Martian Summer

  “What happened to the monitors?” Clive Cook asks. “They really seem to have shrunk. I swear they looked a lot bigger yesterday.”

  “Yeah, you’ve been downgraded,” Chris replied. “JPL is taking their stuff back.”

  When Mark Lemmon walked off from his last sol, Leslie Tamppari came over to say a collegial good-bye. She couldn’t. She had to choke back her tears. She took a second to compose herself. They’ve worked so hard to make this happen, years of disappointment, worry, and togetherness. So many long days and then even longer sols. One struggle after another, but they did it and now it’s over. Who could imagine this day four, five, or six years ago? Ice and snowstorms, calcium carbonate and maybe even liquid water! She tries again to say good-bye, but it’s too much.

  “Excuse me,” she says. And walks off.

  DOUG ARCHER IS THE SPI I. HE’S BEEN A DOCUMENTARIAN ON THE mission and now in these final moments got a chance to work a key position. He puts up a quote on the projector.

  Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.—Dr. Seuss

  The mission is in transition. The day starts with kickmid, or is it mid-kick? No one quite knows what to call our morning meeting. Kickoff and midpoint are now one combined meeting. This is one of many Earth time changes. At kickmid, we evaluate the data downlink and then approve the day’s uplink plan in one swooping science and engineering orgy.

  Just a few weeks ago you couldn’t get a seat, always a row of overflow standers in the back. Now there are fewer scientists, no visiting VIPs, no camera crew or journalists waiting for Sara to escort them into downlink. There’s plenty of space at the big conference table. The SOC feels so empty.

  Vicky Hipkin is the science lead. She shares duties with a strategic science lead to accommodate the new parallelized ops.

  “This is the parallelized ops—not paralyzed. So be careful how you pronounce that,” Vicky says. Parallelized means that shift I and shift II both work on a nine-to-five schedule. The shift I team is planning two sols ahead, and shift II is sequencing a plan for the next sol.

  These new days start familiarly enough with a look at the historic and strategic plan, then the downlink assessment of everything Phoenix collected during its workday. Then there’s a game of musical chairs. The downlink engineers swap with the sequencing engineers to solidify the next day’s plan.

  There’s a roll call.

  “SSI is remote.”

  “Spacecraft is remote.”

  “Mission manager is remote.”

  Vicky puts up an image of a strategic sol plan. It’s already out of date.

  “We’re trying to work out these two sol paths. But it’s proving to be very difficult,” Vicky says. Parallelized ops means sequential plans must be independent of each other.

  For all the talk about how the mission will be more efficient, I feel like the same activities have been on the docket for a week. We seem to languish in our Earth time transition.

  “We’ll get over that hump in a few days,” Joel promises.

  As we get closer to the lander’s impending doom, I feel more stress about completing the mission and not letting our little friend go quietly into the night. We will “rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

  I really hope this Mars time-induced irrational sentimentality wears off soon. The RA is now unsafed and we acquired a sample called Burning Coals. It’s time to deliver to TEGA. Finally. Three of the last four sols, the RA remained safe. It’s not the encoder problem either. It was—gasp—human error. It turns out the RA engineers are fallible. It only took three months of working them seven days a week to determine that they’re human. But we did it.

  The RA downlink engineer must send out an email with something called “encoder count updates.” These updates tell the sequencing engineer the initial position of the RA.

  “There was an error in the email. The count in joint four was wrong. The sequencing engineer failed to double-check, and the RA safed,” Joseph said with his head low at yesterday’s kickmid.

  It’s an easy mistake and there’s no formal process for this situation. Normally, the RA team has their own internal checks; a second engineer always looks it over.

  “Because we’re on this new schedule and there’s another drive to get ice, there was no one else,” Joseph explains further.

  “I’d like a report on this,” the mission manager says.

  “But I’m not exactly sure when I’ll have time,” Joseph said. That’s the point exactly. No time. Then we lost two days unsafing. Now we’re back and the RA team recovered.

  Katie Dunn is the shift lead.

  “The RA is unsafed and ready to go,” she announces happily.

