 It began here at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, last summer. A pair of spacecraft, Viking I and Viking II, were ready for their separate journeys to Mars. Each is really two spacecraft in one. A 5,000-pound orbiter with cameras and communications gear and sealed inside two saucer-like capsules at the other end, the Viking landing craft. A camera-equipped, automated biological and chemistry laboratory and seismic station, which has been purged of earthly organisms by being heated in a huge oven. The 11-month, 420-million-mile trip for the two Viking orbiter landers was set in motion by two launches. One in August, one in September. Earth shrinks smaller and smaller as the two Vikings head toward their Martian rendezvous. Then, breaking rockets fire on command, slowing the first Viking explorer enough that it goes into orbit around Mars. For the next two weeks, the orbiting spacecraft will survey the surface below, transmitting pictures of possible landing sites to scientists on Earth. The Martian surface should be a study in contrasts. From vast, dust-swept planes to immense canyons and frost-covered plateaus, huge gullies and channels photographed by earlier Mariner spacecraft are believed to have been caused by running water sometime in the distant past. If all goes as planned, the first Viking lander will separate from the orbiting command ship and descend to the Martian surface, landing at 9.40 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, July 4th. The second Viking is scheduled to land on September 4th, 1,000 miles to the northeast of Viking 1. How will Viking go about looking for life on Mars? We asked Dr. Richard Young, NASA's chief of planetary biology. We look for life on Mars in much the same way we would look for life on Earth if we were forced to use an automated device. We don't send a scientist along. If we were sending a little wagon out into the Sahara Desert or one of the dry valleys of the Antarctic, which had to function all by itself with automated equipment, this is probably exactly what we would send. And let me say, by the way, that we're looking primarily for microorganisms. It would be rather fruitless of us to look for horses on Mars. We wouldn't look for horses on Earth if we were looking for life because the chances would be a million to one against finding them with a random search. Viking's mechanical arm pulls in a scoop full of Martian soil and drops it into a one cubic foot box that's really three completely automated testing laboratories. It is here that the possibilities for or against the presence of life will be determined. What will it mean to Earthlings if life is found on Mars? It must mean that the universe is literally an inhabited universe with many planets that have life on it. Now, if there are many planets that have life on it, there is no doubt at all that terrestrial life is not going to be the most advanced civilization, the highest level of consciousness. We must be somewhere in the broad spectrum of possibility. And that drives you to the conclusion that there may be conscious life elsewhere in the universe. Vikings to Mars and the search for life there. Countries first close up scientific exploration of the red planet.