Shutdown

The shutdown has yet to affect Curiosity operations except for the fact that those of us who are not government employees are taking operational shifts for those who are.  However, the shutdown affects a lot of other things.

I have been planning for a research trip to Antarctica, and that is likely cancelled (but no one has been able to confirm this since everyone who could is on furlough).  Please see my blog entry for Dawn In Antarctica for my state of mind the last 2 weeks:  http://dawninantarctica.blogspot.com/2013/10/shutdown.html

Planning Curiosity's First Scoop

Our first set of 5 science papers on results from scooping martian dirt with Curiosity were published this week.  Those results and papers seem so old to me; we got the data late in 2012 and wrote the papers last spring.  We are working on more papers with more detailed results.  This will likely continue for years or maybe even decades - like the Viking analyses.  But the specifics are new to everyone not on the team.  The excitement from the broader community is so fun to see.

Reading the papers and talking about the results (MP3 interview on Insight) brings back interesting memories.  Most of them are good.  But it was also very hard to identify all of the things that had to be done before we could scoop and analyze the samples.  I was intimately involved in that process, and fellow Long Term Planner (LTP), Sanjeev Gupta, captured me working with sol paths and contingencies in one of our daily meetings with the Strategic Uplink Lead (SUL Alicia) and Strategic Science Planner (SSP Greg).

Long discussions often lead to better plans.

White boards are essential!

In operations, the LTP, SUL, SSP, and others representing engineering and science instruments meet near the end of every day at the Look Ahead Plan Meeting (LAPM), and often earlier in day at informal tag-ups.  We shape the plans for Curiosity for the upcoming 1-7 sols.  This is easy when we are mostly driving, but it was extremely challenging for our first sample.  There were so many things we didn't know.  We did our best to make good plans and revised them every day until we got our sample and our results.

I went through a similar process for Waypoint 1 / Darwin, but in that case, I was the Point of Contact for science planning.  Thus, I did a lot of the planning even when I wasn't the LTP.  It was great to have a LTP take care of the daily planning while I focused on other details.  We'll likely use this approach going forward when we get to a place where we want to do intensive work.  It gets easier each time.

When I started this mission, I had no idea what it takes to ask a rover on another planet to do science for you.  I now have some idea, but every time I sit down with someone with different expertise than mine, I realize how much they know and contribute that I'd never dreamed of.  For example, it took strategic planning plus three expert rover planners and me and instrument Payload Uplink Leads plus many others all day to plan the contact science for one day at Darwin.  And that is using tools developed that week in response to need identified from our last contact science adventure.  And... and... and...  Each time we do this, we know more, we improve our approaches, we build better tools.  I don't think it will ever be easy, though.  We will always push for more; it seems to be in our natures.

What an amazing adventure to be exploring Mars with Curiosity!

Waypoint 1 Mysteries

Over the last 4 weeks, I spent more than 100 hours preparing for our science campaign at "Waypoint 1", also called Darwin.  (See the official press release for a summary of results.) This is one of a handful of sites that we chose in advance to spend some extra time for contact science on our <as fast as possible> drive to the base of Mt. Sharp.  Along with Ken Williford, I volunteered to coordinate analyses at this first waypoint.  There were several key goals for this site.

First, we know that the rocks are very interesting and only a fews sols won't get us very far in understanding all the rocks in the area.  But we don't want to get bogged down in a long campaign of analyses because the base of Mt. Sharp is our prime science target.  Thus, Ken and I, with the help of many others, tried to put together a plan that included identifying the site for contact science, approaching the site, bumping to our contact science location, and doing 3 days of "outcrop" science.

Second, we wanted as much scientific information as possible in our short stay here. Maximizing science return is different for different people with different interests.  To start the planning off well, I encouraged the science team to identify the key science questions we could address at this site. Many team members stepped forward with presentations on scientific enigmas and the observations we needed to address them. We then settled on analyzing the composition and texture of conglomerates as our top science priority, with analyses of sandstones and mystery dark rocks as secondary targets.

Third, we decided that a good view is worth a lot, and there was a nice 3-m high, smooth hill with an amazing view of both the basin to the south of the official waypoint and what we hoped would be good areas to consider for contact science.

