Virtual Viking, Images and animations of the Viking landing sites Options

[Phil Stooke]

In the past we've had some good Viking images here. Soon - all too soon - we will not have Phoenix any more, but despair not! Now we can re-live Viking by playing with old images. They can be searched by sol at the PDS.

As an example, I've made a composite of the very last Surface Sampler activities at either Viking site. This is work done on Viking 2 sol 957 and imaged on sol 957 and 959. (someone can animate it if they like!)

We see two separate trenching activities at the same place, and a soil dump (bottom) and a conical soil pile made by the second dump (middle). (more obvious in an animation, I just can't make one on this machine).

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

I'm still perfecting that reprojected Viking 1 site map. Meanwhile here's a composite of images showing surface changes at the Viking 1 site. There were a few changes in soil patches on the lander itself as well, otherwise these were the only changes seen by Viking 1. For the first one, of course, the change I'm drawing attention to is the erosion by wind of Conical Pile 4 late in the mission. Several other artificial piles of soil were made and monitored but didn't change.

Phil