Viking '75 Mars Lander Construction, Looking for Viking lander design/construction information Options

[Tom Dahl]

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.
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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:

• Viking Mars Missions Education and Preservation Project
• The Museum of Flight in Seattle
• NASA Langley Research Center
• California Science Center
• Virginia Air and Space Center
• Smithsonian Air and Space Museum

Here is a list of on-line albums with Viking information that I have gathered. Essentially all the photographs - about 3500 currently - were taken by me (with the notable exception of those in the "Misc diagrams" album, which come from historic sources). The photos have descriptions that explain the major subject of each image. To see the descriptions with the current Google Photos web album interface, click on an image and then click the small letter i in circle (i) icon in the upper right corner. This displays an information panel that includes the description. You can also zoom and pan to see the full resolution image detail. Many images in a number of the albums show the 1000 or so measurements I have been able to capture from actual Viking hardware, thanks to the kind cooperation of the above folks.

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

[Tom Dahl]

The Viking lander's Surface Sampler Acquisition Assembly (SSAA) is complete, for now at least. The SketchUp model file is available at the 3D Warehouse. The final set of components to be finished included the boom supports and guides:

Here is the overall lander (still missing most external components) with the SSAA and its Collector Head in place (the second view shows the collector head fully retracted):

This view shows the surface sampler with its Collector Head Shroud Unit (CHSU) attached and configured for launch, cruise to Mars, and landing wherein the SSAA is pivoted down to engage the triangular restraint post. The CHSU sealed the ultra-clean and sterilized collector head: