Spirit and MSL

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.