Martian Summer

  Denise signs the plan and faxes it to Denver. Everyone calls it a day. This is the process. Shift II dutifully services the scientists’ every flight and fancy, putting together the plan that lets the scientists discover perchlorate, ice, water, and everything else. They don’t get much glory, but there’s a lot of satisfaction.

  SEVERAL BOXES OF PIZZA ARRIVE AS THE PLAN WRAPS UP. IT’S WALTER Goetz’s last uplink shift. He’ll come in tomorrow for a bit, but then he’ll head to the airport. He must get back to his teaching duties.

  Katie Dunn asks if they can take a picture.

  “I’m sad to see you go,” she says. We all are. Walter has his arms at his sides. He’s wearing a buttoned shirt, dark pants, socks, and sandals. Katie puts her arm around his waist to pose for the photo.

  “If you touch me this way, my wife will get jealous,” Walter says, raising his eyebrows. Katie blushes. We all laugh. Bob Denise, of all people, can’t figure out how to make the flash work on the camera.

  “Can one of the SSI engineers please help Bob?” Chris Swan, the strategic mission manager, asks.

  AFTER SHIFT, IT’S STILL EARLY; CHRIS SHINOHARA ASKS IF ANYONE wants to grab some quick dinner and a beer. I accept.

  Over pastrami sandwiches and frosty mugs of local brew, Chris speaks candidly about the problems.

  “With TEGA,” he says, “by the time everyone came around to the conclusion that they couldn’t make it work, it was really late. The ion pump didn’t work. They had to take it apart. The deeper inside you go to fix these parts, the more expensive it gets. They all have to be sealed in clean rooms. It was a mess.”

  The main disappointment was with how NASA handled the problems. It’s the same scientist/engineer divide. Although Chris’s background is in software engineering, he knows his job: he is there to serve the science team, to make the science possible. If the science doesn’t get done, then your software isn’t doing its job. It gets late, but Chris is trying to explain how the SSI camera works and why it’s harder than you think to take great pictures on Mars.

  Chris Shinohara isn’t just the instrument manager for SSI who plays a tactical role as shift lead on the mission; he’s also the general manager for Mission Control. That makes him pretty much responsible for everything that happens in the building. Are top-secret landing ops guarded? Ask Chris. Is there a toilet paper shortage? Ask Chris. There’s a pretty wide scope for the job. When he’s not managing the building, he’s responsible for SSI. Chris is not a one-job type of engineer.

  When he first met Peter, Chris went down to his office because he heard he was hiring. “I’d like to apply for your job postings,” Chris said.

  “Which one?” Peter asked.

  “Both,” Chris replied. Peter and Chris immediately clicked, and Peter loved his drive and enthusiasm. He got the jobs, worked on the Pathfinder mission, and they have been best friends ever since. Peter was even the best man at Chris’s wedding (to their colleague Heather Enos).

  The restaurant we’re at wants to close; they’re sweeping under our feet. But Chris ignores the broom and keeps talking. I think he can tell I’m confused about how exactly the filters on the SSI work, but he goes over everything several times. He tells me not to worry about keeping up with all the science and engineering. “It’s impossible to get it all right,” he says. “Just tell the story you see.” That’s a relief. But still I tell him I’m worried it’s not flattering to NASA or that Mike Hecht might come off looking like a jerk, even though he’s really a sweet guy.

  “Don’t worry about anyone else. Just tell your story,” he says again. It’s reassuring, and not just because he’s a gun enthusiast and expert marksman. But he really wants people to get excited about space.

  Then he goes on a rant against project executives at NASA. The same ones that everyone seems to complain about.

  “They don’t give a shit about the science in these missions,” Chris says. “Where have they been?” he asks. I don’t know, but it’s true that they’re rarely here. They show up when NASA is annoyed or there’s some big press conference.

  They probably have other projects, right?

  “This is their only project,” he says and motions for us to go. We get up and wander down the block. Regardless of the number of projects they have, this one should certainly be a focus. We find a bar and Chris tries to teach me more about the secret treacheries of Martian optics. It’s less controversial to talk about color calibration, compression, sub-framing, and filter wheels, but a bit harder to keep up with the material.

