Martian Summer Read online

  “For me it was a success, not much money in the Mars watch business, but I’m happy,” Garu says.

  Before I knew what it meant to go to Mars, I pictured myself sleeping in a little tent next to the engineering model of the Phoenix Lander. Each morning I’d wake with the one of the engineers sounding reveille and set my NASA-issued Mars watch for a brand new sol. No one plays reveille in Mission Control, and I had to make a pilgrimage to Montrose, California, to buy my own damn Mars watch.

  WHEN I COME BACK, THERE’S A CROWD GATHERED IN THE SSI OFFICE. Pat Woida, an SSI engineer, is wearing his Mission Control uniform: a Hawaiian shirt, sweat shorts, and Birkenstocks. He’s more excited than usual. “We got it! We got a sample!” Everyone goes nuts. They clap and cheer. Elbows push me aside to get the best scientific angle.

  Pat Woida is larger-than-life—both in character and appearance. He is the red-haired Santa Claus of space—always jovial, spreading Martian cheer wherever he goes, and bringing gifts of freshly printed Mars images. Pat’s in charge of the large-format printer in the SOC. Mark Lemmon, the co-investigator for SSI, Woida’s boss, looks over his shoulder. Lemmon—who wears khakis and polos and always has his dark hair neatly parted—couldn’t offer more of a contrast when standing next to Woida. Yet both men can barely contain their mutually shared joy.

  “Wow. Look at that,” Pat says and points to the images on his machine. They look at a close-up image of clumpy Martian dirt that fills the scoop. The gathering crowd spills out of the SSI office. Those who can’t fit inside the office crowd around a large flat-screen display labeled “Jedi.”

  “I remember when the first images of Viking I came back from Mars,” Pat says. He was just a pimple-faced teen when we first landed on the Red Planet, but it changed his life forever. Working on Mars is a childhood dream-come-true for Pat and almost everyone else crowded into the small office.

  “The first images ever taken on Mars were of the Viking lander’s footpad. It was really Mars! And then I thought one day, I’m going to be that guy,” Pat says.

  Cut to the present. Pat took the images of Mars we see in front of us. Dream fulfilled. Last August, he left launch to deliver the keynote address at the Star Trek convention in Las Vegas.

  “That was definitely a career highlight,” Pat says. “The fans were awesome. I really think people will want to know about this mission.”

  Outside the SSI office, Matt Robinson, the young RA engineer who wrote the code for the “RA Acquire Sample” activity, celebrates.

  “We really got it,” he says with a big fist pump. He started working on Phoenix fresh out of grad school. Since then, every single day for the last five years, he practiced for this moment. That’s a lot of practice scoops. Now, he’s grinning ear-to-ear. You just want to hug him. Happiness is infectious. He puts his hands on his head and does a kind of post-Superbowl interview.

  “Five years I’ve been scraping up concrete. And now we’re on Mars,” Matt says and punctuates his cheer with another fist pump.

  “Good work, Matt,” Ray Arvidson, the understated co-investigator for the Robot Arm—code-named “Dig Czar”—says to congratulate the young engineer. He gives him a firm handshake and a close-lipped smile and nod.

  “We haven’t looked through the data yet, but everything appears to be just fine,” Matt replies. He’s more serious and composes himself when addressing Ray.

  Peter sees the commotion from his office and joins the celebration.

  “Coming through,” Pat Woida says as he grabs an image of the scoop—the Phoenix Lander’s first official soil sample—off the printer.

  “Sign here,” Pat says as he hands the image and a Sharpie to one of the RA engineers. When the RA team finishes signing, Pat proudly tacks the image to the wall.

  “I wonder if there are ice crystals in there,” a scientist says to a colleague as they walk through downlink. There’s wide-eyed speculation and commentary coming from everywhere.

  “When I look at that image I think about the Sistine Chapel,” Joel says. “You see a beautiful work of art. But I can also smell the paint and hear them putting up the scaffold.” You can’t see the image in isolation when you spend five years building the scaffold, or a robot arm.

