Martian Summer

  “As simple as a rounding error in an initial position,” Matt Robinson says. This difference might have moved the RA too close to a soft stop. That error was likely tiny, maybe even one “encoder tic.” (That is one increment on the gear that controls the joint.) The arm is just smart enough to know that if it’s going to approach one of these positions, it should try to re-calculate its trajectory to avoid it. It does this before it even starts retracting its TECP needles from the ground. In this case, it found a better route. It rerouted itself.

  Unfortunately, it might be smart enough to find a new path, but it can’t see anything in its way. Ironically, the safety precaution led to it hitting a rock.

  “How do we prevent this from happening again?” Katie asks.

  “It’s kind of a freak occurrence, so I wouldn’t be too worried. But we could provide extra soft stop margins,” Robinson responds.

  “What we do need, before we can proceed, is high-resolution stereo images from SSI. The arm could be still torqued up against the rock. Carelessly turning the RA back on could damage a joint,” Robinson explains. He wants to consult with an SSI engineer to make sure the RA scoop is in view of the camera and they can get the right image.

  Okay, one problem is now well understood. What next? Katie moves back to the RAC issue. That story is coming into focus. The RAC safed because the RA safed. Joe Stehly found a RAC command that called on the RA. Since the RA was already in safe mode, the command went unheard. Without the proper response, the RAC did the only thing it knew how: it too went to safe mode. Easy.

  Unfortunately for John Moores, who is the strategic SPI for the day, the plan he was working on for sol 49 is no longer valid. Delete. He has to start over. He’ll re-do his rounds, polling the theme leads and instrument teams.

  On my way to see the first images of the crash, I pass Nilton.

  “Don’t forget to attend the end-of-sol [science meeting]!” he says. It’s going to be really exciting.

  I won’t.

  Everyone squishes into the RA office to get a look at the accident scene. The skid marks from the rock crash tell the tale of our first collision. It doesn’t look like there’s any damage.

  “It’s our first rock-moving experiment/traffic accident,” Mark Lemmon says.

  “That wasn’t a validated activity,” Mike Mellon says. “There’s probably going to be a penalty for that.”

  “It’s validated now,” Lemmon responds. Planetary scientists doing Vaudeville. There’s going to be a quick midpoint meeting to assess the situation, and then a scramble to get a few new activities together and unsafe the RA.

  IT’S 1:16 A.M. LOCAL TUCSON TIME AND 5:53 P.M. ON MARS.

  “Welcome to a new and exciting day at the SOC,” Ray calls the meeting to order. “Shift lead, please tell us what’s going on.”

  Chris Shinohara explains the situation to the shift II personnel: three instruments are safed and we’re rapidly updating the plan. He asks Matt Robinson to explain what happened to the RA.

  “The action occurred when we retracted the TECP needles,” Matt explains. “When the spacecraft executed the sequence, it hit a soft stop and calculated a complex set of wrist moves to avoid it. It led to the collision,” he says.

  “Is it possible we damaged the TECP needles?” Chris asks.

  Matt doesn’t think it’s likely.

  “TECP probably did not impact the ground, but there is a desire from the RA team to image the rasp to be sure it’s healthy,” Matt says.

  Mike Hecht, the MECA co-investigator, isn’t happy with that response. He’d like to see some documentation. He asks if they can add an image of the TECP to be sure.

  If the collision damaged the rasp, there would be no ice and who knows what kind of chaos would ensue. The myriad options are too hard for my brain to parse.

  “We will unsafe the RAC, but not the RA or TEGA,” Chris says.

  Ray tells the team there’s a lot of opportunities for other groups to jump in with any activities that are ready to go. He calls it opportunistic science.

  “Please honor the five-meter rule and proceed lightly,” he says, trying to defend the impending onslaught of the SPI I.

  Chris Shinohara posts meeting times for the three anomaly resolution groups on a whiteboard.

  “We might need to add a partition to the penalty box,” Joel says.

