Joseph Haschka 2008-02-07
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"We see it! We see it! We see it! We're in lock. We're in lock." - Voice of Entry, Descent, Landing Telecom, Cruise Mission Support Area, Jet Propulsion Lab, January 4, 2004 on acquiring signals from Spirit lander after its touchdown on Mars.
On June 10 and July 7 of 2003, NASA and Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) launched the twin Martian landers, Spirit and Opportunity respectively. They touched down on the Red Planet on January 4 and January 24 of 2004, the first mobile robotic explorers to do so since Pathfinder/Sojourner in 1997. ROVING MARS is their story as told by Steve Squyres.
Squyres, a geologist by profession, was the Principal Investigator, i.e. science team leader, for the Spirit and Opportunity projects representing JPL. He recounts earlier years and unsuccessful attempts to get a lander proposal approved by NASA. Then, against the backdrop of NASA's latest failures at Mars exploration, Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter in 1998, Steve shares the anxiety, frustration, doubts and hard work involved in getting eventual conceptual approval for the 2003 missions, followed by the months of design, construction, testing failures and successes, nearly insurmountable problems, budget overruns, and final nail-biting reviews by NASA before the rovers could be encapsulated in their landers and placed atop their Delta II rockets at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station for their launches, which themselves involved maddening delays. Following relatively uneventful flights to Mars, Squyres again picks up the rovers' stories to describe their landings, deployment, and treks of discovery. The goal of the dual mission - to discover in Martian rocks evidence for a watery past.
The reader will perhaps stand amazed that Spirit and Opportunity ever overcame multiple obstacles to get launched at all. There are two excellent sections of color photographs within the book, one of which images shows Squyres reaching for the sky in supreme exaltation as Spirit's deployment on Martian soil is confirmed by telemetry. Steve recalls that as one of the best moments of his life. And, when arriving at that point in the narrative recounting the tense moments of Spirit's landing, the (American) reader can perhaps be forgiven for letting out a yell of proud victory, "YES!" This was, after all, an American red, white and blue accomplishment told via the author's clear, informative and non-technical prose.
The Spirit and Opportunity rovers had projected operational lifespans of 90 sols, each "sol" being a Martian day of 24 hours 39 minutes. By the end of the narrative in mid-September 2004, Spirit had reached 248 sols and Opportunity 227. Squyres expected the vehicles to die in months, perhaps a year at the outside, the buildup of dust on the rovers' energizing solar panels being the determining factor.
If you go to JPL's website, you'll find that as of 2008 both Spirit and Opportunity, albeit somewhat worse for wear, are still operational on the Red Planet transmitting back pictures and data. Amidst all the planning and pre-mission speculation, nobody imagined that the rovers' solar panels would be cleaned by ... dust devils. You can't even get that service for your windshield at the gas station anymore.
Despite its semi-technical nature, ROVING MARS was a book I couldn't put down, something I can't say about most of the trashy fiction novels I read. Honor to Squyres and his scientific and engineering team is due. (More than 4,000 names are listed at the end of the book.) At 59 jaded years, it makes me particularly proud to be a citizen of the US of A.
