Category Why Mars

The first phase of the Viking mission ended November 8 when Mars passed behind the Sun, interrupting radio communications with the Red Planet. Viking would resume after a while and continue operating in an “extended mission.” On November 9, however, NASA held a Viking news conference. Soffen, Klein, Sagan, and Klaus Biemann of MIT, leader of the team analyzing GCMS data, were present to answer media inquiries. Relevant data and analyses from Viking і and 2 were now in. The scientists stated that the evidence of life was contra­dictory. Klein, responding to a reporter’s questions, said of the data, “I would say that on the basis of incomplete evidence, which is where we are today, we cannot say conclusively that there is life on Mars. I would say we cannot say conclusively that there is not life on Mars.”83 The media representatives pressed for a yes or no answer; instead, they heard the scientists declare an absence of what Sagan called “conclusive explanations of what we’re seeing.” Sagan pled for the media to have “an increased tolerance for ambiguity.”84

The scientists tried to explain that Viking had sampled just two places on a large planet and dug just a few inches beneath the surface, but such caveats were “lost in the noise.” What was perceived by the media and conveyed to Congress and the public was “stripped of nuance, laden with finality.” The verdict: “no life on Mars.”85

Nevertheless, all these macropolitical events at the international and national policy level, as well as pressure from external advocates (especially Sagan), were making a difference for NASA’s Mars science program. The priority was going up. Fisk saw MESUR as “part of a larger program of Mars Science Exploration in OSSA.”61 Such a Mars program did not exist at the moment. It would have to be designed. In late 1990 Briggs had left NASA Headquarters for another position, being succeeded by Wesley Huntress. Huntress was an astrochemist who came to Washington after 20 years of research and project management at JPL. He was activistic in temperament and intended to be a strong advocate internally. He saw the environment in which he served as favorable to innova­tion as long as costs were contained. He wanted programs that could appeal to both scientists and the public and came to his job with an agenda. He was supportive of expanded Mars activity, but his initial emphasis in 1991 was a solar system-wide program called Discovery. It featured low-cost missions that could launch frequently. For Huntress, Mars Observer was revealing a way not to run a planetary program, and he pushed for Discovery as the right way.

Complicating getting MESUR under way was its origin at Ames and the fact that Ames was under a NASA directorate other than OSSA. Fisk sought in 1991 to make MESUR “a leading example of successful intercenter cooperation in Mars exploration.” His discussions about MESUR with the director of Ames did not go well, however, much to Hubbard’s dismay. As Hubbard recalled, Dale Compton, the Ames director, came across as ambivalent. In contrast, JPL’s director, now Edward Stone, clearly wanted the program. As before, JPL lob­bied aggressively to run all planetary efforts.62 On November 8 Fisk wrote JPL and Ames that he wanted to move ahead with a comprehensive and evolutionary program for the scientific exploration of Mars and that he had decided to make JPL the lead center in this endeavor.63

As Fisk was making the requisite scientific and institutional choices for MESUR, and Mars research generally, Huntress was moving Discovery for­ward. Discovery, with its emphasis on a range of low-cost missions, fit the times. It also matched the political situation Fisk faced. Fisk was getting pressure from

congressional supporters of the Applied Physics Lab (APL) of Johns Hopkins University. APL, an entity somewhat similar to JPL, worked primarily for the Defense Department and wished to perform more substantially for NASA. These legislative allies indicated they would help NASA establish a “program line” in NASA’s budget for Discovery if NASA would be willing to entertain a proposal from APL.64 NASA had sought a program line for the Observer series years before and failed to get it owing to the traditional reluctance of OMB and Congress to provide long-term authorization for a particular program. Also, Huntress wanted competition for JPL and planned Discovery to be open to proposals from the scientific community beyond JPL. He decided that the first low-cost mission would go to APL—a relatively simple project called NEAR, for Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous.65

However, Huntress wanted Discovery’s second mission to be much more demanding so as to prove the point that difficult missions could also be low cost. As NASA and JPL had already been discussing the initial MESUR mis­sion, one entailing both landing and roving, he decided to move that mission from MESUR to Discovery. That project would go to JPL. With the prospect of congressional backing for Discovery, OMB also went along with the concept of a program line, by which NASA could determine the sequence of missions within an established budget category without negotiating each mission sepa­rately as a “new start.”

