Category Why Mars

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

July 20 came. The Soviets had landed twice, once in 1972 and then in 1974. The first lander had survived 20 seconds and the second most likely crashed, neither transmitting pictures back. Would the United States meet a similar fate? Mars was 212 million miles away as the flight controllers at JPL made the decisions that separated the lander from Viking’s orbiter. Then came the slow descent, begun with a parachute, braced by retro-rockets, as the lander neared the surface. Because of the distance between Earth and Mars, Viking could land—or crash—19 minutes before anyone on Earth would know which fate had occurred. NASA had prepared two press statements: one for success, one for failure. Naugle called the wait the longest of his life.57 It was “nail-biting time,” Martin later said. Mutch looked at his shoes as he waited and silence engulfed the mission control room. Dreading failure, he composed a statement of condolence for friends standing near him.

“A muffled prayer came over the loudspeaker. ‘Come on, baby,’ said a voice.” Finally, the waiting and agony ended: “We have touchdown.”58 When the signal came that Viking had landed safely at 5:12 a. m. (PDT), everyone at JPL gave a loud cheer, followed by hugs, laughs, and other expressions of sheer relief. Hinners cried, as did Lee (whose wife was still days away from giving birth).59 Pictures later showed that Viking came within 10 feet of hitting a huge boulder, and almost certain failure.60

Politicians and the media joined in the celebration. Headlines across the United States and beyond congratulated NASA for what the New York Times called a “superb and triumphant achievement.”61 As Viking sent back the first color pictures of Mars, revealing a light blue sky (later determined to be an imaging error; the sky was pink) above reddish land, there was rapt attention to the mission. President Gerald Ford was among those who greeted the news and photos with awe and excitement. He personally called to congratulate Fletcher, Martin, and the NASA team.62

Viking had passed its first great test in landing. Now all it had to do was find life.

Mars Observer was still on target for 1992. However, it was not exactly un­troubled. Its budget was mounting from the $250 million slated for the first in a series of low-cost “planetary observers” its original architects had planned.33 The administration and Congress had approved only one Observer, not a pro­gram of closely coupled missions, and this initial “low-cost” venture was up to at least $450 million in cost in 1988, not counting launch expenses. The problems causing growth were many, but the basic reason for the cost overrun was that Observer was increasingly vital to all stakeholders: NASA, JPL, scientists, the industrial contractors, administration, Congress, and even the Soviet Union.

Seeing Observer as the first U. S. Mars spacecraft in the years since Viking, Mars scientists were desperate to get their experiments on the machine. NASA, JPL, and their political masters did not want it to fail, especially now that it embraced foreign policy purposes. NASA sought to reduce risk through various technological safeguards. Virtually all involved agreed that the delay from I990 to I992 made it all the more essential that the scientific payoff be substantial. Moreover, the use of a shuttle added to the pressures to make the mission wor­thy of the huge launch cost.

Indicative of how costs could rise was a decision in 1986 by Edelson. He had personally ordered that a sophisticated new camera developed by Michael Malin, then at JPL, be put on Observer. He thereby overruled Malin’s JPL superior, who had tried to keep it off. “I’m not going to approve of any mission to Mars, or any planet that doesn’t have a camera aboard,” Edelson had de­clared.34 The decision had merit, but so did other decisions that added expense. Briggs, as NASA official responsible for the flight at headquarters, tried hard to keep costs down, struggling with a host of stakeholders for whom technical suc­cess loomed largest in values. He did not succeed. Many headquarters officials shared the performance-oriented values of those doing the work at JPL.35 Thus, formally and informally, the mission was redefined and grew in instruments and complexity over time.

The rising expense became so much an issue that Briggs in May 1988 asked the Space Science Board’s Committee on Planetary and Lunar Exploration (COMPLEX) what instruments might be taken off Mars Observer. The com­mittee refused to say, declaring,

For whatever reasons, Mars Observer has now outgrown all the original Observer class parameters. Moreover, it is clear from the recently promulgated OSSA strategic plan that with the failure to establish a true Observer line, MO almost surely represents the only mission to Mars by this nation in the coming decades. COMPLEX therefore takes the position that in these circumstances MO cannot be judged by the criteria for science return that would apply to Observer-class missions as initially conceived by the Solar System Exploration Committee. Consequently, the potential surrender of any current mission capability that substantially addresses the primary science objectives established for the exploration of Mars is a matter of great concern to the committee.36

