Struggling to Restart

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