Viking '75 Mars Lander Construction, Looking for Viking lander design/construction information |
Viking '75 Mars Lander Construction, Looking for Viking lander design/construction information |
May 17 2012, 12:38 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 101 Joined: 3-May 12 From: Massachusetts, USA Member No.: 6392 |
Greetings all! I am searching for detailed construction and design information about the NASA Viking '75 Mars project hardware, particularly for the lander, aeroshell, base cover, and bioshield. Can anyone recommend good sources? I am especially looking for engineering drawings and under-construction photographs.
To set the stage, here is an album of about 100 drawings and photos which I've collected so far. I have already read the "usual" books, such as NASA RP-1027 "Viking '75 Spacecraft Design and Test", the press kits, the scientific papers produced about the mission, a number of industry papers covering various instruments and subsystems, the major Martin Marietta books, etc. I am hoping to find additional sources. Any ideas? Also, does anyone know if there are aeroshell, base cover, or bioshield components lurking in a museum or in storage somewhere? FYI, I have visited three of the best landers still on Earth: The Proof Test Capsule in the Smithsonian NASM, the Flight Capsule 3 (backup) in the Museum of Flight near Seattle, and the Science Test Lander in the Virginia Air and Space Center. I've taken nearly 1,000 photos of the three of them (most of which are publicly available in other Picasa Web albums of mine). I've taken a few measurements, but I would dearly love to find more authoritative drawings of more hardware (interior, exterior, everything). I have begun submitting some Freedom of Information Act requests to NASA/JPL which has started to bear some trivial but kind of fun fruit. --- Update as of March 2017: During the past few years I have been fortunate enough to collect a significant amount of information on the Viking lander hardware. My thanks to a number of organizations for providing me access to their resources:
Flight Capsule 3 in Seattle Museum of Flight (756 photos) Dimensioned diagrams of the FC3 lander PTC Lander at Smithsonian NASM 2013 (466 photos) PTC Lander at Smithsonian NASM 2016 (888 photos) Lander at Virginia Air and Space Center (622 photos) Dimensioned diagrams of the VASC’s lander Lander at California Science Center (456 photos) Dimensioned diagrams of the CSC's lander Misc diagrams, unusual photos (over 350 images) Body assembly blueprints Collector Head Shroud Unit at NASA LaRC (99 photos) Biology instrument at Cleveland MoNH (36 photos) Meteorology Sensor Assembly (60 photos) Meteorology Electronics Assembly (22 photos) Tape Recorder (53 photos) High Gain Antenna photos and measurements (96 images) XRFS Instrument (42 images) Viking lander contractor historic scale model (14 images) My Viking project documents collection The main focus of my efforts during the past few years has been to create an accurate and high-fidelity digital 3D model of the Viking lander. I've chosen to use the SketchUp software to build the model because a near-full-featured free version is available, allowing other people to use my model. The 3D model itself, as a work-in-progress, is available via DropBox. I update that model file periodically as major elements get added. I've created an album containing numerous renderings of digital model components, and I have a YouTube channel with some videos about the modeling project. I have also uploaded the lander core body and the Surface Sampler Collector Head to the SketchUp 3D Warehouse so that other people can easily access those components (the 3D Warehouse can be accessed from within SketchUp, or via web browser). The file on DropBox lister earlier contains those components and others. -- Tom |
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Jun 27 2017, 12:01 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 101 Joined: 3-May 12 From: Massachusetts, USA Member No.: 6392 |
Next up are the components of the boom extend-retract drive mechanism and the boom stowage drum for the lander's Surface Sampler Acquisition Assembly, in approximate form due to lack of detailed reference material (as denoted by the green tint). The hollow interior of the large drum contained a few feet of the Flat Conductor Cable (FCC) that runs through the middle of the boom (not shown here, but see earlier replies for renderings of it). This slack allows the boom to extend and retract by ten feet, as the slack within the drum is wound clockwise around the stationary hub when at one end of full travel, and re-wraps to be counter-clockwise around the hub by the time the other end of travel is reached. The flattened boom itself wraps around the exterior of the drum. The large slot in the drum (visible in the second image) allows the FCC to pass from the boom into the drum, and the slot in the hub (partly visible in the first image bracketed by curled bend-limiter fences) allows the FCC to exit the assembly through the center of the hub (coming out on the side visible in the third image).
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