Curiosity Page 21

  Another trade-off is chosen—this one limits the Navcam imaging to a spread of 105 degrees instead of wider (this saves on data and possibly electricity.) This limitation makes one of the rover drivers a bit nervous—he's doing his job, protecting his machine. Ehlmann notes with a smile that the decision “probably does not inspire warm and fuzzy feelings.” Something has to give here, and the driver accepts the decision. While the Navcams and Hazcams image nearby terrain to determine the safest drive, the Mastcam will spend some time shooting images farther ahead for planning purposes.

  ChemCam reports: status okay.

  There is a question about the availability for the Mastcam to do a “workspace survey.” It is a chance to document the area in which they are currently residing before the drive tomorrow.

  It is estimated that the rover will begin tomorrow's operations with a battery charge of “about” 48.27 percent. How they can estimate so exactly is a mystery to me. After all items are considered, they restrict tomorrow's drive to ten meters, or about thirty-two feet, from the previously planned amount, which was almost three times that.

  One more go/no-go with these refinements considered. All is still well.

  Fig. 21.1. DRIVING TEAM: Curiosity's drivers meet to discuss tactical planning. Second to the left is Brian Cooper, speaking to Vandi Tompkins, in the center. Cooper also designed the software that allows the rover's drives to be planned and implemented. Tompkins creates driving and arm-motion sequences, which the rover then executes. Image from NASA/JPL-Caltech.

  A meeting later in the day is planned for a smaller group comprised of the science team representatives and a few technical people who will report on tweaks to the planned activities. There is little rest for those involved in this day's planning, and it is no wonder that they rotate people in and out of the most intense “tactical” positions on the mission every few days. It involves an unbelievable amount of work and attention to detail, and it is enervating to simply sit and listen. Actually making the determinations is probably quite energizing, but I bet a few shoulders sag when they break for coffee after the meetings. It is a lot to track.

  The second meeting is adjourned, and Webster and I prepare to leave and find the gent who authored the software used to plan and execute the rover's driving schedule. As I watch the assorted participants pack up to return their respective offices or go to another meeting (there is always another happening somewhere), I notice that they are smiling, are chatting, and show little signs of overt stress, at least not between them. Nobody displays any sense of having their toes stepped on, their data constrained, their activities delayed—though many have just experienced it. There is a shared understanding of the challenges, the limitations, and, perhaps most important, the mission.

  It's really something to see.

  We are about to go driving with Curiosity across the face or Mars. During this trip, you'll hear plenty of place names. Some will sound pretty normal—Rocknest and Darwin—and others kind of weird—see Glenelg, below—so where exactly do they get these names for places on Mars? It's a question a reasonable person might ask.

  In the old days, back in the nineteenth century, there was no official naming system for planetary features. The nationality of the observer and mapmaker often dictated what names were used. An Italian astronomer named Father Angelo Secchi, working at the Vatican Observatory in 1858, gave some of the larger features the names of famous explorers (with a bias toward Italian ones, of course).

  In 1867, English astronomer Richard Proctor, utilizing drawings made a few years earlier by a fellow Brit, renamed some of those markings—and additional ones—after astronomers from the past and (then) present. Camille Flammarion, a French astronomer and, oddly, a fanciful mystic, also made maps, this time with geographic names in French. Flammarion was a pretty wild fellow—he drew detailed maps of his observations of Mars even as he wrote early science fiction (rather ahead of its time, but in terms of prose he was certainly no Jules Verne), discussed intelligent life on Mars (no evidence really, just wishful opinion), and penned extensive treatises about the afterlife and universality of extraterrestrial beings. Many thought him to be a bit of a nut.

  Giovanni Schiaparelli came along in the mid-1800s and made his best observations and maps in 1877 during a close approach of Mars. He, of course, used Latin names for his maps—he was Italian, after all. He was also one of the first to create maps of the surface of that planet in detail. Much of the detail he charted was illusory, probably a result of eyestrain and a vivid observational imagination, but those interested in Mars were sufficiently hungry for any detail that his maps and nomenclature had substantial staying power.

  Other astronomers took turns at the eyepiece over the next few decades and a few tried their hand at renaming things, but when Percival Lowell came along in the 1890s and built his Mars-only observatory out in the Arizona territories—devoting his copious spare time to observing that planet (he was independently wealthy, as you will recall)—he adopted Schiaparelli's naming tradition and it stuck. Mars would be labeled in Latin, and these maps were used in one form or another until the mid-twentieth century.

  Thank goodness for the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a global federation of academicians, who stepped up and in 1960 standardized a naming scheme for Mars and other bodies. Here is its schema (in my terminology):

  LARGE CRATERS: Dead scientists and writers who contributed to the science and lore of Mars;

  SMALL CRATERS: Global villages with a population of less than 100,000 persons;

  LARGE VALLES (Valleys): The names for Mars or the word “star” in various languages (but not always—Valles Marineris was named after the Mariner spacecraft, for example);

  SMALL VALLES: Classical or modern names of rivers; and so on.

