Brian Cory Dobbs

Ryan, there's another photograph in here somewhere that will show Mars actually has blue skies.

No, of course not.

Leaving us to only speculate.

I was speaking with Ron Levin, who was the son of Dr. Gillivan, who was part of the Viking program.

The Viking mission of 1976, they actually sent two orbiters and two landers there.

It's one of the most...

It's one of NASA's greatest missions, most accomplished missions that most kids today have no idea about.

But anyway, they send these two landers to Mars in 1976.

It works flawlessly.

That's 50 years ago, man.

They start beaming back images, and in the NASA control room, Ron Levin is relaying the story because he was in his 20s at the time, accompanying his father to work at NASA headquarters on the Viking mission.

And just so we have the monitor here, they have the monitors there, and they're beaming back images, and they're seeing blue skies.

They weren't expecting that.

And everyone in the room is stunned, and they're not sure what to do about it because it's like this awkward moment.

Like, ooh, that kind of looks like Earth, right?

And for whatever reason, one of the technicians was ordered to start going around these analog monitors and adjusting the color to make it appear more red.

And that's where it started.

It started immediately.

So Ron Levin went and changed it all back.

And then he got in trouble, and so they had to change it all back.