Prime goal of Project Viking is this National Aeronautics and Space Administration sketch, to land a biological laboratory on the surface of Mars. The picture shows a design in which the protective housing around the experiments unfolds in petal fashion once the laboratory is safely on the Martian surface.
Project Viking: Space Conquest Beyond the Moon
by Irwin Stambler
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970
Image credit: NASA
Image source: Numbers Station
numbers station 