Talk:Viking program

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Spacecraft and mission descriptions courtesy NASA's National Space Science Data Center. http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/viking.html

[edit] lost data

Within a magazine's context I read part of the data collected from the Viking Mars mission was lost. Is that true? --Abdull 15:43, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] end of Viking Lander

If possible, I believe this page should include the end of the Viking probe:

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=191776&cid=15755314

Basically, I don't know if that's true or not, so I believe it should be considered until we can get an authoritive answer in one place.

"Battery failure" appears correct for Viking 2's lander. "Faulty command" is correct for Viking 1. The Slashdotter's indignation over "revisionist history" looks to me like confusion between 1 and 2. gparker 06:55, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, Gparker. Either way, wikipedia internally should agree, so I synched up the reasons for failure with the reasons in the Viking 1 and Viking 2 articles. The former article is well sourced, the latter does not appear to be in contention. Porkrind 04:02, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] confusion over delta-v?

The article quotes a delta-v as "1480 m/s" for the Viking Orbiter. Since delta-v is an acceleration the unit should be m/s^2, but 1480 m/s^2 is much too large (amounting to nearly 150 g!) The correct figure would appear to be an initial 0.57 m/s^2 (1323N/2328kg=0.568m/s^2 -- figures taken from the article). Alternatively the article could mean that the rocket engine could change the velocity of the spacecraft by 1480 m/s, but this would depend on how long the engine was running. A similar use of the terms above occurs in the Lander section. Could someone who knows more than me either correct the article or correct me! Thanks —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Hammerandfeather (talk • contribs) 20:10, 27 February 2007 (UTC).