Plated Wire Memory Board

This photo is the Plated Wire Memory Board, one of the artifacts donated by a Viking Team member to The Viking Mars Missions Education & Preservation Project. This hardware was important because it represents a unique configuration designed specifically for the Viking mission. The name comes from the fact that the individual wires of the Memory board were individually plated in order to reduce noise transfer and interference from the system itself that would have been difficult to differentiate from the scientific data that was being stored and transferred through the board in the form of a signal. This design was in response to challenges encountered during testing, and caused this system to put put on Viking Program Director, Jim Martin's "Top Ten" list. The "Top Ten" list was a list of top priority issues the project was working on at any given time. These items were considered mission critical, and resulted in resource allocations, schedule, materials, and staffing changes, and in some cases even a reassignment of vendors contracted to work on specific subsystems.