Such a line provided continuity. It was an extremely important and strategic move.66 It gave NASA more power over its future missions and scientists greater sense of sustainment. The bargain NASA struck with its budgetary and political masters was that these missions would be low cost as well as open to various per­formers. It gave NASA greater flexibility and autonomy in choosing and manag­ing projects. It enabled NASA to transfigure MESUR Pathfinder into what later became Mars Pathfinder, the combination lander-rover. MESUR Pathfinder got into the president’s budget as part of the Discovery series. The president’s proposed budget went to Congress in early 1992, with the way smoothed for Discovery’s approval. Discovery was designed to be a general program, not a Mars-specific program—but it was a model for how to proceed, and it would get the first Mars effort after Observer under way.

The Mars surge built on success and assumed more technical success. On Sep­tember 23, the Mars Climate Orbiter was supposed to slip into a proper position to do its work. It did not do so. Instead, it flew off course and either burned up in the Martian atmosphere or missed Mars entirely and wound up circling the Sun in a useless orbit. What went wrong?

NASA convened a board of inquiry under the chairmanship of Arthur Ste­phenson, director of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. What the panel found seemed too embarrassing to believe. A young and inexpe­rienced engineer at NASA’s contractor, Lockheed Martin, had failed to convert navigation data from English to metric units. When the data went to JPL, the NASA center assumed that the conversion had taken place. No one checked the facts over the nine-month period during which the $125 million MCO sailed from Earth to Mars. It was an inadvertent mistake with dire consequences. The fact that no one checked the information was viewed by many in NASA as the most serious finding. The Stephenson panel pointed out that inattention, mis – communication, and overconfidence played roles in the mishap.16

What some critics, especially outside NASA, wondered was whether FBC management bore some responsibility. NASA rejected that view. Weiler pointed out that FBC “includes following rules and processes. Those rules and pro­cesses were ignored.”17 Hinners, who once had run space science and was now the responsible senior executive for the robotic probes at Lockheed Martin, thought there was an effect of FBC in this instance. “It’s a matter of sufficient staffing—perhaps 10% or more—to make sure checks and balances work.”18

John Pike, director of space policy for the Federation of American Scientists, put it this way: “They’re basically trying to take 15-gallon trips on io-gallons of gas.” He urged NASA to take a hard look at FBC, a look the Stephenson panel had failed, in his opinion, to take.19

Everyone at NASA who spoke about the incident, especially Ed Stone, di­rector of JPL, said that the mistake would not be repeated. Commenting on the next mission, the Mars Polar Lander, Stone said, “No one wants another mistake to go undetected. We are doubling and redoubling our efforts.”20

The euphoria of the Mars science community was not shared by other scientists who saw both their status and resources diminished. In spite of Weiler’s denials, they saw a zero-sum game of winners and losers. Astronomers and advocates of planetary missions other than Mars were vocally unhappy. They spoke of “collateral damage” and pointed to O’Keefe’s Hubble cancellation decision as evidence that Bush and O’Keefe had no real understanding for science. Refer­ring to funding choices, Fisk remarked, “Some of us feel like lesser species.”

Fisk warned O’Keefe that NASA was creating first – and second-class citizens, by splitting the agency’s scientific constituency into haves and have-nots. This was “an unnecessary distinction which I think will work against the program.” What non-Mars scientists saw as a problem, others viewed as good manage­ment. Dave Radzanowski, the White House OMB official overseeing the NASA budget, applauded O’Keefe’s decisions and spoke of “setting priorities and showing leadership.” NASA was getting the largest increase in budget among agencies, other than Defense and Homeland Security, and making decisions in accord with presidential preferences, he pointed out.

Weiler, who was a telescope astronomer, not a planetary scientist, tried to assuage the self-identified losers by arguing they were seeing their wishes de­ferred, not cancelled. Over the long haul, if NASA gained, everyone would ben­efit. “I love all my children,” he avowed.46 However, in August, O’Keefe shocked many scientists by moving Weiler from his SMD leadership and making him director of the Goddard Space Flight Center, a shift many observers regarded as a demotion for the dynamic science chief and possibly related to differences with O’Keefe over the Hubble service termination issue. O’Keefe replaced him with Al Diaz, who had been director of Goddard. Diaz was an engineer by training and had been Fisk’s deputy when Fisk ran the Science Office. Although an able manager and interested in Mars, Diaz was not regarded by the science community as “one of us,” as Weiler had been so regarded. Nor did Diaz seem comfortable with the science advocacy role that came with the job.47

Criticism of the budgetary choices also came from Congress. Politicians were generally supportive of the Moon-Mars destinations in principle. But several worried about costs, and Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), chair of the House Sci­ence Committee, expressed concern that NASA could become a one-mission agency.48 He especially worried about the future of the Earth Science activity.