On July 19, Fisk went to JPL and met with Allen, the director of the facil­ity. They agreed, via a “handshake,” to descope the mission, removing certain instruments. At the same time, they concurred that NASA would add the Mars balloon relay, with funding from outside the Mars Observer project, to enable possible U. S.-USSR collaboration.37

Although human exploration was the long-term goal, the search for life in the universe was the immediate driver for Mars activities. Goldin went on CNN after the December 1996 Gore workshop on the Mars meteorite and said he would provide money to nurture astrobiology.59 Huntress had coined the term, a change from Viking-era “exobiology.”60 He wanted to convey a broader search for life in line with recent discoveries of extrasolar planets and possible water under Jupiter’s ice-laden Europa moon. The new term also aimed to herald a new beginning in NASA’s search for life.

Goldin designated Ames Research Center in California as home to a new Astrobiology Institute. Ames had been in jeopardy. It was an old aeronautics center whose role had diminished over the years. Senator Barbara Boxer (D – CA) had urged Goldin to secure Ames, and Goldin told her not to worry. NASA needed a lead center for astrobiology, and Ames was the logical place. It had always had an interest in life sciences and had played an important role in that respect in the Viking era through the pioneering work of biologist Chuck Klein. It had helped keep life-on-Mars research alive in the hiatus years after Viking. Goldin also asked Soffen, who had been lead scientist in Viking, but who had worked at NASA in the Earth observation field subsequently, to return to the life-search quest. He asked him to assist in planning for how NASA should rebuild the astrobiology field. The search for life on Mars and in the universe was now Goldin’s vision and rhetoric for NASA.

What Soffen and others told him, and Goldin well knew, was that NASA and the planetary science community had few life scientists in their ranks. In July, Goldin spoke at the American Astronomical Society meeting and asked his large audience, “How many life scientists are in this room?” Practically no one raised a hand. If we are going to search for life, said Goldin, we are going to need life scientists. He announced that NASA was creating an Astrobiology Institute that would bring traditional planetary scientists and life scientists together.61 Even though NASA’s budget was constricted, Goldin proclaimed he would add astrobiology to his list of priorities. Although based at Ames, the institute would enlist an astrobiology community elsewhere, especially at universities. The in­tent was to rebuild a field of science which had become almost moribund after Viking.

Mars momentum was growing rapidly, the meteorite had been a catalyst, and then came the spectacular impact on the public of the Pathfinder mission. Launched in 1996, Pathfinder landed on Mars on July 4, 1997. For the first time in two decades, an object from Earth had made it successfully to the Red Planet. Pathfinder’s task was not to search for life, but to demonstrate that a faster, bet­ter, cheaper mission could work at Mars. Its role was to establish credibility for the 10-year Mars Surveyor Program. Moreover, it carried a small rover, named Sojourner, and its goal was to show that such a vehicle could maneuver at Mars.

Everything about the Pathfinder/Sojourner mission was fascinating, in­cluding the way the landing was accomplished. Surrounded and protected by a cocoon of airbags, Pathfinder hit the ground and then bounced as high as a five-story building. Then it bounced again, 20 times, before coming to rest a mile from the initial landing point, on an ancient floodplain amidst rocks and boulders.62 When Huntress, who was at JPL witnessing the landing, heard someone announce, “Full stop,” he “jumped up and screamed.” He ran to the mission team. Many were in tears, and one turned to him and said, “Thanks for giving us the responsibility to do this.” Such a heartfelt statement of apprecia­tion “broke me up,” Huntress remembered.63

All the scientists and NASA officials at JPL rejoiced and then celebrated again the next day when Sojourner, a six-wheeled rover, rolled from its carrier and inched along the surface. It eventually met with rocks that got names such as Barnacle Bill, Yogi, Scooby Doo, and Boo-Boo.64

Pathfinder was an unalloyed triumph. Headlines everywhere proclaimed the success, as did appreciative editorials in leading newspapers. Both Clinton and Gore issued congratulatory statements to NASA, and Gore called JPL to praise all those associated with the mission. After so many years and a sequence of failures (Russian and U. S.), it was marvelous to have what was universally seen as a great success.65 Striking pictures of Mars were shown on television, and Clinton admitted he couldn’t get enough of watching them. Gore declared that the “validity” of faster, better, cheaper was being borne out by Pathfinder.66

Huntress was ecstatic: “This mission,” he said, “has demonstrated quite clearly that we can in fact build and launch planetary missions for a low cost.” And low costs “will allow us to continuously launch these missions and provide the American public with the excitement, the drama, and the knowledge that comes from our solar system exploration program.”67

