Martian Summer

by Andrew Kessler

  Mike Mellon is back in the SOC after a two-day rest. He had to go home and check on his house. This trip back to the real world reminds him of everything he’s neglected over the last year. He tries to put it out of his mind now and refocus.

  “It takes a minute to catch up,” he says. “There are new images scraping and rasping. It’s a lot.” He’s happy now that there’s time to think about science goals instead of just this one icy sample that’s been the focus for so many sols.

  “This will be a good sample,” Mike says about the new RA acquisition. “Probably similar to the one we were going to get a month ago.”

  Geez, time flies. That whole drama was a month ago. It feels like days.

  “If we’d known it was going to take this long, it would have made sense to do other science. There is a lot of work to do with the RA and many science goals. Now we spent a lot of time and resources rasping and scraping one trench,” Mike says. “But it’s hard to look back like that,” he says. There was not a lot of time for second-guessing, but when pressed it’s hard not to consider what might have been.

  “I just don’t know if we should have done the Dodo-Goldilocks sample. Remember, it’s of unknown origin. We could have got it, but it might mislead the science community if we say this is a typical sample. This new sample is what we want. But it’s just taking a long time.” The downside of taking so much time is what was missed. And that’s a high price to pay.

  “We’ve neglected change monitoring and some of the other features, like Snow Queen. Now we have a 20-sol gap where all those cracks and interesting things occur. But when did that happen? Slowly? All at once?” Mike asks. They don’t know. This may seem like a small thing, but those observations could be the basis of great discovery. “But NASA had other priorities,” he says diplomatically.

  “I suppose she [Carol] might have been right,” Mike finally says, willing to concede that, in hindsight, quickly grabbing ice could have saved a lot of heartache and headaches. At the time, though, they did what they thought was right. They cannot predict the future. They can just do science: hypothesize, experiment, and repeat.

  Now we look forward. Before Phoenix landed, there were only fuzzy images of the polygons. And Mike was desperate for a close-up look. Now he’s here and there are close-ups and extreme close-ups, but that doesn’t feel like enough. When every scoopful deeper into Mars reveals some new hidden treasure, it’s hard to feel satisfied. No matter what situation you’re in, on a mission like this you always want more. That’s frustrating, but also exciting. It’s what keeps us going.

  “I work on HiRISE [the imager on MRO], and those images are great. The images are tantalizingly close to being good for looking at the permafrost. Now we’re there and we can get centimeter resolution. That’s even better. But it just gets you wondering what’s next. You always want to know more. You just want to get out and look beyond the next polygon,” Mike says.

  This is what keeps him coming back, staying up all night and going until his body fails him. There’s always some new piece that seems so close you can taste it, but it will take years of work to finally get there.

  Mike is quick to point out that this isn’t supposed to be easy.

  “This is hard stuff to get. I was in Antarctica looking at the dry valley. That permafrost was hard. I could barely make a dent with my ice ax!” he says. Mike is a pretty big guy; swinging an ice ax at full force should do some damage. “Now for comparison, that was in ice cemented soil frozen at –5c. And we’re trying to get ice that’s been frozen at –90c. So it should be difficult!”

  BEFORE SHIFT I ENDS, THERE’S THE MATTER OF LONG-TERM PLANNING to address. All the new science experiments are after the ninety-day primary mission. Will NASA extend the life of Phoenix? How much can we get done once the team moves to Earth time and the scientists return to their home institutions?

  “We’ve reached the point where we’re reluctant to push stuff to the right (on the plan calendar),” Aaron Zent says.

  There are still seven TEGA cells and two wet chemistry cells in MECA. We start to run out of time. Zent estimates the earliest they could get through all their samples would now be sol 120. That’s thirty days into an extended mission—if NASA funds one—and dangerously close to the start of Martian winter. Which means there might not even be enough sunlight left to power the more energy-intensive activities. Everyone looks to Joel Krajewski for some insight. He nods affirmatively. What can he say? We’re running out of time.

  “When Joel nods, people listen,” Aaron says.

  BILL BOYNTON PACKS UP HIS THINGS AND TURNS OFF HIS COMPUTER monitor. He stands up and looks around.

