Moving Ahead: Astrobiology, Pathfinder, and More

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.