Martian Summer Read online

  Shift I workers begin each evening (Mars time) by planning for the next sol. They use any new data to make sure what they’re doing is consistent with what’s new on Mars. That’s kickoff and the data downlink part of the day. The science team then works with engineers to codify these activities into a tactical plan. The two teams come together to discuss the plan and make an official handoff at midpoint; the midpoint meeting marks the break in the “Y”-shaped day. It’s where shift I and shift II come together to coordinate the science plan and begin the process of converting scientific activities into lander instructions. After midpoint, the shift II team takes on a tactical role preparing the day’s plan, while shift I moves on to planning the next few sols.

  Implementing the plan, the shift II tactical role, is a difficult, detail-oriented process that must be completed before the last communication pass of the day. If they can’t complete the plan, the science day is lost. The key to a successful midpoint meeting is that all the instrument sequencing engineers (ISEs) and shift II personnel are comfortable with the intention of each activity in the plan. This is what makes the 80% rule important. The engineers must be 80% confident that they can complete the code for the activities within an eight-to-ten-hour window. It’s a funny construct, but that’s how you get good results with imperfect information.

  The engineers are artisans, hand-coding to the lander program in a special robot coding language called virtual machine language (VML). Each activity is a sequence. Occasionally there are sequences that are already tested and used frequently; these are blocks that live within a library of activities. The coding process has lots of rules to keep errant commands from damaging the spacecraft. The guardians of these rules, mission managers like Richard Kornfeld, Bob Denise, and Julia Bell, are the spacecraft’s protectors, and they take their work very seriously.

  Even after all the code is tested and compiled, the instrument sequence engineers (ISEs) are asked to describe for the group the riskiest aspect of the code and how the code they’ve written might fail and what they’ve done to prevent that. Once the mission manager feels satisfied that the code is solid, then the shift II lead and the mission manager II must sign paperwork authorizing the plan. They take the authorized plan into one of the few places in Mission Control—besides the women’s bathroom—where few people are allowed, the spacecraft room. From there, they fax the paperwork to a man called the ACE. (After hours spent researching what exactly ACE stands for, I learn it’s just a name. The guy who directly commands the spacecraft is the ACE.) The ACE is then authorized to radiate the plan through the terrestrial satellites of the deep space network and on to Mars.

  I’m glad they made it in time. Losing another day, just as things get going again, hurts.

  TO GET A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE ON THE MISSION, I GO FLYING OVER the desert. Nilton Renno set up a flight with his friends at the Tucson Soaring Club. Nilton is an accomplished sailplane pilot. He used to race until a friend died in a sailplane accident.

  “I have a family, and those risks no longer seemed appropriate; not for a sailplane record,” he says. “But seeing these processes in action is a big inspiration for my work.” Nilton actively studies the convection and atmospheric forces that make it possible to glide. Gliding gives you a chance to experience the interactions between the ground and the atmosphere. There’s no better way to get the visceral impact of physical processes and the silence to contemplate them. I couldn’t resist a chance to interact with the atmospheric forces that inspired Nilton to become a scientist.

  NILTON RENNO AND PETER SMITH COLLABORATED FOR MORE THAN A DECADE. “It was serendipitous,” Nilton says. “One of my undergrads came to talk with me about dust devils, and I didn’t know much about them. I told him to come back and we could start to review the literature on them.” Dust devils are the swirling masses that look like tornadoes but form under clear skies. Researching only drove their curiosity.

  “There was no comprehensive theory to explain them,” Nilton says. Curiosity turned into an obsession.

  Meanwhile, on Mars, Pathfinder and Peter snapped photos of dust devils. Then one sunny afternoon, Peter and Nilton got to talking and found they had a similar passion for swirls. After the Pathfinder mission concluded, they collaborated on a project called Matador.

  It was a typical bromance. A couple dudes finding a common love of Martian dust devils. Their Matador project was a massive investigation of how dust devils affect the atmospheres of Earth and Mars.