With these goals in mind, we headed toward the hill, named Panorama Point, expecting that it would not cost us any extra sols to get there rather than go straight to the contact science area. As luck would have it, full fledged AutoNav was approved the day before our drive toward Panorama Point, the terrain was perfect for a long AutoNav drive, and we got to almost the top with a record-breaking drive (141.5 m!). It was also right before a weekend, which meant we would have the weekend at the top of the hill for some stereo panoramic images, opportunistic contact science, and our approach to the contact science area.  On top of all that extra time at a great place (rather than a miscellaneous place), we got to our contact science area several sols earlier than we were planning!  This meant that Ken and I, and the rest of the team had to move into hyper planning mode, making decisions a week earlier than we expected.

This acceleration in schedule meant that we also got some extra science at the prime contact science location at no cost to drive progress beyond that already planned.  We were in what we call "restricted sols", which means that we only get our data down from Curiosity after we have to make a plan for the next day. This really slows us down when we are driving, because we can only drive every other sol. However, when we are doing contact science in one spot, we can do useful analyses every sol. Thus, I really wanted to get to the contact science area during restricted sols, which we did. That means that we could bump to one site and do some analyses while waiting for the data we needed to get to the second site (which had better outcrop in my opinion). Thus, we ended up with more contact science and two sites at the cost of no drive sols (or maybe 1 drive sol, depending on how you count).  This was a huge accomplishment for the team.  We took a record number of MAHLI images and did 8 analyses with APXS. And we left the site on schedule with no problems.  And we ended just as restricted sols ended.  Thus, we are back to Drive, Drive, Drive every day!

To see our data, check out the images at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=#/?slide=385 starting with sol 385 for tons of AutoNav drive images and going up to sol 402 with our last HazCam picture of the outcrop at site 2. Spend some time with 100's of images! And remember - they are from Mars!

Curiosity's Longest Drive Yet!

The "Darwin" Outcrop

Curiosity did its longest drive yet late last week: Press release.  It was beautiful!

I spent the last two weeks at the on-duty Long Term Planner, plus helping the team develop our science priorities for analyses at Waypoint 1, our first significant stop on the way to Mt. Sharp.  

It has been intensely rewarding to see the amazing images come down.  We chose this area as one of our 5 places to do more intense science because we expected reasonably good outcrop of the rocks that make up Bradbury Rise based on images from the orbiting instrument HiRISE.  And we chose well!  

Images: 

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=5554

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=#/?slide=387

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=#/?slide=388 (more full frame images will come down over the next few days)

Curiosity Update - On our way to Mt. Sharp with a bit of mudstone

It's been a while since I've posted anything.  It was a crazy-busy spring from me trying to teach as well as keep up with my work for the Mars Science Laboratory.  Now that we are halfway through summer, I'm feeling caught up.  I have time to focus on writing and editing papers, for MSL, my graduate students' projects, and our big Antarctic project.  It has been wonderful.

Here is a nice update from Colette, a great engineer I often work closely with:

Colette mentions that the science team will be releasing our results in the future.  I spent this morning editing our first paper on SAM results from the Yellowknife Bay mudstones.  The lead author is Doug Ming, and he plans to submit it to Science early next week.  It is so thrilling to see the plans for analyses turn into data and then interpretations.  Writing up the results forces us to critically evaluate what we've done and what the data mean.  It is satisfying to see how much we've learned!

Next Tuesday, I go back on shift as a Long Term Planner for almost 2 weeks.  During that time, we'll be driving, planning our next suite of science observations, and managing the data in our cameras.  It will be a busy two weeks.

Our First Problem...

We've been on the surface of Mars with Curiosity for over 6 months, and nothing serious had gone wrong - until Tuesday night.  We got part of our data down for planning on Wednesday - when I started my shift as Long Term Planner.  Then we got errors.  The science team continued with planning in case the problem was with the communications, e.g. the links getting data from Curiosity to us.  The engineering team scrambled to figure out what was wrong.  By the end of Wednesday, they realized that Curiosity had not gone to sleep for its nap.  That is equivalent to the "spinning wheel of death" we all hate to see on our computer screens. 

There is, of course, a JPL Press Release and National Geographic has a nice summary with more engineering explanations from Richard Cook (Project Manager) and Madgy Bareh (JPL Engineer).  Madgy is leading the "tactical" recovery efforts, which includes getting all the necessary settings into RCE-B.  There is also a team working to reconstruct what went wrong and whether or not RCE-A can be used in the future. 

It's been a very stressful few days, but we still have a working rover on the red planet!  (Actually 2 - Opportunity is still going strong, too).

I'm still on duty at Long Term Planner through Saturday.  My main job right now is to help the science team regroup on our plans for the next few weeks.  As one team member said, "It's time to brush off our patience."

Success

We successfully drilled our first sampling hole on Mars!  Whoo-hooo!

