Pandemonium spread through the operations area. Everywhere people were shouting and hugging. Some, like me, were even shedding tears of joy. Meanwhile, the telemetry indicated that the spacecraft on Mars was relaying its post-landed data to the orbiter. After the transmission was complete, the orbiter would point to the Earth and the world would receive its first look at Mars on the scale of a large backyard.

The memory of that first photograph from Mars is indelibly stored in my mind. I was standing in a dark room with twenty or so of my Viking colleagues, staring raptly at a large monitor in the corner. The image was displayed vertical strip by vertical strip, starting at the left edge of the screen. It took several minutes for enough of the picture to emerge that we could really tell what we were seeing. Some of the first strips were a little fuzzy, as if they were out of focus, but as the data processing continued and more vertical strips appeared, the scene from Mars became clearer.

Tim Mutch, the lander imaging team leader who was in the pressroom with Al Hibbs, pointed out the edge of one of the landing petals as it appeared on the monitor. An instant later someone in my room hollered, "Look, it’s the bleeping footpad". Immediately the room erupted in cacophony. Everyone congratulated everybody. The exultation was universal.

Many of us were in a dreamlike trance for the rest of that day, July 20. We talked with reporters from all over the world, accepted congratulations from President Gerald Ford and other dignitaries, and marveled at the images from the surface of Mars and the initial interpretation of the atmospheric science data.

In the early evening I managed to leave JPL and go home for a short nap. Later, on a clear California night, I wandered into my backyard and stared upward at the dark sky, looking for Mars. Gazing at the splendor of the starry night, I suddenly was overwhelmed by the accomplishment of the day. Waves of ineffable emotions engulfed me. Goose bumps spread quickly across both my arms and my eyes suffused with tears. "We did it," I said with a large lump in my throat. "We landed on Mars."

In fact, from the point of view of space history, Viking looms like a legendary giant, an incredible success against which all present and future missions will inevitably be measured.