  “We built the instruments for the cancelled ’03 mission,” Peter says. “Instead of using the equipment to learn about dust devils on Mars, we brought it out to the desert and learned about dust devils on Earth.” When it came to for Phoenix, it was only natural that Peter would ask Nilton, his colleague and the resident atmospherics expert, to lead the MET team when he first conceptualized the Phoenix mission.

  “In fact, I was in Peter’s office when Chris McKay and Carol Stoker called to discuss a mission with Peter as the P.I. After the call, I was really excited. I said something like, ‘Let’s do it!’ Peter then asked me to lead the MET instrument.”

  At first, Peter and Nilton decided to ask their colleague from the Matador project Allan Carswell to build the LIDAR for MET. Carswell is a Canadian science legend and LIDAR expert. Partnering with Carswell and the CSA (Canadian Space Agency) meant they would get LIDAR expertise, and the CSA would cover the cost. Those savings could mean the difference between making or breaking the cost-cap on a super-frugal mission like Phoenix. After NASA shortlisted Phoenix and the prospect of being a real mission grew closer, “philosophical” differences emerged.

  “When Nilton accepted the project, he was here at the University of Arizona. Then when he moved to Michigan, the University there was eager to participate, but things got more complicated,” Peter says. There was a disconnect between Nilton and the proposal manager at JPL. “First there were contractual issues, and then Nilton’s costs kept going up.” Nilton’s lab and JPL couldn’t come to an agreement on costs. They claimed that Nilton was difficult. Nilton says being “difficult” means not agreeing with their accounting. Words were exchanged. Trust was broken. In the end, JPL awarded the entire MET instrument development to the Canadian Space Agency. Peter asked Nilton Renno to remain a co-investigator and lead the atmospheric science theme group.

  “I felt a little deceived,” Nilton says. “But I was happy to focus on the science and lead the group.”

  “I don’t think there was deception, just a matter of controlling cost,” Peter responds. “These were hard decisions we had to make. The scientists are invested in their instruments, and there aren’t many opportunities to go to Mars. Sometimes there are hard feelings. There was another instrument we were considering but had to cancel. The guys who were going to build that instrument still turn away when I see them on campus.”

  The move saved the mission a lot of money and offered a chance for NASA to include Canadian partners. For Nilton, it was a chance to focus on the big questions.

  “As ASTG theme group leader, I spent my time working to formulate science questions, developing science requirements, and working with all instrument builders and co-investigators,” Nilton says. And the work paid off. “People frequently mentioned that the ASTG was the most well organized and efficient theme group.” Before the launch, “we at the ASTG discovered that ice scraped by the RA would sublimate faster than could be collected to be delivered to TEGA; this led to the addition of the RASP drill to the RA. We proposed the telltale, we helped refine the sample delivery, and much more.” Freed from the time-consuming contractual obligations of delivering parts and paperwork, Nilton had a bit more time to sit back and think. For Nilton, it turned out to be a gift. He had time to do his best thinking. And for Nilton, his best thinking is done soaring over the Sonoran Desert in a sailplane.

  Most of the scientists on the mission work on a particular instrument. It’s time-consuming to build equipment and design experiments for Mars. On
larger space missions, there are scientists dedicated to instruments and the big picture. For this mission it wasn’t possible. There wasn’t enough money in the budget to have lots of people doing this kind of big-picture integrated science. Instead, the mission was structured with four theme group leads that would make sure the instruments development tracked with the science goals. And then, during the mission, they help Peter align the Phoenix goals with all the new evidence and experimental results. The streamlined approach works within the budget constraint. Unfortunately, this streamlined structure limits the time many of the scientists have for just doing science.

  “That’s why we come in on our days off,” Suzanne Young says. “When else would we have time?” For the scientists that have double duty manning instruments and working on the daily plan, the science analysis they came for can seem like a luxury. The four theme groups are supposed to ease that process, but they introduce other problems.

