Over 50 years ago, on July 20 1976, NASA achieved something quite incredible for humanity and photography. At precisely 05:12 PDT the space agency successfully touched down on Mars with the Viking 1 lander, beginning the search for life on our celestial neighbor.
Just 25 seconds later, the spacecraft – now stationed on Chryse Planitia, a smooth, circular plain in Mars’ northern hemisphere – snapped the first ever image of the surface of the Martian world.
