Latest research indicates that NASA’s Viking 1 lander that touched down on Mars on July 20, 1976, landed at the spot where a Martian megatsunami deposited materials 3.4 billion years ago, according to a study published last week in the journal Scientific Reports.
The catastrophic event, according to researchers “likely occurred when an asteroid slammed into the shallow Martian Ocean — similar to the Chicxulub asteroid impact that wiped out dinosaurs on Earth 66 million years ago, according to researchers.”
Ashley Strickland writes: “Five years before the Viking I landing, NASA’s Mariner 9 spacecraft had orbited Mars, spotting the first landscapes on another planet that suggested evidence of ancient flood channels there.”
Also Read: Orion Spacecraft has Covered the Longest Distance from Earth, NASA Says
Alexis Rodriguez, the lead author of the study and a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, says: “The lander was designed to seek evidence of extant life on the Martian surface, so to select a suitable landing site, the engineers and scientists at the time faced the arduous task of using some of the planet’s earliest acquired images, accompanied by Earth-based radar probing of the planet’s surface.”
“The landing site selection needed to fulfill a critical requirement — the presence of extensive evidence of former surface water. On Earth, life always requires the presence of water to exist,” he adds.