  You get the idea—it was a weird but generally standardized approach. By the time that NASA's robots got to Mars, the tradition was well established and the new features being observed were worked into the existing maps, which had been made from Earth-based observations. But by 1971, the images were getting clearer, and more craters of all sizes, along with valleys, volcanoes, and myriad wind- and water-sculpted features were photographed. Still, classical names were applied.

  This held up for the most part through the Viking era, with some informal terms used for terrain near the Viking landers. Apparently the IAU decided that items smaller than about 330 feet should not receive official recognition (i.e., names), so the door to the barn was left open and the metaphorical cows scattered.

  The Viking landing site included features with such names as:

  Big Joe

  Bonneville

  Delta

  Midas Muffler

  Mr. Badger

  Mr. Moley

  Mr. Rat

  There is a theme here: playfulness, whimsy, and classic literature. The last part is clearly a generational theme, as we will see next.

  Now, look out! It is 1997 and here comes Mars Pathfinder, with its crew of young and apparently irreverent scientists. Prepare to be amused/horrified (depending on your inclination).

  As objects near the Pathfinder landing site were imaged, they got a whole new set of names…ones that would not tickle the IAU people, if they were in the room, any more than “Midas Muffler” likely did. The region in which Pathfinder set down was called Ares Vallis (“The Valley of Ares,” after the Greek name for Mars) and that moniker was observed. But not what was in it. A partial list:

  Barnacle Bill

  Yogi (after Hanna-Barbera's Yogi Bear cartoon character)

  Scooby-Doo (also a Hanna-Barbera creation)

  Anthill

  Baby Otter

  Chimp

  Goldilocks

  Gumby (after the wacky 1960s kid's TV show)

  Jimmy Cricket (from the early Walt Disney movie Pinocchio; the actual character name was “Jiminy,” but apparently this was either lost on the excited young engineers, or “Jimmy” was intended as a nickname)

>   Lumpy

  Nibbles

  Snoopy

  T. Rex

  Zorak (another Hanna-Barbera 1960s character—a man-sized praying mantis with a lisp from the largely forgettable cartoon Space Ghost)

  And others. See an age-dependent trend here? The Pathfinder team was enjoying the mission like crazy, and it showed. Some in the NASA hierarchy were less amused, but these were unofficial names, so what the heck. They were having a blast.

  Then—someone at a gray metal desk woke up. This person may or may not have been a part of the legal office of the space agency, but for reasons that are difficult to pin down with authority, a new rule came about: no names were to be used that might be subject to copyright law. That proscribed just about anything created within the last seventy years, so at the time of the MER rovers that flew in 2004, this meant no creations subsequent to 1934. And as we know, some properties created earlier (think Mickey Mouse) will have copyrights extended come hell or high water, and legally defended with vigor. It's not entirely unfair, either, as NASA protects the name, likeness, and context of the use of its own logo—you can't use it to promote a product or make money. So these things cut both ways. You don't ever want to get on the wrong side of Disney and other big-name copyright owners.

  Gone were the fun, cool names from our respective childhoods.

  In were classical references and homages to important people. Oh, and the geologist's favorite rock formations *yawn*.

  Fig. 22.1. WHERE'S BAMM-BAMM: How many potential copyright violations can you find in these rock names? This is a small portion of Sojourner's backyard on Mars. Midway into the MER mission, they stopped using names that might cause legal concerns…and Mars became just a bit less fun. Image from NASA/JPL-Caltech.

  So why the heck did I take you on this diversionary jaunt? Because a lot of people wonder about the names used to label the features found by Curiosity in Gale Crater. The first place Curiosity explored was called Yellowknife Bay. It was named after a region and capital city in the Northwest Territories of Canada. The earthly Yellowknife is a tiny place, with a population of about twenty thousand, and not exactly Las Vegas. But it has its attractions. According to John Grotzinger: “What is the port of call you leave from to go on the great missions of geological mapping to the oldest rocks in North America? It's Yellowknife.” The town in Canada, that is.

  So this is apparently what happens when you institutionally crush whimsy and put the geologists in charge. But at least it's a naming system.

  For Curiosity's actual landing site, they made some exceptions. The much-beloved science-fiction author, Ray Bradbury, died just a few weeks before Curiosity landed on Mars, so in a gesture that warmed many hearts, including mine, they named it Bradbury Landing. Of course, they could have named it Percival's Pinnacle or Giovanni Gorge, I would have been okay with those, too, but nobody asked me. I expect that oversight to remain uncorrected.

  Soon another name bubbled into the awareness of those casually following Curiosity's progress: Glenelg. Huh? How do you pronounce that? Newsrooms far and wide had to stop, sound it out, and run to Wikipedia to find out what the heck that name referenced. Here is what they found…enjoy:

  “Glenelg (Scottish Gaelic: Glinn Elg, also Gleann Eilg) is a village and civil parish in the Lockalsh area of Highland in western Scotland. The parish covers a large area including Knoysart, North Morar and the ferry port of Mallaig. At the 2001 census it had a population of 1,507. The smaller ‘settlement zone’ around the village had a population of 283. In 2011 Highland Council estimated that the community of Glenelg and Arnisdale had a population of 291.” (This comes from the “Glenelg, Highland” Wikipedia entry, accessed March 12, 2013. You can find it here, if you are really that curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenelg,_Highland.)