  “These are historic images,” Peter says to me in his least intimidating voice. “We got the first sample… . And we’re all waiting to see what it means. But there’s a sense of unreality. It’s a bizarre feeling because you only get to see it through pictures. It’s happening 170 million miles away. You’re removed from the visceral direct experience,” Peter tells me.

  You watch all kinds of movies or TV where people beam off to other planets and the mystery is wrapped up in an hour and it’s easy to accept. There’s a suspension of disbelief. Oddly enough, this is the real thing, and it’s unfathomable that we are controlling an 800-pound lander so far away. And not only are we controlling it, it just sent pictures back through interplanetary broadband! That hurts my brain. And my brain rejects it as false. Mars presents the first time I ever had to suspend disbelief for something that’s real. Peter probably knows this feeling better than anyone. When he tells me about his disbelief I even think I detect a hint of sadness in his voice. (Martian scientists also cry.)

  “Now, the question is what’s written in that dirt,” Peter says, examining the new images with a few of his colleagues. I try to nudge my way in and look thoughtful.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE CLOD

  SOL 12

  BEEP. BEEP. THAT’S THE SOUND MY SECURITY BADGE MAKES WHEN I let myself in the front door of Mission Control. Thankfully, it works. I swipe it one more time just for fun.

  Excited to start the sol, I show up two hours early. It’s just passed 11:00 p.m. local Tucson time, and kickoff doesn’t start until 1:15 a.m. local Tucson time. The big conference room on the other side of the security door is empty. It’s the calm before the swirling activity of scientists meeting at the big conference table and the hotbed of Martian discovery.

  The Mars schedule gets updated each day in an email called “phx_surf_ops.” I’m not on that list.

  “It wouldn’t be appropriate,” Sara Hammond tells me. So I’m not allowed on the “phx_surf_ops” mailing list. Even though I’ve got a security badge, “phx_surf_ops” is an official JPL email list. They’re particular about who gets their email. Since I don’t exist in their system, that would be impossible. People would ask questions. And then I’d have to try to explain all over again why I’m here.

  “It just can’t happen,” she says, driving home the point. I’ll live with it. And my early arrival turns into a happy accident.

  “I am Nilton Renno, from the University of Michigan!” says a bright voice from a shiny dome. He says “Mi-chi-gan” with a distinguished foreign accent that I can’t put my finger on.

  “I’m from Brazil,” he says. I think I’m sitting at his desk. He doesn’t seem too fussed, though. “Are you working with the Canadians?” Nilton Renno puts out his hand and we shake. He’s smartly dressed with pressed khaki pants and a fashionable collared shirt—more of a Silicon Valley executive look than Mission Control.

  “Actually, I’m helping Peter with a special project, trying to bring the mission to a larger audience,” I tell Nilton, over-sharing just a little because of this dogged space inferiority complex and my desperate need for credibility. Luckily, Nilton knows no over-sharing.

  “I will show you something,” he says, taking a seat at his desk. Nilton calls up an image from the Phoenix planning software. It’s an image called Snow Queen.

  “This is my favorite image,” he says. I like the idea that each scientist has his or her favorite image, some piece of Mars that he or she especially loves. Snow Queen is a big shiny spot under the lander. This photo captures not only the shiny spot but also exposes the nether regions of the lander, the struts and thrusters. If we were to get all arty-farty, we might say it tells the story of a Martian vastness interrupted by a highly engineered lan
der intruding on the landscape. While the shadow of the lander obscures parts of the scene, the sunlight peeks in to expose just enough of the smooth white feature and thruster cone for us to begin our analysis. It’s both a metaphor for our presence and hard scientific evidence. Or something like that.

  “This says ice to me.” Nilton says, focusing my attention under the lander and away from overreaching artistic pronouncements. “It’s a hard, shiny material. That’s something we predicted in the lab.” Nilton is speculating at the moment, but his speculations come with years of experience and intuition. He wants to take more images and he thinks it represents everything we’re here for. “Can you see these little chunks stuck to the leg of the lander?” Nilton asks.

