Curiosity

by Rod Pyle

  He is being kind to many of his fellow planetary geologists. There are people who have seen far less who have advanced theories based on that slimmer volume of data. But when you see so much (over a quarter million images!), it seems that the odd result is that there are more specific instances in your mind that can cause doubt. It's scientific humility created by observation and introspection…and the oft-mentioned concept that Mars will always, always try to screw with you. Maybe the Greeks were right about Ares…he was an irresponsible, irritating oaf as a god, and still can be as a planet.

  This brings us to an interesting junction: we've seen how looking at Mars from orbit helped us to understand that there were sedimentary processes taking place, and by extension, in the case of MSL, this resulted not only in a well-crafted selection of a landing site, but it is what brought John Grotzinger to the table in the first place.

  What happens when orbital observation meets ground truth?

  “It's really interesting for me now having the MAHLI camera down on the surface. Now I'm taking what I've learned from orbit and I'm going all the way down to things smaller than a millimeter.” That's one heck of a change in scale. “I'm trying to wire those things back up to what I see from orbit. It's kind of cool.”

  What will Malin and Edgett make by combining their massive catalog of orbital images from what they learn on the ground? You'll just have to wait and see.

  Curiosity was on Martian soil. Sky crane had worked. The descent stage had flown off, crashing as planned some distance away—it would be imaged, and its point of impact refined, later. The same was true of the heat shield and even the tungsten weights that had been ejected from MSL on the way in. All these impacts were important to track, if possible. The images of the shape, depth, and even direction of the small craters they made—from which soil properties could be established—were all important. Also important was an evaluation of the images from the MARDI camera during the final phases of descent. JPL would set people to the tasks even as they commissioned the rover.

  May I say it again? Nothing is wasted in space exploration.

  But first and foremost, they needed to make sure that Curiosity was healthy, stable, and ready to go to work. The official landing time was 10:32 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time on August 5, 2012. The overall mission was still formally called the Mars Science Laboratory, but from now on, most people would just refer to it as Curiosity. That is the name of the machine now roving the Martian surface.

  In those early hours at Gale Crater, the engineers were busy making sure that the onboard systems were healthy and waking up properly. Meanwhile, Mike Malin and the imaging team were working feverishly to bring back the first images of the newest part of Mars to be explored. The very first picture, taken by one of the low-resolution Hazcams aboard Curiosity, showed the shadow of the rover and some terrain in the distance. The image was canted to one side and somewhat occluded by the dirty lens cap (which would soon be opened), but it was proof that Curiosity was down, safe, and operational.

  At the same time, still frames from the MARDI descent camera were being stitched together to create a low-resolution depiction of the downward-looking image stream downlinked in the final phases of landing. A high-resolution version would follow some days later. It was spectacular.

  Two hours after landing, Curiosity sent back another Hazcam image, this time with the dust cap removed and with much better clarity. Though it was still distorted and low-fidelity (only 512-by-512 pixels, or about a quarter of an HD television frame), it was not long before Grotzinger was beginning to pose questions, just as a good chief scientist should: “Curiosity's landing site is beginning to come into focus,” he said in a press conference. “In the image, we are looking to the northwest. What you see on the horizon is the rim of Gale Crater. In the foreground, you can see a gravel field. The question is, where does this gravel come from? It is the first of what will be many scientific questions to come from our new home on Mars.”

  Fig. 20.1. EARLY IN: One of the first images sent down by Curiosity. This is pointing toward Mount Sharp and was taken by one of the Hazcams. Image from NASA/JPL-Caltech.

  Curiosity was not working alone on Mars. NASA's orbiters, Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, were providing images that pinpointed the landing site and the condition of the rover using their high-resolution cameras. The data were of particular interest to the JPL’ers who had entered a game John Grotzinger had put together called “Landing Site Bingo.” Team members had earlier been invited to go to a wall-sized printout of the landing ellipse and pick a spot, tagging it with their name. Attempting to factor in wind speeds, atmospheric density, and uncertainties about the exact behavior of the parachute all added to the fun. When the orbital pictures were in, the winner of the competition was our very own Rob Manning. Upon hearing the results, Grotzinger quipped, “No doubt about it…it was fixed.” As it turned out, they had landed less than two miles from their preferred landing site. Considering the vast distances, the autonomous operations of the lander, and the vagaries of the atmospheric conditions, it was an amazing accomplishment.

  A low-resolution series of images was returned from the main cameras atop the mast and quickly built into a panoramic, providing a good view of where the rover was in relation to ground features and Mount Sharp. High-resolution images followed.

  These pictures revealed that pebbles had been thrown up on the rover's top deck during landing. This accounted for why one of the two wind sensors was not operational—a rock kicked up during landing by the rocket motors nicked one. It was an inconvenience, but they had a workaround in short order. A side benefit of taking test images with the Hazcams was to ensure that all the transparent, plastic dust covers had swung free—the cameras would still be usable even with the filter hung up, but the images would have been degraded, just as the very first image had been.