Throughout most of 2004, lawmakers sparred over the new NASA mission in committee hearings, awaiting the November election results, and postponing most federal spending actions. John Kerry opposed Bush for the White House, and neither presidential candidate had much to say about space. Kerry agreed in general with the human exploration goal but claimed he could manage the space program better. Neither said anything about paying for the mission. When the votes were counted in November, Bush prevailed, as did Republican control of Congress. Stability in political leadership seemed to presage relatively smooth sailing for Moon-Mars and NASA, at least for a while.

But there were technical issues complicating funding which had little to do with the election. The repairs to the shuttle fleet, grounded since February 2003, were proving both quite difficult and very expensive. It looked like the shuttle return-to-flight bill could be $2.2 billion. At the same time, O’Keefe had bent with the avalanche of criticism he had received for his Hubble decision. He still refused to use a shuttle for the Hubble servicing mission, but he did agree to seriously consider a robotic-repair mission. He had announced that fact in June at an American Astronomical Society meeting, to loud applause. But work since then was showing that a robotic-repair mission was exceedingly complex and could also cost $2 billion or more.

Even with the raises contemplated at the time of Bush’s decision, these un­anticipated shuttle and Hubble costs would prove a serious burden. O’Keefe pled for help for these unforeseen costs from the White House and was refused. Comptroller Isakowitz admonished Congress to give the agency what Bush had requested. He said that anything less in money would not only affect human spaceflight but also have a “negative” impact on science.49

Those scientists and their allies who did not identify with the Bush vision were more wary than ever of the trends they saw. It did not help their cause that many leading U. S. scientists had vehemently and visibly opposed Bush during the election. James Hansen, NASA’s best-known climate change researcher, had been especially vocal in opposition to Bush. Marburger himself admitted that Bush and the scientific community had differences.50 Mars was doing extremely well under the vision—but other fields were perceived as suffering. However, Mars scientists were not entirely pleased because of Diaz. Diaz asked Figueroa to be his deputy. Figueroa in turn had to relinquish his Mars program director

role and asked Doug McCuistion to take on that task. McCuistion was a 48-year – old systems engineer with a background as a manager in Earth sciences. In ef­fect, Diaz appeared to have “demoted” Mars organizationally since McCuistion reported to a deputy rather than directly to the associate administrator.51

If Stern was deterred by the negative reaction from the Mars constituency, he did not show it by his actions. Moreover, MSL continued to go up in costs, complicating his ardent managerial effort to keep expenses down. More and more, MSL became a test case for Stern and his campaign for reform and desire to reshape the Mars program.

He went to JPL and came back convinced it could not make the 2009 launch deadline without raising costs even more. He looked at the NAS National Re­search Council Decadal Survey published years before, which had called MSL a “moderate” mission of $650 million. How had it gotten so expensive? The answer for Stern was “duplicity” on the part of JPL and the Mars science com­munity. They had gotten away with an elaborate increase in instruments and sophisticated technology, and NASA’s review committees either had not seen the problems or had ignored them. “It was Christmas in the middle of the year,” Stern complained. He called MSL “a ticking time bomb” in terms of cost. He wanted to descope “profligate instruments.” He wanted to stop spending money on a crash basis to meet a deadline that he did not believe JPL could meet. By extending the deadline to the next launch window, 2011, he believed he could make changes in MSL that might control costs while also making it more rel­evant to MSR.93

Figueroa—who was implicitly a target of Stern’s charges about review com­mittee failure—opposed Stern in the debates about MSL within NASA. So did Garvin, who was outraged by Stern’s actions. These officials made the case that it was far too late in the development process of MSL to make radical design changes. Doing so would slow down the project even more and further raise costs. Moreover, they defended MSL against the charge that it had grown enormously from the $650 million Decadal Survey figure Stern used. MSL was not the Mars Smart Lander that was in the original Hubbard plan. Stern, they said, was comparing apples and oranges. Others entered the fray, including John Grotzinger, Caltech professor and chief scientist for MSL, who defended the project.94

The debate over MSL escalated to associate administrator (and general man­ager) Chris Scolese. Scolese conducted his own analysis and sided with Stern’s opponents. He agreed it was too late in the development stage for significant changes other than those absolutely necessary. Beyond technical issues were institutional commitments with JPL, industry, and the Mars science community which could not be disrupted.

