Leaping Ahead with MSL

Then, there was MSL, the biggest and most important project of the MEP, set for 2009. In June, after years of planning, exploratory design and research, and continuing debate, MSL came up for Preliminary Design Review (PDR). This is a critical milestone in any NASA mission’s evolution. It is the point at which NASA decides either to go ahead with full-scale development to meet a launch deadline or not to do so. It is the point when sufficient technical agreement is reached on design, schedule, and cost for top NASA officials to say, in effect, “go forward and implement.”

Richard Cook, the project manager, and his team made their case to a review board headed by Figueroa during lengthy meetings at JPL.42 Various technical experts and managers were present, and there was considerable participation. The PDR process took the whole week. Getting to this decision point had been tortuous. As with all landers, matters of safety and science had to be equated. In the years leading up to the PDR, NASA had reconsidered the question raised in 2001 by Isakowitz, when at OMB, about whether it would be better to send two MSLs to lower risk of failure. As Spirit and Opportunity were performing so remarkably well, some scientists also suggested sending a number of Spirit – Opportunity-scale missions to various sites.

JPL engineers recommended that NASA go beyond Spirit-Opportunity technology in a major way with one flagship mission.43 There were also scien­tists who felt that breakthroughs were more likely to come with a single bold mission than with a number of smaller missions having incremental improve­ments over Spirit and Opportunity. Both scientists and engineers wanted to go beyond following water to detecting chemical building blocks of life. Out of the myriad technical discussions and debates prior to the PDR meetings, a consensus emerged—that NASA go for a truly significant MSL mission. The performance of Spirit and Opportunity was so outstanding that it gave confi­dence to those who favored the more ambitious approach to MSL. Moreover, MSR and the quest for life seemed to many to require a leap forward with MSL, rather than a more incremental strategy.

JPL and the Mars science community had devised a host of cutting-edge scientific instruments. They had conceived a new mechanism (called sky crane) to deliver MSL to the Mars surface. MSL had by now grown to be the size of an automobile and was thus heavy—and also very vulnerable to damage. It had to land with precision and delicacy, and JPL believed that retro-rockets or the kind of cushions Spirit and Opportunity used would be inadequate. But would this sky crane device work?

Many of the scientists and engineers employed on MSL had migrated from Spirit-Opportunity once its development was done. They brimmed with con­fidence, perhaps bordering on hubris. In 2005, Griffin had visited JPL and met with Elachi and the MSL team. “Can you do this?” he asked the scientists and engineers on the team. They said “Yes.”44 “Do you believe you can launch MSL in 2009?” Griffin asked Elachi. Elachi responded, “No problem.”45 Now, in 2006, the time for formal decisions had arrived, and grilling at the PDR sessions revealed at least two key problems that remained to be solved for mission suc­cess. One had to do with the motors that moved various parts of MSL. They were called actuators. NASA had opted for an advanced technology that would improve the capacity of the actuators to perform in extremely harsh places scien­tists wanted MSL to go. The other pertained to sample processing technology, critical for scientific understanding of the ingredients enabling life on Mars.46

There was considerable debate at the meetings, and Gentry Lee, who worked at JPL and had advised Hubbard when the MEP was planned, stood up and expressed skepticism with what the project team was saying. He believed that MSL could be built, but not by 2009. “Impossible!” he exclaimed.47 But the consensus view was more optimistic that the problems could be solved quickly enough. “Yes, we can” was the mood at the end of the PDR process, and it was widely shared. MSL got the go-ahead from Figueroa and his review team. The message from Figueroa to the project management team was, “We trust you. Don’t get cocky!”48 Reviews up the chain of command led to the neces­sary approvals from NASA leaders, and MSL advanced to the next stage: full implementation.

Lee did not relent. He was convinced that the MSL team, as outstanding as it was deemed to be, was asking for too many technical miracles to launch in 2009. He went to Elachi to express his reservations. He was not able to persuade Elachi to hold back. Elachi believed that JPL would come through and had con­veyed his confidence in MSL success to Griffin.49 The PDR process established the best estimates technical people could make about design, schedule, and cost, as a basis for NASA decision making. The MSL cost estimate that followed PDR, and which became the number NASA used in dealing with OMB and Congress at the time, was $1.6 billion.

At the same time that the PDR process was under way in 2006, NASA was also initiating a process to determine where MSL would land. In late May and June, NASA gathered 120 Mars researchers together to initiate siting discus­sions. It was noted that Viking had initially been wrong in its siting decisions and was forced to make last-minute changes. Indeed, luck had played a major role in its successful landing. Spirit’s initial site was predicted to be scientifically interesting, but it turned out not to be so. Only its roving capability saved it from disappointment. Opportunity’s site was one that quickly proved fortuitous, however. With only one expensive rover and an exceptionally ambitious goal, NASA had to pick the right place. The group discussed a long list of possibili­ties and narrowed the list. However, this assemblage was just the first of several meetings.50 Existing NASA missions at Mars would provide further information as time went on.

The question of NASA’s post-MSL future was also still open. A panel of the SSB in July released a report responding to the plan for 2011-2016 which McCuistion had provided earlier. While generally supportive of McCuistion’s proposal, the NAS panel suggested that NASA consider postponing the 2016 Astrobiology Field Laboratory mission until 2018 and instead use the 2016 op­portunity to build a seismic network. It was concerned that NASA research not neglect Mars’s structures and evolution in the agency’s quest to find past or pres­ent life. The panel backed the notion of resurrecting the telecommunications orbiter that had been killed. Further, it called for beginning technology devel­opment leading to MSR. The panel said that given the financial constraints, future plans as presented by NASA were “not optimized.”51