Curiosity Read online

  ALSO BY ROD PYLE

  Destination Mars: New Explorations of the Red Planet

  Published 2014 by Prometheus Books

  Curiosity: An Inside Look at the Mars Rover Mission and the People Who Made It Happen. Copyright © 2014 by Rod Pyle. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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  Cover images © Media Bakery

  Cover design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht

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  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Pyle, Rod, author.

  Curiosity : an inside look at the Mars rover mission and the people who made it happen / by Rod Pyle.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-61614-933-8 (paperback) — ISBN 978-1-61614-934-5 (ebook)

  1. Roving vehicles (Astronautics) 2. Curiosity (Spacecraft) 3. Mars (Planet)—Exploration. 4. United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I. Title.

  TL799.M3P95 2014

  559.9'23—dc23

  2014007558

  Printed in the United States of America

  Acknowledgments

  Author's Note

  1. Death Valley Days

  2. Tango Delta: Touchdown

  3. A Long Road to a Red Planet

  4. Setting the Stage

  5. The Scarecrow

  6. Laying the Foundation: Mars Pathfinder

  7. Curiosity's Cousins: Spirit and Opportunity

  8. A Whole New Ball Game

  9. Where to Go?

  10. The Science Platform

  11. Rocks, Rocks, Rocks!

  12. Earth Attacks!

  13. Delays, Delays…

  14. My Mars

  15. Hurtling to Mars

  16. Sky Crane

  17. Arriving

  18. Weird Watches: Living on Mars Time

  19. The Orbiters: Help from Above

  20. First Moves

  21. Meetings

  22. Place Names and Paranoia

  23. On to Glenelg

  24. “One for the History Books…”

  25. Interlude: Post AGU Conference

  26. The Yellow Brick Road

  27. The Drill

  28. Calling John Klein

  29. Red Mars, Gray Mars

  30. Go Southwest, Young Rover

  31. Discoveries!

  32. A Drive to Mount Sharp

  Epilogue: You Gotta Have Curiosity

  Select Bibliography

  Index

  Thanks are due to countless people who generously gave of their time and energies to assist in the completion of this book. The bulk of these people work at JPL, either on staff or as contractors, and rarely get the thanks or recognition they deserve.

  First and foremost: my deepest thanks to the selfless Guy Webster, as fine a person as you are likely to meet during your brief time on our planet. He is the media's point man for JPL's Mars program, and gives and gives without complaint or hesitation, which is rare in his area of endeavor. And—he knows his stuff; Mars is no stranger. I simply cannot thank you enough.

  John Grotzinger, who was kind enough to survive my many questions, most of which are well below his pay grade. John made time for me on numerous occasions when I'm sure he had better things to do (like exploring Mars, for example). John, I am in your debt for the many hours you spent educating me on things I did not know I needed to know, and making it fun.

  Rob Manning, a fantastic guy, gave me more time than I could have asked for and did so with copious good grace. He is a font of information presented in a way that is as enjoyable as it is informative, and the fact that he enjoys it so much means that all of us do too.

  Very special thanks to: Ashwin Vasavada, Dan Limonadi, Joy Crisp, Justin Maki, Mike Malin, Ken Edgett, Scott McLennon, Lauren DeFlores, Vandi Tompkins, Doug Ming, Brian Cooper, Rebecca Williams, Al Chen, Steve Squyres, Chris McKay and Jakob van Zyl. You all provided time for interviews in schedules that were already jammed to the hilt. My thanks.

  To Buzz Aldrin, who made time for questions about this story as well as others; you are a founder of the Space Age, and one of the few key players who continuously strives to push open the frontiers. Mars owes you much.

  Robert Zubrin, whose work underlies so much of manned Mars planning now it's hard to find the borders of his involvement. Thanks for being a selfless champion of the red planet. Alexandra Hall of the Google Lunar XPrize: you will first win the moon, then Mars. Carry on.

  Steven Dick, former NASA chief historian and now astrobiology chair for the Library of Congress, and Roger Launius of the Smithsonian NASM, thanks as always. Leonard David, space journalist and fellow niche author: thanks for being there.

  Steven L. Mitchell of Prometheus Books: your continued support of planetary exploration and the sciences at large are a testament to the integrity and high standards of Prometheus. We are all better for your efforts. And to the rest of the Prometheus Books staff: Catherine Roberts-Abel, Melissa Raé Shofner, Bruce Carle, Nicole Sommer-Lecht, Jade Zora Scibilia, Mariel Bard, Meghan Quinn, and those who worked behind the scenes—thank you.

  John Willig, ever-present agent and supportive friend, who wrangled the details and made it look easy as he always does. Deepest thanks once again.

  Blaine Baggett runs a tight ship at JPL and it shows. The communication division works wonders with limited resources. Veronica McGregor, Jane Platt, Jia-Rui Cook and D. C. Agle make this sort of thing possible.