Dawn on Charlotte Talks, My NPR Interview

Curiosity's hand print in the soil of a wheel scuff.  The imprint is from the APXS instrument, which measured the elements (e.g. Si, Al, Mg, Fe, etc.) in the soil.

Earlier this week, I had the privilege of going to the annual Geological Society of America meeting in Charlotte, NC.  I presented our preliminary geological map of the Curiosity landing area in Gale Crater, Mars.

Thanks to Justin Samuel, of GSA, I was invited to record an hour-long NPR show with Mike Collins of Charlotte Talks.  It was great fun!  Here's the link: Mars Rover

Joy Cooke already posted a comment on the show asking if I encourage young students to pursue science (Thanks Joy!) - I do, but informally.  I try to share my experiences, but right now, I am almost entirely focused on making sure we use the rover for the best scientific purpose possible.  It's such a capable - and complicated - rover, that we have to have people dedicated to making all of the daily decisions on what to do - down to planning seconds, looking for swapped numbers, making tough choices about what to throw out of plans, etc.

For example, if a command has an error, it can put an instrument in an unsafe state. We then have to evaluate

1. what happened, 
2. whether or not any damage was done, 
3. which data stored on Curiosity we need to request to diagnose the problem,
4. how to fix the problem, 
5. how to make up for the things Curiosity didn't do because of the error,
6. how to change all the commands we were prepared to send to the rover (and make sure there aren't any new errors!)
7. how to change the plan for the next day, 
8. how to prepare for the Thanksgiving weekend (when most people actually get a holiday), and
9. how to keep the problem from happening again

Yesterday, I worked over 12 hours on planning for the next few days plus Thanksgiving observations, and I wasn't the only one!  There were dozens of us.  

Eventually, we get to actually look at the amazingly cool data and learn something about Mars.  Often, the public has more time to look at the beautiful images than the people on the team!  I hope that all people of all ages can enjoy the sense of exploration, adventure, and discovery provided by the Curiosity rover!  It is an amazing international collaboration that people across the world can and should be proud of!

Self Portrait of Curiosity!

We used MAHLI, the Mars Hand Lens Imager, to image Curiosity on Mars!  MAHLI is on the end of the arm, so to take the self portrait, we had to command the arm to move to a couple of dozen different places, pointing MAHLI precisely.  Several team members spent hours and hours preparing the sequence of images, testing it on Curiosity's Earth-bound twin, and then implementing it on Curiosity.  The result is spectacular, even in low resolution thumbnail mode!

Analyzing Mars

In the last week, we announced results from both of our large analytical instruments on Curiosity.

CheMin characterized the mineralogy of dust and sand at the site called Rocknest.  CheMin uses x-ray diffraction patterns to measure the spacing between atoms in crystals, which are diagnostic of specific minerals.  Some of the CheMin team members have been working for more than 2 decades to get x-ray diffraction on Mars!  This first sample analysis is a spectacular achievement.

Similarly, SAM characterized the composition of the martian atmosphere.  The SAM team looked for methane, a trace gas that some have suggested is present based on observations from Earth and a Mars orbiter.  However, those detections have been very controversial.  The SAM team announced that they did not detect martian methane in the atmosphere.  SAM did, however, refine estimates of the amount of 13C versus 12C in carbon dioxide as well as the concentration and isotopic ratios of argon.  These results are critical for understanding the history of the martian atmosphere, in particular why it is thin and how much of it might have been lost to space over the last several billion years.

SAM has not yet analyzed the dust and sand that CheMin has analyzed.  Those analyses are in the works and will represent another important milestone for our mission.

On a personal note, I'm heading to the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America.  There is a special session on results from the Mars Science Laboratory, and I'll be presenting our geological map on Monday morning.  It will be great to share our results with our colleagues!

Jake, Glenelg, and Mugearite

Here is a great blog about the fun of names on Mars, particularly the rock named Jake.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/19979798  

We name things on the MSL mission because it's easier to understand someone when they say "Jake" rather than "That rock we analyzed on sol, hummm, maybe sol 48.  The one that looked like a pyramid."  

Geologists do this with formations (groups of rocks) on Earth all the time.  Almost all formation names on Earth are taken from nearby places, a tradition also codified by official naming organizations such as the International Stratigraphic Commission.  We are now doing it on Mars, but we have to name the places before we can name the rocks.  

