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:

https://picasaweb.google.com/11379204157387...feat=directlink

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.
-- Tom

[tasp]

Can't remember where I read this, but at least one piece of a spare aeroshell assembly wound up in someones backyard.

Seems like I saw a pic somewhere. Maybe Sky and Telescope a LONG time ago.

[Tom Dahl]

I have begun creating a 3D model of the Viking lander, attempting to be fairly detailed and as accurate as I can manage (based on the references I have, including some 900 photographs I've taken of three authentic landers). I recently completed my first pass at the lander's sidebeam #1, which forms one third of the lander's hexagonal body. Here is a comparison between renderings of the model and photographs of the backup lander body in the Museum of Flight near Seattle.

The model linked above represents the solid machined aluminum beam without any of the brackets, fittings, and flanges which are bolted or screwed to the sidebeam. The attachment points for all those brackets etc. are represented as carefully-located bolt holes. As I understand it, each sidebeam consists of a lander-body long side and half of the adjacent two short sides. The three sidebeams are apparently connected to each other via the vertical landing leg primary support fittings, which are bolted across and under the joints between adjacent sidebeams. The top and bottom cover plates also help to hold the body together; fastener locations for those plates are included in the model.

Proportions of the model are based on dimensions I have taken from some authentic landers, various published references, and a lot of photo interpretation and cross-check. I have been careful to ensure that the various points of contact between the lander and its aeroshell are reconciled (three large bolts, one under each leg primary support fitting; six shear points, two under each sidebeam; and three guiderail roller assemblies).

If anyone has corrections or questions, I would be pleased to address them!

[Tom Dahl]

I am looking for a good-quality version of an image published in NASA Ref. Pub. 1027, "Viking '75 Spacecraft Design and Test Summary: Volume 1 - Lander Design" issued by the Langley Research Center in 1980. Figure 20 "Lander Body" (on page 25) is what I hope to find.

The PDF version of RP-1027 Vol.1 (10MB) on the NASA Technical Reports Server has an almost illegible image of Figure 20. I have examined two original printed copies of RP-1027 from nearly libraries; in both cases the original halftone printing of Figure 20 is fairly poor. Here is a version which I scanned at 400 DPI from one of the copies.

Does anyone know if a photographic print or high-resolution scan of that image is available in some archive somewhere? I recently sent a message to the "Contact Langley" web site asking about this image, in case that turns it up.

Edited to add: as a prior reply mentions, I am creating a 3D digital model of the lander. My intention is to make that model freely available, both as a 3D SketchUp mesh and as 2D blueprints. The purpose of the blueprint form is to aid my ultimate goal of scratch-building an actual model, probably 1/8th scale. My collection of published drawings and unusual photos (including "Figure 20" linked above, which shows the lander's internal Equipment Plate) are already shared, in case they help folks also interested in the Viking project.

[Tom Dahl]

I've now completed the first-pass 3D model of the lander's three sidebeams. Here are some comparison actual photos vs. renderings, and one render by itself (sidebeam 3 is in the lower right, #1 on the left, and #2 in the upper right, with meteorology boom mounting bracket attached):



This is only a small fraction of the job, but it's nice to see the shell of the lander in the round.
-- Tom

[Tom Dahl]

For those following at home I have added the Viking lander's top cover plate to my 3D model. It was a challenge to reconcile the externally-visible features with Martin Marietta's drawing of the interior Equipment Plate (instrument locations, support posts, etc.). I've tried to minimize the discrepancies. Here is a line drawing of the overall body:

And here is a close-up of the right upper corner of sidebeam 2. Prominent are the mount for the meteorology boom and magnet cleaning brush (on the right corner), and large openings in the top cover for camera 1 (on the right), the biology and gas chromatograph mass spectrometer inlet processors (on the left), and thermal switch contactor for Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator 1 (partly visible at top):

The current state of the 3D model is available here as a SketchUp file (6.8MB; hopefully it's downloadable).

I had a very enjoyable phone conversation today with Prof. Jim Tillman of the University of Washington, who along with his daughter were principal agents in saving and restoring the Flight Capsule 3 (backup) lander body. I'm hoping to return to visit the FC3 in the Museum of Flight near Seattle in a few weeks. I'm glad I could share a bit of my enthusiasm for the Viking program with Prof. Tillman and thank him for saving an important historic object.

[djellison]

There is a model - I'm not sure of its fidelity - at the California Science Center. If there are details there that could be useful, let me know and I'll head over with a camera.

Doug

[nprev]

IIRC, they've got the actual ground engineering test lander in the lobby of the National Air & Space Museum in DC. I wonder if the curators there have complied a dataset of public-domain information on same; might be worth an e-mail.

[Tom Dahl]

Hi Doug -- regarding the California Science Center's lander, thank you very much for the offer! I suspect that unit is a replica created by Penwal Prototypes, rather than an authentic Martin Marietta unit. I base this largely on the photo shown on the company's web site (look for the Viking Lander thumbnail), compared to on-line photos I've found of the CSC's lander. Details such as Camera 1's clear housing; the mock-up BIO and GCMS inlet processors; the silver foil bands on some leg's white cloth contamination fairing skins; the dark bands wrapping the meteorology boom cabling; the fuel tank and roll-control thrusters, and fuel-line routing and joints. I wrote to Penwal a few months ago asking about their replica and whatever references they may have had, but never received a response.

Overall I don't think it is authentic enough for my purposes, except I am very curious about the exposed camera 1. Did Penwal manage to acquire a surplus original ITEK facsimile camera unit? It seems out of character with the rest of the lander; too much detail. So I would very much enjoy seeing some photographs of that camera's innards (both the upper rotating opto-mechanical part, and the lower fixed electronics part) from various angles. If possible!

Hi nprev -- that's the Proof Test Capsule in the National Air and Space Museum. I've actually visited it three times in the last year, and accumulated about 460 photos of that fantastic unit. I have not yet attempted to contact the NASM archive division, which I really should do! Thanks for the nudge.

[Tom Dahl]

In September had the opportunity to spend a couple of days at the Museum of Flight near Seattle WA, and study the Viking lander Flight Capsule 3 (flight-backup) on display there. I took over 500 detail photographs of the lander. I recently completed processing (e.g., brighten shadows, diminish background distractions, add captions) and have uploaded them to a Google Picasa web album if anyone else is interested. They join about 180 photos of the FC3 I had taken a year ago.

The images are about 12MPixels in size. If you use Picasa web's magnifying-glass tool to see the full version, it usually takes five seconds or so before the complete image is available. Before then the little zoom-navigation widget only goes to about half size; the bar will re-scale to access the full detail when ready.

I also had a chance to meet Chris Vancil and Eckart Schmidt, both of whom worked to restore the FC3 for display (Eckart worked during the mission at Rocket Research Company on the terminal descent engines), and also Ron Hobbs of the museum staff. It's a great facility with an amazing collection.