  “The die has been cast,” he says. We are about to cross the Martian Rubicon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  DON’T BE A RASP HOLE

  SOL 60

  VICKY HIPKIN IS THE SCIENCE LEAD. SHE GIVES THE SCIENCE day invocation, “Welcome to exciting sol 60. We’ve all got our fingers crossed.” Vicky puts up a special sol quote on the overhead projector. It says:

  “A dream is a wish the heart makes.”

  “It’s from Cinderella,” Heather Enos tells me. “I picked it. The sample is called Glass Slipper. And once the glass slipper fits, we will be free from our curse.”

  To get in the spirit, Heather wore a special pair of pink heels, her “princess” shoes. I guess there’s a little room for superstition in the hard sciences.

  EVERYONE GETS TO WORK. THERE’S ANTICIPATION AND EXCITEMENT in the air.

  Katie Dunn is in her office. She monitors the data as it streams in.

  “It’s not looking good,” she says and sighs.

  What? That can’t be right. All this buildup … the funny sample name … the pink shoes … and then we get the sample and all is well in the world. That’s how the story goes.

  “TEGA safed,” she says looking closely at her monitor, face downcast.

  It gets very quiet in the SOC.

  “I THINK IT’S AN ‘OVEN FULL’ ISSUE,” CHRIS SHINOHARA SAYS. THEY probably didn’t get enough material. If TEGA thinks it doesn’t have enough sample for a heating run, it goes into safe mode. They have to repeat the whole exercise.

  “Where exactly in the process did it safe?” Barry Goldstein asks Chris Shinohara.

  “Unclear,” he says. “There looks to be some dirt at the bottom of the TA.” The TA (Thermal Analyzer) is the oven part of TEGA.

  Mark Lemmon tries to process the new images of the scoop and TEGA as they come down. He types furiously, putting his face close to the monitor.

  “The scoop had loads of material in it,” he says without looking up from his image-processing software. Mark doesn’t think it’s an issue of not having enough material. Maybe there’s something else going on.

  The team divides itself into two. Mark and Chris’s group try to figure out what happened. Ray Arvidson heads a team to work on a new plan.

  “If we want to retry on sol 62, we need to scrape on sol 61,” he says. Of course, then they’ll have to cut out the rest of the exploration digging that’s been scheduled. Bob Bonitz and the RA team don’t look so good. They are probably a few activities from catatonia. I fear Matt Robinson could pick up the water fountain, throw it through the blacked-out SOC windows, and run off into the desert at any moment.

  Mark says there were at least three cc’s of material in the scoop. That should have been more than enough for a delivery. Why is TEGA reading empty? Did it stick to the grate? Not again.

  WHEN MORE COMPREHENSIVE ENGINEERING DATA FROM TEGA STARTS coming down, there’s even more mystery. The LED pattern indicates that lots of fine material passed the LED, but it’s only reading a few percent full. And yet, someone says there’s another means of measuring and that signal says it’s 75% full.

  There’s a lot of conflicting information flying around. But that’s pretty typical when the data gets dumped on the SOC. Opinions oscillate wildly until all the data gets processed to fill out the picture and buil
d consensus. Boynton says the LED counter doesn’t work as well with fine particles.

  “It might be tricky to sort out,” he says.

  I see Peter head to the kitchen and follow him. I want to know what he thinks about this new mess. I have to run to catch up, but then I slow down before I reach him to make it look like we were just headed the same way. When I finally match his step, he stops. There’s a baby crying somewhere in the SOC. It’s an odd sound. We both look to see where it’s coming from.

  “I hope that’s not Heather,” Peter says. He still has his sense of humor. “HQ will never be happy. There’s always going to be a risk. They know that. They really have their panties in a bunch.” Before he walks off, he asks, “Do you think you’re getting a good story for your little book?”

  “Ehhh … ahh … yes, I do think so. Thanks for asking.” Peter cares.

  In the TEGA office, Heather Enos looks at the data with Jerry Droege. She is not crying like a baby, and Jerry is defiant.

  “It’ll happen eventually,” he says, “and then the sweet will never have tasted so sweet.” Next step is to take an image inside the oven and then try again. Everyone will pull together for one more push.