  “We have to analyze the data as it arrives each sol and test hypotheses developed on the fly, otherwise you might never be able to test them,” Nilton says. Nilton is one of the few who has time to do this. He spends his sols devising strategies and testing new hypotheses. Whether he’s got an ionizer cranking on his desk or dropping things and timing them, Nilton likes to pursue lots of avenues. His free time doesn’t make him a lot of friends. During development, many saw Nilton’s tinkering as meddling. They weren’t sure who had appointed him mission gadfly. He seems to wear that epithet as a badge of honor.

  “It’s what happens when you’re very honest,” he says. “But at least you sleep well at night.”

  Before launch, Nilton had a hunch that interesting things might happen under the lander.

  “I wanted to see how the rockets would disturb the landing site,” Nilton says. The lander used pulse-rockets to touch down on Mars.

  “My lab thought probably it would excavate a lot of material,” he says. That would have uncertain impact on the pristine Martian environment. NASA puts extraordinary effort into planetary protection for Mars. They relentlessly clean the spacecraft so they don’t take any bacteria or spiders to Mars. But what happens when you pound the surface with hydrazine-powered rockets? No one knew.

  With some of his graduate students, Nilton went to work on a series of thruster-plume experiments.

  “Manish, one of my graduate students, set up a slow-motion camera in one of NASA Ames’s Mars rooms,” he says. Nilton used a special 16,000-frame-per-second camera (your normal camera shoots about 30 frames per second) and a glassed-in, Mars-like sand pit to set up his “Mars-Fire II: The Return of the Nilton” shoot.

  The film, in super slow-mo, shows a tsunami of flying topsoil cleared away by violent shockwaves. “It was an interesting result,” Nilton says. The thruster plume dramatically heats the surface and even turns some of the sand into glass.

  “The French Atomic Safety Commission invited me to give a talk about the results of this test.” The movie, and mathematic modeling that accompany it, show how the rockets will disrupt the landing site (and how radioactive dust might spread if aliens attack a nuclear power plant).

  On sol 3, Nilton approached Bob Bonitz to ask if the robot arm camera (RAC) could see under the lander. Nilton wanted to see if his predictions were correct.

  “Why not?” Bob replied. The image was Snow Queen, the same one Nilton proclaimed his favorite last week.

  Snow Queen was an instant hit. It showed the smooth and reflective Martian material.

  “We were right!” Nilton thought when he first saw the Snow Queen image. “I called Manish first thing. We got some emails from colleagues who said we were wrong. But it was exactly what we thought. We could see the ice.”

  Snow Queen was featured in an early press conference. There was no mention of Nilton or his lab pre-launch experiments. The University of Michigan wanted to do a press release with the movie before the mission, but the mission did not approve it.

  “That was disappointing,” he says. “It’s hard to trust some members of the media team.”

  Now Nilton spends a lot of time looking under the lander for hidden gems.

  PETER AND DARA STAND AT THE BACK OF DOWNLINK, WAITING FOR kickoff to begin. Dara is sticking around the SOC to consult on the next sample delivery.

  “Will you ever do it again?” Dara asks Peter. Peter looks a little surprised by the question.

  “Not soon,” Peter says after hesitating for a minute. He laughs uncomfortably.

  “It takes a lot out of you,” Peter says with a sigh. “I can’t be at the front of the room. I have to make sure they get funding. But I have full faith in these guys. I don’t want to do their jobs for them. They know better than I.” Peter sounds a little beaten when he talks to Dara. Maybe it’s the stress of getting funding for an extended mission after the initial ninety days. Apparently, that’s not going well. Chris Shinohara told me the grants they’d hoped for to keep people employed at the SOC doing data analysis after the mission aren’t looking promising. It’s weighing on Peter today.

  It’s a rush to get on the surface and working, but now there’s only two months to figure out how to keep everyone working after the mission. Dara isn’t sure about the future.