The issue of whether to delay MSL from a launch in 2009 to 2011 went to Griffin for decision. Stern argued that JPL would not make the schedule and hence NASA should hold up expenditures to the laboratory sooner, rather than later. That saved money could then be spent more wisely. Delay, however, would cost money in the long run, too, and affect other projects, so the decision to postpone launch raised extremely tough issues either way. Griffin decided to keep going with the existing schedule. He told Stern, “Run for the cliff.” When Stern protested that JPL would not make it, Griffin responded, “Try!”95

On November 26, MSL, carrying its Curiosity rover, blasted into space. At last, two years late, it was on its way to the Red Planet. Thirteen thousand onlook­ers watched it soar from Cape Canaveral. It would take eight months for the spacecraft to journey the 352 million miles to Mars. Its goal was to search for evidence that microscopic life might once have lived on Mars—or be capable of living there now. It also contained sensors that would detect radiation affecting the ability of astronauts to land there some day.64 Administrator Bolden de­clared, “We are very excited about sending the world’s most advanced scientific laboratory to Mars. MSL will tell us critical things we need to know about Mars, and while it advances science, we’ll be working on the capabilities for a human mission to the red planet and to other destinations where we’ve never been.”65

Everyone connected with the mission was elated, but they also knew the risk of failure. A Russian probe to Phobos, a Mars moon, had launched on No­vember 9 and failed to escape Earth’s orbit. The U. S. spacecraft was now on a trajectory to Mars. But the landing, several months hence, would be daunting. And what would the rover find? Time would tell. The future of the Mars pro­gram—and maybe NASA—depended greatly on the answer.

Mars exploration takes an intrinsic need and turns it into governmental action. The cost is billions of dollars over time. Humans explore because of science, but also because of an innate drive to know what is on the next frontier. We want to extend the human presence outward. How do we fit into the universe? Are we alone? Mars embodies scientific and larger human needs. Mars is attainable. It may have answers to age-old questions that are among the most profound that humans ask. Robots are there today and will continue to forge a trail. They may find life or evidence of past life. Whether or not they do, they will address fundamental issues. The quest itself lifts the spirit. Robots go first as pioneers. Ultimately, men and women will bring life to the Red Planet. Mars calls because we want to know about ourselves.

[1] found myself unconsciously urging the [Viking] spacecraft at least to stand on its tiptoes, as if this laboratory designed for immobility, were perversely refusing to manage even a little hop. How we longed to poke that dune with the sample arm, look for life beneath that rock, see if that distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the four sinuous channels of Chryse. For all the tantalizing and provocative character of the Viking results, I know a hundred places on Mars which are far more interesting than our landing sites. The ideal tool is a roving vehicle carrying on advanced experiments, particularly in imaging, chemistry, and biology.4

What or who moves the decision process forward? The key governmental insti­tution providing direction and pace for the Mars program in the United States is NASA. NASA and the Mars politics engulfing it are the orientation of this study. NASA is the engine that powers Mars exploration. Sometimes the engine motors well; other times, it sputters. NASA is involved where major decisions are made. It is often influential in policy development, always critical in imple­mentation. NASA provides money and management to enable programs and projects to go from agenda setting to completion—or failure. But who influ­ences NASA? NASA has internal and external constituencies that seek to com­mand its behavior.

The internal core for Mars policymaking is in NASA’s Washington headquar­ters, the Science Mission Directorate (SMD). This division has had different names over its history. NASA has almost always had a “Science Directorate,” headed by an associate administrator who reported to the NASA Administrator.

Below the associate administrator usually has been a planetary director. Below the planetary director would typically be found the Mars program. Bureaucrati­cally, Mars is not and has not been high on the agency’s organization chart. But it has a visibility that far exceeds its place in the hierarchy. At times in history, it has had a visibility beyond much else that NASA did.

The associate administrator for science has always had considerable power among directorates within NASA, generally second only to the associate ad­ministrator for human spaceflight. SMD gets ample advice from the technical community, including the National Academy of Sciences. Indeed, scientists are extremely active in the agenda-setting stage of policy and produce planning doc­uments galore.

