Martian Summer Read online

  Martian Summer

  My Ninety Days with Interplanetary Pioneers, Temperamental Robots, and NASA’s Phoenix Mars Mission

  Andrew Kessler

  For Lottie and Bobo

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  PART I: THE PHOENIX OF TUCSON

  CHAPTER 1: First-Day Jitters

  CHAPTER 2: The Clod

  CHAPTER 3: Control Room

  CHAPTER 4: Cloddy with a Chance of Sprinkles

  CHAPTER 5: Red Haze

  CHAPTER 6: Special Mars Pill

  CHAPTER 7: Wonderland

  CHAPTER 8: The Lost Day

  CHAPTER 9: Missing Pieces

  PART II: RED PLANET BLUES

  CHAPTER 10: I, for One, Welcome our NASA Overlords

  CHAPTER 11: Arm Up. Stand Down.

  CHAPTER 12: All the Landers, Independent

  CHAPTER 13: Down and Out in the SOC

  CHAPTER 14: In a Scrape

  CHAPTER 15: Powers of Ten

  CHAPTER 16: Nilton’s Nodules

  CHAPTER 17: An Enemy Among Us

  CHAPTER 18: Nilton’s Nodules (Round II)

  CHAPTER 19: Feel My Rasp

  CHAPTER 20: Martian Colds

  CHAPTER 21: There is No Try

  CHAPTER 22: Don’t Be a Rasp Hole

  CHAPTER 23: Ice Delivery, Take Two

  CHAPTER 24: Mars Man Forever

  CHAPTER 25: The Third Time

  CHAPTER 26: Press Conference

  PART III: IT’S DRY FREEZE

  CHAPTER 27: Tinfoil Hats

  CHAPTER 28: Oy Covault

  CHAPTER 29: Full Release

  CHAPTER 30: Shove the Regolith Back in the Lander

  CHAPTER 31: That’s the Planet I Saw on TV

  CHAPTER 32: Forty Minutes Back

  CHAPTER 33: Scooped

  CHAPTER 34: Two Days Forward, One Sol Back

  CHAPTER 35: Paralyzed Ops

  CHAPTER 36: The Dude Abides

  CHAPTER 37: Stiff Joints

  CHAPTER 38: Salty Liquid Water Tears

  CHAPTER 39: Sol Searching

  Index

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT MARS AND THE HUMANS THAT MAKE ROCKET science possible. This is not the most accurate account of this NASA mission. For that, you’ll want to review the science papers or other Mars-related literature. Instead, this is an account of winning the nerd lottery: The luckiest fanboy in fandom gets a shot to spend three months with unfettered access to Mission Control. It’s just your average summer trying to capture the story of 130 of the world’s best planetary scientists and engineers exploring the north pole of Mars. It’s a warts-and-all look at the Phoenix Mars mission from a regular guy who loves space.

  PART I

  THE PHOENIX

  OF TUCSON

  DATE: JUNE 04, 2007

  THE STORY BEGINS TWO MONTHS BEFORE THE LAUNCH OF THE Phoenix Mars Lander. One year before the landing. It takes ten months to fly at 74,000 mph to arrive on Mars. It’s far.

  The subject of the story is a Martian photographer.

  “Don’t call me that,” Peter Smith, the world’s greatest Martian Photographer says dryly. “It really diminishes the science.”

  This is a story about the world’s greatest Mars picture-taker and his robot, Phoenix.

  “And don’t make me look like some wacko mad scientist,” Peter says. He has a hard enough time with the mission’s image as it is. Peter is particular about the mission’s image because he knows how getting it right has the potential to inspire children and adults alike. More than half his team is here because they grew up watching Apollo and Viking missions.

  “What’s going to inspire the next generation?” he wants to know.

  We’re sitting in the back yard of Peter’s Tucson home. We’re getting off on the wrong foot and I can’t stop imagining Peter working in his Martian photo studio posing little aliens on the Red Planet. Stupid, I know.