It was obvious that Pathfinder and Sojourner had hit a nerve with the public. NASA released images quickly not only to the media, but to the Internet. This decision to use the Internet brought about the largest virtual participation in exploration by people since the world watched the Apollo Moon landing in 1969. Indeed, no event up to this time had as many “hits” on the Internet—80 million a day in the first days, 450 million by the beginning of August. Various observers commented excitedly on the phenomenon: “It wasn’t just the media that’s picked up on this story,” said Alex Roland, a Duke University history pro­fessor and former NASA historian. “People of their own volition are turning to it in incredible numbers.”68 What was especially impressive, said another NASA watcher, Jerry Grey of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, was that this achievement came on “a shoestring” budget. Louis Friedman, ex­ecutive director of the Planetary Society, said that the mission had “reawakened the image of NASA as ‘the can do’ agency.” John Logsdon, space policy profes­sor at George Washington University, called Pathfinder a “robotic folk hero” with the public.69

NASA made the most of the public’s interest, emphasizing cost-benefit com­parisons, pointing out that Pathfinder had cost taxpayers $250 million, whereas Viking would have cost, in 1997 money, $3.6 billion.70 Viking employed thou­sands, whereas Pathfinder only a few hundred. Goldin personally gained enor­mous credit, and he said Pathfinder was just the beginning of NASA’s assault on the Red Planet.

Pathfinder and Sojourner were destined to gradually cease operating in Sep­tember, but while they were highest on the public consciousness, Goldin paid tribute to the late Carl Sagan. He held a special ceremony honoring the famous astronomer, writer, Mars advocate, and advisor to Goldin. With Sagan’s widow, Ann Druyan, present, Goldin named Pathfinder a memorial station for Sagan.71 Sagan thus joined former Viking scientist and NASA official Tim Mutch as having a memorial station on Mars.

On September ii, 1997, MGS, also launched in 1996, moved into Mars orbit. Its goal was to map Mars in unprecedented detail, almost as much as Mars Observer was to do. NASA again pointed to the difference in spending. NASA priced Mars Observer at $i billion. This mission cost $250 million.

To get into proper lower orbit, MGS used aerobraking, a method by which

it employed the friction of Mars’s atmosphere to slow the descent. However, when it sought to do so, the air resistance caused one of the solar panels needed to power the craft to bend too far backward. NASA had to reposition the space­craft to a higher orbit and replan the mission. The solar panel in question had apparently been damaged earlier in the flight; hence, there was serious concern of added harm. In November, NASA concluded that it could save the mission by very gradually lowering the orbit. This approach would minimize the atmo­spheric resistance, but it would take an extra year before MGS would be in its optimal orbit.72 NASA decided to take the time; the process of a slow aerobrak – ing began. The prognosis was positive.

The NASA budget Clinton proposed in February 1998 was $13.5 billion, a modest decline from the previous year. However, space science fared extremely well, getting another 4% increase.73 With budget balancing continuing to be top priority for the president and Congress, this raise was impressive. Huntress used the good news for science as an occasion to announce he had decided to leave NASA after heading space science since 1993. “We seemed to be on a roll,” he later commented. He felt it was the right time to retire.74 He was also exhausted. Joseph Boyce, one-time NASA chief scientist, marveled that he had lasted this long. Huntress “had the highest threshold of pain I’ve seen,” said Boyce. He saw Goldin “embarrass him in public. Rip him apart. But he knew how to get things out of Goldin. He kept his eye on the ball.”75

Huntress gave way to Weiler, who had run the Origins initiative. Age 49 at the time, Weiler was an experienced science manager who had honed his internal and external political skills earlier as science leader of the Hubble Space Telescope. Pugnacious in style, he got along with Goldin. Because he was a single parent of a child with health problems, he had to leave his office at 4 p. m. Goldin gave Weiler the OK for this need but kept in touch with Weiler via a pager. He called Weiler at any time, day or night, seven days a week.76 Weiler took over at a time of consensus in the White House and Congress that space science, especially Mars, should be protected from budgetary vagaries. The Mars rock was obviously the chief reason for this view.

