Humans Visiting Viking Lander(s) on Mars

A manned mission to visit one of the Viking landers could
provide us info on how various materials on the landers
have held up to the Martian atmosphere and which of these
materials are best to use on that planet. How would you
go about planning such a mission? Or is it not worth the
likely trouble involved?

-McDaniel

Hobbs aka McDaniel ) wrote:
: A manned mission to visit one of the Viking landers could
: provide us info on how various materials on the landers
: have held up to the Martian atmosphere and which of these
: materials are best to use on that planet. How would you
: go about planning such a mission? Or is it not worth the
: likely trouble involved?

Makes perfect sense. As I recall Apollo 12 visited an unmanned probe
Ranger...oops (nice history of Ranger missions by Henry Spencer he
http://yarchive.net/space/apollo/ranger.html from right here nearly 7
years ago to the day!).

Anyway, Apollo 12 visted Surveyor 3. See he
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031005.html

I think that rather than study Surveyor, it was cannibal...err, salvaged
for parts. No atmosphere on the moon and all. But your suggestion of when
a manned mission to Mars actually occurs, seeing Viking or even the
current Mars rovers would definitely make sense. Given that they will have
to be on Mars for several months it stands to reason that they will have
time to do the searches rather than the short two week window we had with
Apollo.

Eric

: -McDaniel