Category Why Mars

In 1965, even as NASA and its Mars constituency celebrated the success of Mari­ner 4, they thought ahead to what would come next. “Next” meant not only next in the line of Mariner projects, but the beginning of a new program called Voyager. Not to be confused with an interplanetary Voyager, launched in the late 1970s, this Voyager—a Mars lander with an automated biological laboratory payload—was conceived in the early 1960s at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with the encouragement and involvement of the exobiology community. It was seen as the natural successor to Mariner, which featured flybys and orbiters. From the beginning, advocates knew that it was unusually challenging, but the challenge attracted top engineers at JPL. Also, the exobiologists who wanted to look for life knew they would have to develop experiments and unprecedented life-detecting equipment. NASA leaders zealously aimed to surpass the Soviet Union in the space race, and that race encompassed robotic Mars missions. For NASA, the program was also precursor to human Mars flight. Hence, in the 1960s there was relative unity within NASA and among various interests—planetary scientists, exobiologists, engineers, and administrators—about the rationale and direction of robotic Mars exploration. All three drivers for the Red Planet operated: life on, life to, and international competition.

But NASA Administrator Webb belatedly added another reason for Mars Voyager—keeping the Saturn 5 rocket alive. This use of the giant Moon rocket

raised the potential cost of Voyager tremendously, ultimately making it politi­cally unacceptable. When Congress killed Voyager, NASA substituted Viking. NASA made Viking’s purpose clear: to search for life. With its budget declin­ing, NASA felt that it had to recapture public support. It decided to put most of its planetary program energy and money behind Viking. Tom Paine, Webb’s successor, raised the stakes by augmenting the complexity and costs of Viking. While planning and selling Viking, NASA landed on the Moon. Surely, if NASA could succeed with Apollo, it could succeed with Viking! Technological opti­mism reigned. The political consensus in the space sector and between space policy and national policy which had operated in the Apollo/Mariner era gave way to discord over Mars Voyager. What happened to the robotic program de­pended in large part on what happened to NASA. Eventually, the president and Congress settled the question of NASA’s future via the shuttle decision. Mean­while, a new consensus and equilibrium among NASA, scientists, the White House, and Congress were forged around Viking.

On June 19, 1976, Viking і swung into Mars orbit. “After eight years, we’re finally in orbit,” a relieved James Martin exclaimed.46 This was an achievement in and of itself. But NASA knew that this was but the first step. Soon, Viking was transmitting photos of Mars’s surface, including the region where NASA planned a landing for Viking і. Various NASA officials and others gathered at Mission Control, Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Gentry Lee, JPL mission planning director, recalled how grown scientists and engineers behaved like 10-year-olds as pictures of Mars from the orbiter came in. They whooped and yelled and ran to the screen where images appeared with cries of “wow.”47

While the images were fascinating and spectacular, they also produced anxi­ety. Sagan, a member of the landing site team, remarked that Viking could see the larger-scale features, and many were menacing. But what about smaller – scale features the orbiter could not see? If Viking landed the wrong way on a boulder the size of a trash can, it might be wrecked.48 Looking at images of the previously selected landing site, Harold Mazursky, on loan to NASA from the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS), felt that the risk was acceptable.

Martin, however, was not so sure. He conferred with superiors at NASA Headquarters up to Fletcher. NASA had scheduled the first landing for July 4, aligned with the national celebration of the country’s 200th birthday. Presi­dent Gerald Ford was “enthralled” and eager to make the landing part of the celebration. Fletcher and other top managers told Martin not to worry about the scheduled July 4 landing date. If he believed the site in question was too dangerous, they said, he should delay the landing and look for a place that was safer. On June 28, Martin informed a vast media assemblage that had gathered for the historic event that the chosen site “had too many unknowns, and could be hazardous.”49 Fletcher, meanwhile, informed the president that the July 4 rendezvous was out. Martin “would have thrown his badge on the table if we’d taken the risk of landing on July 4,” Hinners recalled.50

The vital importance of Viking to NASA kept Fletcher intimately involved. On July і, Fletcher announced from JPL’s Mission Control Center that NASA had found an alternative 150 miles northwest of the original place. “Mars is a lot different planet than we thought it would be,” he stated. “By a combination of intuition, wise judgment, and a little bit of luck, we found a site close by that exceeded all expectations.”51 But just a few days later NASA examined radar signals of the new site from Earth, and they indicated that the orbital images could be wrong as to the smoothness of the terrain. Again, Martin and his team decided they had better keep looking, and senior NASA officials once more went along with the judgment.

This time the reconnaissance was even more thorough, using orbiter pho­tos, radar, and expert analysis. The problem was that as NASA looked farther from the original site, it moved more distant from potentially fruitful places of scientific interest. The search for life was the prime announced purpose of the mission, and that purpose was in danger of being jeopardized. The Viking team had to find a place that was both reasonably safe and scientifically interesting, which was becoming extremely hard to do.

The meetings of scientists took place every day for long hours, amidst grow­ing frustration about getting consensus on a place to land. There was no time for personal lives. Viking dominated all schedules. Gentry Lee worried that the landing date would coincide with the birth of his first child. Tim Mutch, a Brown University geologist in charge of the lander’s camera system, tested the system again and again, so often that he became mesmerized by his routines and, at one point, confused testing with reality. He went home one evening to tell his wife how well the photos had gone only to be reminded that the actual work lay ahead.52 Everyone was on edge and getting cranky. Minds wandered and speculations roamed amidst the nervousness and loss of sleep. Mazursky imag­ined great floods taking place on Mars carving giant canyons. His USGS col­league, Mike Carr, countered that the surface features were more likely caused by slow-moving streams that took eons to carve the cleavages. Observers called Mazursky “the great inundator” and Carr “the long, slow trickler.”53

No one was more frustrated or tense than Martin. “We always had it in the back of our own minds that Mars would not cooperate, and it hasn’t,” he complained.54 One day he exploded over a trivial matter, signaling to everyone the exasperation they all felt about the exigency to make a decision soon about where to land.55 Finally, at midnight, July 14, the landing-site team reached agreement on a particular site. It was 200 miles to the northwest of the original target in the plains of Chryse, where water was believed to have flowed.56 An­nouncing the decision the next morning, Martin said Viking 1 would land July 20, a date that marked the anniversary of the first Moon landing of Apollo.