  “Don’t worry,” Ashitey says to me. “The mission will speed up after they meet the minimum success requirement. Then they will be less conservative. A lot of the flight rules can be relaxed and we can get on with it.”

  NILTON RENNO TAKES HIS PLACE IN THE FRONT OF THE ROOM AND smiles. He looks excited for his science talk. The first few slides of his Powerpoint presentation are of the same Snow Queen image that we talked about this evening when the shift started.

  “The thrusters melted bits of the permafrost and splashed liquid droplets onto the lander legs,” Nilton says, advancing his slide presentation. “These droplets form an exotic kind of brine.” This brine is similar to antifreeze that is so salty, its freezing point has been dramatically lowered.

  There are measurements, arrows, and circles pointing to various features of the images. It’s like any of the other EOS talks, except for the palpable discomfort in the room. Scientists squirm in their seats every time Nilton says “next” and a new slide appears on the projector screen.

  “The droplets remain in liquid form—” Nilton starts to say.

  There’s a distinct murmur. Groans. Coughs. Either this is the worst presentation in the history of EOS or Nilton is up to some scientific shenanigans. The crowd is going to start throwing fruit any minute.

  “I disagree,” Mike Hecht leaps from his seat. He can’t contain himself one minute longer. “Why wouldn’t it just be frost?” Hecht asks incredulously.

  “It could be a lot of things. There could be any number of explanations.” Hecht is beside himself, and the other scientists support his objection with “yeps” and “I agrees.”

  We should pause for a moment to locate the exits in case the fomenting mob gets violent, and figure out why everyone is getting upset.

  To sum up: Nilton Renno calmly asserted that he made a major Mars discovery. He has evidence there’s liquid water on Mars. You should know that there is not supposed to be any liquid water on the surface of Mars. That might be a strange point that you’re looking for ice, made of water, but floored to hear someone say that there is liquid water. That’s because the low-pressure conditions just make it impossible for there to be any liquid water. Any liquid water would sublimate, disappearing into the atmosphere. There might have been water a long time ago on ancient Mars and we’re here to understand that. But right now, our Mars understanding only allows for water to be solid (as ice) or gaseous (as vapor). Full stop. Nilton is trying to tell us otherwise. Any over-achieving fifth-grader with a minor planetary obsession can tell you that it’s not possible. Just ask Lucas, Nilton’s son.

  This mission was going to prove there is ice on Mars and hopefully some organic material. This is a lot bigger than any of that. If there’s liquid water on Mars, planetary science just took a big leap. It will radically change our view of Mars forever.

  Mike Hecht isn’t buying it, and neither is anyone else in the room. Where is the data from the wet chemistry experiments or TEGA supporting this? How could he possibly make such a wild claim just by looking at a few images? If this is a joke, Mike Hecht doesn’t find it funny.

  Doug Ming, already skeptical of any big claims made at the end of sol science meetings, says the droplets could easily be explained some other way. For instance, the lander legs are the coldest local spot and frost is forming from vapor in the atmosphere. And they’re certainly not liquid water.

  “It would drip off if it was liquid!” Doug Ming says, nonplussed. Maybe this is another one of Nilton’s stunts to rile people up. Objections come from all quarters. Peter asks the fomenting mob for quiet, so Nilton can at least finish his presentation.<
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  Nilton says he has evidence. But there are too many objections to hear it.

  “Frost on the lander legs would explain why the nodes there appear to change,” Mike Hecht challenges Nilton again.

  “I assure you that these will support the claim,” Nilton says, pointing to a list of chemical compounds. He then presents some possible candidates of the chemical reactions that might be responsible for creating this brine. He says he knows he still has a lot of work to do on this, but he thinks we could use the TECP and some other measurements to help confirm his hypothesis. There is more grumbling.

  “If this is soooo common, why aren’t we sitting over a big puddle with a minus 60-degree freezing point?” Mike Hecht says, practically choking on his own rage.

  “I can tell you for sure there aren’t salts,” Doug Ming says.