  “RA has a sample,” Ashitey says. “It’s about 2 to 5 cc’s. I think we should proceed, but let’s ask the dig czar.” Ashitey suggests using the rasp to channel the dirt down the center of the scoop, since it’s all collected on one side. He thinks that will aid the delivery. The good old sprinkle delivery.

  “I’m a little worried about the small volume of sample,” Dave Hamara says.

  That elicits groans. Who can be picky at a time like this? He reconsiders.

  “It’s on the low end, but it should work,” Hamara says. “But we would like for the RA to dump the scoop after they sprinkle to get every last grain.”

  They’re going to go for it.

  CHRIS MAKES ME A BURRITO FOR LUNCH. HE MAKES PETER ONE TOO.

  I ask Peter if he’s up for another interview to bare his soul. It’ll be very cathartic, I assure him. These are my last grasps at an emotional connection with Peter. Even though we had a promising lasagna tête-à-tête, I tell him we don’t want the book to read like Tuesday’s with Nobody.

  “Oh now, we’re far from that,” Peter says. He walks away. With just four sols remaining, I need to dig up some Peter-themed excitement to end this book.

  ASHITEY IS THE SHIFT II SEQUENCING ENGINEER. HE WORKS AT HIS machine in uplink, pausing to explain the intricacies of “guided moves” that let you over-torque versus “free-space” moves in the context of the encoder problems. This is advanced robotics.

  “This encoder problem is going to hamper our efforts,” Ashitey says. Each RA fault will take at least two sols to fix.

  “We’re trying some workarounds,” he says. “But there will be more encoder faults.” Even a conservative estimate of four more faults means up to twelve lost days. If there are a total of forty sols left in the mission—that’s Ashitey’s rough estimate—that limits the amount of science. We have to consider many of those sols will be power-limited, restricted, and have all the same issues. Soon the strategies for delivery will collide. Both MECA and TEGA want to complete their experiments, and there won’t be time. There’s a lot of uncertainty on what the right path will be. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that you can’t do this job without managing a bit of uncertainty.

  “That’s very hard for people to understand. They want everything specified. But it’s not possible here,” Ashitey says. He’s a student of the Dara Sabahi method of space mission management.

  “For all their planning on the rovers, a lot of the interesting discoveries came by accident,” Ashitey says.

  Katie Dunn and Byron Jones dial in to the spacecraft meeting while Ashitey and I chat. They get a busy signal and look perplexed. Who else could be calling in to a spacecraft meeting besides them!? They dial in again. The meeting starts. A scientist from Germany is giving a tour to a colleague. He opens the door, and Byron flails. The phone call is ITAR-restricted.

  “You have to leave!” Byron says.

  Stubbe apologizes. There’s supposed to be a sign on the door when effing FNs (foreign nationals) aren’t allowed in. Miles Smith picks up his head to see who he’s talking about.

  “Did you know there’s a journalist in the room?” Miles asks. Then there’s a minor panic. No one seems quite sure if I can listen in or not.

  “No problem,” I tell them. I’
m not really a journalist anyway. But better safe than sorry. They move the call into the spacecraft room.

  Before he leaves for the day, Peter agrees to meet me for one more lunch on sol 87.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  THE DUDE ABIDES

  SOL 87

  I FEEL HUMAN AGAIN. MY BRAIN IS NO LONGER SWIMMING IN WCL calibration fluid. I eat a big breakfast with the Danes—one of our last. They head off for eye exams—part of a complete medical checkup—to be sure that the counter-fatigue study hasn’t damaged them permanently with their battery of counter-fatigue tests. I go to kickmid. It’s the 87th sol of the mission, but we haven’t uplinked the sol 86 plan yet. It’s 9:00 a.m. local Tucson time. 23:46 on Mars. So there’s only fifteen minutes left of sol 85. Because we’re back on Earth time, we’re now two days ahead of the lander.

  “How’s that for confusing?” Ray says.

  Kickmid gets started. Ray, the science lead, and Mark Lemmon, the strategic science lead, work remotely.

  “This will be a good experiment,” Ray says. Peter’s assistant brings a cup of coffee to the table. Peter takes a big sip and rubs his eyes.

