Editing Viking 2 (section)

===Orbiter===
The orbiter's primary mission ended on October 5, 1976, at the beginning of [[solar conjunction]]. The extended mission commenced on December 14, 1976, after the solar conjunction. On December 20, 1976, the periapsis was lowered to 778&nbsp;km, and the inclination raised to 80 degrees.

Operations included close approaches to [[Deimos (moon)|Deimos]] in October 1977, and the periapsis was lowered to 300&nbsp;km and the period changed to 24 hours on October 23, 1977. The orbiter developed a leak in its propulsion system that vented its [[Spacecraft attitude control|attitude control]] gas. It was placed in a 302 × 33,176&nbsp;km orbit and turned off on July 25, 1978, after returning almost 16,000 images in about 700–706 orbits around Mars.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Viking 2 - NASA Science |url=https://science.nasa.gov/mission/viking-2/ |access-date=2024-10-09 |website=science.nasa.gov |language=en-US}}</ref>