Although preoccupied with immediate issues, Fletcher and Fisk were aware that the Soviet Union was presenting an opportunity to direct policymakers’ atten­tion to Mars and space exploration generally. Whereas the Planetary Society stressed cooperation, NASA used the competition card.

NASA looked beyond Mars Observer to propose what it and its scientific advisors wanted—a rover and Mars Sample Return mission. Once the Soviets went to Phobos, they would likely launch such a mission to the Red Planet. NASA argued that the United States should compete. In late March, Briggs and the directors of JPL and Johnson Space Center (JSC) proposed the “Mars Rover and Sample Return” mission at a meeting with 200 representatives from industry in Houston, Texas. “This is a mission that has to happen,” said Briggs. “NASA is not exactly at the zenith of its activities at the moment,” he pointed out. “Nor is the planetary program.” “We either do it now or after the Soviets do it,” he continued. “NASA has got to get moving again.”

It was made clear that this particular mission had strong support from the scientific community and NASA in general. Aaron Cohen, the JSC director, declared, “If we want to be able to carry out tasks [involving astronauts] on the Moon or Mars, we must have a firm base in science. Lew Allen [the JPL Direc­tor] and I agree that by working together, we can learn much from this mission.” NASA gave a similar briefing to contractors a few days later in Pasadena, home ofJPL. JPL would be lead center in the project, with JSC assisting. Briggs again emphasized the competitiveness driver. He said that the Soviets were en­gaged in a similar mission and “that it is my responsibility to make sure the United States is in a position to do a mission with the same kind of complexity in the same time frame. So that really is the trigger on the timing.”23

NASA—and Mars advocates generally—seemed to be searching for any ratio­nale that would sell to get the agency moving again, after Challenger. Whether it was cooperation or competition did not matter, as long as the strategy was effective. The problem was not in the packaging. It was whether policymakers were in a buying mood for the product.

In August 1987, Ride’s report was published. Cooperation and competition gave way to “leadership.” Entitled Leadership and America’s Future in Space, Ride listed four possible long-range initiatives that would restore the United States to a position of leadership in space. Without stating priority among the four, Ride listed them as (1) Mission to Planet Earth—Earth satellites to monitor the global environment; (2) Exploration of the Solar System—essentially the robotic program recommended in 1983 by SSEC, as augmented in 1986, to include more ambitious endeavors; (3) Building an Outpost on the Moon; and (4) Humans to Mars. This last initiative overlapped with the second, as robotic flights to Mars were essential precursors. Ride wrote, “Robotic exploration of the planet would be the first phase [of humans to Mars] and would include the return of samples of Martian rock and soil.”

The problem, as Ride pointed out, was that while many space enthusiasts wanted to go beyond the shuttle and space station to bolder ventures, exist­ing programs would continue to dominate agency spending for the foreseeable future. Given realities, she noted, many observers believed that NASA could

not handle another major program.24 These ambitions and financial realities had to be reconciled somehow, she argued, for NASA needed strategic goals and direction.25

Fletcher responded to the Ride study in two ways. First, he established an Office of Exploration to provide a focus for sustained thinking and advocacy for exploration in general, with emphasis on human spaceflight. With Ride leaving NASA for an academic appointment, he placed John Aron, a veteran NASA official, in charge of the new office as an assistant administrator. In addition, on August io, he met with Vice President George H. W. Bush to brief him on NASA’s plans after Challenger recovery. In this meeting, he pointed out that the Soviet Union was surpassing the United States in certain technologies and program ambition. He said that the Soviets had an advantage in both robotic and human exploration of Mars. He advised that the United States needed to choose a long-term, post-space station goal to give the agency strategic focus, and that human spaceflight to Mars was the logical one.26

Fletcher also wanted to discuss NASA’s future with the president but was blocked in getting to Reagan. The word was that Reagan’s lieutenants felt that Fletcher should get space station spending under control before trying to per­suade the president to launch a Mars venture.27

In November-December 1987 the Planetary Society published and circu­lated what it called the Mars Declaration. Former NASA Administrators, Apollo – era officials, astronauts, Nobel laureates, actors, authors, politicians (including former president Jimmy Carter), university presidents, professors, activists, mu­sicians, and many other notables signed on. The Declaration echoed Sagan’s view that the two countries should go together to Mars, first robotically, and then with humans. The Declaration also noted that a Mars destination would give the space station greater purpose, as a step toward the Red Planet.28

When Reagan and Gorbachev met in a summit in December 1987, the two leaders discussed many common issues, and space collaboration was one area where partnership was deemed possible. Gorbachev spoke officially with Rea­gan and unofficially with others. He met with one group of Americans which included Sagan and Paul Newman, the actor, a member of the Planetary Soci­ety’s advisory board. Gorbachev specifically mentioned to this group his desire that the United States and the Soviet Union collaborate on Mars exploration.29

While conversations took place in Washington, D. C., NASA scientists and engineers were in Moscow conferring with Soviet counterparts about how to collaborate in view of the Soviet Union’s stated desire that Phobos initiate a sequence of missions to Mars. The Americans had Mars Observer approved, as well as ambitions for more missions. Beyond Phobos, to go up in 1988, the So­viets planned a mission in the mid-1990s (after the U. S. Mars Observer) which would go to Mars (rather than Phobos) and release balloons to study Mars’s at­mosphere. NASA entered into talks the Soviet Union initiated with the French as potential collaborators on this mission. If Mars Observer carried an antenna, it could receive data from Soviet balloons and transmit information back to Earth. The robotic programs of the two nations could thereby get collaboration on Mars started in a serious way.30

The Reagan budget came out in February 1988. NASA got a raise, but most of the new money went to the space station, which was suffering overruns, and a new space shuttle to replace Challenger. Money for Mars robotic flight re­mained tight.31 Reagan had considered a “Kennedy-style declaration” calling for a dramatic space venture, such as a Moon base or trip to Mars, but rejected such an initiative. Instead, the White House issued in February a national space policy that called for the United States “to expand human presence and activity beyond Earth orbit into the solar system.”32 While these larger policy activities relating to NASA’s future went on, NASA implemented the one Mars project it had.