  Peter is intimidating. He is tall—very tall—with a shock of white hair, bushy eyebrows, big mustache, a robust Buddha-like belly and an alpha-male cowboy swagger. He towers over me and says little. Only grimacing and asking if I’m sure I’m up for the task, correcting me when I say things like “Martian photographer” or make other interplanetary gaffes. I blabber to fill the silence. It’s not uncommon to feel this way when you first meet the brilliant, geeky—

  “Please don’t make us look like geeks, either” says the brilliant John Wayne of space.

  “Go collect some firewood for dinner,” he says. I do it. When I return, Peter breaks the wood with his hands, starts a small fire, and tells me a story.

  JUST FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, MARS WAS A DOT, A SPECK OF LIGHT. Then came the first telescopes, and Mars ceased to be a dot. It became, instead, a world which scientists claimed was much like our own. Imaginations ran wild, and before long, rather than see vast, wonderful possibilities, we feared a Martian attack. As a war of the worlds loomed, Mars became a source of fear and anxiety.

  It wasn’t until our first stumblings into the solar system in the 1960s, when Mariner 4 snapped photos of Mars’s surface that we caught a glimpse of what it might actually be like. Rather than an advanced civilization poised for an attack, Mariner 4 showed us a lifeless, desolate place. A few years later, in the 1970s, Viking I confirmed those first impressions: Mars was nothing to fear. Just a dead planet; barely worth exploring. The missions stopped. The scientific dreamers lost sleep and became depressed.

  Then a discovery in the 1990s changed everything. ALH84001, a piece of Mars ejected by a cosmic collision, was thrust through the solar system and somehow landed on Earth. It was found in Antarctica in 1984 but no one took much interest. When scientists at NASA finally cut it open to take a closer look, they found something shocking: evidence of life. Tiny microbes, simple little guys with evidence of a few of the basic structures of life, like a cell wall. It was the basic innards of something you might find in the extreme environments of the Earth—sulfur vents at the bottom of the ocean, the dry valleys of Antarctica, or the Andean desert. Clearly there was more to discover on Mars. So, we headed back.

  PETER SMITH IS A MASTER AT CONJURING THESE LITTLE MARS VIGNETTES. That’s not his only virtue or why we’re here. Peter built an excavator to operate on Mars. It took five years of construction and nearly a lifetime of dreams. In a few months, he will watch a Delta II rocket blast off into space carrying his 800-pound lander with a long arm that can dig into the surface of Mars. Past Mars missions toted along soup-spoon style digging equipment, but Phoenix brings a mini backhoe to do real interplanetary digging. His mission is called The Phoenix Mars Lander. Phoenix for short.

  Peter builds cameras for space. Capturing the universe on film is a great gig. He built almost half of the cameras that have operated on Mars, and got to where he is by working his way up from research assistant to Mission Captain—or Principal Investigator to NASA insiders. It’s a classic photon-to-Charged-Coupled-Device story.

  You might remember waking up one summer morning in 1997 to a well-cropped ocher-colored Martian landscape on the front page of your newspaper or computer screen. Remember? Peter took that image. His camera, fixed to a robot called Pathfinder, captured the alien landscape using a simple yet brilliant trick to get non-scientists to imagine themselves on Mars and bask in its glory.

  His scientific images looked like tourist photos. And Peter, betting that scientists wouldn’t be the only ones who wanted to look at them, made a secret handshake deal to thwart NASA protocol and post the images on the Internet as they came down from Mars. It was arguably the first ever viral marketing campaign—undoubtedly the first for space. The traffic he brought
to NASA’s site nearly crashed the whole Internet. The coolness factor re-awakened a waning interest in not just the Red Planet, but space exploration itself.

  This is Peter’s whole raison d’etre, as well as his gift of empathy—a rare trait among scientific minds: obsessed with discovery, but never forgetting to stop to smell the roses. Peter wants people to care about space and science, so he does everything possible to make it romantic and within arm’s length. Get through that gruff exterior, and I’m just positive we’ll find an old softy.

  NOW PETER HAS TAKEN ON SOMETHING BIGGER. HE DIDN’T JUST BUILD the cameras for this mission, he’s the captain of this whole ship and he won’t take no jive from no one—except NASA. They control his $420 million budget and can cut him off at any moment, if he goes rogue. Not that I’m implying he would ever hijack a Mars lander.