  At the same time, “commissioning” continued. This is the process of waking and checking the various electronics and instruments on the rover to make sure they had all survived the rough journey to Mars. Everything (with the exception of the one damaged wind sensor) was operating within specs.

  As the imaging team began to build a three-dimensional ground-level map of the surrounding terrain, the engineers turned on and checked the backup computer.

  Each day during this commissioning phase, the ground team “awoke” the rover by playing a piece of music themed to a day on Mars. Numbers ranging from “Good Morning” from the musical Singin’ in the Rain to Beatles tunes were played. The rover certainly didn't care, as it was perfectly capable of waking itself from the cold Martian nights. It was, however, a nice morale booster for the increasingly jet-lagged operations team working on Mars Time.

  Fig. 20.2. EARLY PANO: An early black-and-white panoramic image of Mount Sharp. As time allowed in the first few days, more color images were sent back and stitched into smooth panoramics. Image from NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

  On the second sol, the orbiters had pinpointed where the last six tungsten weights had impacted. This gave good data on ground conditions at these spots, derived from the amount and type of soil disturbance. They landed in a pattern about 7.5 miles from the rover.

  Instrument checkout continued even as the Mastcam took a high-resolution 360-degree panoramic of the surrounding terrain. The RAD (radiation detector) took readings of surface radiation levels.

  Working with the new surface imagery and orbiter photos, rover planners were able to incorporate both overhead and ground-level images to begin building extremely accurate virtual maps of the surrounding terrain. This allowed them to see features and obstacles beyond the rover's line of sight, which was a valuable planning aid. This had been pioneered with the MER rovers but was now available from the very beginning of the ground exploration. These cameras, working in concert, would allow for safer drives and gave the onboard computer “awareness” of the terrain surrounding the rover. The autonomous driving it would soon be doing would depend on the
se maps.

  A major event was scheduled for five sols after arrival. The onboard computer had been loaded with software for space travel and landing—information that was no longer useful or needed. The programmers had a new batch of software that needed to be installed. They had uploaded this programming while the spacecraft was still in transit from Earth; now it was time to move it from storage to the main computers. It was to be a three-sol process that they referred to as a “brain transplant.”

  Just to be on the safe side, the flight software had included basic operations for the rover—driving and so forth—just in case there was a problem loading the more complex and capable upgrade. They could still make progress even as issues were worked out, but the upgrade was needed to enhance autonomous driving and operation of the robotic arm.

  Other operations were suspended as the “transplant” took place, but the assembling of images from the Mastcam continued.

  At this point, JPL was still holding on-site press conferences. These would soon become teleconferences—it's likely more cost-effective and a better use of scant resources than continuing to host the ever-shrinking number of news-media personnel that are closely following the mission. The major news outlets have fairly short attention spans for such things—the drama of landing was over, the first surface images were back. Now it was just more of the same, right? Well, not exactly. Each day revealed new and amazing surface images both from the rover and the orbiters. But that is the food of specialized media, such as Space.com and the Planetary Society (among others, including books by this space geek…), so those of us working for those outlets were going to get as much on-site time as we could.

  I was there for the release of that first high-resolution panoramic shot. The images had to come down, one by one, and then be assembled into a wide strip of the horizon with color correction applied. The one we saw first, in true “Martian color,” was the expected dull, ruddy hue of Mars. It looks like a very smoggy day or, if you happen to have lived in Southern California, much like a day when the summer wildfires are burning in the foothills—the landscapes and sky glow a dull brownish red. The white-balanced version shifts the image toward the blue, simulating light on Earth, and the geologists can see the rocks as they are used to seeing them (for example, during terminally strenuous field trips to Death Valley…not that I'm fixated on that or anything). It was the latter image that caught my attention….

  To my everlasting shame, my first thought was that it looked like a gravel-strewn Walmart parking lot, complete with the San Gabriel Mountains in the distance (had the Walmart itself been visible, the day would have turned out very differently). Of course, it was Gale Crater with Mount Sharp in the background, but the foreground was so flat and sharp that it was immediately unremarkable. Then the reasoning brain caught up with the primitive one, and the wonder of it swam into view. It was, to apply an overused adjective, spectacular.

  It is interesting, however, that for a person who came of age during the “golden era” of space exploration—Apollo to the moon, the Vikings to Mars, and the Voyagers to the outer planets—it looked almost too good. The people at the lab are so good at their jobs, and Mike Malin's cameras are so good at their jobs, that it made it look almost too easy. Of course, this is silly and counterproductive, spawned by memories of watching NASA struggle with the challenges of those early pioneering days.

  One thing that is remarkable with the newer cameras, though, is the color. The Viking images had been orange, so saturated and deep that they looked incredibly exotic. What we were seeing now looked much more like a day out in the redder regions of the national parks in Utah—crisp, clear, and a desaturated, dull brick red. The sense of wonder is now more subtle.

  Then when you spent a bit more time looking at Mount Sharp in the distance, and realized that within a couple of years the rover would be climbing in those foothills, the sense of awe came back in a blast. This thing is actually going to dive to, and in some cases through, those places, and we can see them like they are just across the street.