We're bootstrapping our way on the naming business.  First, we identified interesting geological formations on Earth that have the same name as a city with a population of <100,000 people.  We can then follow International Astronomical Union naming conventions and name a small crater after the city.  We then name the quad (a ~1.2 x 1.2 km2 area) containing the crater after the crater, which is named after the city, which has the same name as the geological formation, which is named after a place where the formation is found, which is named after a person, another place, or whatever it reminded the namer of...  This naming approach provides a very rich history from which people can make all sorts of interesting connections!  

I have to admit that the fact that we found mugearite on the way to Glenelg, both ultimately linked name-wise to the Isle of Skye, does seem like a "cosmic coincidence!"

Curiosity Scarecrow Rover

Yesterday, the shuttle Endeavor was delivered to LA.  It flew over a number of key areas in the state, including the Golden Gate Bridge, NASA Ames, Disneyland, and JPL.  Needless to say, many people at JPL wanted to see it.  We piled out of our meetings and chose a place with a good view of the sky.  Since JPL is built on the Sierra Madre Fault scarp, everywhere that isn't behind a tall building has a good view.  I chose to go to the Mars Yard - the place the rover drivers test the mobility of the "scarecrow" rover.  When the rover Opportunity got stuck in the sand on Mars, this is where the rover drivers spent a month studying how many wheel turns would be needed to get her unstuck - and it worked!

The Curiosity Scarecrow consists of the same suspension system as the real rover, but lacks all of the instruments.  One of the rover drivers decided that Curiosity Scarecrow also wanted to watch the shuttle fly over.  Thus, he drove her out, over some rocks, and into the center of the yard.  I took some good video of the rover and posted a cut version here:  

It was great to see the Curiosity Scarecrow creeping around - and going over some very interesting obstacles!

(My video and photos of the shuttle flyover aren't worth posting.)

Finding the Path

Today was a great day.  It was the first of four sols (martian days) that I am assigned to the tactical Long Term Planner (LTP) role, which means I attend meetings and am generally responsible for communicating LTP decisions to the relevant people.  

It was also a hard day.  The team has been working hard to find the right order and timing of activities over the next few sols.  The LTPs have been making sol trees showing the various choices, considering the engineering constraints, and trying to optimize the outcomes of various necessary activities.  The decisions were so complicated that we have had more than two significant plan revisions per sol for several sols.  We finally found the right order for things just in time for solorrow (tomorrow's sol)!  We knew it was right when each person we consulted provided more insights that supported the new plan rather than requiring changes.  Whew!  

At the end of my shift, after writing my notes, I send an e-mail updating a number of people on the new plan for Sol 19 (solorrow).  One of the instrument Principle Investigators thanked me for my patience, and here is my response:

I don't feel like it was so much patience as finally feeling the path under our feet.  In the late 1980's, I went on a hike up Mt. Baldy (just to the east of us here in Pasadena) and started to watch the sunset from the top with some friends.  Then we realized that none of us had flashlights.  We ran down as fast as we could with the remaining daylight.  Then it got dark and we got to a wooded area.  We lost the trail.  I stayed in place while my friends when off in different directions looking for the trail.  My philosophy was that I must be really close to the trail as one can't go very far off the trail in the dark.  It turned out that it was only a foot to my right.  Today was like that.  We've been running around, trying to find the right path.  Suddenly, things came together, and we got back on it.  There is still a lot of work to get down off the mountain, but we have a plan that will keep us moving forward.  I really like days like today...

For my next birthday, soon after that mountain trip, my dad gave me a day pack with a matching flashlight.  I've almost always had a flashlight with me since then.

And reading my response now, I think I should say "There is still a lot of work to get to the mountain" since Curiosity is not yet even at the base of the trail up.  Mt. Sharp is beautiful and it calls my spirit of adventure!

HazCam mosaic of Curiosity's shadow and Mt. Sharp.
Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Be on Mars!

There are some very cool martian toys available that can give you a real sense of being with Curiosity on Mars.  First, you need to know what time it is, so you should get a Mars24 Sunclock.  When MSL is in the dark, we're hard at work!

Next, you can land with Curiosity at Eyes on the Solar System by choosing "replay".  Then there's the "LIVE Mode" button that you can use to follow along on our mission!  The simulation that you see was scripted before landing and was only 0.6 seconds off in time.  They didn't get exactly the right landing site, though.  This will be corrected in the next week or so.  I think that the site will follow Curiosity during the entire mission!  What fun!

Science, Science, Science!

