The strange world of robotic SPACE EXPLORATION
For over 60 years, humanity has been pushing ever further out into the Solar System, exploring our seven sibling planets and their many moons, as well as countless asteroids. Yet we’ve done this all from a distance: it isn’t people that have been making the journey, but robotic spacecraft. While humans have yet to stray far from Earth, robots have been to the hellish surface of Venus, ranged the hills of Mars and bounced across asteroids.
Their road to the heavens has been far from a straight one. Along the way there have been dozens of false starts, fallen hurdles and unexpected twists. Here are some of the more surprising tales from the journals of robotic planetary exploration.
Viking’s team photo
A field trip to test NASA’s first Martian camera offered a unique photo opportunity
In the 1970s, NASA had its sights on Mars. The agency built an impressive pair of spacecraft named Viking which would, they hoped, take the first ever panorama from the Red Planet’s surface. With such an important task resting on having cameras that worked, it was with horror that Thomas Mutch, the head of the Viking landing team, discovered that the engineers intended to send the instrument to Mars without having taken a test photo. The build team