  “I’ll be headed far away from email and computers,” he says.

  Bob Bonitz, Doug Ming, and Mark Lemmon look at a 3D image of the new trench. They closely examine the unexpected dark stuff.

  “I think we need to keep monitoring until we know what’s going on,” Doug says. “We need a surface sample anyway, so we could grab one just to the left and deliver to the OM [optical microscope].”

  “That sounds like the right idea,” Peter says, joining the discussion. “It’s better we understand the site before we jump in with more digging and disturb things.”

  A group of geologists and camera engineers congregates in the SSI office. They look at a new image: the two white chunks from Tom’s talk. In this new image, taken at the same angle as the old one, there are no small chunks. They’ve disappeared.

  “We were expecting that,” an unenthusiastic scientist from JPL says over a bite of french fries.

  “Well, if expecting it doesn’t mean it’s exciting, I don’t know what to say,” Mark Lemmon responds.

  “Yes, it’s very exciting,” the JPL scientist says.

  According to nearly everyone, this means one thing: it’s ice. It’s enough to convince Tom Pike. He’s ready to celebrate. Everyone else hedged for so long, afraid to make any big claims, I think now they’re afraid to celebrate.

  “If we all agree this is ice, we should change the sol plan,” Carol Stoker says. “Let’s stop digging in Wonderland and get this Dodo-Goldilocks ice into TEGA.” She thinks they can easily dislodge a few more chunks and drop them into TEGA. No one else seems too keen on the plan.

  An ice sample is a huge win for the mission. Even NASA thought that getting ice would be the hardest part of the mission. NASA did not require Phoenix to get an ice sample to claim success. You can’t require the team to discover something. That sorta defies all logic.

  “This might be paydirt and we’re digging elsewhere,” Carol says to Peter. Carol objects to moving on, when what we want is right in front of us. She thinks that any ice sample is a great ice sample. Moving to a new digging area would waste valuable time.

  “It’s a mistake to start a new trench when we have what we came for right in front of us,” she says.

  Carol Stoker is the co-investigator who heads the biopotential group. She was one of the scientists who first pressed Peter to pitch this mission—and this was before Bill Boynton’s hydrogen-at-north-pole-of-Mars discovery. She pushed him to go for it. Carol, like Nilton, is one of the few interdisciplinary scientists who thinks about the big picture. Carol framed the requirements for one of Phoenix’s main goals: determine the habitability potential of Mars. That might be the coolest job on the mission. Carol is a researcher at Ames Research Center, a NASA satellite in northern California.
Carol, like a lot of her colleagues here, is outspoken and doesn’t mind being in the minority opinion. Carol is not attached to any instrument. Her role is to make sure that the research done with the instruments speaks to the larger goals of the mission. She won’t let this rest and makes her case to Peter. She doesn’t care that Wonderland is the most promising area. There is ice in front of them.

  “I’m not sure I agree with you,” Peter says to Carol. The rest of the group is quiet.

  People begin to crowd into the SSI office. Everyone wants to see. With the crowd comes more celebrating. The influx pushes me closer to the front and I get a glimpse of the monitor. This time it’s clear. Now there’s chunks. Now there’s not.

  “It would be hard to argue that’s anything but sublimation,” someone says. This is the moment of discovery. Drink it in. It goes down smooth.

  “Are we ready to go public?” Tom Pike asks.

  “Sure,” Peter says, “but there’s no press conference today.”

  A FEW HOURS LATER, A PRESS RELEASE GOES OUT: BRIGHT CHUNKS AT Phoenix Lander’s Mars Site Must Have Been Ice.

  “It must be ice,” said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of The University of Arizona, Tucson.

  “These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it’s ice,” Smith added. “There was some question about whether the bright material was salt. Salt can’t do that.” Salt does not melt like ice.

  At the end of sol science meeting, Tom Pike does a follow-up presentation, appending the disappearing-nuggets image to the end of his controversial talk. He’s very civil.