  “You need your images to be consistent regardless of conditions,” Chris says, breaking it down. “Accurate color is important for the science team. That’s why we needed to relentlessly protect the calibration targets from dirt. Those paint chips are a reference point and how we accurately represent color on Mars.” I like to get lost in the details and pretend I understand, especially after a few beers.

  Listening to Chris, I start to feel nostalgic. He and Heather had welcomed everyone to Tucson and done their best to make us feel at home while working on Mars. Chris hosted after-shift hikes, took us deep into the desert, and brought countless dinners to the SOC. Both he and Heather hosted parties to celebrate our successes and answered every question I ever asked. And tomorrow, when I’m hung over and regretting not going home and sleeping after shift, Chris will be on time and chipper. I’m being out-drunk and out-nerded by a Harley Davidson-riding, gun-toting planetary engineer. I love the people of Mars.

  LATER THAT EVENING THERE’S A NEW AVIATION WEEK STORY POSTED online. It’s from Covault.

  “Phoenix Lander Mission Deemed a Success” is the title of the story. Covault scooped them! Unbelievable. The article says Phoenix declared mission success. And Covault declared it before NASA can get their press release out. I’m not even sure they decided it was a success yet. The article says: “The Phoenix Mars lander and its science and operations teams at the University of Arizona and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) will reach key milestones this week, including an official determination by NASA that the mission is a complete success … Designating the mission a success means it has completed key contractual and scientific goals with plenty of margin remaining in its systems for additional imaging, wet chemistry and microscope tests, and for the continued search for organics by its organic chemistry instrument.”

  Man, he’s good.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  TWO DAYS FORWARD, ONE SOL BACK

  SOL 80

  I ARRIVE AT 7:45 A.M. THERE ARE ONLY A HANDFUL OF PEOPLE AT the SOC. I’m surprised it’s so quiet. The transition to Earth time seemed like it would be a big relief. But it’s proving difficult to readjust. Ray Arvidson warned us that it would take a month to feel normal again. Blech.

  At kickoff, Ray reminds everyone we just received downlink from sol 79. We uplinked sol 80 and we’re now planning sol 81. Usually we’d get the downlink from sol 80 right after kickoff. When we were on Mars time, it all made sense. Earth time messes it all up. It’s some form of space-heimer’s. Today we plan and execute sol 81; but it’s still sol 80 on Mars and we don’t yet know what happened on 79. It’s hard to know what to call it. I dread someone asking me why this chapter is called sol 80, and it’s just going to get worse. Keeping track of the days gets trickier and trickier.

  Today’s goal is to sample from Cupboard and then deliver to TEGA. The TA-7 doors are open and ready for some dirt. If the RA hasn’t safed, we’re going for it. Another sample could come any day.

  Mike Mellon waves hello as he walks through the SOC. Wait! Yesterday was his last day. Now time is going backwards?

  “No, I couldn’t stay away,” he says. And mission managers needed his expertise. Now he’s trying to catch up.

  “I never should have left,” he says. There are ten sols left in the primary mission.

  “A lot of people will leave over the next week,” Doug tells the team.

  The spacecraft team is the first to go remote. Ne
xt week all the core spacecraft tasks like batteries, solar panels, heating, communications, and general lander wellbeing will be done at Lockheed Martin. We all applaud their effort. Ed Sedivy, who ran the operation from Colorado, and Matt Cox here at the SOC get universal praise from the engineers and scientists.

  “You really get your money’s worth from them. They make things happen,” Chris tells me. I’m sorry I didn’t spend more time with them. Yes, they’ve been here this whole time. An army of engineers that barely get mentioned. For shame. Twenty-four hours and forty minutes just aren’t enough hours in a day.

  Peter will host a special science meeting for the spacecraft engineers.