  To the rest of JPL's able PR staff: Elena Mejia, Mark Petrovich, Daniel Goods, Erik Conway, Scott Hulme, and John Beck-Hoffman—thanks for responding to my continuous (and probably irritating) requests for media materials. There is simply no way for an author to approach such as task without your talents and support.

  Lawren Markle and Brian Bell of Caltech's media relations: thanks for your accommodation. Lawren has since moved on, but may well have saved me from becoming a permanent part of Death Valley.

  Janice Alvarez provided tireless transcriptions on time and with remarkably few errors or omissions considering the complexity of the work—and while delivering a new baby, no less. I have no idea how you did it.

  Thanks to my pals from the Griffith Observatory days who generously donated their time to JPL during the Curiosity landing: Jim Somers and John Sepikas. You made the landing a whole lot easier for the press; they will never know what you did for them. Glenn Miller helps you stay t
he course. And Bob Brooks, who is at JPL every day—Mars would not be the same without you.

  Thanks to Ken Kramer, Sherry Clark, and Scott Forbes, for being there. To my son, Connor, who endured countless hours of silence and separation (do teenagers even notice?) while I operated in missile-silo mode to write: thanks for being understanding.

  Sherry Clark, you are a pillar of strength and support. Gloria Lum, your contribution to this process is too much to write. Thanks.

  To mom and dad: thanks for being understanding of a sometimes-puzzling son.

  To the readers: thanks for being understanding of a sometimes-puzzling adult. I love writing books, and your support is the greatest treasure any author can ask for.

  Any book such as this requires a vast amount of research and cooperation with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Caltech, and other appendages of the government/academic space-exploration enterprise. Of course, the richest resources are the people within, and the larger NASA entity is filled with wonderful and helpful ones who have vast experience and long memories. In particular, the exploration of Mars is an undertaking that inspires great passion in the participants, fostering deeply moving and fascinating conversations.

  I interviewed dozens of participants in the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission for this book, and it draws upon their statements and memories liberally. In all cases they demonstrated an acute memory of entry, descent, and landing akin to people's memories of where they were when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, or for the younger generation, that awful day when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry. Other memories and recollections of duties and actions taken since landing, during the primary mission, were also fresh. For the scientists, their summaries of their particular areas of interest were detailed and exact. Likewise for the engineers; their recall of their portions of the mission and the technologies within were acute and complete. These recorded interviews were later transcribed into about three hundred pages of text for reference.

  For the recounting of specific statements and events not covered within interviews (or requiring backup), I relied on two primary sources. The first, where applicable, were the vast amounts of archival video footage of various phases of the MSL mission which are available online both through publicly accessible NASA websites and by request via JPL's servers. One may also order footage from JPL's vendor if desired. Thousands of still photos back up this visual data, too. The second source was the statements of other participants in the mission themselves, and in cases where there was any mismatch or doubt, I attempted to find a third source to support individual claims.

  In absence of other recorded data, Guy Webster, JPL's point man for Mars, has a vast institutional memory and was helpful when other methods failed. He is a rich resource.

  For older missions and histories, NASA has massive archives spread across the web and in various physical locations—specific to planetary exploration, JPL, Caltech, and Nils Bohr Institute archives can be particularly helpful.

  All this said, one occasionally finds an error or misquote that has been propagated across time and space—something printed twenty-five or thirty years ago, then erroneously quoted in another book or article, then archived among a half dozen or more web portals, can become very thorny to unravel, especially when (as sometimes occurs) the primary reference may have gone missing. Fortunately, MSL is a young-enough mission that this is not yet a concern. In fact, part of NASA/JPL-Caltech's challenge with this mission is to preserve and archive events and documents as they happen, with very little budget to do so.

  The vast bulk of the imagery in the book comes courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech. Their online image archives are superlative, and in most cases the accompanying captions make clear the phase of the mission related to the photo at hand. A few other images were sourced from stock agencies or Creative Commons sources. Still others come from my personal collection.

  Review and some fact-checking was performed by JPL and in some cases specific mission participants. Any remaining mistakes are my own.

  Vultures cut lazy circles in the sky above me, patiently awaiting my certain demise. Dropping my gaze, I could see the heat shimmering off the mountainside. It was well over one hundred degrees and the last of the water was long gone. I was close to forty miles from the nearest road and the situation looked bleaker than the late dinner seating on the Titanic.

  What did this potentially life-threatening situation have to do with Curiosity on Mars?

  Then the image of Lawren Markle, the dapper (and sweatless, in stark contrast to my drenched shirt) PR rep from Caltech, swam into focus before my parched and crispy eyes.

  “You doing OK?” he said with a look of genuine and entirely reasonable concern, given my condition. “Sure,” I croaked. “I'm…good….” It was then that the death fantasy evaporated and I was back in an equally grim state—atop a barren, rocky peak in Death Valley with a group of science journalists and our Edmund Hillary–esque geological guide, Caltech's Dr. John Grotzinger.