  Huh. That's not much better than where we started. Some science bloggers caught the fact that the word is also a palindrome—it's pronounced the same way when read backward as it is when read normally—and that should have been hot fodder for the conspiracy theorists, though it did not seem to protrude into that sphere, thank goodness. I can hear it now…

  “Glenelg is glenelG spelled backward!!! And Curiosity is a rover, and Rover is a dog's name…dog spelled backward is God…and so—” you get the idea. These lonely people never tire of finding mystery in clarity. It's the reverse of science, taking logical observation back into the Dark Ages: the “Face on Mars,” pyramids on Mars, and underground cities on Mars and on the moon. NASA is supposedly run by unrepentant Nazis, Freemasons, and, of all things, worshipers of ancient Egypt. I kid you not, look it up. Oh, and by the way, we never went to the moon….

  In truth, Glenelg was named after both a rock formation near Yellowknife in Canada and the previously referenced Scottish region. But according to a NASA statement: “The science team thought the name Glenelg was appropriate because, if Curiosity traveled there, it would visit the area twice—both coming and going—and the word Glenelg is a palindrome. After Glenelg, the rover will aim to drive to the base of Mount Sharp.” So, Glenelg it was. They could have also named it “Pop,” which would have accomplished the same thing as a palindrome, but once again, nobody asked me. I'm available by request.

  A note on the conspiracy lovers: while they may not have made much hash over Glenelg (at least I didn't find it if they did), they have found plenty of other things to get excited about. So far, Curiosity has found—in some people's fevered imaginations—a jackknife, a flower, a person—possibly a Greek figure, Bigfoot, or Elvis (depending on whom you listen to)—miniature pyramids, and many “ventifacts”—objects that are just too regular, too right-angled, or too geometric to be found in nature. We are not talking crop circles here (though if you are a True Believer, I can't see why they would not be on Mars as well)—we're talking rocks (of which there are billions upon billions on Mars—the place is a desert after all) that have “unnatural” shapes. You can look for yourself—the websites usually have titles that include “THE TRUTH ABOUT [insert your favorite space program here]!” in all caps. Or, try a search for “NASA conspiracy” or “Mars NASA truth”…you'll see the rocks in question. At best, to my eye, they look like broken ashtrays (wait—that's not natural!) or smashed plaster chunks (ditto).

  If this intrigues, do yourself a favor and visit Death Valley sometime. I'd take you there, but I already went and am just happy to be alive. But spend an afternoon squatting in just about any area where there are rocks that have tumbled down from higher slopes. Guess what? You will see rocks that look like flowers, lizards (though it might actually be a lizard—check before touching), swastikas, Paul McCartney, and Osiris. I swear—it's like looking at clouds for too long, and they can be very convincing until you remind yourself—they are just, simply, rocks. Then go back to the aforementioned websites and stare at the photos again, and I do believe that you will see…just rocks. Give it a shot if you are so inclined.

  Fig. 22.2. THE MARS RAT: Yes, you could be excused if you took a second look…it does look like a rat. But enlarged and enhanced, it's just a rock. Image from NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

  If you still see a ziggurat or zeppelin on Mars when you've completed this experiment, let me know. I know a few thousand scientists who would love for it to be true.

  After the August 5 landing, Curiosity sat at the recently christened Bradbury Landing as the folks on the ground got their bearings, checked out the rover and the surrounding terrain with the cameras, and prepared to wake up the rest of the instrumentation aboard.

  From orbit they were also able to survey the neighborhood a bit. The heat shield came to rest almost five thousand feet away. Almost opposite, about two thousand feet away, were the backshell and parachute. To the north, about 2,100 feet from the rover, was the final resting place of the descent stage. And of course, they pinpointed the location of Curiosity—so close to the target that the offset was almost equivalent to a rounding error.

  Within ten sols, the checkout of the rover and
its instrumentation, as well as the upload of the ground-operations software, were complete. Concurrently, the science teams had been busy as well, deciding where to go first. Mount Sharp beckoned from a few miles away, but spectacular as it was, it was not the first target on the minds of the geologists. They had decided, based on new data, to go in the opposite direction.

  A closer inspection of what was now called Glenelg revealed some tantalizing geology about a quarter-mile distant. The area showed an overlap of three kinds of terrain and was just too juicy to resist, even though it meant heading away from Mount Sharp.

  “With such a great landing spot in Gale Crater, we literally had every degree of the compass to choose from for our first drive,” said John Grotzinger. “We had a bunch of strong contenders. It is the kind of dilemma planetary scientists dream of, but you can only go one place for the first drilling for a rock sample on Mars. That first drilling will be a huge moment in the history of Mars exploration.” An understatement for certain.

  Fig. 23.1. A FACE ONLY A MOTHER COULD LOVE: Glenelg, as seen from the Navcam, is a place only its mother—or a geologist—could love. But it represented a union of three geological regimes in one spot and was therefore too rich to pass up even though it meant heading away from Mount Sharp, Curiosity's primary destination. Image from NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.