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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Jul 15 2023, 06:57 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 101 Joined: 3-May 12 From: Massachusetts, USA Member No.: 6392 |
I have completed integrating the SNAP-19 Viking RTGs into my work-in-progress Viking '75 Mars lander 3D model. Here are renderings of the coolant loop, from above and below, that was used prior to launch to remove excess heat from the RTGs and lander interior. The RTGs directly generated electricity from the copious amount of heat produced by radioactive decay of plutonium 235 fuel within each RTG. The RTGs and associated integration mechanisms were designed for the Mars surface environment, which is very low pressure and quite cold. Earth's warm higher-pressure atmosphere caused excessive heating of the lander after the RTGs were installed during the final few months prior to launch. Sterilized chilled water was circulated through the loop almost without interruption (even during the lift of the shrouded orbiter and lander capsule onto the Titan launch vehicle) until shortly before launch. At that point, the coolant was purged with hot dry sterile nitrogen gas, and then a pyrotechnic cutter severed the lines within the Base Cover (top half of the inner layer of the lander capsule). This elaborate procedure was used to avoid unsealing the bioshield (outer layer of the capsule within which the sterilized lander was enclosed) and contaminating the lander with Earthly spores and microbes.
The large black objects affixed to the top and bottom of the RTGs (seen in transparent form to better reveal coolant loop components) are passive End Cap Coolers (ECCs). The coolant circulated through tubing embedded within the ECCs to carry away some RTG heat, and the large surface area of the conical upper ECC and the flat disk lower ECC radiated additional heat. The loop was also used during the two-day complete-capsule sterilization procedure, temporarily replacing the chilled water with hot water to speed up heating the lander interior (otherwise the lander body's insulation would require a much longer heat soak period). Here is an historic diagram of the coolant loop and N2 purge line (a simplified form of which is included in the model, see subsequent replies, but not shown above). |
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