  Peter Smith invited me to his rocket-ship-shaped home—a design rendered when he was a swinging space bachelor—because he wanted to revive the great space narrative, begun a generation ago, but now in need of a new chapter. From our scant conversations before I arrived in Tucson, I learned he was looking for an outsider to join the mission and articulate to the world a story starring one lovable but tough-as-nails hero, Peter Smith, on one crazy, heroic, funtastic mission to explore the innards of another world.

  This is our first face-to-face Mars accord. Peter wants someone on his mission that’s not a brilliant scientist. Check. He’s got enough headaches with 130 of those. He’s looking for someone who might see Mars with a fresh approach and could write about it from a new perspective. Check. And there’s one thing Peter can see clearly—I’ve got naïveté in spades.

  Still, this whole project is a risk. Letting an outsider into Mission Control makes Peter’s current P.R. chief nervous.

  “You’re a liability.” she says. Then again, she used to work for the folks that make shoulder-fired Stinger missiles, cluster bombs, and the like. Transparency doesn’t come naturally for her. I just have to gently remind her, this is the Martian arctic, not Afghanistan.

  NASA WAS ONCE A BRASH ORGANIZATION, THEIR RANKS FILLED with half-crazed suicidal rocket jockeys and space cowboys. On the eve of the first moon landing, President Nixon prepared a speech to deliver if Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin couldn’t get back from the moon. Why? Because they weren’t sure they could get back. NASA never apologized for taking that risk and the American public cheered them on with every small step for mankind. NASA gave us heroes fighting the good fight, expanding the possibilities of modern civilization. Somehow, since then, they devolved into a bunch of terrified bureaucrats. Can Peter Smith and his fanboy sidekick restore the glory days with a single trip to Mars? Hell, yes. If I fail, Mars and Peter could be relegated to obscurity forever and have their planetary street cred stripped away. Remember what happened to Pluto?

  Peter is not going to ask NASA if it’s okay for me to be here, either. That’ll make life a little bit more complicated, but Mission Control is his building. And he decides who gets in. Besides, what’s a minor security breach?

  “Security breach? This is not a security breach.” Peter says. “You were issued a security badge through the proper channels. We had to make sure you didn’t leak stories to the press.”

  FOR THE LONG YEAR AFTER OUR FIRST MEETING IN TUCSON, I TRAINED. I woke up early and went to bed late. I had two full-time jobs: one paid the bills, while Mars, Peter Smith, and the Phoenix mission fueled my dreams for a better tomorrow. There was no way I would let my own ignorance keep me out of Mission Control. I did a few push-ups, but training mostly consisted of early mornings getting caught up on all things space before I headed off to my cube.

  I’d give anything for a chance to spend 90 days on our red neighbor. Even though it was a gamble, Peter was never entirely sure letting an outsider in was a good idea. Or even if it was, that I was the right guy to do it. I sublet my apartment and told friends and family I was going to Mars, without a hint of irony. I even threw a bon voyage party. All my loved ones showed up to wish me luck. Then I held my breath and hoped Peter would eventually let me in.

  ON THE 10TH DAY OF THE MISSION, AFTER A DRAMATIC AND SUCCESSFUL landing (Phoenix on Mars and me at the glorious Tucson Airport), the intergalactic discovery was about to begin. The engineers were satisfied that Phoenix was in good shape and the excavation could get under way. The mission held press conferences to update the few hard-core media outlets still in town. And then a ray of light shined down as Peter’s assistant walked over and handed me my very own security badge. My name neatly printed in black Sharpie.

  “Talk to Peter before you use this,” she said.

  “It’s a five-day trial,” Peter said. And that’s where this story begins: Peter Smith offering me the chance of a lifetime, a chance that’s never been offered before and one that is never likely to be offered again. I just won the space-nerd lottery and I swear I’m not going to let Peter or his team of world-class scientists and engineers down. See you in Mission Control.

  CHAPTER ONE

  FIRST-DAY JITTERS

  SOL 11

  IT’S NEAR QUITTING TIME AFTER A LONG DAY OF TAKING PHOTOS of new acquaintances—Lory and Mad Hatter—measuring atmospheric gases, and digging. The Phoenix Mars lander beeps and blips along. The sun never sets on these long Martian summer nights, but the Phoenix has strict orders to rest. The engineers want Phoenix asleep before 5:00 p.m., Mars time. Soon it will be time to put away its instruments and recharge its batteries. With the core plan nearly finished, Peter Smith and the engineers back home will be pleased.