  AT MIDPOINT, THE MOOD IS MIXED.

  “There’s lots of data excitement,” Vicky Hipkin says. It’s a phrase you don’t often hear.

  “But it does not look like we got enough sample,” she says, smiling. Nothing gets Vicky down.

  “We should cheer the great rasping and the fact that we did get an icy sample!” she says. There’s limited celebrating, however.

  “We’ve brought some organics for everyone to sample,” Vicky says and passes out a red bucket filled with chocolates.

  “Bill, please go first,” she says.

  Bill takes the pail filled with Hershey’s kisses and other treats. There’s a little shovel in the pail to dig up a sample.

  “Good organics,” he says, making a show of eating the first piece.

  The meeting starts.

  Chuck Fellows, a TEGA engineer, prepared several graphs to help us understand the oven-full confusion. The graphs plot the signal strength of the diode that measures the particles. These should explain why they don’t think there’s a sample.

  “There is a bit in the early moments, but the curve is similar to TA-4 [the first delivery that stuck]. They can’t estimate the amount of material,” Chuck Fellows says. He thanks the team for their hard work. He knows what an effort they have made.

  The RA team reports they successfully made sixteen rasp holes. It went as planned. The SSI engineer has a series of black-and-white images of the four-by-four grid of sixteen perfectly drilled holes.

  “Great work. It’s just what we wanted,” Bill says.

  “Beautiful. Just beautiful,” Vicky says. Everyone applauds. The activity was a success, but the ice delivery failed. Nevertheless, this is promising. Tomorrow we’ll try again.

  LONG FACES GRACE THE ENGINEERS IN THE RA ROOM.

  “Now everyone will be under a tremendous amount of stress,” Ashitey says. He’s worried about the health of the team.

  “You can see that some people aren’t sleeping,” he says, “but that doesn’t solve problems.” I think he might be talking about Bob Bonitz. I don’t think he’s slept for days. The black circles under Bob’s eyes and his slumped shoulders don’t give you the sense that he’s a well-rested man. On a small mission like this, you know instantly who is upset and who is letting the stress get to them.

  “I go to sleep and get up at same time. When you start to change things, you introduce errors,” Ashitey says.

  Images of the scoop start to stream in over the network, ending all the musing and speculation.

  “Are you looking at the scoop images?” Bob Bonitz asks as he charges in.

  “The sample is stuck in the back of the scoop!” he says and gives me the nod to get out. An exclamatory from Bob Bonitz, perhaps the most understated of all the engineering team, is worrisome.

  PETER AND BARRY WANT EVERYONE TO MEET. NOW! WE STUFF OURSELVES into the small conference room. The big conference room is still out of commission from the storm.

  “You have to leave,” Peter says to me.

  “What? Serious?” I say.

  He frowns. I instantly regret my too-casual reaction. I forgot where I was for a moment.

  “No problem,” I say, trying to correct the misstep.

  I can’t believe I just got the boot. I collect my computer and notebook.

  Then Peter turns and says something quietly to Sara Hammond. Her mouth drops open, but nothing comes out. She looks at him and then storms out.

  “I have freaking DOD security clearance and I can’t get in. Unbelievable,” she says to me outside. I can’t believe Peter just kicked Sara out too. I feel bad for her. She walks off.

  I hang out with the LIDAR team. Their office is next to the small conference room, but I don’t press a glass up against the wall. It would be wrong and I can’t find a glass.

  “Let’s use the LIDAR to melt what’s in the scoop,” Clive Cook says.

  “APAM starts in five minutes,” says a voice over the SOC walkie-talkie. It’s kind of garbled.

  “They’re calling you to the conference room. They’ve changed their minds and they want your opinion,” Clive says.

  “Quit being a rasp-hole,” I tell Clive in an effort to lighten the mood. Then we sit around like Beavis and Butthead and call each other rasp-holes. We have a severe condition known as the Mission Control giggles. Another Mars Lag symptom, it’s an unfortunate and sad condition.

  BARRY GOLDSTEIN TALKS ON HIS CELL PHONE AS HE CHARGES OUT OF the conference room. The meeting is over.

