‘Nova’ Goes Along on Risky Mission to Mars

“I think the credibility of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is at stake,” scientist Steve Squyres says in “Mars Dead or Alive,” an episode of PBS’ “Nova,” premiering Sunday. “I think the credibility of NASA’s Mars program is at stake. A ... lot of science is at stake. The last 10 or 15 years of my career is at stake, from a purely personal perspective.”

The installment chronicles the monumental efforts that went into the latest attempt to land robotic spacecraft on the red planet.

After two spectacular and controversial failures in 1999, resulting in the losses of both the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander, JPL, based in La Canada Flintridge, and NASA are trying to recapture the momentum begun by the successful 1997 landing of the Mars Pathfinder mission and the worldwide telecasts of images of and from the little rover called Sojourner.

Last summer, Sojourner’s maxi-sized descendants, Spirit and Opportunity, were launched a month apart on dual missions that could make or break the future of robotic space exploration.

But if disaster befalls one or both of the new rovers, the entire U.S. space program will be shaken at its foundation, with no way to predict what happens next.

Not that it was any cakewalk getting to the launch, as the “Nova” episode -- written, produced and directed by Mark Davis for Boston PBS station WGBH -- painfully illustrates. From inception to launch, MER (Mars exploration rover, under whose auspices Spirit and Opportunity launched) overcame one engineering and science challenge after another.

“Mark and his crew were present for some of the low points in the engineering development,” says Adam Steltzner, the lead mechanical engineer for the entry, descent and landing phases. “There were moments when I wished that it would never have been preserved for all time.”

The broadcast should conclude with an update on Spirit’s landing, which was to have happened Saturday.

Perhaps illustrating MER’s importance, JPL threw open its doors in mid-November to a press junket for “Mars Dead or Alive,” sponsored by worldwide distributor National Geographic International.

On hand were all the mission’s major players, including Squyres, principal scientific investigator and a Cornell astronomer with an evangelical enthusiasm for his job, and Gentry Lee, an author, scientist and futurist whose involvement in the search for life on Mars stretches to Viking in the mid-1970s.

Tucked in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, JPL’s sprawling grounds could be mistaken for a college campus, a military base or a movie studio. Buildings spanning 60 years are jumbled along winding, tree-shaded roads.

A newer building houses the spaceflight operations facility for the rovers, a sleek room done in violet, gray and white with rows of flat-panel computer workstations and pull-down projection screens.

A cramped 1940s building houses a compact lab for robot design; it contains rock-studded inclines and two test “sandboxes” that simulate Martian landscapes.

More impressive is the large “sandbox” in a vaulted room with a glassed-in viewing gallery. On the red sand, surrounded by rocks and camouflage netting, sits a test version of the new rovers. At once sturdy and spindly, the six-wheeled vehicles resemble an unlikely marriage of a Tonka truck and a bug, with their solar panels spread out like dragonfly wings and a tall mast topped by high-resolution cameras.

Spirit’s Mars landing procedure was designed to follow a particular, demanding routine (the success of it wasn’t known when TV Times went to press). If it went according to plan, it will have folded into a capsule no bigger than the one that carried Sojourner. As with Pathfinder, it will have taken the craft through the atmosphere, then braked it with both a parachute (Steltzner’s particular nemesis) and rocket thrusters. Giant air bags will have inflated around the capsule, which will then have dropped for a touchdown. It conjures up a picture that would be spectacularly silly if it weren’t so serious, with the air bags bouncing willy-nilly along the surface.

If it avoided burning up, crashing, impaling itself on a sharp rock or having its air bags deflate prematurely, the Spirit rover will have come to rest on Mars, the air bags should have deflated and the craft should have begun the slow process of unfolding itself, calling home and rolling off to begin its mission.

Viking had the broad agenda of seeking the organic components of life, but Spirit and Opportunity ask more specific questions in two different locations. They seek minerals and rocks that give evidence that, long ago, there was water on Mars, meaning it was once warmer, wetter and perhaps conducive to life.

After Viking scientists first announced the finding of organic compounds, only to take it back later, Lee is reluctant to speculate on what the MER rovers might find.

When pressed, though, Lee admits, “Were we to see a hedgehog or something like that, it would be the most significant event that ever occurred in human scientific history. That moment, we would know we are not alone in the universe.”

Kate O’Hare writes for Tribune Media Services.

“Nova: Mars Dead or Alive” airs at 8 p.m. Sunday and 8 p.m. Tuesday on KCET.

Cover photograph by Kees Veenenbos.