SMD is also subject to pressures from superiors and field centers within NASA and beyond. The associate administrator of SMD is a decision maker embracing most aspects of space science in addition to Mars. He or she inte­grates many factors in priority choices, including his or her own personal pref­erences. While key decisions affecting Mars may emanate from the associate ad­ministrator, generally a senior career official, NASA’s top politically appointed executive—the NASA Administrator—makes final decisions on the most costly and controversial matters. For the SMD head, Mars is one interest among many seeking decisions and resources. From the NASA Administrator’s perspective, SMD is one interest among many wanting decisions and resources. The NASA leader (like the associate administrator) has to balance a multitude of pressures. There is never enough time or money to satisfy everyone.

The associate administrator for science and the NASA Administrator have influential external constituencies. They consist of individuals and institutions that develop, use, fund, and learn from space science and technology. They in­clude scientists, engineers, the president, White House surrogates (especially the Office of Management and Budget [OMB]), Congress, media, industry, univer­sities, foreign governments, and the general public. Both internal and external constituencies seek to shape decision making by the associate administrator for science and NASA Administrator in a myriad of ways. The NASA Administra­tor deals most often with the external political world. The associate administra­tor interacts primarily with the external scientific community. Both cope with the other participants in decision making within and outside NASA.

There are many individuals (such as the deputy administrator, the agency’s “number two”) who are important players in Mars policy. But, in headquarters, the associate administrator for science and NASA Administrator stand out in

influence over the Mars endeavor by virtue of their formal positions in NASA. The associate administrator can make Mars the directorate’s science priority. The Administrator can make it an agency priority.

As Viking got under way, Nixon became president, on January 20, 1969. He retained Paine and eventually appointed him NASA Administrator, but he gave him little or no access to advocate his post-Apollo vision. Paine wanted to advance a comprehensive post-Apollo program, the central element of which would be human spaceflight to Mars. It would feature also a space station, a space shuttle, and a lunar base.27

In July, NASA launched Apollo 11 to the Moon and Neil Armstrong took “one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” It was a remarkable moment that brought the world’s people briefly together. It was an epic mile­stone in human history. However, the euphoria over Apollo did not transfer to post-Apollo. When Nixon and Paine flew to meet the returning astronauts, Nixon—in one of his few conversations with Paine—stressed that he supported NASA, but money was tight given the continuance of the Vietnam War and domestic economic troubles.28

Paine tried hard to use Apollo 11 to generate public enthusiasm for a post – Apollo human Mars mission. But winning the race to the Moon removed much of the competitive urgency space had. Paine hoped the 1969 Mars flybys (Mari­ners 6 and 7) would help his cause. Instead, they actually hurt to some extent. These flybys, which went up in late July and August, provided the best view yet of Mars, but like Mariner 4, they revealed a planet hostile to life. The media praised the twin probes, but some commentators asked why Paine would want to send astronauts to such a desolate planet. Indeed, critics said that robotic flight could do Mars reconnaissance relatively cheaply, and hence human flight was not necessary.29

Getting Congressional Support

While Paine labored to promote the goal of human exploration of Mars, it was left mainly to Naugle to sell Viking politically. He had been working the scien­tific community. He negotiated with the Bureau of the Budget (BOB), renamed Office ofManagement and Budget (OMB) in 1970. He now looked to Congress. Paine’s decision to go for the most ambitious Viking option more than doubled the cost. Project Manager Martin told Naugle in August 1969 that the cost would be over $600 million. Naugle then added $150 million as a contingency from his own reserves and went to see Rep. Joseph Karth (D-MN). Karth was chair of the House subcommittee that had authorized Viking, and he was the project’s most influential champion in Congress.

When Naugle told Karth that the project originally sold for $364 million was now $750 million, the lawmaker exploded. He accused NASA of “low-balling the cost to get Viking’s ‘feet in the door.’ ” He gave Naugle “a very rough time,” as the NASA official had anticipated. Naugle responded that NASA was just getting started on the project, and if Karth felt strongly, he should cancel it now, before major development costs were incurred.