  I nod affirmatively. “The thruster plume excavated down to the ice. This is the debris that splashed up on the lander. When the lander touched down, there was a lot of force applied to the surface and that force kicked up a lot debris. I think some of it froze to the cool spots on the lander legs. That’s this part here,” he says, pointing to the legs of the lander. There are lots of secrets hiding in these images. Today we’re hopeful that the first mission experiment, putting a soil sample in TEGA, will offer clues to understanding the shiny patch and little nodules in the Snow Queen image. Nilton tells me it’s going to be a slow reveal and to be patient. I’m glad I got here early.

  MISSION CONTROL STARTS SHOWING SIGNS OF LIFE. SCIENTISTS AND engineers exchange chipper “good mornings” and the overhead lights flicker on. In spite of the bags under their eyes, everyone seems excited to be coming to work.

  “How’s the LIDAR working, Jim?”

  “Good! And your AFM scans, Tom?”

  Apart from no one knowing exactly what time of day to reference, it’s like any other place of work, only the bullshitting around the SOC has a fun Martian twist. That and our day starts at 1:00 a.m. local Tucson time, then some other time tomorrow and another time after that.

  The engineers set down their satchels in the rows of offices that surround the central meeting area, downlink. “Downlink” is a popular word around here because it’s the room where we spend most of our days planning Phoenix’s adventures; downlink is also the most exciting part of the day, when we get data from Mars. The downlink process happens in the downlink room. Along the back wall of the room each instrument team has an office, MECA, MET, TEGA, SSI, RA, and RAC. Then there are offices for data managers, mission managers, and the image processing. Opposite these offices, Peter Smith has a large office, and he’s flanked by the mission’s accountant and the SOC general manager, Chris Shinohara.

  After collecting their thoughts and completing their morning reports, the team gathers around the big decision-making conference table. Peter pokes his head out of his office and makes his way to his seat at the head of the conference table.

  “I have to balance Mars time, NASA time, and the press,” Peter says with a yawn. He’s getting less sleep than most. With another 80+ sols to go, he already looks like a bear fighting off hibernation. I hope he makes it. His assistant brings him a large cup of coffee. He takes a big gulp and stretches.

  “We’re working on a big four-sol plan,” Ray Arvidson says. This includes the preparation and execution of the first TEGA experiment.

  “First step is to get the dirt into the oven. Then confirm the delivery and start the bake,” Ray explains. The TEGA bake will take a few days. It comes in three stages, a low, medium, and, finally, high temperature experiment that will reach 1000 degrees Celsius.

  “There’s certainly some white material in Dodo,” a scientist says, referring to some whitish chunk of what might be ice or salts at the bottom of our new trench, called Dodo. Why is it called Dodo?

  “It’s from Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland,” Peter says. He wanted the names to appeal to kids, so they named them after fairytales. “On Pathfinder we named them after cartoon characters, but NASA worried we would get sued for copyright infringement. I don’t think we ever got sued. Although, I think the Cartoon Network sent us some T-shirts. This time we chose characters in the public domain.”

  “It could be salt crystals,” a colleague says as they fantasize about what the next few sols might bring.

  Today is sol 12 and we’re working on the plan for sol 13. Before the sol 13 comes together we need a progress report from Phoenix. We take our seats so that the first meeting of the sol kickoff can start. From my squatted desk, next to Nilton’s, things seem pretty positive. Some of the TEGA engineers are already shaking hands in celebrations.

  “We finally got our sample,” one of the TEGA engineers says coolly.

  “You don’t know that yet,” Peter says. He shakes his head. Peter wants some hard evidence from Mars before he draws any conclusion. The TEGA engineers are willing to hope a little. They came all this way, scooped up the perfect sample and couldn’t get it to slide off a shovel and down TEGA’s gullet.

  Up until this point, the engineers conducted various checks for the “health and safety” phase of the mission. These were the first 11 sols. The science team had to wait until engineers made sure Phoenix was upright and could safely deploy its solar panels, digging arm, and camera. Then check out all the instruments for signs of any problems. Phoenix did just fall out of the sky after a ten-month catapult through deep space. It makes sense to do a comprehensive exam before getting started. During this first week, the SSI camera made a 3D map of the space around the lander. The instruments were retested and calibrated and the RA team practiced digging. Now that all the engineers are happy and Phoenix appears mostly fit. At least it’s in good enough shape to try our first experiment. All that’s left is the first scoopful of dirt to fall into TEGA and discovery begins.