  “I want them to go home with a sense of what they did for Phoenix science,” Peter says. Because of a typical sol’s schedule, the shift II team doesn’t get to attend the science meetings. And there isn’t time to follow the scientific developments. They are hyper-focused on a particular activity and don’t often get to hear about what scientific discovery their engineer talents yield. Peter, ever conscious of the bigger picture, asked the theme group and instrument leads to give a recap of what we’ve learned so far.

  I SEE CHRIS SHINOHARA IN HIS OFFICE LOOKING GLUM.

  “I have to fill out layoff notices,” he says. The grant that Peter and Chris were working on fell through. They hoped the State of Arizona would help fund Phoenix data analysis after the mission concluded. Instead they gave the money to a mining consortium. Space drama meets budget realities.

  Filling out these notices reminds Chris how hard it was to attract talent in the early days of the mission.

  “We had no money and a lot of problems,” Chris says, “so we had to do some convincing to get some people on board.” When the engineers heard Phoenix would use the recycled body of the Polar Lander, some balked at working on a mission that had already failed once. Somehow, they assembled a team. In the last six years, they’ve become a family.

  “I already talked to most everyone,” Chris says. “It won’t be a surprise. They know we had limited funding for distributed ops.”

  “Still, it’s not something you look forward to. But we do it and move on,” he says. Even Peter says he’s not sure what he’ll do next. A donor endowed a chair in his name. So he’s not getting kicked to the curb. He has a salary and some research money. But what will he do with it? This has been with him for so long.

  “I think he’s going to teach a class on Mars next semester,” Chris says of Peter’s plans.

  Chris’s office is separated from Peter’s by a thick wall. While Chris and I talk about the layoffs, I can hear Peter arguing with Barry through the door. I assume Barry wants to declare mission success and, the Aviation Week headline not withstanding, Peter is not quite ready; but who knows.

  “THE FROST IS ON THE PUMPKIN. THE LEAVES ARE CHANGING. PEOPLE are going back to school. It’s time to take stock,” Peter says to his team. There’s a diverse audience for this special session at the end of sol science. The shift II back-room engineers who command the spacecraft are here.

  Peter wants to thank the spacecraft team one more time.

  “We applaud their efforts,” he says. And we do.

  Peter begins his Powerpoint presentation of our summer on Mars. He starts with the main premise of the mission: to land in the Arctic where Bill predicted there might be ice.

  “We want to talk to the ice, but it can’t talk,” Peter says. “We must look for the next best thing. So we have to look at how the soils were modified by these interactions.” These modifications created a mineralogical echo, a unique signature of what happened in the presence of ice. And once the ice spoke, the team needs to determine what it said about the habitability of Mars.

  “We were able to show there was water ice with the TEGA measurements. And that was step one,” Peter says. “Now we would need some kind of energy source. And we’ve found perchlorate. That result has been partially verified.” There’s already evidence on Earth of microbes that happily subsist on perchlorate. That qualifies as an energy source.

  “We still don’t know much about organics yet, but we do have nutrients,” Peter says. And there are still four TEGA cells and two WCL left for testing. We followed the water and are on our way to determining the habitability of Mars. We take the next step in Mars exploration. Now there’s the possibility to look for life. That should keep us coming back.

  “We all know TEGA is on the spacecraft, but what does it do? Except cause trouble and send people to the penalty box,” Doug Ming says. It’s a great beginning to what is otherwise a highly technical talk.

  “In English!” Peter says. This presentation is supposed to be for a general audience—not TEGA specialists. Somehow the scientists just can’t tell us what’s happening without logarithmic scales and technical terms. Peter looks annoyed.

  Sam Kounaves gives the WCL roundup.

  “These are very preliminary and very simplistic results, as this is a very complex system,” he says. Kounaves spends a few minutes making caveats and hedging everything he is about to share. “WCL is like a tongue,” he says. “It must taste soluble things. Mostly salts.” Sam describes the analyses of soil samples, from the surface and one from the trench. He shows us where each sample was acquired. Then we get to the first “big” discovery in WCL—a slightly alkaline soil. Remember the asparagus days? The chemistry team found calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, chlorine, sulfate, and of course the big surprise, perchlorate. The team looks at how these elements combine to form salts. The types of salts that form tell us about the environment. For instance, we know that certain combinations only form in the presence of liquid water. When we piece these clues together, the results will broaden our picture of ancient Mars.

