Viking Mars Missions' Lander and System Integration proposal by Martin Marietta 1969. Viking Mars Missions' Lander and System Integration proposal by Martin Marietta 1969.

This document is the original Viking Mars Missions' Lander and System Integration proposal by Martin Marietta to the NASA Langley’s Viking Project Office in 1969. This proposal was a response to the NASA Langley Request for Proposals for the mission, and was based on numerous years of study by Martin Marietta staff beginning in the early 1960s when the company was based in Baltimore, Maryland. The Team that constructed the proposal were individuals hand selected for the Viking Project, many of whom were moved by Martin Marietta to Littleton, Colorado, specifically for the mission. Also competing for the Viking Project elements, were numerous other contractors and NASA Agencies including JPL, GE, Boeing, TRW, and many others. After all proposals were in, the Viking Project Office Team reviewed them for numerous criteria, and Martin Marietta was selected for the Lander Design, Test, and Build, as well as procurement of the science instruments and the overall integration of spacecraft systems. In addition, Martin Marietta separately won the contract for the Launch system, which was a Titan III-E with Centaur upper stage. The expertise of the Martin Marietta staff was deep and broad, and resulted in additional assignments throughout the project phases including Mission Flight Team and Mission Operations. In addition, Martin Marietta designed, developed and managed a Science Instrument on the Lander, the X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer (XRFS) instrument. This Proposal includes some details of the primary elements for the mission as they were originally proposed, as well as processes and touch points between vendors and NASA and the organizational and decision making processes. The Proposal was part of the bidding process to win the contract for these elements. As such, it is different than the final "As Built" document which we will also include in the exhibit. However it contains the primary elements for each functional system as well as the integration and testing processes and is an excellent example of how much work went into the research for the mission prior to even winning the contract. This early investment was done through company investment in the systems and project concept, some of which was done in conjunction with NASA-sponsored efforts and others under Internal Research and Development Program (IRAD) funding.

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