Fifty years ago this week, a robotic arm on Earth cut a ribbon at the opening of the National Air and Space Museum. The arm was controlled by a signal that traveled to Mars and back. It was one of the most creative stunts in museum history.
And then it vanished.
Michael Collins — Apollo 11 astronaut and the museum’s first director — was watching his watch. The July 1, 1976 opening had been moved up from July 4 and then pushed around again when the Viking 1 lander’s Mars landing got delayed. Collins had beaten the original schedule by three days, but those final 36 minutes were all that mattered.
President Gerald Ford and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller found their seats. The Thunderbirds flew over. The Presentation of Colors took 20 seconds. The national anthem took 85. Ford gave a speech quoting Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Nine and a half minutes. Done.
Then everyone moved to the entrance. Mounted on a small table was the surface sampler arm from a Viking Mars lander engineering model. A red, white, and blue ribbon ran through it. Two sets of traffic lights sat above — green off, red blinking.
Thirty-six minutes earlier, NASA had sent a signal to the real Viking 1 probe, still 20 days from landing on Mars. Communications took 18 minutes each way. The command came back to Earth, hit a tracking station, and triggered the engineering arm sitting in front of the museum.
The green lights blinked on.
“I was holding my breath,” Collins recalled later. “All those VIPs standing around looking at this ribbon and this mechanical shearing device and nothing would happen.”
It worked. The arm snipped the ribbon. The doors opened. The public got their first look at the Wright Flyer, the Spirit of St. Louis, and Collins’ own command module Columbia.
After the ceremony, NASA reportedly packed up the arm assembly and took it back. Fifty years later, no one is sure where it ended up. The Smithsonian has a Viking proof test article on display, but not the arm that cut the ribbon. collectSPACE and the museum itself have been trying to track it down.
If you know where a 50-year-old Mars lander arm is sitting in storage, the museum would like a word.
