In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

82 chapter six The Rover Becomes Rovers Many people probably believe that for space missions, building the spacecraft takes all the time. However, in my experience, we often understand well how to build spacecraft, and it is the scientific instruments that are the slowest to develop or the last to arrive. This is not because the scientists don’t take the schedule seriously. It is because the scientists and engineers supporting them are almost always pushing the state of the art. These teams are trying to measure things around distant worlds that have never been measured before. Still, for our newly decided-upon Mars rover, we had a real strength in an already developed science payload, the Athena payload, complete with its tireless and effective advocate, Steve Squyres. Of course, having developed and pushed for the Pathfinder airbag concept, I truly believed in it. Bouncing onto an unknown, uncharacterized alien surface may seem strange or even comical, but it’s an incredibly forgiving way to land when you have no idea where the next boulder might be. On July 16, 2000, Jim Garvin and I met with Ed Weiler to give him the results of the meeting we’d held just days before and the decision I’d come to, which Jim shared, that we needed to go to the surface in 2003 with a Pathfinder-­ like mission that we were calling the Mars Geological Rover (MGR). Ed was initially very difficult to convince. He is well known for adopting a very skeptical attitude toward anything that has significant risk attached to it. This is probably because of his experience with the Hubble Space Telescope. We all remember that when the $2 billion telescope launched into orbit, it turned out to be out of focus and ended up requiring a costly retrofit. As the Hubble program scientist, Ed had had to The Rover Becomes Rovers · 83 explain and work through the problems that Hubble had before it became an operational telescope (now doing its job, as we know, superbly). Space is a tough business. I think the reason that Jim and I were eventually able to prevail was because of a combination of the science readiness, the celestial mechanics , and the fact that I was beginning to develop a sense of the program architecture. In the emerging program sequence where we were trying to accomplish a decade-­ long science investigation, it was starting to become clear to me that to put resilience in the program, we really needed the alternating approach of landers and orbiters. Having a lander in 2003 after launching an orbiter in 2001 meant that we could start to adopt an overall approach of orbital reconnaissance followed by surface ground truth. Over the next several months, until we presented the entire program in October, this “ladder to Mars” concept became a very important part of the overall program systems engineering concept and, once fleshed out with actual missions, represented the whole new Mars Exploration Program. After a great deal of discussion in which we presented the pros and cons, the celestial mechanics arguments, the budget arguments, the science arguments , and both the advantages and the concerns about a Pathfinder package with the Athena payload, Weiler agreed with us that it was time to go back to the surface with a lander. Shortly after this meeting, Jim, Ed, and I went to see Dan Goldin to give him the rationale for the lander in 2003. As the administrator, Dan had the last word. A typical meeting with Dan Goldin is that you get to brief your first chart out of your package of ten or twenty, and then Dan starts asking questions and going off on his own monologue. You may or may not ever get a chance to actually make your case. This meeting was no exception. We had only just presented the conclusion that a rover in 2003 was the right thing to do when Dan challenged us with the question, “What about two rovers?” At times like these, you really have to think on your feet. After gulping some extra air, I could hear my unbidden thoughts: “The man is crazy! . . . This is the kind of off-­ the-­ wall thinking that got us into this mess in the first place! . . . Well, at least two identical vehicles isn’t quite as crazy as two very different spacecraft would be. . . . He’s the boss, and I can’t just blow him off. . . . Help!” A brief discussion ensued...

Share