  Peter looks fairly pleased. Finally, it’s a presentation non-chemists can understand. Sam’s second slide is a scatter plot with dense technical writing. Peter shakes his head. Logarithmic scatter plot: who can understand that?

  There are more technical talks. They’re too technical. And we all glean whatever bits we can, some ice cloud discovery here, more evidence of ice there. This session didn’t go exactly as planned.

  “On behalf of the spacecraft team, I just want to say it was an honor to work with the science team,” Matt Cox says after the concluding presentation. The engineers applaud the science team. Then the science team applauds the engineers. Then everyone applauds everyone.

  PETER SMITH ADMITS HE’S ACTUALLY QUITE SHY, OVER LASAGNA AT his regular spot in Tucson. With few activities this afternoon, Peter agreed to have lunch with me, and with a little less pressure from NASA and the team, there’s finally hope for our bonding session.

  “It took me a long time to come out of my shell,” he says. “There’s no point in being shy in life. You have to speak up.” And then he reiterates his hope that he’s not going look like some stereotypical mad scientist in this book. Somehow he sees that as a bad thing. Nerds have been cool for a long time, I say, but reassure him that I’ll do my best.

  “I’d come home every day and find my parents reading in their easy chairs,” he says, looking up at the ceiling of this pasta joint. His arrival home from school usually coincided with cocktails and reading hour.

  “It was kind of a family tradition in the Smith home. My mother and father often hosted scientific salons or impromptu mini-operas. It was not a rough-and-tumble place,” he says. Peter’s mother, an opera singer, would call Peter and his brother to dinner with an aria.

  Peter’s father was a gentle scholar. He’d spent his wild youth gallivanting around the planet curing disease. Family life was more settled and calm.

  “I was the quiet kid in class who was always staring out the window, oblivious to what was happening just a few feet in front of me but lost in faraway worlds,” he says. “Maybe not much has changed.”

  Peter’s father, Hugh Hollingsworth Smith, was a bon vivant and adventurous spirit. Hugh was born in Easley, South Carolina in 1902. He left his sleepy home to
wn to become a doctor and eventually travel the world to rid it of disease. Hugh specialized in tropical diseases and worked toward the lofty goal of eradicating the plagues of the twentieth century. He began his career as a virologist doing fieldwork in the Caribbean; then South America working as a researcher for the Rockefeller Foundation’s Division for Public Health and Medicine. In 1937, while conducting field trials on attenuated strains of the yellow fever vaccine, Hugh and his boss, Max Theiler, announced their strain of yellow fever vaccine effective. Hugh and Max cured yellow fever. They saved millions of lives.

  This story, a favorite of Peter’s, is cause for both celebration and resentment in the Smith household. Max Theiler received the Nobel Prize for his accomplishment. Hugh Smith did not. Instead, Hugh was appointed an associate director at the Rockefeller Institute. But an office job in New York wasn’t much of a consolation. He retired from the Rockefeller Institute that same year, at the ripe old age of forty-nine.

  “You could say he had a dispute with management,” Peter says. He married his secretary, a talented young opera singer. They packed their bags and moved to Tucson, Arizona.

  Hugh knew and loved Tucson. He’d discovered it while on a road trip in the early 1920s and now was eager to start a new life there. He got a job teaching at the University of Arizona, presided over salons, and raised his two sons, Peter and his brother Robert. And he always made sure there was time to read over cocktails.

  Peter Smith recalls his childhood fondly. But he’s emphatic that his father belonged at the podium in Oslo with Max Theiler. We can’t know what Theiler was thinking when he left out his colleague. The science journals and historical accounts of the discovery usually credit the two men working in conjunction. And in his later years, Theiler admitted that he should have shared the prize. But it was too little too late. Hugh’s disappointment was an important lesson for Peter that the politics of discovery are sometimes more confusing than the discoveries themselves.