The Columbia Disaster

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