OMB, leading presidential budget-balancing policy, had had NASA going down drastically in ensuing years, and that included draconian cuts for space science. Both Gore and House Speaker Newt Gingrich went on record after the Mars rock discovery, saying NASA would get more money for Mars explora­tion. There was political agreement on that. But from where would the money come? House Republicans argued for taking the money from Gore’s favorite program—space-based global environmental observation—which they believed provided ammunition for Gore in the global warming debate.43

Goldin did not wish to rob the budget of other important missions to fund Mars. He pressed OMB to keep the overall NASA budget stable, at least, and not have it decrease in following years. On November 19, he wrote T. J. Glau- thier, OMB associate director, pleading for budget stability in the out-years. He followed this up the same day with a letter to Glauthier’s superior, the OMB di­rector Franklin Raines, declaring that NASA was “at a crossroads… level fund­ing is critical.”44 Huntress complained publicly that NASA’s “productivity has been going up, but our budget has been going down.” Gibbons acknowledged that NASA’s financial situation was a “dilemma [that] is coming to a head.”45

The Russian connection had helped “stabilize” NASA’s space station budget in 1993, and the Mars Together initiative might have been an additional help with regard to the robotic Mars program if it proved viable. But Russia had monstrous financial problems and continued its string of robotic failures. On November 16, Russia launched “Mars ’96,” but it went awry soon after launch and crashed into the Pacific.

Russia’s more recent failure reminded NASA and its Mars constituency how difficult implementing big plans for the Red Planet could be. “You always have to stay humble in this business,” said Tony Spear, project manager for the Path­finder lander/rover mission.46 On December 4, Pathfinder soared into space successfully, on a trajectory that would take it to Mars ahead of MGS. Huntress exclaimed, “Pathfinder will establish the technological basis for missions of the future. Each mission will learn from its predecessors to pry loose the secrets of Mars.”47

In early December, Sagan paid what would be his last of a number of visits to Goldin. His hair gone and appearance gaunt, he showed the ravages of a bone marrow disease that would soon take his life. The two men spoke for hours, during which Sagan “laid out a series of visions about the future of space exploration.” “He was talking with intensity,” Goldin recalled. “A man on his deathbed. This is the Carl Sagan I love, a man so full of hope and optimism that he never gave up.”48

On December 12, Gore held his much-anticipated meeting to discuss the implications of the Mars meteorite. This was presumably preparatory to the policy summit Mikulski had demanded and Clinton had promised. The Gore meeting was about ideas and philosophy, not programs and budgets. Scientists, philosophers, theologians, NASA, and administration officials attended. Not present, and sorely missed, was Sagan. The scientist most identified with the quest for life was himself now so gravely ill that he could not come. He would die on December 20.49

The Gore meeting extended almost three hours, more like an academic seminar than a government hearing. Most present were impressed with Gore’s knowledge of the subject. Although he “brushed off’ one participant’s sugges­tion of an Apollo-style approach, he clearly was eager to do more on Mars and Origins.

He said it was important to seize the moment, because the combination of Mars and extraterrestrial life fired the human imagination. He said he person­ally believed in the “ubiquity of life.” At the end of the meeting, OMB’s Glau – thier—the same OMB official to whom Goldin had recently pled for funding— declared he would try to find ways to insulate space science from cuts. He would not have said that if it was not clear that Gore and Clinton were supportive of such a statement. Finally, after the meeting, Gore declared his desire for a “robust space science program.”50

An unidentified “administration official” told Science magazine that prior to the Mars meteorite, space science had few advocates in the White House. “Clearly,” this official said, “space scientists have more leverage now than they have ever had.”51

In January 1997, Clinton began his second term as president. He retained Goldin, now regarded as a valuable member of his administration, the poster boy for federal reinvention. Clinton gave his State of the Union Address on February 4 and—in a rare presidential nod—specifically mentioned his support for space and the Mars program. He declared, “We must continue to explore the heavens—pressing on with the Mars probes and the International Space Station.”52 Then, on February 6, Clinton rolled out his budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year.

As expected, the budget was a reprieve for NASA. Overall, the budget re­fleeted Clinton’s desire to make progress to achieve a balanced budget during his time in office. But it also showed a conscious effort to support research and development as key to the nation’s future. NASA was helped by this govern­ment-wide decision. That did not mean a budget increase. It meant averting a huge cut. Within NASA, the budget also showed a particular desire to favor space science.53

The mark for NASA was $13.7 billion. This was $280 million down from its current budget. But this was far better than what NASA was going to get if OMB’s earlier recommendation had had its way. At the White House’s direction, the new Origins theme became the focus of NASA’s budget submission, and OMB worked with NASA to add $1 billion over the agency’s five-year projec­tion for this initiative.54 Goldin knew he had dodged a bullet, and he expressed delight to the media. “Holy Mackerel,” he said, “this is a great program.”55 Space science got a 4% raise, bringing it to $2 billion. Ed Weiler, put in charge of the new Origins activity and destined to succeed as associate administrator for science when Huntress retired from NASA in 1998, declared, “I’m exceptionally happy. All the boats are going to rise.”56 This would especially be true of Mars exploration.

