History: On August 20, 1975, NASA launched Viking 1, with its destination on Mars. The Viking 1 was equipped with a landing pod capable of photography that would send data from the surface of the planet, and its main purpose was to determine if there was every any form of life on Mars. Although the Viking 2, launched shortly after the first Viking, proved that life as we know it was inhospitable on the planet. However, other dramatic discoveries were made by the program that made some believe that Mars may have once had an ancient civilization on it. The Viking 1 sent out pods to be placed on the planet to take pictures to see how the planet looked from the surface. Pictures of impressions of depleted rivers, extinct volcanoes, two polar caps where the ice is easily visible, and deserts th