  There’s just one more critical task before Phoenix can crank up its night-time heaters and initiate sleep.

  “RA Acquire Sample with Rac Doc” is the instruction. This note and the corresponding lander code tells Phoenix to scrape up the first ever scoopful of Martian dirt. It’s no ordinary scoop of Martian dirt. This scoop is a milestone in a long journey—one that took centuries to complete. It’s the first human experiment ever done on the arctic plains of Mars. And a tiny step in the process of one day getting a man to Mars. A small camera mounted on the robot arm documents the moment for posterity.

  Once this Martian dirt is safely tucked away, Phoenix will send home its daily report and then head off to bed—to dream of finding little green men and having its day delivering a lecture to the king of Norway when it accepts its Nobel Prize on a stage in Oslo. I know it’s just a robot, but did I mention it’s not coming back alive? Phoenix is a robot suicide mission.

  Back on Earth, I imagine what it might be like on Mars as I swipe my security badge for the first time and walk into Mission Control.

  IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T BEEN GLUED TO NASAWATCH.COM, THE PHOENIX MARS Lander is a robotic spacecraft built by NASA, the University of Arizona, the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), Lockheed Martin, the Canadian Space Agency, and a whole consortium of international universities and industry, all under the leadership of one intimidating scientist named Peter Smith. It carries six scientific instruments to complete its mission: find out what Mars used to be like and if anything can, or did, live there.

  We don’t really know all that much about what’s going on down on the surface of Mars. “Is there life on Mars?” might feel like just a brilliant David Bowie lyric, but it’s actually a legitimate and central question. It’s worth a tiny digression to talk about the “life on Mars” issue before we get back to humanity’s first interplanetary ground-breaking ceremony.

  Sometimes aliens are the only things that make us care about Mars. They’re the gateway drug to the hard science. There’s no shame in dreaming about aliens. Even the most stone-faced scientists on the Phoenix Mars lander team imagine what might happen if they turn on the electron-scanning microscope and see tiny cells mucking about. Even better, if Phoenix found some wide-eyed E.T.s lounging on the ice, NASA would get a huge new budget, Martian Summer book sales would be through the roof, and Peter Smith and the Phoenix Lander would share a Nobel Prize. Win-win-win.

  Wha
t’s more likely is Phoenix might run into tiny bits or blobs of unrecognizables that would be hard to classify. How do you know when you have found “life” if it doesn’t look like you or even anything you are even remotely familiar with that falls within your classification of “alive”? Even defining life on Earth is kind of a tricky thing. If you’re too inclusive in your definition, then you end up allowing things like cars—that convert energy and move—as living. But if you’re too restrictive you might designate things like mules—that convert energy and move but don’t reproduce—as not living.

  If it doesn’t have eyes and use a ray-gun, and it’s not a DNA or RNA or even carbon-based life form, how will you know it’s alive? Finding new forms of life on another planet would send our idea of sentient supremacy into a tailspin. Since we only have one data point, life on earth, finding some strange form of life on Mars would certainly shake things up a bit. This mission does not have any sort of DNA detectors, but it’s got some good tools for decoding whatever mysteries it encounters. So I’d like to quash those hopes and fears before you get too excited about this book revealing a giant Mars conspiracy of brain wave-reading Martians. But don’t worry; there will be plenty of time for tinfoil hats, whether they be a fez, centurion, classic, or even a bonnet for the ladies. Read on but keep your Reynolds Wrap close at hand, because there will still be some unanswered questions at the end of the mission.

  Mars was once similar to Earth. Then, a couple of billion years ago, it went from a soupy-warm planet to a cold desert. We don’t know how that march toward doom happened. There are huge gaps in our knowledge: from simple things like the pH of the soil to big, earth-shatteringly revolutionary things, like is Mars habitable? Phoenix, the robot, is mandated to find the answers to these fundamental questions. If everything goes according to plan, we should have some answers in the next 90 days. (Or less, if you read quickly.)