  There was also an image of the crater wall opposite Mount Sharp, the rim of Gale Crater. It showed what was clearly the result of fluvial processes—a river or stream entering the crater from the surface above. It was the first ground-based observation of such a feature at that scale, and it drew deep sighs from those who knew what they were looking at.

  Closer to the rover, the cameras spotted the areas nearby where the descent stage's rockets had briefly scoured the surface. The gouging was not deep, but the rockets had been sufficiently forceful to blow away the loose surface soil. What remained was the darker, hard surface underneath and rocks embedded in it. This was a free bonus provided to the geologists by sky crane, and it would be looked at in more detail later.

  By the end of sol 5, the software upgrade was successfully crossing into the main memory and was tested.

  The next day, a priority call was received from Air Force One. The president wanted to say thanks to the Curiosity team. The lab's director, Charles Elachi, fielded the call and responded that he hoped the mission would inspire the many young people who were watching the landing and were tracking the progress of the rover from classrooms all over the country. Of course, the president did not miss an opportunity to give a shout-out to Ferdowsi: “NASA has come a long way from the white-shirt, black dark-rimmed glasses and the pocket protectors…you guys are a little cooler than you used to be.” He continued by saying that he had “thought about getting a Mohawk myself, but my team keeps discouraging me.” The president closed with, “You guys should be remarkably proud. Really what makes us best as a species is this curiosity we have—this yearning to discover and know more and push the boundaries of knowledge.”

  The call was piped throughout JPL and across NASA's television network, and then it was picked up by major news outlets. Despite the strained budget, despite the trimmed programs, a lot of smiles were seen around NASA that day.

  On sol 9, JPL announced that the new programming had loaded and tested out properly. The rover's brain was digesting the new software and executing the commands as expected, which was a huge relief. While nobody expected any trouble, programming computers from over 150 million miles away is anything but routine and kept people's attention. The relief was palpable.

  In my years as an academic employee—both on the administrative and professorial side—I, like so many before me, grew to have a genuine loathing of meetings. Academic meetings have an amazing tendency to crawl on for hours and achieve astonishingly little. A certain form of order—roughly Robert's Rules—are followed, which by turns give structure and destroy enthusiasm. The most challenging part for me was that once on the dreaded academic committee, one could attend monthly or bimonthly meetings for a year and sometimes accomplish almost nothing. Of course, not all committees are like that—maybe even most are not—but the few I was pulled into were. I commented on this once, after enduring a year of long monthly meetings on the subject of academic retention—keeping students through until graduation. I was returning to life as a television producer, and I thought, as a closing flourish, I'd make an observation. At my final meeting, I was asked my opinion on the proceedings. “I've never spent so much time accomplishing so little,” I said with a straight face, “And am astonished that we are discussing, meeting after meeting, the same things we began with.” A few recoiled in shock (you are allowed to think these things, but never to say them), others offered a knowing snicker, most just stared at the center of the broad Formica expanse that separated us. Needless to say, the chair was displeased and sputtered a bit.

  I can't blame those who were displeased—it was not good academic form—but it was satisfying nonetheless.

  So you can see that I have a distaste for meetings. But on sol 506 of the Curiosity mission, my faith in meetings was restored somewhat (yes, we are jumping ahead here, but only for this chapter. The activities are sufficiently similar on most days—in very general terms—that it's good to
get an idea of how the teams work before proceeding).

  When the chance came to attend a planning meeting at JPL for the next two days of rover-driving activity, I was not sure what to expect. The tireless Guy Webster, PR lead for Mars Exploration at JPL, called me to let me know I had been granted access to a strategic planning session at the lab for Curiosity. Being the gentle soul that I usually am, I put my previous experiences in a bottle and shelved them in order to approach this effort with a fresh attitude. But it never takes long to uncork that container should conditions warrant. Not that there would be any reason to—I was simply an observer and could depart (or nod off) at any time—nor was anyone there likely to care about my opinions, pro or con. But I had that experiential bottle handy, metaphorically clinking around in my laptop bag, nonetheless.

  JPL is managed and operated for NASA by an academic institution, Caltech, so it's a somewhat more academic setting than other NASA field centers or headquarters. These people work hard, and while they can be intense, they are optimistic and collegial. They are truly on a mission. In other meetings at other NASA centers, while the people there are driven and care deeply about their work, there can sometimes be a sense of tired institutionality. NASA employees can appear to be worn down by the endless procedures and the unrelenting bureaucracy. Not so here. The JPL’ers take to the task with a vigor and sense of purpose that would have inspired General Patton. It's refreshing.

  I arrived early, as it can take some time to get through the intense security at the front gate. I signed in and waited while they checked the veracity of my documentation. Webster soon showed up to escort me and we were on our way. Crossing the campus, one always notices that previously mentioned sense of purpose as demonstrated in the faces passing—these people are infused with it. I envy them.

  We made our way to the operations center, part of the two buildings that make up the SFOF (reminder: Space Flight Operations Center). Upstairs there are many meeting rooms and offices; we proceeded to the one designated for this morning's meetings.