  Ray Arvidson, the Dig Czar, calls the science team to order and begins the sol kickoff meeting.

  “We started the science phase of the mission!” Ray is pleased to tell the team. He doesn’t think it’s premature to celebrate either. There is applause. Peter frowns.

  Perhaps yielding to Peter’s prudence, Ray retreats from his proclamation. “Today’s work will be to verify that we actually started the science phase of the mission. We won’t turn on TEGA unless we confirm there’s something in the oven.” Ray then asks the TEGA engineer—speaking on behalf of the instrument team—what signals they’ll be looking for to indicate that the oven is full.

  “What do we need for ‘go’?” he asks.

  “We’ll be looking for ‘oven full’ or ‘oven not full’ from the instrument software,” he says. “Then we’ll be looking for the oven closure. We’ll look at the current drawn by the actuator.” That answer satisfies Ray. (Although I suspect he already knows these answers and is just making sure everyone is clear.)

  Ray dismisses the team. In 15 minutes, the satellite relay orbiting Mars will come into view of Phoenix’s helix antenna. The data transmission begins and the “oven full” or “not full” signal will flow through the deep space network and back to Earth. It’s important to remember that all this digging and dumping has already—or should have already—happened. Phoenix is on its way to bed and we’re waiting for a progress report. If everything went as planned, the scoop of dirt is now resting in TEGA’s TA-4 oven, waiting anxiously for the engineers on Earth to upload a plan that tells it to start cooking.

  Now we wait. Smoke if you got ’em. I’m going for some Tang.

  WHEN I GET BACK TO THE BIG CONFERENCE TABLE IN THE DOWNLINK room, everyone is standing around with worried, crinkly foreheads and furrowed brows. The data is slowly streaming in from the deep space network.

  “No dirt,” I overhear an engineer say. The science team is migrating over to the RA office. Matt Robinson—one of the RA engineers who stayed up all night making sure that nothing went wrong with the sample delivery—is sitting at his desk. He looks up at his monitor with a squinting, contorted face.

  “There’s nothing in there,” he says. The scoop is empty. The robot arm reports from Mars that it successfully executed
all its commands. But the TEGA reports from Mars indicate something different: its oven is empty. Someone must be lying. The scoop made the drop but the package never arrived. What happened? Did they miss the delivery? Did the dirt blow away?

  “We don’t know yet,” is the answer from Matt. He explains that they took a series of images to show the lander deck in case something like this happened. Only the images haven’t arrived yet. We need more images to complete the story. Currently, they’re held up due to network traffic—somewhere between Arizona and Mars. We stand by.

  Matt Robinson scrolls through an inconceivably large table of figures.

  “There’s no way we missed that,” he says to no one in particular. One of the engineers asks if it’s possible they stopped looking before the sample was delivered. He means that they were measuring light from the LED and photocell at the wrong time. If the timing was off, they might have turned the “oven full” detector on too soon. This would mean that there could be dirt in there. But it would still read “oven empty” in their data set.

  Good theory.

  “I don’t think so,” Bill says, shaking his head.

  Bad theory.

  They look at the LED readings again. If there was dirt in there, the light sensor would be at least partially blocked and have a lower light reading than normal. Then they might guess the oven was in fact full.

  Peter and a few senior engineers from JPL grab some folding chairs. They make camp in front of the big flat screen labeled “Jedi.” This area in front of the SSI camera office is occasionally referred to as Pat’s Porch for its main resident, Pat Woida.

  “These images are taking forever to get here,” Peter says.

  “I think the scoop is empty,” Boynton says.

  “Where did it go? Mysterious,” Peter asks rhetorically. He smiles.

  “SHIT!” SOMEONE YELLS FROM THE SSI CAMERA OFFICE. THE FIRST image shows a small pile of dirt sitting on top of TEGA, not inside it. Nothing went in. It’s all there and accounted for, but for some reason it just wadded up all shy-like on top of TEGA. It’s not Matt Robinson or the robot arm’s fault. He put the dirt where he was supposed to. And it’s not TEGA’s fault, they were ready to receive the handoff.