  “WCL adds water and doesn’t show salts,” Diane Blaney, a soil science co-investigator, says. She agrees with the anonymous heckler in the back. There’s a lot of hostility. Soon it’s just an unruly science mob berating Nilton. They pummel him with science orthodoxy. Nilton tries to defend himself, but the attacks fly fast and furious and he can’t keep up. Nilton takes a defensive posture.

  “This event might be isolated because these are areas we might have melted in landing and caused the brine to splash up on the lander legs,” he responds to Hecht. But the moment passed. He raises his arms to protect his face and gets nailed with another body shot.

  Nilton is kind of shell-shocked from the beating. He just stands there absorbing each blow.

  “Would you accept any scientific evidence that would suggest you’re wrong?” someone shouts.

  “We could just calculate the growth rates of the nodules to see if they work in the proposed model,” Nilton says weakly. No one is listening. He gives up.

  “Thanks for the feedback,” Nilton says. “That’s it.” He takes his seat.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  AN ENEMY AMONG US

  SOL 48

  “WE HAD AN INTERESTING DAY YESTERDAY,” DOUG MING tells the team at kickoff. “We had our first accident on Mars.”

  I don’t think he is referring to Nilton’s talk.

  “We may decide that if the images come down and everything is hunky-dory, we can just move on.” Ming makes no mention of the incident at yesterday’s EOS. It’s back to the business of planning the mission.

  “Yestersol, three instruments were safed. Now we’re in recovery mode,” Ming says. “We’d like to begin more trenching and cleaning so we can do our rasping and focus the next few sols on demonstrating to NASA that we can do these things.”

  Today, if we do not feel it’s safe to move ahead with RA, then we will have to move ahead with other instruments.

  “It’s a MECA play day!” Suzanne Young says. But before she can get too excited, Doug tells everyone there’s even a backup—pictures and weather measurements—if MECA doesn’t work out, if things are really not good.

  He dismisses the team.

  NILTON RENNO PULLS ME ASIDE.

  “I’m more convinced now than ever that there’s liquid water on Mars!” he says. Nilton spent the day working out some of the issues in his initial presentation, which was met with such hostility earlier. Apparently there was some relevant criticism bundled in all that yelling. Nilton spent the evening bolstering his argument, and now he thinks he has it.

  “The geologists feel threatened,” he says. Some nameless scientist spoke with him privately after the talk. He or she was not happy. Nilton tells me they told him that they’ve been studying this for twenty years and now you’re coming up with something pretty far out there. Nilton started a turf war. They probably won’t fight it out with protractors in the parking lot after shift, but there’s a lot of animosity brewing for a team that still has to spend the next month under one roof.

  “It’s making them uncomfortable,” he says. Nilton is either awesomely brilliant and they really feel threatened, or he’s totally lost the plot.

  “It’s frustrating and not fair. The EOS is supposed to be a forum for open ideas and dialogue. Hecht throws out a lot of ideas that are very preliminary. So it’s not fair to attack other new ideas,” Nilton says. “There were people in the room who thought it was an interesting talk, but they were afraid to say anything because of how everyone reacted.” Fear is not an emotion that you usually associate with science talks. Even though it’s not healthy, it was very palpable that day. The anti-liquid folks wanted to tear Nilton to shreds. Now that he had a chance to re-group and rally some support, he says “Bring it.”

  THERE’S A WOMAN TALKING TO RAY ARVIDSON. SHE SAT THROUGH kickoff with a recorder and notebook and they talk breezily. Ray and this woman seem to be friends. He introduces her to a few of the JPL folk.

  “Why don’t I take you to see the lander and meet the PIT crew?” Ray asks. And they head off. What’s this all about? Competition.

  A few days ago, Miles Smith, a JPL engineer of no relation to Peter, asked me if there would be any trouble with this woman coming to write about the mission for a textbook. Smith had volunteered to be her escort. Sara Hammond was okay with her coming for two days, and I guess he thinks I might have some say in these matters. Still, I thought it was really kind of him to mention it.

  “No problem,” I said. It’s fine. I don’t feel threatened. He didn’t even need to say anything. The EPO office approves the journalists.

