There's an obvious problem with NASA and the current climate of space exploration. Spaceflight costs a lot of money and its just not something that's well-funded right now. Part of the solution is to get more people interested in the U.S. space program, but how to do that isn't obvious. Andrew Kessler took a novel approach: He finagled his way into mission control and spent three months observing NASA's 2008 Mars Phoenix mission from the inside. What he found was great and seldom told story.Kessler was a space kid; he loved it growing up but sort of forgot why as he got older. As he rightly points out, the casual space phone doesn't get to see all the good stuff. So many mission documents present lists of data and checkpoints. There's no story, and you have to be a real space-nut with an active imagination to get excited about mission plans and work manuals. The sources NASA puts out are just too tech-heavy for the average readers.This was a problem for Kessler. NASA's doing amazing things, why aren't they telling us how cool all this stuff is? So, he thought, why not highlight the humans behind the machines, take a technological story and add a human element.For most of us, mission control invokes images of Ed Harris as Gene Kranz in Apollo 13. Mission control sounds like the place where young men in white shirts line up at consoles with pocket protectors and skinny black ties. But, as Kessler points out, it's not the 1960s anymore and engineers aren't the stereotypical nerds. Phoenix's mission control – which he reminds was in Tuscon, not the city that shares its name – didn't even look like you'd think mission control should. He likens it to a church basement with fluorescent lighting and a false ceiling. It's filled with computers, and that's where the magic happens, "on those computer and projection screens." In this unassuming space a bunch of guys ran a mission on Mars.They're just regular guys who happen to have an overwhelming passion for their work. And we rarely hear their stories. We tend to anthropomorphize landers and rovers, giving them nicknames and assigning personalities, but we don't often look at who controls them.The product of Kessler's three months is his book, Martian Summer. "It's really about the character and the people inside mission control," he said, describing them as some of the most dedicated and passionate and remarkable people."Think about what they're doing," he urged me on the phone. He describes the guys in mission control as modern explorers. They're building the robotic equivalents of Columbus' ships, all to give us a better understanding of our position in the universe.Phoenix was a really interesting mission for which to be a fly on the wall. Phoenix was so named because it was born of the ashes of the Mars Polar Lander that failed in 1999 – both missions are shortened to MPL. The Polar lander succumb to a tiny failure, a break in the leg joint triggered the premature shutdown of the landing rockets – the retro rockets – and it fell to the surface traveling an order of magnitude faster than it was intended. Needless to say it smashed.
Phoenix used leftover hardware and instruments from Polar. It also landed at a similarly high latitude that Polar had been aiming for. There was a lot on the line. But there was phenomenal scientific return: Phoenix found water. Water can't exist in a liquid form on Mars but the lander found evidence of sublimation, the process of moving directly from a solid to a gas.Mars fans can only imagine how thrilling a mission this much have been to sit in on. Kessler got to watch engineers problem solve stuck instruments and negotiate digging into harder-than-concrete Martian soil with a 14 minute time delay! The only downside might be shifting to a Martian cycle of sols. A day on Mars lasts 24 hours and 39 minutes so every day you go to work 40 minutes later. Kessler describes it as constant jet lag.Martian Summer is an interesting look behind the scenes of mission control, a very candid "warts and all" look at some of (what I might say is) the most interesting science going on in the world. But Kessler highlights a bigger problem, namely the general lack of interest people take in robotic planetary missions. His decision to highlight the engineers – the mission's principal investigator Peter Smith dominated the narrative – is a pretty good reminder that there are men involved in unmanned spaceflight. And just because they aren't in the spacecraft doesn't mean they are any less interesting.Connections:
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Phoenix used leftover hardware and instruments from Polar. It also landed at a similarly high latitude that Polar had been aiming for. There was a lot on the line. But there was phenomenal scientific return: Phoenix found water. Water can't exist in a liquid form on Mars but the lander found evidence of sublimation, the process of moving directly from a solid to a gas.Mars fans can only imagine how thrilling a mission this much have been to sit in on. Kessler got to watch engineers problem solve stuck instruments and negotiate digging into harder-than-concrete Martian soil with a 14 minute time delay! The only downside might be shifting to a Martian cycle of sols. A day on Mars lasts 24 hours and 39 minutes so every day you go to work 40 minutes later. Kessler describes it as constant jet lag.Martian Summer is an interesting look behind the scenes of mission control, a very candid "warts and all" look at some of (what I might say is) the most interesting science going on in the world. But Kessler highlights a bigger problem, namely the general lack of interest people take in robotic planetary missions. His decision to highlight the engineers – the mission's principal investigator Peter Smith dominated the narrative – is a pretty good reminder that there are men involved in unmanned spaceflight. And just because they aren't in the spacecraft doesn't mean they are any less interesting.Connections: