The Viking 1 mission to Mars is launched from Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla., on a Titan III booster. The spacecraft enters Mars orbit on June 19, 1976, and the lander, which takes soil samples and performs rudimentary analysis on them, soft-lands on July 20, 1976.
The Senate Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces heard testimony from the Defense Department’s top missile defense leaders and demanded to know why the Missile Defense Agency's proposed $9.6 billion fiscal 2023 budget will not yield more reliable defense against hypersonic weapons already being fielded by adversaries, including Russia on…