I have heard of this as being a potential problem.

JPL does not think so. The arm probably reaches far enough away to miss any 'blast zone' from the retro rockets.

The only way we will know for sure, is after landing.

Was this a problem with Viking 1 & Viking 2?

Andrew Brown.

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"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before". Linda Morabito on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.