The first MAHLI image came down!  This is our microscopic imager that can also focus at a distance.  This image was taken through the dust cover of MAHLI, and we kicked up a lot of dust on landing.  Thus, the image is not as sharp as we will see later in the mission.  However, it is really beautiful and reminds me of the Smokey Mountains!  Although the color is different - and this is true color, taken with an RGB imaging chip!  Welcome to Mars, the Red Planet - or maybe orangey-yellow planet.  Just wait until we get that dust cover off or the first pictures with the color MastCams!

Ken Edgett describing the first MAHLI image from Curiosity.  You can see a distinctive peak on the crater rim!  This image reminds me of the Smokey Mountains!  Although the color is a bit different - Welcome to Mars, the Red Planet!  From AP Photo.

The science efforts are really heating up.  We've been working on mapping the geology and geomorphology of Curiosity's landing area using data from orbiters.  These data are amazing!  And when you have a hundred people looking at the same areas, lots of observations get made.  I've worked with several others to compile maps made by ~20 volunteers.  We are now at the stage of identifying better units for one of the particularly interesting rock types.  We'll have a detailed discussion about how we want to map that unit starting at 1 am!  It's absolutely fantastic!

Color Movie of Landing on Mars

The MARDI camera took the very first movie of landing on Mars, and we got more than 100 thumbnail images back from it this morning.  It's in color!  We'll have higher resolution soon!

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=149974611

We're there! And now it's time for SCIENCE

We landed!  It couldn't have been better or more successful!  Nothing (!!!) went wrong, except the A/V system in the Science Discussion room was stuck in "show NASA TV" mode from the landing.  We could still talk, though!

I finished my shift as Long Term Planner at 9:30 in the morning.  I went home and immediately fell asleep for 9 long hours.  I woke up just in time to watch the sunset.  In reading my e-mail, I've learned that we got a lot more data while I was out.  I'm eager to get back in, see where we landed, and dive back into the science.

UCDavis compiled a list of links to media coverage of me, which Louise sent around.  Here's that list:

Outlet: BBC News

Title: Gale Crater: Geological 'sweet shop' awaits Mars rover

Publication Date: 08/03/2012

Summary: BBC News interviews geology professor Dawn Sumner about the Mars rover mission: "I am confident we will learn amazing new things. Some of them will be answers to questions we already have, but most of what we learn will be surprises to us."

Source URL: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19112800>

Unique Visitors Per Month: 8,696,910

Outlet: Nature

Title: Crater Mound a Prize and Puzzle for Mars Rover

Publication Date: 08/03/2012

Summary: Many researchers have differing theories regarding the formation of the mysterious Mount Sharp on Mars, but Dawn Sumner is not concerned with these differences. "That's what the mission is for," she says. "We have a million different opinions among 250 people."

Source URL: <http://www.nature.com/news/crater-mound-a-prize-and-puzzle-for-mars-rover-1.11122>

Unique Visitors Per Month: 1,862,094

Outlet: Sacramento Bee

Title: Mars Rover Success Could Lift Future Missions

Publication Date: 08/05/2012

Summary: The Sacramento Bee interviews Dawn Sumner about the Mars rover mission: "It will be an adrenaline rush, but I tend to be an optimist." As co-investigator, Sumner is in charge of culling information from data sent back from the rover. "We will be looking for rocks that are 3 billion years old," she said.

Source URL: <http://www.sacbee.com/2012/08/05/4693895/nasa-mars-rover-team.html>

Unique Visitors Per Month: 1,158,680

Outlet: Sacramento Bee

Title: Video: UC Davis Professor Dawn Sumner Speaks About the Mars Rover Mission

Publication Date: 08/05/2012

Summary: Before the Mars rover "Curiosity" landed on the planet Sunday night, UC Davis professor Dawn Sumner discussed its mission and landing.

Source URL: <http://www.sacbee.com/2012/08/04/4693184/video-uc-davis-professor-dawn.html>

Unique Visitors Per Month: 1,158,680

Outlet: Davis Enterprise

Title: UC Davis Scientist Prepares for Mars Rover Landing

Publication Date: 08/05/2012

Summary: Geology professor Dawn Sumner will spend the first four "Martian" days as the "long-term planner" of the Mars rover team, coordinating the first scientific interpretations of what is seen when the rover lands and helping make daily decisions about Curiosity's activities.

Source URL: <http://ct.moreover.com/ct?haid=b637362cea6ad7731344127835477ef3dcf30fd5241bb&co=f000000000432s-1158206718>

Unique Visitors Per Month: 17,332

Outlet: KCOP-TV

Title: Fox News at 11

Air Date: 08/05/2012

Summary: Fox 11 was at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California where UC Davis geologist Dawn Sumner celebrated the successful Mars rover landing with her colleagues and discussed the mission's purpose.