Naugle had lived in Minnesota for 10 years and understood Karth’s problems in justifying space expenditures to his fiscally conservative district. However, the Soviet competition for Mars loomed large for Karth. Naugle recalled that he knew that Karth would not want to be the one who cancelled Viking and let the Soviet Union be the first to soft land on Mars. Viking stayed in the NASA bud­get.30 With Karth leading the charge in Congress, NASA had sufficient allies on the Hill to keep Viking going. The political environment, however, was harsh, and Paine was not doing well with his campaign for human flight to Mars with Nixon. Viking’s fate could not be separated from NASA’s future.

Viking had failed! At least that was what many critics believed. NASA knew better. There was much that Viking contributed in new knowledge about Mars. But the agency and the Mars community were deeply disappointed on the life front, the central purpose of the mission. In the wake of Viking, NASA debated intensely how Mars fit into its future. NASA was getting desperate for “new starts.” Hinners, associate administrator for science, warned Congress that without starting new flight projects in the pipeline NASA’s planetary program was on a “going out of business” trajectory.[1] NASA had geared much of its strategy to Mars, in hopes that Viking would yield evidence of life. NASA had believed that it had ample reason to do so. It did not have firm plans as to what it would do if it did not find life.

After internal debate, NASA decided it needed to go beyond a lander to a rover, what it called Viking 3. But that would cost over $1 billion at a time when NASA had on its agenda the Hubble Space Telescope and an outer-planet mis­sion, Galileo. NASA deferred a Mars decision, and Mars went on the agency’s back burner. Outside advocates subsequently lobbied for renewing the Mars dream, but it took eight years, from 1976 to 1984, for NASA to launch a new start to the Red Planet—Mars Observer. The design and objective of the new mission were vastly different from the Viking 3 vision. NASA lowered its ambi­tion to what it could get its political masters to accept. The Mars advocacy coali­

tion was weakened by Viking’s results after so much talk about life. Moreover, there was ample opposition to Mars from those favoring other space priorities.

Ford: What Next for Mars?

In telephone calls congratulating NASA for Viking 1 and then Viking 2’s suc­cessful landings, President Gerald Ford twice asked senior agency officials about future Mars efforts. Naugle, after Viking 2, explained that NASA had been wait­ing on what Viking produced before defining and proposing a follow-on project. Naugle said there were three options NASA was considering. One was a Viking with wheels that could rove rather than be stationary. Another was to go back with better instruments to unravel the surface chemistry puzzle. A third was to bring a sample of Mars soil back for analysis in Earth based-laboratories. Ford replied that he assumed he’d be hearing from Fletcher at some point on NASA’s plans.2

There were opportunities for Mars launches in 1981 and 1984, and decisions had to be made soon to take advantage of them. Could Viking (a single project) be turned into a multimission Mars program? Should it be? Martin was actively promoting the idea of a mobile Viking, not just to superiors up to Fletcher, but externally. At a news conference preceding the Viking 2 descent early in Sep­tember, Martin declared, “We believe it is possible to make a mobile lander. We believe it is possible to launch by 1981, if such a program is approved.” Martin said that “we have learned very exciting things from the surface of the planet and I believe we need to now take advantage of that knowledge.” When asked about Martin’s comments, Naugle stated that NASA and the Office of Management and Budget were negotiating next-year budget proposals and no decisions had been made, but the agency was “looking hard” at the rover issue. Martin was putting the price of a Viking 3 between $350 and $450 million plus launch costs.3 Outside NASA, Sagan argued for a rover. As he later wrote, I

Not all Mars scientists agreed that a rover was the logical follow-on mis­sion. Tim Mutch, the geologist from Brown University who had directed Viking lander camera activity, was not so sure this rover approach was the best next step in Mars research. Klein, NASA’s chief biologist, was sure it was not a fruit­ful approach. He said he felt he had to “speak out against the rover concept.” Traveling around Mars taking biological samples would not necessarily resolve the question of life there, he told the media.5

By mid-September, NASA had settled its internal debate in favor of a rover mission as a Viking follow-on. It did not want to repeat the existing Viking mis­sion, but go beyond, to take the next step in exploration. The rover would make measurements, take photographs, and collect Martian soil samples that would be returned to Earth through a later Mars Sample Return mission. Naugle said that NASA was thinking in terms of an MSR mission that would launch as early as 1986.6 The rover might well be nuclear powered to assure it longevity and range. The disappointing results from the Viking soil experiments were coun­tered to some extent by Viking 2 orbiter findings that indicated that the perma­nent northern polar cap of Mars was composed entirely of frozen water. If that was indeed the case, there might be water elsewhere, maybe in the permafrost. Where there was water, there was the potential for life.7

Proponents of Viking 3 were calling for use of the 1981 opportunity, but this would depend on NASA’s getting adequate money in its FY 1978 budget. Fletcher made it known that NASA was considering a Viking 3. “We must go with what is going to sell [to the public] in addition to what is popular with sci­entists,”8 he declared. Fletcher said he might discuss Viking 3 with White House officials or at least during the budget dealings under way with the administra­tion. A possible complication in managing a Viking 3 project had been resolved with decisions about center roles made recently.

