Word: soiling
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...Columbus arrive in history?" asked Gerald Soffen, Viking project scientist. "We've just witnessed one of the arrivals. We are a privileged generation." For the first time, through an obedient and ingeniously contrived robot, man was about to gaze at a Martian landscape, to begin sifting through Martian soil for evidence that life exists beyond the earth...
Painted Desert. Like an apprehensive human who had plummeted from the sky onto alien soil, Viking first looked down at its footing, transmitting back to Pasadena the historic, if not dramatic first picture from the Martian surface. It showed one of the lander's round footpads resting upon an area of hard-packed soil strewn with pebbles and small rocks of varying sizes. At J.P.L., 212 million miles away, scientists could clearly see the rows of rivets on the lander's foot, late (Martian) afternoon shadows and-extending from rocks-dirt tails that might have been formed...
...illusion of standing on the Martian plain became even more vivid when scientists produced a color picture that confirmed the appropriateness of Mars' longtime sobriquet of Red Planet. The soil seemed to consist of a fine-grained reddish material interspersed with small blue-black or blue-green patches. Many of the rocks were also coated with a reddish stain, strongly suggesting the presence of iron that had rusted in the presence of atmospheric or waterbound oxygen. Other rocks, blue-green and opalescent, reminded some scientists of copper ore. After correcting the color values on the photograph, scientists decided that...
...Monsters. Once the first lander was safely down on Martian soil-thereby assuring at least partial success of the $1 billion, eight-year-long Viking project-scientists decided that they could afford to be less cautious with Viking 2, which is approaching Mars and scheduled to go into orbit on Aug. 7. Last week scientists were considering setting the second lander down in a rugged northern region that would be more hazardous for landing than Viking 1's site but potentially more interesting to geologists and biologists...
...West Germans almost certainly face problems since their team includes members from West Berlin. The Soviets contend that West Berlin is an independent political entity and must have no ties with West Germany. And what about Israel? The Arabs claim that Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian soil. Would the Soviets invite a team from the P.L.O. and bar the Israelis? Even if only a small part of this scenario developed, what might be the U.S. response...