Curiosity

I’ve been a NASA TV junkie ever since I’ve been able to get it on my home television, which has been the last half dozen years or so.  I did spend time watching that same signal stream on-line prior, but sitting in front of a computer watching television doesn’t quite work the same for me as in the easy chair, feet up, with a beer and chips at the ready.

I’ve watched lots of launches, daily International Space Station updates, space probe reports, and tons of talking heads on panels explaining what engineering and scientific miracles NASA and its global partners are up to.  

I’ve got to tell you, in my view NASA TV is the greatest reality television going today.  I mean, when you look at a quiet TV screen of a fueling rocket breathing on the launch pad for hours before ignition and launch -- or a last minute scrub -- it doesn’t get much more real than that.  No rush.  No commercials. Nothing fake.  An interview or two explaining what’s happening. Occasional voice-over updates. Real stuff, I tell you. 

So it was with heightened interest that I watched the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory, better known to many as the Curiosity rover, last November around Thanksgiving.  Loaded high atop an Atlas V rocket, the largest Martian probe ever built -- about the size of a small SUV -- took off into a lovely Florida morning on a multi-million mile, eight month trip to the red planet.  Such an interplanetary expedition can only happen every eight years due to the orbits of both Mars and Earth.  It’s a fuel economy thing.  Last time the planets lined up like this, rovers Spirit and Opportunity made the trip.  

So it was with even greater interest that I watched the landing of Curiosity early Monday morning about 1:30 Dayton time.  Sure enough, there was plenty of drama.  All of the landing activity broadcast in ‘real time’ had already happened almost ten minutes prior on Mars.  In reality, we were just getting a reading of the data that told the folks at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena what already happened.  At one point NASA administrator Charles Bolden said they knew the probe was on the surface, but didn’t have a clue yet what kind of shape it was in.  Soft land or crash?  After all, more probes to Mars have crashed than have made safe arrival.  

What really got to me Monday morning -- and brought me to tears for much of the event -- was the reaction of JPL engineers and scientists who had their faces front and center on NASA TV’s cameras.  There was no hiding their enthusiasm.  Every time a positive bit of news was announced (‘The chute has opened,’ or ‘We have powered flight’), a series of cheers went up in the room.  And then when the news of the soft landing finally ended the ‘seven minutes of terror,’ all hell broke loose in the room.  

What moved me to tears?  First, I’d have to say, is the understanding that hundreds of people had worked diligently to both solve new problems for this flight and build a craft that could execute all the commands a robot geological laboratory trip to Mars requires.  It was kind of like shedding a tear when an American ascends the medal stand at the Olympics.  Along with the national pride, you just have to appreciate the blood, sweat, and tears the whole thing required.  

But another piece that really got me occurred at the Q&A following the post-touchdown news conference that, frankly, prompted today’s post.  Something like 700 international engineers and scientists are currently on the Curiosity team.  Story is they will live together in Pasadena on Martian time for the next 90 days as both engineers (who must check out all of the rover’s equipment) and scientists (who will work the multiple labs on board) learn how the machine actually works in Martian conditions, some of which cannot be duplicated on Earth in simulations.  And it’s not just the equipment they need to learn and calibrate, but it’s each other.  Seven hundred folk need to learn how to work together more closely to maximize what Curiosity can do.  After 90 Martian sols on Earth, these folks will be able to go back to their institutions and operate Curiosity remotely  from their own work stations.    

So in reality, it’s not just the amazing machine built that succeeded in an exceedingly difficult task, but the people who made it all happen over an eight+ year problem solving cycle.  And to put an exclamation point on those people who know how to do such things, another NASA satellite currently in orbit around Mars was in proper position to actually photograph Curiosity’s descent.  For heaven’s sake, we actually have a picture of the parachute fully open, drifting the newest Mars rover to the planet’s surface, before the device even dropped out of its shell and started to fly on rockets. 

It is stunning what these amazing people have accomplished.  Makes me think that just about anything is possible if we just put our minds to it.  Such a day!  ;-)

Today’s Elder Idea:  A special thank you to Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac for bringing forward this poem by Wendell Berry last Saturday:

The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do

we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go

we have come to our real journey. 

The mind that is not baffled is not employed. 

The impeded stream is the one that sings. 

from Standing by Words: Essays

North Publishing (1984)

Reprinted by Counterpoint (2011)