Fifty years ago, NASA’s Viking 1 touched down. It happened on July 20, 1V76. The dust has settled, but the conversation hasn’t.
If you follow space news, you’ve probably seen Space.com highlight This Week In Space. It’s a TWiT podcast. I co-host it with Rod Pyle. He’s a space historian and edits Ad Astra. We usually drop new episodes every Saturday. Predictable. Reliable.
Not this weekend.
To mark the 50th anniversary of the Viking Mars landings, we’re doing something different. No pre-recorded track. We are going live. Rod and I will host a special taping starting at 1:30 p.m. EDT. That’s 1730 GMT for the international crowd. Expect it to run about 90 minutes.
Why go live? Because history needs context. We aren’t just reciting dates. We are digging into what those landings meant then and what they mean now.
Who joins the live Viking Mars anniversary discussion
You won’t just hear the two of us rambling. We brought in experts. Serious ones.
Dr. Pascal Lee is on the call. He’s a planetary scientist, a geologist, and an artist. He splits his time between the SETI Institute, the Mars Institute, and NASA Ames Research Center. That mix of science and art is rare.
Dr. Penny Boston is also joining us. She’s an astrobiologist and a speleologist. If you don’t know what a speleologist does, it’s the study of caves. She comes to us from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology caves.
Where should we look for life on Mars
We’ll talk about the personal impact of those Viking missions. We’ll cover the science, obviously. But we are also looking forward. Where does Mars exploration go from here?
The big debate? Where do we hunt for signs of life?
Is it on the surface? Or should we drill down into Martian caves? Boston’s expertise in caves makes her the perfect person to argue that point. Lee brings the geological perspective.
“The hunt for signs of life” isn’t just about picking a spot. It’s about choosing the right strategy.
We’ll cover the best places to look. We’ll compare surface risks with underground potential. It’s a complex question. One without a single easy answer.
So, tune in. It’s not just a recap. It’s a conversation.