Senator Mikulski was particularly elated. When she saw the budget, she wrote Vice President Gore, declaring, “A space summit is no longer necessary.” She had been the prime mover for such a summit, but she had achieved as much as she could have expected without one, thanks in large part to the Mars rock and the vice president’s support. “How do you spell relief?” she asked. The answer she spelled out: “G-O-R-E.”57

Exhilarated, Goldin pushed officials in NASA space science and human spaceflight directorates to work closely together, and—while there was fric­tion over who would pay for what—there was serious effort expended by both sides.58 Goldin believed that if all went well with the robotic and the space station programs, he or a successor could propose to the president the “next logical step,” which Goldin regarded as human spaceflight to Mars. Goldin had come to Washington to set NASA on a trajectory to Mars. Like many advo­cates, especially Friedman, who had easy access to the NASA Administrator, Goldin believed that this was the place where the human and robotic programs converged. He shared Zubrin’s view that humans to Mars required extracting resources while on Mars. But the “living off the land” philosophy required bet­ter knowledge of what resources existed that could be converted to human use.

Accordingly, NASA could equip robotic Mars probes with instruments to scout such resources, as well as detect radiation and other hazards to astronauts in the Mars environment. For Goldin, robotic Mars missions combined scientific and precursory rationales, and he made that clear to the agency.

But the fanfare that ordinarily would have greeted the formal announcement of the president’s proposed budget February 3 was missing. Just two days before, disaster struck the agency and nation: Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it prepared to land, killing seven astronauts aboard and scattering debris across a number of states. The shock numbed all of NASA.

What would be the impact of Columbia on NASA’s robotic MEP? O’Keefe had been appointed Administrator chiefly to deal with the space station financial problem. All of a sudden, he was cast in the role of a disaster manager. This role dominated O’Keefe for the remainder of the year and influenced most of his decisions the following year. The shuttle and its future took center stage. More­over, the media gave saturation coverage to the Columbia investigation, carried out by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), a body appointed by NASA but given maximum independence by O’Keefe.

In this time of crisis, Weiler and his SMD managed the Mars program with an extra burden. They knew how crucial to the agency it was that the twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, succeed. From the outset, the rovers had been more than a science priority—they had been a NASA priority. In the wake of Columbia they took on even more significance. They would symbolize NASA’s technical credibility. As the CAIB investigation extended over a seven-month period (February to August), it uncovered evidence of not only technical but also organizational flaws. These added to the blemishes on NASA’s record stem­ming from the 1999 robotic Mars failures. The media highlighted these multiple indicators of management weakness. All those connected with the upcoming Mars flights worked harder than ever to make them show that NASA was still a “can do” agency. JPL in particular became increasingly focused on the MER. Never before had Naderi seen JPL come together behind a project so inten­sively as it did on the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.22

Those involved at JPL and in the Mars science community worked incred­ibly hard. Squyres, the principal scientist, recalled his own experience: “I taught [at Cornell] on Monday and Wednesday. Then, Wednesday night I flew to the West Coast. I worked at JPL Thursday and Friday. Friday night, I stayed at a Los Angeles International Airport motel. I flew back East in time for dinner with my family on Saturday evening.. ..I lived on West Coast time when in the East. I went to bed at 2am, got up at ioam….I usually arrived in Pasadena at iipm.” Squyres kept to this routine over and over again as necessary, for six years spanning before and after the rovers launched.23

Success for the Mars rovers depended greatly on where they landed. As Wei – ler put it, NASA had to balance “science value with engineering safety.”24 NASA looked at 155 potential places to land, involving ioo Mars scientists in the deci­sion process. On April ii, NASA announced its choices. It selected two sites. The first rover, scheduled for launch in late May, would be sent to Gusev Crater, 15 degrees south of Mars’s equator. The second, to go up in late June, would go to the Meridiani Planum. Gusev was a giant crater that appeared to have once held a lake. Meridiani was a broad outcropping with deposits of an iron oxide mineral, usually associated with water, 2 degrees south of the equator, halfway around Mars from Gusev.

NASA and the Mars community grew increasingly tense as the date for the first rover launch approached. Their preparations were accompanied by the din of media attention not only to their work but, even more loudly, to the CAIB investigation. Ironically, Scott Hubbard, architect of the new Mars program, was on the CAIB panel and playing a leading role in determining what had gone wrong. He knew that everything he had done to put the Mars program in shape could go down the drain if both Spirit and Opportunity failed. One of these missions had to work. He declared, “I will be holding my breath with everybody else.”25

On June ii, Spirit, the first of the two rovers, rocketed into the sky. It became clear shortly afterward that all had gone well. The next month, Opportunity went aloft, again successfully. Each would take seven months to reach its des­tination. Figueroa was elated and told the media so. Weiler tried to explain where this particular set of launches fit into the program. “We’re not searching for water this time,” he pointed out. “We know there’s water on Mars; we know there was water on Mars” in the distant past. “What this mission does is try to understand how long water preserved at any one point. That’s the key question for life.” Where water has been around for thousands, even millions of years, “life seems to spring up,” he said. Then, he contained his enthusiasm with a note of caution. He pointed out that there was no guarantee of success. “Mars is a death planet,” Weiler lamented. “It’s a graveyard for many, many space­craft. Despite all these efforts [to eliminate risks], the rovers remain high-risk missions.”26

The macropolitical context of Mars exploration changed significantly at this time, making it even more difficult than before for Griffin and the scientific community to reach an accommodation. The Democrats recaptured control of Congress in the November elections. With Bush in the White House, relations in policymaking grew toxic. Fights between Congress and the president in No­vember and December made it almost impossible to get budget bills through. This was bad news for NASA, space science, and robotic Mars exploration. The lobbying campaign by the Planetary Society and others had paid off in getting congressional bills that added money to science at NASA. Moreover, friendly senators had gotten the Senate to pass a $1 billion supplement to NASA, above its regular program appropriation, for shuttle recovery and Katrina-related re­pairs. Such legislation—if it had become law—would have been a great help to the agency in restoring some of the cuts to science, including Mars exploration.