In the time since the Mars rock announcement, scientific skepticism about the claims had grown, however. A University of Arizona-Scripps Institution of Oceanography study contended that 80% of the organic materials in the rock came from terrestrial contamination. JSC’s McKay found the new report “inter­esting,” but said the team stood by its original contention. Richard Zare of Stan­ford, the most prominent scientist on the team, said the research “cast doubt”

but was not “a refutation” of the life hypothesis.77 He did not believe minds had changed one way or the other since the claim was first announced. What was different, he said, was that prior to the Mars rock, “if you talked about searching for life on another planet, you were considered a nut. It has now become a huge topic that is attracting the best scientists.” Weiler said there would be no settling the Mars debate “until we go there and get some samples.”78

Whatever the scientific debate, the rock, combined with Pathfinder’s pub­lic impact, gave NASA’s Mars exploration program much greater momentum. Goldin saw search for life as the kind of exciting vision that could unify activities in the agency and build support outside.

Origins was a compelling theme for all NASA missions beyond Earth. Astro – biology was now an ongoing activity at NASA, with Ames the lead center. Scott Hubbard, the senior space scientist at Ames who had conceptualized Pathfinder in its formative stage, was working to relate astrobiology to flight missions.79 In 1998, NASA formally established its Astrobiology Institute. This was seen as a “virtual” organization, with many institutions involved in government and the university world. Soffen assisted Goldin and worked with others to get the institute started. Soffen was at an age when he could have retired, but he wanted to help fulfill his own much-delayed dream.

In May, NASA announced the selection of 11 academic and research insti­tutions as the first members of the Astrobiology Institute, calling it “a major component of NASA’s Origins Program.”80 Goldin asked Hubbard to take over for Soffen, now that the institute was under way. Like Soffen, Hubbard was “in­terim.” Goldin said he intended to recruit a “King Kong” biologist to head the new institute.81 The next year Goldin hired the 73-year-old Baruch Blumberg, a biochemist who had won a Nobel Prize, to be its official director.

Also in May 1998, Goldin gave a commencement address at the University of Arizona. He urged the graduates to have a dream and follow it. “Mine,” he said, “is an astronaut on Mars—in a nice, white spacesuit set against a red back­ground, with a NASA logo on one shoulder and an American flag on the other.” In August, he spoke at a memorial for Alan Shepard, the recently deceased first American to fly into space. “Alan,” he promised, “America will go to Mars.”82

Zubrin helped fuel this momentum from outside. The Mars Underground was gone, with Goldin acquiring one of the last remaining red identity buttons from its early days as a quasi-secret society. He “begged me for a button,” Carol Stoker recalled.83 In the Underground’s place was Zubrin’s newly organized Mars Society, which held its first meeting in Boulder in August. At least 750 people from 40 countries paid $180 to attend the four-day conference to make a case for sending humans to Mars. While emphasizing human exploration, Zubrin wanted the robotic program to scout the way. He urged that its budget be doubled.84

The sense of progress was surely felt at JPL. Charles Elachi, director ofJPL’s Space and Earth Science Program, headed a study for how to return samples of soil and rock from Mars, and Goldin approved plans he worked out. Norm Haynes, now Mars program director at JPL, spoke of returning four samples from four separate locations on Mars by 2011.85 His boss, Ed Stone, JPL direc­tor, was caught up in the sense of optimism that permeated the agency, and Stone pressed Haynes hard for action.86 Maybe it would be possible to go even sooner than 2005, some Mars advocates said.

The “yes, we can” mood was embodied in Elachi. Elachi called for sending two MSR landers, perhaps one as early as 2003 and another in 2005. An orbiter would collect samples in 2007 and return them to Earth in 2008. Asked to advise NASA, a panel of the SSB, while applauding the goal of MSR and endorsing the Elachi plan, nevertheless expressed some concerns that it was “aggressive” and entailed “risk.” It stated “low confidence” that NASA had the money for such a multistage mission. It called for a more “comprehensive” approach to under­stand the context of Mars as an abode of life, past or present.87 NASA’s scientific advisors did not wish to deter the agency from speeding toward a goal the Mars community had long sought, but they clearly were worried that NASA might be going too hard, too fast, too narrowly with insufficient resources.

Goldin pushed, and there were some doubters, but most connected with Mars in NASA and at JPL shared Goldin’s enthusiasm and longing. Doubters within NASA tended to keep quiet. No one wanted to be associated with what Huntress had called the “old guard.” NASA was launching two missions to Mars every two years under its Mars Surveyor Program. These were faster, better, cheaper missions. They were now geared to the accelerated goal of MSR. So far they were successful. In December, NASA launched Mars Climate Orbiter (MCO) and followed it up a month later with Mars Polar Lander (MPL). These were half the size of their predecessors (Pathfinder and MGS). The polar lander mission was in part a fulfillment of Lederberg’s desire to “go north” for landing in the Viking era. This was where Lederberg had thought life was most likely to be found. Unfortunately, Lederberg, who had helped pioneer the search for life on Mars, had died in February 1998.

