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Concept
Viking lander biological experiments
Summary
In 1976 two identical Viking program landers each carried four types of biological experiments to the surface of Mars. The first successful Mars landers, Viking 1 and Viking 2, then carried out experiments to look for biosignatures of microbial life on Mars. The landers each used a robotic arm to pick up and place soil samples into sealed test containers on the craft.
The two landers carried out the same tests at two places on Mars' surface, Viking 1 near the equator and Viking 2 further north.
The four experiments below are presented in the order in which they were carried out by the two Viking landers. The biology team leader for the Viking program was Harold P. Klein (NASA Ames).
A gas chromatograph — mass spectrometer (GCMS) is a device that separates vapor components chemically via a gas chromatograph and then feeds the result into a mass spectrometer, which measures the molecular weight of each chemical. As a result, it can separate, identify, and quantify a large number of different chemicals. The GCMS (PI: Klaus Biemann, MIT) was used to analyze the components of untreated Martian soil, and particularly those components that are released as the soil is heated to different temperatures. It could measure molecules present at a level of a few parts per billion.
The GCMS measured no significant amount of organic molecules in the Martian soil. In fact, Martian soils were found to contain less carbon than lifeless lunar soils returned by the Apollo program. This result was difficult to explain if Martian bacterial metabolism was responsible for the positive results seen by the Labeled Release experiment (see below). A 2011 astrobiology textbook notes that this was the decisive factor due to which "For most of the Viking scientists, the final conclusion was that the Viking missions failed to detect life in the Martian soil."
Experiments conducted in 2008 by the Phoenix lander discovered the presence of perchlorate in Martian soil.
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