But legislation of this kind was not to be. The best Congress could do was to pass a continuing resolution to keep most agencies, including NASA, funded at their current year’s rate. This meant no raise at all, at least until after the Demo­crats had taken charge of the new Congress in January 2007. If the continuing resolution held the entire next fiscal year, NASA would have to cut deeper into its programs. Mars research could be further damaged.58

The year 2007 opened with NASA getting decidedly mixed signals from its political masters. In February, the new Congress, led by the Democrats, ex­tended the continuing resolution that funded NASA and various other federal agencies at the 2006 level through the end of the fiscal year, September 30. In doing so, Congress gave some agencies small increases at the expense of other agencies that received modest cuts in order to maintain the overall figure. NASA was one of the agencies cut. However, the president’s FY 2008 budget, also announced in February, gave NASA a raise, to $17.3 billion. That was a 3.1% increase over the president’s 2007 request, which Congress did not grant thanks to the continuing resolution. So NASA had to do the best it could, Mars science included. The president’s science advisor, John Marburger, suggested that space scientists curb their appetites and turn off missions before launching new ones.59

Griffin focused all the more acutely on his own priorities under the circum­stances. Everything narrowed down to his view of the core mission, and pro­grams were weighed in terms of their value to that mission. For Griffin this meant concentrating on the first phase of Constellation, Orion-Ares I, which promised a shuttle successor and technology development relevant to Orion – Ares V, the heavy-lift Moon rocket that would come later. Mars research gave way to lunar research. The Mars budget was far from what it had been projected to be when O’Keefe left the NASA Administrator’s post. But Mars was treated better than many other planets or science projects. Astrobiology was especially hard-hit, not just by budget reduction, but also by Griffin’s words. “If they [as – trobiologists] want to work for government money,” he declared, “they must look at what the government wants—not what they think it should want.”60

Implementation of the existing MEP continued. The next mission in line for launch in the Mars program—Phoenix (2007)—was experiencing an over­run. NASA considered killing Phoenix, the first Scout mission, but wanted to stay with its launch-at-every-26-months strategy. NASA decided to meet the additional costs. McCuistion indicated that the Mars program had very little flexibility and that “the overrun on Phoenix was going to have some effect on us,” which meant that NASA would have to take money from elsewhere in the Mars budget to pay for Phoenix.61

In 2007 MSL also revealed overrun issues. Solving the overrun problem for MSL was going to be much more difficult than for Phoenix given MSL’s size, the criticality of the mission, and the scale of the potential overrun. Dealing with MSL would not be Cleave’s problem, however, as she had retired in De­cember 2006. Colleen Hartman served in her place on an acting basis. Griffin in February announced that S. Alan Stern would succeed Hartman in April, as associate administrator for science. Stern was executive director of the South­west Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. He was a well-known, respected planetary researcher and the principal investigator of the Pluto mission.62

The rhythm of change within a multimission program—where birth, life, and death of discrete projects occurred in parallel—was seen graphically at this time. For several months, NASA had been working to make contact with one of the two Mars rovers that for seven years had been operating on Mars: Spirit. In May, NASA decided that the task was hopeless. The official date for ending attempts at contact was May 25T Opportunity, however, was still alive and continued.

MSL, meanwhile, almost had a potentially serious setback. It was sitting on a table at JPL, clamped tightly onto a platform. A back shell was attached to MSL. The back shell was designed to protect the car-sized rover as it entered the Mar­tian atmosphere. A crane operator accidentally lifted the back shell and MSL, along with the 2000-pound aluminum table to which MSL was attached. It was an extremely anxious moment for those who witnessed the event, but MSL escaped damage. NASA, JPL, and Mars proponents generally were lucky.48

They were not so fortunate when it came to money. On June 8, NASA’s inspector general issued a report based on an investigation of MSL. It cautioned that MSL would need additional resources, even at this late date, to be ready to launch on time. Moreover, even with more resources it might have difficulty meeting the launch deadline. There were still technical issues to be resolved. “Project Managers must complete nearly three times the number of critical tasks they originally planned in the few months remaining until launch,” the inspector general reported. He also worried that money, time, and technical problems might force NASA to reduce capability to get MSL up. The inspector general charged that NASA was taking MSL down to the wire for the Novem­ber 25-December 18 window.49

NASA said in response that the agency might well have to use remaining reserves of money ($22 million) to launch MSL. That sum, an agency spokes­person said, would be sufficient to deal with the issues raised concerning the $2.5 billion venture. NASA still believed it could resolve whatever technical problems remained by the launch time. It could cope with software develop­ment challenges after the launch. The spokesperson said that the software could be uploaded to the rover.50 Hence, NASA believed that it would make the dead­line. The inspector general did not contest the NASA response. The agency thus arranged for MSL’s cross-country trip.

The product of almost 10 years and a workforce of 1,000, MSL was at last ready to go from JPL in California to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.51 On

June 22, an Air Force C-17 transport plane flew MSL to the Florida cape. There was still final assembly to take place, with the next big milestone being in Sep­tember when the aeroshell would be placed on the car-sized rover.

