Viking 1

Viking 1 is a space robot that was sent up to explore another planet called Mars. It was built by very smart people who wanted to learn more about Mars and what it was like there.

Viking 1 was like a little car that worked on its own. It had wheels to help it move around the planet and a camera to take pictures. It was a very tough robot because it had to survive very cold temperatures and bad weather on Mars.

Scientists sent Viking 1 to Mars in 1975. It traveled for more than 300 million miles to get there! When it arrived on Mars, it started taking pictures and exploring the planet. It took pictures of rocks and soil, and even took some pictures of the sky.

Viking 1 did lots of cool experiments on Mars. One of the most important ones was to see if there were any signs of life on the planet. It was looking for things like tiny microbes or bacteria. Scientists worked really hard to make sure the experiments were perfect so they could find out for sure.

The Viking 1 robot sent a lot of information back to Earth for many years. It helped scientists learn a lot about Mars and how different it was from Earth. Even though it's not working anymore, it was a very important robot that taught us a lot about our neighbor planet.