  I looked from Grotzinger, who was holding forth on a geological premise that was not quite soaking in, to Lawren, who had refocused his attention to Grotzinger, where it belonged. Having Grotzinger as our tour guide in this garden spot of Death Valley was a true privilege. If I survived it, I would be very grateful in a week or so, once I was able to rehydrate.

  Reality hit: we were probably a mile from the road, it was about eighty-four degrees, and we had been hiking for about twenty minutes. I was wiped out. This was not promising to be my best day.

  The invitation I received in my e-mail a week before had sounded exciting and bore the return address of Caltech. I was invited to join Dr. John Grotzinger, mission scientist (a.k.a. Big Kahuna) for the Mars Science Laboratory, as he hosted a two-day press junket into Death Valley to discuss some of the formations that informed earthbound geologists about what they might find on parts of Mars. It all looked like good fun, and there would be only a handful of us, maybe twelve science writers. I would be the sole outside video guy; JPL's John Beck-Hoffman would shoot for their media operation.

  At the end of the note was added, “Wear sturdy shoes, as we will do a bit of walking.” Oddly, I missed the hidden meaning even though I had taken a string of geology classes in college. I should have remembered that this was geologist's code for “wear steel-toed boots, as we are likely to run into rattlers and possibly even desert snarks as we hike over hill and dale looking for the perfect Precambrian outcrop”…or in this case, as we hike about twelve miles, mostly vertical, in the hottest and driest place in the continental United States.

  What may have thrown me off was that Grotzinger is not the old-breed of geologist I knew from my increasingly distant college days. He wore no suspenders, no plaid flannel shirt, and did not smoke a pipe. He had no gold-miner's belly hanging over a turquoise-buckled beltline. He is, in fact, tall, slim, irritatingly fit, and tan. His weathered good looks would be welcomed into the Explorer's Club. While his explanations can be challenging to follow, he is patient and graceful with the laypeople. He can be folksy and technical in the same sentence, so clearly the geologist's pedigree was there.

  We traversed many roads and junctions on our way into the high desert, and the map showed many nearby avenues with such charming (and informative) names like Talc Road, Sulfate Road, and Cactus Flats Road. A few hours out of LA, we reached our destination: Shoshone, California, with a population of thirty-one. Our group almost doubled it.

  As we checked in at the cinder-block penitentiary that was to serve as our motel for the night, an optimistically named “inn,” Grotzinger wandered over to one of the hulking, chalk-white Caltech SUVs that had transported us there. By the time I got my camera equipment and other packings stowed in the room, he was completing elaborate dry-marker murals on the rear passenger-side door of one of these overwrought grocery haulers. Big murals. Murals of complicated rock bedding, uplift, and other geological delig
hts. And on the front door, he had drawn surprisingly artistic renderings of very steep Alpine-looking mountains, which I hoped were metaphorical. As I watched, and thought back to my own college geology field trips, I wondered if any of his compatriots had ever swapped out a permanent marker in the SUV drawing kit just for laughs. I know I would have. “Ha ha, that was funny. Here's the turpentine…oh, that takes off the car's paint too, now doesn't it…”

  As we waited for the formal talk to begin, a three-foot-long and very red snake worked its way across the roadway and for some reason (probably seeking the same relieving shade that I would soon pine for) decided to work its way through the spokes of the truck's wheel. Our group tittered nervously. Most of us were now regretting the light athletic shoes we had chosen to wear.

  We moved to a fire ring nearby (why a fire ring in Death Valley, you might ask? To keep the sidewinders and rabid coyotes away at night, of course), and Grotzinger began discussing the day ahead. I missed most of it because I don't shoot video out on location all that often and was fiddling with my camera gear and cleaning the sand off the parts I had already dropped twice. But I had it running by the time he got to the most immediately relevant part of the talk, moving back to the mural on the Suburban. “Then we'll end up at this formation, here in the foothills. It's the Glimmenshorp Finkleheimer formation of preglandular hermphratite…”(this was not exactly what was said, but it's how it registered in my overheated brain).

  I was still rolling video, so I meekly asked, “John, for my audience would you mind giving me the eighth-grade, Weekly Reader version of the story?” He paused for a moment, looking at the ground. I thought perhaps I had committed some kind of faux pas, but I think he was merely gathering his thoughts. At least I hope so.

  “Um, OK. So what these structures represent is a feature called stromatolites, that we interpret on Earth to represent the interplay between microbial mats that are living on the seafloor and sediment that comes in and interacts with the mat. The sediment is ultimately why it becomes a rock. If it's just left as a microbial mat, the organics will decay and there will be no record of that, but by having the sediment come in, it can get cemented and turn into a rock. Then we see these features in the rock record and infer that there were once microbes living on the seafloor that were forming these structures.”