First Panoramic Photo of Mars

Photograph courtesy NASA/Camera 2 on Viking 1

Shortly after Viking 1 landed on Mars on July 20, 1976, its Camera 2 captured the first photograph ever taken of the planet’s surface. This 300-degree image shows Chryse Planitia, the flat, low-lying plain of Mars’s northern hemisphere, littered with mechanical parts from the lander and rocks that range from four to eight inches (10 to 20 centimeters) across.