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Viking 1 Touches Down on Mars

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Use the arrow keys to move between letters. Press Enter or Space on the first letter of a word, then again on the last letter. Press Escape to cancel.

A few of the words

LANDER
Viking 1's lander separated from its orbiter on July 20, 1976, and touched down after a harrowing descent through the thin Martian atmosphere.Find this word in the grid to read its note.
SOIL
A scoop arm on the lander collected Martian soil samples for onboard biology experiments, the first direct analysis of another planet's surface material.Find this word in the grid to read its note.
ANTENNA
Viking 1 relayed its data through a high-gain dish antenna, bouncing signals across roughly 212 million miles of space back to NASA's Deep Space Network.Find this word in the grid to read its note.
CRATER
The landing site in Chryse Planitia was chosen partly because ancient craters and channels hinted that liquid water once flowed across the region.Find this word in the grid to read its note.

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Viking 1 Mars landing word search · free, large-print, no sign-up

Viking 1 Touches Down on Mars: a free large-print word search

Viking 1 Mars landing word search, free and large-print, honoring July 20, 1976, when a robot touched alien ground for the first time.

About Viking 1 Touches Down on Mars

On July 20, 1976, NASA's Viking 1 lander settled onto the rust-red plain of Chryse Planitia and began sending photographs back to Earth, the first images ever taken from the Martian surface. The pictures revealed a rock-strewn desert stretching to a peach-colored horizon, alien and yet strangely familiar, like a dry canyon land under a different sky. That moment transformed Mars from a distant point of light into a place where a machine had stood, tasted the soil, and listened for signs of life.

How to play

  1. 1
    Find a word.Tap its first letter, then tap along to its last — the trail fills in and finishes itself when it spells a word. Or press the first letter and drag.
  2. 2
    Words run in straight lines.Across and down, and on the harder difficulties diagonally and backwards.
  3. 3
    It marks itself.Each word you find takes on its own soft colour on the grid and is crossed off the list.
  4. 4
    Choose a difficulty.Relaxed, Classic or Challenging set those directions and how much the word list helps — never the grid size. Tap the A buttons at the top to enlarge the letters, or pinch the grid.

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