These decisions made the Jet Propulsion Laboratory lead center for future planetary missions, assigning Langley other tasks. Pickering had recently waged a determined campaign to get this designation for JPL prior to his retirement in 1976.9 Langley did not strongly contest the matter, as Cortright had retired in 1975 and many in the institution had found Viking the “tail that wagged the dog” of Langley’s historic aeronautics emphasis.10 Although he remained a strong advocate for Viking 3, Martin was now uncertain about his own role in view of the assignment of lead center for planetary exploration to JPL.11

The problem for NASA was that by October 1976 it was clear that a Viking 3 rover mission would be another $1 billion project, and NASA officials were admitting that “in the absence of the spectacular selling point of life on Mars, it would be difficult to persuade Congress to finance such a project.” “If we had found life, or even a reasonable hint, we would have gone berserk,” Naugle re­called. “We would have sent landers at every opportunity.”12 Even Fletcher was now expressing disappointment and a sense of lost opportunity. “If you found life,” he declared, “you might be making a manned mission to Mars before too long. But we weren’t that lucky.”13

With the November 9 Viking news conference and the translation of scien­tists’ “ambiguity” into a public perception of failure to find life, NASA’s chal­lenge in defining and selling a Viking 3 worsened. Its plans for making a plea for additional funds rested primarily on Viking’s exobiology results, and those results had been disappointing to virtually everyone. One NASA official, Oran Nicks, wrote, “It had been a little like waiting for Christmas as a kid, only to find on Christmas morning that Santa did not come through.”14 As the projected spending plan for the succeeding year made its way through the White House budgetary process, NASA was still equivocating about Mars exploration. It did not negotiate with OMB a specific Viking follow-on mission funding in its pro­posed budget as of mid-November.

President Ford would be evaluating the fiscal 1978 budget soon, and NASA would have an opportunity to “appeal” beyond OMB to the president to make last-minute changes before the budget was finalized.15 President Ford was at­tentive to Mars thanks to Viking, and he had virtually invited a proposal from Fletcher for a successor project. But this would be Ford’s last budget, owing to his loss to Jimmy Carter in the November election. The initiative would have to come from NASA, and it had to be a strong case to get more money on appeal.

The conversations about an add-on for Mars took place in the context of a growing scientific pessimism and debate about NASA’s finding life on Mars via a rover. For many scientists, the biological explanation might have won over the chemical explanation of results if the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrom­eter had found organic molecules. Even Murray, longtime doubter, now JPL director, admitted he might have changed his mind. But Sagan opined that too much was being placed on the GCMS experiment. The positive biology experi­ments were “a thousand times” more sensitive than the negative GCMS test. But Lederberg, Sagan’s ally, was not backing him up this time. “Occam’s Razor clearly points toward a chemical hypothesis,” he said.16

Many scientists with outer-planetary and telescope interests worried that pushing too hard for Viking 3 would jeopardize non-Mars science missions.

Mars scientists themselves divided over strategy. Sagan and Gerald Wasserburg, a Caltech geophysicist, attended a NASA science advisory committee meeting, and their altercation illuminated the split among scientists who were advocates of Mars research. They both reported on work with the National Academy of Science’s Space Science Board on Viking follow-on options. Wasserburg argued that NASA should de-emphasize “search for life” in future Mars missions in favor of physical and chemical science. He expressed a “horrible fear” that all future Mars missions would be jeopardized by continued ambiguous biology results. Sagan countered that the SSB panel displayed “differential timidity” in science priorities. The biology instruments could be improved, he argued, thereby strengthening the chances of finding life. Moreover, Sagan complained, the SSB panel was not representative of the exobiology community. Wasserburg disagreed strongly with Sagan, declaring that the SSB body had a full spectrum of views, from conservatives to “fanatics, like yourself.”17