the lander sent its last signal in November 1982.

"There's a point at which everything comes to an end. And as sad as that was an event and my father was definitely affected by it, deeply affected by it, they had exceeded expectations," Rachel Tillman said. "And they had already provided and collected enough data to impact all future Mars missions."

Today, the Viking Mars Missions Education and Preservation Project focuses on preserving the artifacts, original documents, and data from the Viking Missions. Rachel Tillman has interviewed dozens of the remaining Viking researchers and scientists, including her father, who passed away in March.

To Rachel Tillman, documenting the histories of these missions highlights not just the technological advancements of Viking, but the personal sacrifices made by team members and their families.

Listen to the full segment above.