  “Today’s sol has an aggressive timeline,” Ray warns. But the plan is straightforward. They have to finish by 6:15. By management fiat, the workday is limited. If the team does not finish a plan in time, they will go to a pre-made remote sensing plan.

  During a pause in the action, Peter asks some of the TEGA engineers if they’ll go back to their old offices on campus next week.

  “I’m going to be the only one here,” Peter says. “Don’t go.”

  The core of the plan is a blind delivery TEGA and then more deep digging in the trench called Stone Soup. It’s a simple plan but not much time to complete.

  Uwe Keller and Diane Blaney lament the slowdown in activities. They talk with Mike Hecht about how it’s only going to get worse.

  “There aren’t enough resources,” Uwe says.

  “We should still be on Mars time,” Diane says.

  “We’re not making any progress,” Uwe laments. Leslie Tamppari interrupts.

  “That’s not true. We’ve dug and safed and dug and safed and it might be slow but we’re getting there,” Leslie says. Mike excuses himself.

  “I have to call Barry, but it shouldn’t be long. He’s never one to chat,” Mike says.

  Barry tries to help MECA get additional funding to analyze data. TEGA has similar issues getting funding. They both have more than a year of data analysis to really understand what they collected over the past ninety sols. It’s not clear who is going to pay to keep the team together.

  NO ONE IS SHOWING UP FOR THE END-OF-SOL SCIENCE MEETING.

  “Where is everyone? Why are we even doing this?” Peter asks. The phone line is open but no one calls in.

  “This is what’s to come,” Peter says.

  “I’m here,” Diane says looking up from her conversation. “We should think about the next sample.”

  A few more latecomers straggle in. And there’s another round in the “what to sample next” discussion. They can’t come to a conclusion.

  “No other talks?” Peter asks when they finish.

  There are none.

  “Well, what about you?” Peter says. He’s looking at me.

  I just laugh. Good one, Peter. But then I regret not taking a turn. There’s one activity I’ve secretly hoped for. This is my big opportunity to lobby for it. I say nothing.

  There’s a secret microphone on board. Well, it’s not so secret but it’s buried deep on the motherboard of a de-scoped instrument. I ask Bob Denise if it’s possible to turn it on.

  “In theory, yes,” he told me. And that’s good enough for me! The microphone is on an instrument called MARDI. Sadly, the Phoenix never turned it on. MARDI is a descent imager designed to take pictures of the ground as Phoenix landed. Had it worked, it would capture a series of images—the ground rising up to meet Phoenix. Why did they turn it off? MARDI shared a piece of its memory with a key landing component. There was a small chance this shared memory would cause a disaster during landing. The problem wasn’t discovered until after they bolted MARDI to the spacecraft. The prudent decision was to turn it off. But there’s still hope for MARDI. We could use it to listen to Mars. I want to know what Mars sounds like. Who doesn’t? The science meeting ends.

  CHUCK FELLOWS FROM TEGA GIVES AN UPDATE ON THE SAMPLE.

  “Right now we are hopefully processing TA-7 and doing a low-temp. Tomorrow medium-temp and then high-temp. For the next sample we are developing process steps to deliver to TA-0 … without exposing the sample to the sun. Then we have to decide if we can get an icy sample up through the screen. Then we could choose TA-1 for an icy soil delivery,” Chuck says.

  “If we can’t do the icy delivery, then we would open TA-6 and try to resample Rosy Red because it already has a lot of that particular sample on it,” Chuck continues. That accounts for the fourth, fifth, and sixth samples.

  “That leaves two more ovens,” Peter says. He thinks one should be used for the organic free blank to help understand the background levels of organic material. “Then, we have one cell left. That could go to Carol’s cause,” he says.

  “Yes, sure,” Chuck says. He pauses to think. “What is Carol’s cause?”

  “It’s a nice white sample she wants taken from Dodo-Goldilocks,” Peter says.

  “Didn’t you see the T-shirt?” Suzanne Young asks, making light of Carol’s relentless lobbying for this Dodo activity. Ever since we saw that first white chunk in Dodo, Carol insisted this was a worthwhile experiment.