What has energized NASA toward Mars has been a loose coalition of Mars ad­vocates. These proponents—governmental and nongovernmental—have pro­vided the continuing push behind NASA to maintain the quest. What the Mars Underground said of itself—that it was “closely knit but loosely woven”—might be said of Mars advocates generally. They have constituted an inside-outside political coalition, one congealed by shared attitudes rather than overarching structure. There have been scientists, engineers, and managers within NASA who have propelled the Mars program forward. There have also been indi­viduals and institutions outside NASA who have similarly galvanized action in relation to Mars. The Mars coalition is a “special interest” in Washington parlance. NASA has many interests (and constituencies) to satisfy. The robotic Mars program is but one of many agency enterprises, and not the largest. The central strategy of the Mars advocacy coalition has been to make its priority a

NASA priority, and to influence NASA to engage academic scientists, industry, the White House, Congress, the media, the American public, and international partners in backing a sustained MEP. Especially important has been enlisting (or neutralizing) OMB through broader political support.4

The course of Mars exploration has reflected the success and failure of its network of supporters in the yearly competition for priority and funding. Chai­kin has written that a cluster of people have had “a passion for Mars.”5 They are the core of the coalition, the activists. In addition, Mars has a long history of being fascinating to a wider audience, and that fact has helped those with a Mars passion to make Mars first among equals in planetary exploration.

The Mars advocacy coalition extends over generations. It has expanded and contracted. Its membership has changed over the decades, and the baton of leadership has been passed on. Some of the prominent early advocates, such as scientists Sagan and Mutch, have had sites on Mars named after them. Others, such as Viking project manager Martin, are virtual legends among many con­temporary Mars proponents, particularly engineers and project managers. As the early Mars exploration protagonists have left, others have taken their place. Often, they have been the graduate students of the pioneers, as Squyres was of Sagan and Garvin was of Mutch. Squyres is an example of an outside advocate, while Garvin exemplifies an advocate inside NASA.

Some of the graduate students in the Mars Underground, such as McKay and Stoker, joined NASA as researchers as they advanced professionally. Outside advocates became insiders. Many outside scientists serve on NASA advisory bodies, achieving access and sometimes shaping policy their way. Inside advo­cates leave NASA and continue their efforts on behalf of Mars from the outside, as seen in the cases of Hubbard and Huntress. Some have been highly visible, such as Zubrin. Others are virtually unknown to the public, as was the situation with Klein at Ames.

Beyond the ad hoc advocacy of individuals, there has been the “institutional­ization” of interest. Hubbard and Naderi began a sequence of officials serving, respectively, in Mars director posts at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Labora­tory. Certain universities—for example, Cornell, Arizona State, University of Arizona, University of Colorado, Brown, and others—have become continuing focal points for Mars research.6 JPL is the NASA center that has been the most continually active among NASA centers for big science projects in Mars explo­ration over the decades. Various companies are closely associated with Mars exploration. Some are huge like Lockheed; others are smaller and more special­

ized, such as the planetary camera firm of Malin. There are organized interest groups with a Mars emphasis, particularly the Planetary Society. After many years as the Society’s executive director, Friedman stepped down, succeeded by Bill Nye, “the science guy,” a well-known media commentator. People in posi­tions change, but roles in advocacy continue.

The Planetary Society, based in Pasadena, is associated closely with the robotic program and has JPL roots. The Mars Society is another interest group, particu­larly oriented toward human spaceflight, but supportive of precursory robotic flight. Core advocates gather allies and attempt to build an ever-widening gyre of support, including politicians, media, and the public. NASA is the target of all pressures. More than an object of pressures, NASA is a force itself. NASA has helped to mobilize Mars advocacy through formation of a Mars program that provides funds to universities, professors, and graduate students. More recently, NASA has sought to build a scientific constituency for astrobiology. Astrobi – ology (formerly exobiology) was once ridiculed as a science without a known subject. NASA’s Ames Research Center helped keep the field going in the late 1970s and 1980s when most scientists abandoned it. But with the revival of life as a credible rationale for Mars exploration in the 1990s, the field has regained respectability and has attracted an interdisciplinary band of able scientists.

Individuals in strategic positions associated with Mars at NASA Headquar­ters and various centers have provided authoritative leadership to Mars explo­ration over the years. Some of these individuals have had strong influence in the policy process, and others relatively little. Turning ideas into government programs is hard, especially when resources are extremely limited and compet­ing demands are numerous.

What makes this translation of visions into action so complex is that Mars exploration is big science of a particular kind. It is “distributed” big science. While there have been some billion-dollar missions—for example, Viking and MSL—the program more often has featured a parade of spacecraft of more moderate expense. It has been organized into missions spread across years. Ide­ally, there is a coherent and integrated sequence of activity, with one mission providing a base of knowledge pointing to what must be done in the one fol­lowing. For most advocates who provide a “push” toward Mars, there is a major goal that “pulls” them forward. This is the return of samples of rock and soil. At least since Viking, MSR has been the holy grail of the robotic program. Most advocates agree that it is the best way to determine the question of Martian life short of sending scientist-astronauts. However, many Mars activists also see

MSR as a way to develop critical knowledge, technologies, and skills that will enable human spaceflight to Mars. Hence, MSR has a potentially unifying role that makes it a NASA-agency goal, not just a science goal. It relates to the two sides of the life rationale—life on and life to Mars.

It also has symbolic significance. David Southwood, ESA science director who worked with Weiler to initiate a Mars Together program, has declared, “Doing it [MSR] together sends a message. It shows what we can do. It is a big deal. For the robotic program, it is analogous to Armstrong on the Moon.”7 The U. S. withdrawal from a full-partnership role in the program, however, points up the difficulty of accomplishing the goal, whether together or singly.

From NASA’s establishment in 1958, the space agency looked to Mars as a compelling prize, the one place, beyond the Moon, where robotic and human exploration could converge. Over the years the human space venture to Mars remained a dream, on NASA’s agenda, but always on a distant horizon. NASA’s Mars robotic program—the focus of this study—has now been actualized, mark­ing one of NASA’s greatest achievements.