  “Let’s hold off on saying anything until we can regroup and more fully understand the issue,” he says into his phone.

  That can’t be good.

  There are many closed-door meetings and the scientists ambulating betwixt them look grumpy. Finally, the group gathers for a team-wide update. I decide to press my luck and loiter nearby. This time I can stay.

  “For those who don’t know, there’s still a sample in the scoop. It’s stuck,” Paul Niles says. “The new strategy is to understand the properties of this new clump and put it on top of the OM [Optical Microscope] box.” This is deja vu all over again. “So now we must understand the paths,” Paul says. “First, attempt to re-deliver to TEGA using the 4x4 Rasp method–we’d need to understand how to remove sample in the scoop. Second, scrape Snow White and deliver.”

  “Joel and I discussed that any new ice delivery should be regarded as a research project and for now we need to move on with TEGA,” Bill Boynton says.

  “That’s the same as option two, no?” Paul asks.

  “We should get away from the whole ice issue and decide the options,” Bill says.

  “We have to decide something now,” Paul has his marching orders.

  “We should deliver Rosy Red,” Arvidson says. Full stop.

  “I agree. We should scrape and deliver,” Peter says.

  “Let’s not scrape or rasp. Just deliver,” Bill says.

  “Is this a good sample to coordinate the WCL findings?” Paul says. He wants to be sure this is a good science decision. And it’ll corroborate the semi-secret perchlorate findings from the MECA team.

  “It would make me happy,” Bill says.

  “Let’s go,” Ray says.

  “Hold on a second,” Doug Ming says. “I agree, but I want to be sure that the next sample backs up the WCL perchlorate findings. Then we have a complete science story.”

  “Well, we need to get this sample to satisfy HQ, and this is already in TA-0,” Peter says, reminding everyone that part of the sample is already in the oven. They should consider the fact that a new sample will cross-contaminate. That could be trouble down the road when they want to publish their data. The science community may not buy a sample that has unsure provenance.

  “Yes, we’ve got some material,” Bill says, “but w
e’re also way behind schedule. Are you considering postponing our shift to Earth time so we can finish?”

  “That’s another discussion,” Peter says, cutting him off. There was some talk of moving the team back to Earth time in just one week. The argument for doing so is that people are exhausted and making errors—and it saves a lot of money. But let’s get back to that later.

  “Can we conclude this and make a decision?” Heather asks. Her request falls on deaf ears. The debate continues.

  “What’s the composition of scraped versus rasped material?” Barry asks. He thinks maybe they can just adjust the scraping/rasping mix to prevent sticking. Others think it more an issue of timing. They have to deliver earlier in the morning so the ice doesn’t sublimate and refreeze on the scoop. Many of the scientists think this refreeze causes the stickiness of the soil. Someone even suggests that the mysterious perchlorate—the chemistry team’s big find—causes sticking.

  They decide the best course of action is to scrape and deliver on sol 62.

  “We should go for it,” Bill says.

  If they just redo the plan and delete the rasp, they’ll get some dry material. They can drop it in TEGA and we’re back to the regularly scheduled mission. Barry says he’d like to put off any other activities until this TEGA sample is delivered.

  “Maybe there should be another RA down day too,” Paul Niles suggests, and everyone agrees.

  Mike Hecht says he thinks Barry is wrong. They should not just focus on TEGA. He wants them to push for more MECA chemistry, too. He asks them to please add the wet chemistry, WCL, to the plan.

  “No,” Paul Niles says. And not because Hecht’s request annoys him, but because he knows it’s impossible.

  “TEGA already generates a lot of DATA. There’s just no room for WCL in the plan,” Paul says.

  “Hey, I’m 23 megs! He’s 57. He’s the hog,” Heather Enos says.

  After a brief argument, things settle. The sol 62 plan will repeat the sol 60 plan.

  “Why not? Since we’re so close… .” Bill says. The science team agrees. The RA team rejiggers their commands to reduce rasping to 30 seconds and shaves 20 minutes off the delivery time. That should get the whole process done while the sun is lower in the sky. If they can finish while it’s a bit cooler on Mars, there’s less chance the sample will stick.