  Still, who knew it was going to be like this? Miles Smith’s friend already knew everyone. Ray already gave her a personal tour of the SOC. I’m lucky if he slows his gait when I try to track him down for a question.

  Miles said he wanted to make sure I knew she wasn’t there to scoop me. But I didn’t realize she already knew everyone. What if she’s better than me? (Mars Lag symptom 62: Extreme jealousy and self-loathing.)

  Chris Shinohara has everyone seated and ready to go for midpoint a minute before its scheduled start. It’s a notable accomplishment. He wants to unsafe the instruments and get back to digging. We barrel through. The RA team is good to go. Joel, the fearless phase lead, RA team, and the science lead look at the robot arm data and agree on a plan to un-safe and get back to scraping.

  The downlink engineers give their respective instrument reports:

  “RAC is healthy.”

  “LIDAR is ready to proceed.”

  “TEGA is still safe but eager to get back in the game.”

  “The AFM did not optimize.”

  The SSI team presents 3D images of the RA smashup. Everyone puts on their blue and red glasses.

  “If you look closely, you can see the bow wave,” Ashitey says pointing out where the rock moved. “We see no reason why we can’t pull ourselves out of this mess quickly.” We break for the mission managers to tag up and agree to the plan.

  While we’re waiting, the mystery woman sits down with Carol Stoker. Geez, she’s ambitious. Carol chats breezily with my new nemesis. From what I can gather, she is writing a book about astrobiology. Well, at least that’s what she said, when I briefly interrogated her about what her intentions are with my mission.

  I have a lot of strange territorial feelings that I still need to work through. Damn this Mars lag. My nemesis hasn’t spent the last two years trying to persuade Peter to let her come on the mission. She makes a phone call and her friend Miles is all la-di-da come tour with me around the SOC. Well, this is my story—err—our story.

  “This is not a search for life,” Carol Stoker says to Ms. Nemesis. Carol is responsible for understanding habitability of Mars. That often gets mixed up with the actual ability for people to live there. Habitability just means the potential for anything to live there. So it’s a good science term but a confusing regular-people term.

  “The press wants us to look for life. I’d like to look for life, but that’s not our directive.”

  Carol explains. I wonder if it’s unethical to put my nemesis’s quotes in my book. Nah, this is an open and sharing space. An
y words said here belong to me—err—the mission. That’s probably the best approach to transparency.

  Oh geez, what’s happening to me!? I should go home and sleep. Of course, that’s probably exactly what she wants. I don’t let her out of my sight.

  AT MIDPOINT II, SUZANNE YOUNG TAKES THE MICROPHONE AND SAYS: “Welcome to sol 49 planning, everyone.”

  “We’re sorry your call did not go through,” sounds the machine on the conference phone.

  Everyone laughs like mad. I think I see the other writer write that down. Damn. She’s taking my best comic material. Echh, let her have it.

  The core activities for the day are unsafe the RA, get back to trenching, and work on verifying the rasping blocks.

  Bob Denise is the mission manager for shift II. He grumbles a lot as Suzanne reads the entries in the plan.

  “This is too much work.” Denise says.

  “Does the RA team have sufficient resources to deliver these activities?” Bob Denise asks Bob Bonitz. Bob Denise clearly doesn’t think they can finish in time.

  “We can do it,” Bonitz says. “We have 80.00001% confidence.” And that’s just enough to move ahead with the plan.

  TODAY’S EOS IS NOTHING LIKE YESTERSOL’S SCIENCE SMACKDOWN. Leslie Tamppari gives a very high-minded practical talk about publishing your Phoenix research in a very special issue of the venerable scientific journal Science. In the “publish or perish” world of academia, this is important stuff. For some, it’s everything.

  “Each paper must contain science-worthy data, results, and conclusions,” Leslie says. Ray Arvidson offers a tale of caution.

  “Our special MRO edition was a disaster. On the CRISM instrument, the P.I. paper was rejected while the CO-I’s was accepted. The CO-I then had to withdraw. Then the HiRISE paper was rejected outright.”