Adventure to Mars with the Viking Mission!

This free talk will be held on June 21st at 1pm in the Charleston Planetarium. No tickets required! Come stop by to find out about challenges and achievements of the Viking Mars Mission.

Presented by space historian Rachel Tillman

The Viking Missions were the foundation of Mars surface exploration with many firsts, not only with the first successful landing on Mars, but also the unique organizational structure, myriad engineering innovations including the optimal Mars entry descent and landing (EDL), and the most ambitious Mars science investigations to date. What is not well known is the journey to get there, which has been meticulously reconstructed by Rachel Tillman, of The Viking Mars Missions Education and Preservation Project a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to preserving and reconstructing the mission archives, artifacts, and history through hundreds of Oral history interviews with NASA and commercial contractors like Martin Marietta, Ball Aerospace, GE, Honeywell, and hundreds more.

This talk shares not just some of these unique stories, and the facts surrounding the debate “did we find life”, but the immense influence Viking has on exploration, and how we continue to teach lessons of science, engineering, and leadership through a Viking lens.