What has been the nature of NASA’s Mars exploration program? How was it created and sustained? How has it adapted to scientific findings and shifting po­litical winds? What have been the barriers to the program? How was opposition countered? Where is the program going? These and other questions have not been answered adequately in the existing literature. Most writing about Mars deals with specific missions and emphasizes the technical aspects. The people, institutions, politics, and policy behind the technical exploits get relatively little attention. NASA’s role, although mentioned, is seldom addressed in depth. What is significant is that the missions form part of an ongoing government effort that has lasted over half a century and promises to extend indefinitely into the distant future. Mars is a federal program, but it is also a destination, a place and a magnet for the human imagination. For advocates of robotic and human Mars exploration—who seem often to disagree as much as they agree—it is a great quest, a difficult and noble journey into the unknown.

Mars exploration has evolved from the Mariner flybys in the 1960s, which provided the first blurred glimpses of the Red Planet, to orbiters and landers in the 1970s. Later, in the 1990s, NASA created machines capable of not only landing but also roving the planet. The Clinton administration in 1996 set as a national goal that NASA embark on “a sustained program to support a robotic presence on the surface of Mars.”2 By the early twenty-first century, NASA was building an intricate infrastructure on Mars, a technical system involving orbiters, landers, rovers, laboratories, and communications systems. NASA, moreover, had company on Mars, as other nations sent their own devices. The

names of the machines have become well known not only to scientists but also to the public over the years: Mariner, Viking, Pathfinder, Mars Global Surveyor, Spirit, Opportunity, Phoenix, MSL with its Curiosity rover, and others. With modern technology, citizens on Earth can participate in an epic adventure and explore Mars through robotic machines of incredible capacity. These machines extend human senses of sight, sound, and touch across millions of miles. They have taken NASA, America, and the world to a period that John Grotzinger, chief scientist of the MSL, called “the golden era of Mars exploration,” a time of “extended, overlapping, and increasingly coordinated missions.”3

The evolution of the program has not been all positive. Nor is the future cer­tain. There have been expensive failures amidst the successes. There have been ebbs and flows in scientific and public enthusiasm, heights of exultation, depths of despair. For Mars exploration, between Viking in 1976 and Mars Observer’s launch in 1992, there was a long gap in missions, and then Mars Observer itself became what was called a $1 billion failure. But NASA maintained the quest in the 1990s and into the new millennium. That it did so was not easy. It was a test of scientific, bureaucratic, and political resilience. The key issue in understand­ing the Mars exploration program is one that is generic in American democ­racy: how to maintain a long-term, large-scale, high-risk, and expensive federal research and development (R&D) program in the face of competing scientific, bureaucratic, and public priorities and ever-changing political winds.

In December 1964, following preliminary studies by NASA, JPL, and industry, NASA’s Science Directorate, the Office of Space Science and Applications, of­ficially established Voyager as a flight program. Like Mariner, it was conceived as a program, not a single project. OSSA projected a mission to launch the first Voyager spacecraft as early as 1971, with successor flights at later two-year Mars opportunities. Webb, who could deal with LBJ on a one-on-one basis, obtained President Johnson’s assent to include modest definitional start-up funds in the budget Johnson sent to Congress in early 1965. By the end of 1965, buoyed by Mariner 4’s success, Congress approved Voyager.

NASA started with strong scientific support for Voyager. The National Acad­emy of Sciences Space Science Board declared in 1965, “The biological explora­tion of Mars is a scientific undertaking of the greatest validity and significance. Its realization will be a milestone in the history of human achievement. Its im­portance and the consequences for biology justify the highest priority among all scientific objectives in space, indeed, in the space program as a whole.”1 Mariner 4 findings seemed to have made it all the more imperative for Mars advocates with an interest in finding life to have a lander program. They saw no other way to answer their questions.

However, while Congress went along with the initiation of Voyager, the schedule and longer-term prospects were uncertain. The political and funding

environment of NASA began to change rapidly for the worse. NASA budgets peaked in 1965-1966. The Vietnam War and Johnson’s Great Society began to place increasing burdens on the overall federal budget. NASA was clearly catching up to the Russians in the race to the Moon, and some of the urgency behind NASA was ebbing. NASA was still a national priority, but other national needs had arisen. The result was less money for “new starts” or implementation of those that were authorized.

In this shifting environment, various NASA centers looked for work in al­ternative areas. The Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, saw op­portunity in Voyager. An aeronautics center, Langley could boast expertise in the science and technology of landing. JPL did not take kindly to Langley’s foray into JPL’s bureaucratic turf, but Langley had support for a role in Mars activ­ity in OSSA. Edgar Cortright, Newell’s deputy, reacted positively to Langley’s proposed Mars entry system at a meeting in 1965. Langley got a go-ahead to continue developing its ideas.2

While JPL and Langley jockeyed for roles, major decisions at the NASA Administrator’s level were under way with implications for both centers. The in­ability to get new programs authorized or funded adequately increasingly trou­bled Webb. He knew that he had to sell a post-Apollo program before NASA reached the Moon to avoid a major downsizing problem for his agency in the early 1970s. He was having difficulty getting the president to focus on post – Apollo goals. Johnson kept telling Webb to wait until next year. The problem was the production line of Saturn 5 rockets (the Moon rockets). To have future uses for more Saturn 5s, NASA needed post-Apollo programs, and it had none.

Once NASA got to the Moon, what would it do? Build a Moon base? Go to Mars? Decisions needed to be made. Without decisions justifying more work on Saturn 5s, von Braun’s Marshall Space Flight Center might have to start laying off rocket engineers. Webb went to Johnson and Congress and explained that it made no sense to spend so much money to create an unparalleled rocket/ spacecraft system and then not keep it going and put it to use. He received sympathy, but no decisions, and decisions had to start soon with the president and his budget given lengthy technology development times.

