Viking Lander RTGs

NASA’s Viking mission landed two spacecraft on Mars in 1976, Viking landers 1 and 2. This video describes the lander’s Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs). The video illustrates the RTGs using a high-fidelity 3D digital model of the Viking lander that is a work-in-progress hobby of mine. Some renderings of the model components, still under construction: The model itself (created with SketchUp) is freely available: The animations were created using a version of Fredo6’s SketchUp extension “Animator“. My thanks to the following organizations who have allowed me to research their Viking artifacts: The Viking Mars Missions Education and Preservation Project The Museum of Flight California Science Center Virginia Air and Space Center NASA Langley Research Center Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Mound Science and Energy Museum Jurvetson Space Museum The Viking research photographs and measurements I’ve captured (plus some historic information I’ve collected) are available in the following albums: Flight Capsule 3 in Seattle Museum of Flight (756 photos): Dimensioned diagrams of the FC3 lander: Proof Test Capsule Lander at Smithsonian NASM (466 photos): PTC Lander at Smithsonian NASM in 2016 (888 photos): Lander at Virginia Air and Space Center (622 photos): Dimensioned diagrams of the VASC’s lander: Lander at California Science Center (456 photos): Dimensioned diagrams of the CSC’s lander: Misc diagrams, unusual photos (over 350 images): Body assembly blueprints: Collector Head Shroud Unit at NASA LaRC (99 photos): Biology instrument at Cleveland Museum of Natural History (36 photos): XRFS Instrument (42 images): Biology instrument in the Jurvetson Space Museum (215 photos):