SPACE SCIENCE AND APPLICATIONS IN THE 1970'S 333 



One way to delay the mission would be to require an environmental impact 

 statement of the impact on Mars. 



The Viking mission technically was perfect in execution. At 5:12 

 a.m. on July 20, 1976, the mission controller at the Jet Propulsion 

 Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif, declared simply: "Touchdown. We have 

 touchdown," as the first Viking lander smoothly reached the surface. 

 Less than an hour later, Viking-1 began transmitting the first of an 

 incredible series of photographs of the ridges, sand, bluffs and rocks 

 on the surface of Mars. Later, long arms reached out from the space- 

 craft, scooped up and analyzed samples of the Martian soil and sent 

 the results back to Earth. Two months later, Viking-2 landed at a 

 different location on Mars. In the areas of landing, no unambiguous 

 evidence of any form of life appeared to exist. 



4. Representative Don Fuqua of Florida 



Shortly after 10 o'clock one morning early in January 1975, 

 Chairman Teague assembled the top senior Democrats of the committee 

 for a very informal, unrecorded meeting in room 2317 of the Rayburn 

 Building, the small anteroom adjoining the main committee room 

 (2318). Going down the seniority list, Teague asked each member to 

 choose the subcommittee of his preference. To nobody's surprise, when 

 it came time for Fuqua to choose, he opted for the vastly expanded 

 Subcommittee on Space Science and Applications, with jurisdiction 

 over all of NASA's work except aeronautics. The committee had at 

 first been dubbed "Space Flight, Science and Applications," which 

 Fuqua with consent of the committee changed to its more permanent 

 title. 



By the start of the 94th Congress, the full committee which 

 back in 1959 had perhaps 90 percent of its work dealing with NASA, 

 in 1975 was devoting only about 20 percent of its effort in that area. 

 Nevertheless, the greatly enlarged jurisdiction meant that Fuqua 

 would preside over all the issues and programs once handled by 

 two subcommittees (Manned Space Flight and Space Science and 

 Applications) plus a portion of the work once handled by a third 

 subcommittee (Aeronautics and Space Technology); the new Fuqua 

 subcommittee took over jurisdiction dealing with tracking and data 

 acquisition, technology utilization, and all forms of basic and advanced 

 research once handled by the Hechler subcommittee. The work in 

 aeronautics went to a new Subcommittee on Aviation and Transporta- 

 tion Research and Development. 



35-120 



