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The Secret Space Museum
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What is The Secret Space Museum?

The Secret Space Museum provides a close-up view of space technology from the past. This virtual museum displays rare space memorabilla from major NASA programs such as Apollo-Saturn, ATM-Skylab and Viking. All displayed hardware is from a single private collection.
The museum is currently developing both passive and interactive exibits which should provide the visitor with a unique visual perspective of the displayed technology. Some of the displays will include disassembled units to show the specific details of the internal design and circuitry. Electrical schematics with functional explanations will be included whenever available.

Viking Lander Hardware

The Viking Lander Mystery

The article entitled "JPL Tries to Revive Link With Viking 1" by Bruce A. Smith was featured on page 16 of the April 4, 1983 issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology. This article explains how a command was transmitted to the Viking 1 Lander on November, 20 1982 which disabled the spacecraft by apparently erasing a part of the vehicle's computer memory that controlled the position of the spacecraft's antenna.
Officials visited the proof test lander on display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in an effort to learn more about the spacecraft. Another purpose of the visit was to possibly collect some of the spare Viking hardware for use in constructing a breadboard on which the problem could be recreated. This visit is described in the last paragraph of this article which states:

"During the process of trying to resolve the lander problem, the proof test lander on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum was studied to examine the antenna connections and actuator mechanisms. Officials also removed a panel in an attempt to take out the on-board computer, but found the computer already had been removed from the spacecraft."
The article only mentions the missing computer. What the article fails to mention is that not only had the on-board computer (Guidance, Control and Sequencing Computer or GCSC) been removed from the spacecraft but also the Data Acquisition and Processing Unit (DAPU) the Inertial Reference Unit (IRU) and some other items were also missing. In fact, neither NASA, the Smithsonian nor any of the Viking contractors currently has any of these historically important items.


Question: Exactly what happened to the missing spare Viking Lander hardware? The Secret Space Museum will send a spare electronic circuit board from one of the Saturn V telemetry units to the first person with the correct answer. The answer should include the complete senario of all major events relating to how and why this hardware was lost. If a correct answer is not received by 3/15/98 (extended date), the closest wrong answer will win and the winners name and the correct answer will be posted on this page.
Answer: When NASA realized that the Skylab/Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM) was falling back to earth a program was initiated to save it by developing a vehicle known as "Teleoperator" which was to be placed in orbit with the new Space Shuttle. In order to save time and money, it was decided to reuse most of the major data management, control and instrumentation hardware that had been left over from the Mars Viking Lander program. The Viking Lander hardware was collected including "borrowing" hardware components from the Proof Test Lander which is on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Finally, it was realized that the Shuttle would not be operational in time and the Teleoperator program was cancelled. Because the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) had been responsible for Teleoperator, all of the hardware was returned to MSFC where it was subsequently sold to several scrap dealers and one collector of space memorabelia (me). The units that were purchased by the scrap dealers were all eventually destroyed for their gold content. The surviving units in the "Secret Space Museum" include: 3 Inertial Reference Units (IRUs); 4 Guidance, Control and Sequencing Computers (GCSCs); and 4 Data Acquisition and Processing Units (DAPUs).
To contest winner was Mr. Val Byler with an incorrect, and silly, answer.


The Prize - Saturn 270 Multiplexer Card
 This circuit card is from a Model 270 Multiplexer. The 270 mux is an analog time division multiplexer which was flown on all stages of the Saturn I and Saturn V Rockets for the purpose of collecting telemetry data.
This card provides 10 analog inputs (0 to 5 vdc) which are submultiplexed into one of the 27 main mux channels. Up to 24 of these cards were used in each 270 to provide up to 243 data channels (24X10 + 3).
Each analog switch contains of a pair of NPN and PNP transistors driven by an isolation transformer. The design predates MOS-FET analog switch technology.



Saturn 216 Multiplexer Unit (Similar to 270 Multiplexer)

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