Images from the Viking spacecraft are not perfect! This band of vertical stripes is not an image of something on Mars. To get an image of Mars to Earth, the Viking spacecraft looked at Mars through a camera (like a video camera). The image in the camera was saved into a tape recorder, and then transmitted by radio (actually, microwaves) from Mars to the Earth. Noise anywhere along the way would get recorded on Earth as a part of the picture. These stripes were caused by vibrations in the spacecraft while the camera image was being copied to the tape recorder. Noise in the radio transmissions usually shows up in the images as single dots that are much brighter or darker than their surroundings.