In a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, engineers observed the first driving test for NASA’s Mars 2020 rover on Dec. 17, 2019. Scheduled to launch as early as July 2020, the Mars 2020 mission will search for signs of past microbial life, characterize Mars’ climate and geology, collect samples for future return to Earth, and pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet. It is scheduled to land in an area of Mars known as Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. JPL is building and will manage operations of the Mars 2020 rover for NASA. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is responsible for launch management. For more information about the mission, go to https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/.
I watched the “7 Minutes of Terror” as the rover from Perseverance descended and landed on Mars on Thursday afternoon. Boy, I needed that.
The atmosphere in Mission Control was intense. These people were on the edges of their seats as the progress of the rover was narrated by Dr. Swati Mohan doing an amazing job of staying calm and professional. Every little thing, how fast and far the rover was falling, parachutes opening, course corrections, and the dreaded moment when they lost contact for a while and had no idea what was going on . . . all of it was read by this lovely calm woman as the report came in. Not ordinarily riveting stuff, but in this context, it was breathtaking.
At one point, the team realized that there was a major destructive obstacle in the landing field, and that Perseverance Rover was headed straight for it. There was nothing the team could do at this point – any instructions relayed to the rover would get there too late to make a difference. And so, they had to trust that the programming would do its job, and that the rover would see the obstacle and take action on its own to divert itself to a safer position. There were people standing, shifting from foot to foot, hands pulling at their hair, eyes riveted to the screen. You could hear the anguish, the fear, the worry, the tears . . . and then telemetry started coming in. Yes, the rover made a course adjustment; yes, it was going to avoid the obstacle; yes, the new landing place was safe and free of any element that might cause this multi-million dollar baby to be smashed to expensive smithereens on the surface of a planet 38.6 million miles from the nearest body shop. The relief was astonishing. Some of the team literally doubled over with relief, and collapsed back into their chairs to await the next hair-raising moment.
And then, 3000 feet, 300 feet, and down. The room went silent until that soft, calming voice said, “Confirmation, Mars 2020 Rover has safely landed on Mars,” and the room went insane. Everyone leaped to their feet, cheering, whistling, applauding, and literally, actually jumping for joy. Fist bumps, elbow bumps, high-fives all over the room. And when the first grainy “okay, I’m here” image came in you’d have thought it was a picture of their own newborn baby.
Yes, I needed that. I had no idea how much I needed that. It made me cry.
This is a pure science mission. We’re exploring Mars to discover whether there may have been life in the lake where the rover landed. We’re exploring Mars and asking the biggest question of all time, “Are we alone in this Universe?” Hundreds of scientists, united, working together to answer one of the greatest philosophical questions of all time. All of that passion, all of that energy and worry and joy and fear and elation, focused on this little mechanical pup, landing on a planet where none of them will ever set foot, to explore this mystery.
When I was a kid, my family watched the original Cosmos with Carl Sagan, we watched NOVA back when it was hard science, we watched every science show we could get, and back in the 80s, PBS was in its golden age of science programming. It was astonishing. I got a far better science education from PBS than I ever did from high school. I feel so grateful and so lucky to have been alive at that moment, and for my brain to have been a sponge, and that my family was as obsessed with and excited about this stuff as I was. I didn’t even notice that our tiny TV got more than one channel for years. I mean, who cared about all that other stuff when you could be exploring space and time with Dr. Carl? Not me.
So yes, the tears began to flow when that little rover touched down safely. I felt hope ignited in my heart after a long absence. This is the best of what we as a country can be. This, this is the America I grew up in. Curious, passionate, creative, clever, engaged, excited people working together to do something so complex and so huge that it’s almost an unimaginable thing. We sent a robot – on wheels and with a frickin’ helicopter drone – to Mars to see if there was ever anything living in the lake that the previous robot we sent, Opportunity, discovered. I mean, who needs science fiction? This is fantastic stuff. This is what we are capable of.
Speaking of Opportunity – do you remember how devastated we were when they couldn’t get a response from Opportunity and had to announce that it was “dead?” Some of us went into mourning. Opportunity was like . . . NASA’s cool pet that you couldn’t actually play fetch or snuggle with, but still, we were in love with it, and when it died, damn that hurt.
So now NASA has a new puppy, and I for one am utterly smitten. I can’t wait to see the next batch of photos. I want to hear the recordings it makes – what does it sound like there? I mean, to listen to the soundscape of another world? How astonishing! The new rover is taking soil samples, keeping them safe for when a recovery mission can go, land on the surface, rendezvous with the puppy, take off again and return to Earth with them for analysis. How far out is that? And who knows if those samples will be retrieved in my lifetime, but it doesn’t matter – we’re doing pure, hard science on the surface of another planet and I couldn’t be more ebullient.
This is who we can be when we allow curiosity and passion and the joy of discovery to flourish.
You don’t have to go to Mars, or build a wheeled robot-helicopter to live in that kind of excellence. All you have to do is write some songs, or paint something that moves you, or write a short story, or cook incredible meals for your friends, or just be the best kind of friend possible. Friendship can be a high art form. I have some friends like that. My point is, get passionate, get curious, get engaged, don’t let any bullshit stop you from pursuing a thought or a vision or an idea to its beautiful conclusion, no matter what that is. That is how we become stronger, more thoughtful and more understanding. Leave me a comment about what makes you curious and passionate. Together, we can make a better world, one idea at a time.