Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet by Steven Squyres

Author:Steven Squyres [Squyres, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781401381912
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2005-08-03T04:30:00+00:00

PART THREE

FLIGHT

13

FINAL APPROACH

DECEMBER 28, 2003

I WRITE THIS WHILE seated on US Airways flight 21, traveling to LAX on a one-way ticket. I kissed Mary good-bye this morning at the airport, and Nicky and Katy, awakened briefly from sleep, at home half an hour earlier. Unless disaster hits, we’re facing a long separation.

The last month has not been a good one at Mars. Three weeks ago JAXA, the new Japanese space agency, officially declared the death of their crippled Nozomi spacecraft, shortly before it was due to arrive at Mars. The name means “Hope.” Then, just four days ago, the British lander Beagle 2 disappeared. It had been released six days before from Mars Express, its European-built mothership, bound for Isidis Planitia. It has not been heard from since.

The exact cost of Beagle 2 is something of a mystery, at least to me, but it’s reputed to be in the vicinity of $80 million. If true, that’s less than our overrun was. With big ambitions and underdog status, Beagle 2 had garnered international attention. But now it seems to be gone.

The Beagle story so far is eerily reminiscent of the Polar Lander experience: a low-budget spacecraft with no ability to communicate to Earth once its final approach and entry sequence has begun. Empty data packets in each relay orbiter pass after the expected moment of landing. Silence from the big radio telescope at Jodrell Bank, trying to pick a needle out of a radio haystack. A string of press conferences with an ever more discouraged-sounding team still trying to express optimism. Like the Mars Polar Lander team before them, the Beagle guys have no way right now to tell if they’re dealing with a malfunctioning transmitter or a smoking hole in the ground. I sent their PI, Colin Pillinger, a note of encouragement a couple of nights ago. But he’s been working full-time on his mission since 1997, and he could be forgiven now for beginning to feel the first pangs of despair.

Mars Express itself is now safely in orbit around Mars, poised for what should be a long and successful mission. But its success has been eclipsed, at least so far, by the disappearance of Beagle 2.

Spirit and Opportunity are both alive and mostly well, but their cruise has not been without difficulties. The biggest problems, to my mortification, have been with both of our Mössbauer spectrometers. The first in-flight health check of the instruments on Spirit took place in July, on a night when Mary and I had taken Nicky to see Swan Lake at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Pacing with my cell phone during intermission, Justin Maki back at JPL told me between bursts of static that most of the instruments looked fine, but that there was “something fishy” in the Mössbauer data. Justin’s fishiness turned out to be a horrible distortion of the motion of the instrument’s drive system, the critical device that’s supposed to vibrate a little radioactive cobalt-57 nugget back and forth with great precision.

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