  THE SOL 88 PLAN IS UPLOADED WITH PLANS FOR MORE TRENCHING AND a TEGA mid-temp run. They made it another day. I ask some of the systems guys about the possibility of turning on the microphone to listen to Mars. They say it’s possible and it’s up to the P.I. That’s Peter. I run into Peter in the hallway.

  “The microphone works!” I say.

  “What are you talking about? And why are we talking about this?” he asks. He’s not interested in “listening” to Mars at the moment. He’s more likely preoccupied with how to keep funding Phoenix research.

  “Can we still have lunch?” I ask nervously.

  “Yes,” he responds and walks away.

  WE GET INTO PETER’S CAR AND DRIVE TO A QUIET NEIGHBORHOOD.

  “This little strip mall used to be the heart of downtown, back when I was a boy,” Peter says. We sidle up to the bar and order a couple glasses of wine to celebrate the success of the summer.

  This is it. This is our last chance to connect. The restaurant is nearly empty. It’s really just us and some guy sitting at the other end of the bar.

  “Great movie,” I overhear the man at the bar say to the bartender.

  The Big Lebowski is playing on the TV mounted above the bar. The bartender ignores the comment and continues to clean and dry an array of wine glasses.

  “I’m a new student,” he says. “I just moved here.” The chatty guy continues to talk. The bartender continues to ignore him.

  Frankly, I’m not faring much better. Our conversation is halting. Between the awkward pauses, we both look up to see what The Dude, Lebowski, and Walter are up to. I toss Peter some softball Mars questions.

  “Are you happy with how things went?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything you wish was different?”

  “No.”

  We watch the movie.

  “So, you guys starting school?” Mr. Chatty says, leaning down the bar.

  I offer a polite “No.” Peter chuckles, unsure how, yet still flattered, he could be mistaken for a student.

  We return to our stilted question-and-answer. We get our menus. It’s a respite from the awkwardness and a means to deflect Mr. Chatty’s advances.

  After we order, Chatty tries again. “We are nihilists, we believe in nothing,” he says, quoting the movie and laughing out loud. I ignore him but Peter takes the bait.

  “I love this movie,” Pete
r says, and in about ten seconds they’re engaged in deep analysis of the The Big Lebowski.

  And for all my efforts, three months of worry and stress and this chatty guy at the bar manages to establish an easy rapport with Peter in less than five minutes. Where did I go wrong?

  All this time trying to think of the right questions, and all my efforts to sound smart about Mars, and it’s all for nothing. I’m sitting between them, but no matter. They just talk through me, debating plot points.

  “Did you know that Donny is supposedly just a figment of Walter’s imagination?”

  “Yeah, and the dude is Buddha.” They carry on.

  All is not lost. We actually know a lot about Peter. Every day spent on the mission is an exercise in obsessive observation. Peter is that quiet leader who we count on for safe passage through the fierce storm. He’s all we could ask for to lead us to another planet.

  “Why did you do this?” I ask at a pause in their conversation.

  “I had the opportunity. So I wrote a proposal,” Peter says.

  It’s a crap, stock answer. And I can’t wrap my head around why Peter would have me here and then not want to tell me his story. It’s more mysterious than eutectic Martian perchlorate brines.

  “That’s not much of an answer,” I say. You don’t just casually pursue a Mars mission, writing the ten million documents in your spare time just for fun.

  “I want to know about the drive, the ambition that gets you through the endless list of problems and things that can go wrong, sleepless nights, missed family events, and constant battling to make it work,” I say, a bit surprised.

  He seems a little taken aback. Maybe it’s my tone.

  “Ambition? What’s ambition? When you say it like that, it implies that I put my morals aside to get somewhere. I didn’t do that,” he says. “I worked hard for this and I always did what I believed was right.”

  “Maybe ambition means something much more for you. A Mars mission doesn’t fall in your lap. Something made you do this. Why do it?” I ask.

  “There came a point when I didn’t want to be number two. In light of my father’s accomplishments, I wanted make moves too,” he says.