NASA added two penetrators to MPL which would bore as deep as three feet below the planet’s surface. MGS, meanwhile, was gradually wending its way into an optimal orbit, and already sending back striking images. Ironically, one of its first findings was to prove that a “face” on Mars some enthusiasts still believed to have been carved by intelligent beings, and which Viking had detected, was a mesa.88

America was going to Mars. And so were the Japanese. Japan, in July, had successfully launched its first Mars probe, Planet B. Like the U. S. spacecraft, it was scheduled to arrive in 1999. The excitement and ambition among Mars advocates were palpable. As people got to see Mars, even vicariously, they would start to comprehend that there was a fascinating world out there, Zubrin said. It was time for “political action,” he proclaimed.89

In late 1998, NASA sent the elderly ex-astronaut, Senator John Glenn, back into space on a shuttle. It was a media extravaganza, as well as an occasion for national celebration and nostalgia for past glory. Walter Cronkite, who had cov­ered the Apollo landing for television news, came out of retirement to interview Clinton at Cape Canaveral at the time of the launch. Clinton said that he was open to more financial support to NASA for the International Space Station. However, human spaceflight to Mars would have to wait. “Let’s get the Space Station up and going and [then] evaluate what our long-term prospects are,” he told Cronkite.90 Where Mars was concerned, the robotic program held center stage, it seemed to be performing exceptionally well, and there was political support up to the president.

On August 28, CAIB released its report on the Columbia disaster. It found that the immediate, technical cause of the shuttle accident was a chunk of foam that had been jarred loose during takeoff and hit a vulnerable part of the shuttle with sufficient force to cause a rupture. On entering Earth’s atmosphere, the enormous heat that built up penetrated the shuttle and caused it to disintegrate. CAIB went beyond the technical explanation to score NASA on numerous or­ganizational fronts, all of which revealed the agency to be less vigilant than it should have been. Finally, it went beyond even NASA to criticize the “failure of national leadership” in space policy. National leaders had not had the will to replace the aging shuttle or provide the vision and money a robust human space program required. CAIB wanted a national policy response—a new vision for the space program. CAIB urged the president and Congress to give NASA a higher purpose for risking human lives, one that was greater than sending people around and around in near-Earth orbit.

Following the publication of the CAIB report, Congress held hearings, mak­ing its own inquiry about what had gone wrong and what specifically NASA was doing to improve the safety situation. The congressional hearing showed that many lawmakers wanted NASA to have a bolder goal and grander “vision” than it had. Exactly what that might be was undecided, however.27

In his first year, O’Keefe had not wanted to talk about destinations. After Columbia, and particularly the new pressures for a bold and clear vision, he was open to possibilities. He understood that that vision would ultimately have to come from the president.

Prior to Columbia, Bush had shown little interest in space. After Columbia, he said “our journey into space will go on.” But what did that mean? O’Keefe, using the leverage he had owing to his connections with Vice President Cheney, organized a small but high-level interagency group of White House and cabinet officials to recommend an answer to that question. The chair of the group was Steve Hadley, deputy director of the National Security Council.28 It was delib­erately a “trans-NASA” body, an attribute that would potentially help it make a recommendation with a more “national policy” base.

The group met periodically behind closed doors in the summer and well into the fall. It considered a range of possibilities. O’Keefe wanted a big decision, but also one that was affordable. Over time, the group decided that a return to the Moon made sense technically and financially. Bush, informed of the committee’s

preliminary thinking, indicated that the Moon was not exciting enough. He wanted to add Mars, much as his father had, in his aborted Moon-Mars initia­tive. The culmination of the planning effort came on December 19. O’Keefe, Cheney, Hadley, presidential science advisor John Marburger, top political advi­sor Karl Rove, and others gathered in the Oval Office with Bush. After looking at decision papers and budget numbers, Bush noted that the decision stressed return to the Moon. “This is more than just about the Moon, isn’t it?” he asked. With some prompting from Cheney, the group responded with “yes.” “Well,” said the president, “let’s do it!” He told Hadley to work out the time and place for the official announcement.29