Webb got Voyager approved by his political masters at a time when NASA’s budget was still ample. It had not been authorized as a “post-Apollo” program, but Webb sought quietly to use it in this way. He did so by choosing to launch Voyager spacecraft by Saturn 5 rockets. This move in October 1965 shocked JPL, Langley, and the scientific community, because the spacecraft they con­

templated did not need so huge a booster. In fact, it would enlarge the scale and substantially raise the cost of Voyager as a program. It would also complicate roles, for the decision meant von Braun would be deeply involved in manage­ment decisions—maybe in charge. Newell tried to sell the use of Saturn 5s to the Mars scientists, however. From his standpoint, OSSA should have use of Saturn 5s and would find uses for this massive capability. He told the SSB, in seeking endorsement, “Fellows, if you don’t help me, George [Mueller, associate admin­istrator of the Office of Manned Space Flight, and bitter rival of Newell] will get all the Saturn 5s.”3 However, there were many scientists inside and especially outside NASA who worried that a Saturn-driven Voyager would take money from smaller scientific robotic programs they wanted.

The Saturn 5 decision ignited a debate within the Mars science community. The debate had many nuances, but at its heart was a question of priorities. There were scientists who were not exobiologists who envisioned a string of Mariner flights to Mars at every two-year launch opportunity. They saw robotic Mars exploration in incremental and multidimensional terms, leading gradually to Voyager’s landing. Murray of Caltech was most articulate in expressing these concerns.4 He was an avid Mars advocate, although a skeptic about finding life on the Red Planet. He and his allies wanted a more comprehensive Mariner program that would systematically study geologic, meteorological, and numer­ous other disciplinary questions in addition to biology. Murray was himself a planetary geologist, and he believed that understanding the Mars physical en­vironment came first and was intrinsic to detecting life on Mars—if there was life on Mars. Exobiologists did not necessarily disagree with this gradualist, comprehensive approach, but they were anxious to get moving as fast as possible toward Voyager. After all, they reasoned, finding life was the big prize, and why not go for it while they could?

The real pressure for more direct flight to Mars came not from scientists but from NASA leadership, and the issue was use of the Saturn 5. Once Webb made that decision, it was obvious that not science but post-Apollo needs were his reasons for the Voyager priority. Moreover, cost considerations in a steady – state NASA budget might mean eliminating possible intervening Mars Mariner flights. Doing so did not sit well with scientists generally or with JPL. But JPL found its own influence in NASA decision making slipping. In the first half of the 1960s, when headquarters was overwhelmingly preoccupied with the Moon, JPL was where the most important technical decisions affecting Mariner were made. In the second half of the decade, headquarters began pulling decisions upward as it thought about the future, and NASA funding became constrained. Plans called for managing Voyager in an Apollo mode, with a strong headquar­ters director making use of multiple NASA centers, industry, and universities.5 The “incrementalists” and Saturn 5 “leaper” camps were both represented in OSSA, but OSSA was not making the Saturn 5 decision.

Pickering, seeing competition from Langley for Voyager, tried to be sup­portive of larger NASA decisions. He said he wanted to move toward Voyager as soon as possible but did not want to eliminate Mariner flights. Some head­quarters officials described the JPL attitude as “schizophrenic.”6 As Koppes, in his history of JPL, wrote, “The ambivalence about, and outright opposition to, Voyager derived from the fundamental question of what the laboratory should be. . . . Voyager would entail a huge expansion of JPL. . . the sheer size of the project would divert the laboratory from the in-house tasks that Pickering and the senior staff considered vital to its elan and substitute extensive monitoring of industrial contracts. JPL staff were ‘doers’ rather than ‘managers,’ and Mariner – type projects allowed them to do what they had come to the laboratory to do.”7

Voyager’s high-level proponents in headquarters were aware of the resis­tance to Saturn 5-Voyager within the scientific community and at JPL. JPL’s attitudes, and traditional independence in general, did not help its cause with NASA Headquarters in decisions about roles in the Voyager program which JPL might play vis-a-vis Langley. Nor did JPL’s use of the California congres­sional delegation to get its way go over well with Webb.

President Johnson postponed post-Apollo decision making as long as he could. At the end of 1966, he acquiesced to Webb’s importunings. As January 1967 began, Johnson sent a budget to Congress that provided $71.5 million to begin developing Voyager hardware using a Saturn 5 rocket. The proposed program would send two large orbiters and landers to Mars in 1973 (a slip from the previously projected 1971 launch) and then do so again in 1975. It was im­plicit that those two missions were the beginning of a major robotic exploration program that would extend further in time and destination. Mars would come first, but NASA would develop a capability to explore the solar system.

The budget also included for the first time funds to start an Apollo Applica­tions Program (AAP) that would also use Saturn 5s in near-Earth orbit. The Skylab “space station” effort would evolve from this activity. The point of both AAP and Voyager from Webb’s perspective was to sustain institutional infra­structure and technological capability in space after the Moon landing, pending the nation’s readiness to make a national policy decision akin to Apollo. The only decision that could be like Apollo in size and dramatic challenge would be one about human flight to Mars. Webb was thus buying time for his agency in a deteriorating political environment. Voyager would be justified publicly in its own right, on the basis of science, but it was also a means to an unstated end— keeping Saturn rockets, von Braun’s center, and human space exploration going.

Webb also wanted to link von Braun to Voyager not only technically but politically. The famed rocket engineer and Marshall Space Flight Center direc­tor had dreamed of going to Mars for years. Webb believed that von Braun could help him sell Voyager in the difficult budget climate. Telling von Braun he could build not only the Saturn 5s for Voyager but also “the main vehicle that would stay in orbit around Mars,” Webb “wanted to link the Voyager to Dr. von Braun’s name and to a proven management team.” He even asked von Braun to move to Washington at least for a time to help sell the program to Congress.8