Broadcast Stream: <http://us.cisionpoint.com//BouncingBallVideoPassThrough.aspx?locator=6-29D26BC8CF-1D81775-10FE251>

Nielsen Audience: 32,410

Outlet: Hearst Television Inc.

Title: KCRA News

Air Date: 08/06/2012

Summary: Dawn Sumner was among the many viewers watching the Mars rover landing on Sunday night, preparing for her next four days of crucial work to uncover the scientific meaning of the rover's discoveries.

Broadcast Stream: <http://us.cisionpoint.com//BouncingBallVideoPassThrough.aspx?locator=6-2B02679BCF-1D81775-10FE251>

Nielsen Audience: 14,594

Outlet: Capital Public Radio

Title: Mars Rover Will Have UC Davis Professor at Controls

Publication Date: 08/02/2012

Summary: Dawn Sumner was picked for her position on the Mars mission because of her experience searching for life forms in Antarctica, the place on earth that may be most like Mars. Speaking with CPR, Sumner says the evidence of life her team is looking for is very, very small.

Source URL: <http://www.capradio.org/articles/2012/08/02/mars-rover-will-have-uc-davis-professor-at-controls>

Unique Visitors Per Month: 16,016

Outlet: Planet Save

Title: Mars Rover Curiosity Will Explore Strange Crater

Publication Date: 08/05/2012

Summary: NASA's Mars Rover Curiosity is set to land on Mars and explore Mount Sharp, a 5.5-km-tall mound of layered sediments that time and pressure have squeezed into a mountain of rock, strangely located in the center of the large Gale crater. Dawn Sumner refers to it as a "scientific enigma."

Source URL: <http://planetsave.com/2012/08/05/mars-rover-curiosity-will-explore-strange-crater/>

Unique Visitors Per Month: 31,686

Outlet: Dawn on Mars (Professor Sumner's personal blog)

Title: How to do Science with 300+ Team Members and a Rover on Another Planet

Publication Date: 08/05/2012

Summary: Geology professor Dawn Sumner has written a blog post describing her work with the Mars rover "Curiosity" and the purpose of their mission.

Source URL: <http://dawnonmars.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-do-science-with-300-team-members.html>

Unique Visitors Per Month: N/A

How to do Science with 300+ Team Members and a Rover on Another Planet

Space missions are special. They take hundreds of people cooperating over many years toward a common goal of success.  It’s a complicated process.  MSL is my first mission, and this is my perspective of how the process works.

There are innumerable interesting scientific questions one can ask about Mars, ranging from how it formed to how it has changed through time geologically to how it has changed through time climatically to the potential existence of life.  The first step in any mission is deciding which of those questions to investigate.  To help guide those decisions, NASA sponsors the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG).  In addition to other activities, MEPAG maintains a document that outlines the science community’s consensus on the most important scientific questions to address in relationship to understanding Mars.  Any scientist interested in Mars can participate in MEPAG meetings and provide feedback to this “Goals Document”.  Based on the highest priority science investigations, NASA then commissions working groups to study particular mission types, for example an orbiter, a rover, or sample return.  They include evaluations of whether or not the desired science investigations are technically feasible and financially realistic.  Once potential missions are well enough defined, they are evaluated in the context of all of NASA’s planetary science missions by a committee established by the National Research Council.  This committee produces a “Decadal Survey” document, which outlines what NASA should plan for and accomplish within the field of planetary sciences in the next 10+ years.  If funding is available, the NASA Planetary Sciences Subdivision is required to take the appropriate steps to implement technology development, fundamental research, and missions with the priorities provided in the Decadal Survey.  

When a mission to Mars of a certain type and with general scientific goals is a high priority in the Decadal Survey, NASA commissions a large number of studies to define what is technically possible, what is scientifically reasonable, and what fits within the “budget wedge”, e.g. how much money per year over the next decade can be expected minus the amount per year that is already committed for other missions.  Eventually, a mission emerges that is defined by more specific scientific goals. A call for proposed instruments is released to the science community.  This call lays out what types of observations need to be made, how much money is available, limits on the power and weight for instruments, and many more technical details.  In the case of MSL, the call for instrument proposals included a call for imaging instruments (e.g. cameras).  Malin Space Science Systems proposed to build and operate several cameras, and I was on one of those proposals.  Once the proposals are submitted to NASA, a committee of experts evaluates each class of instrument and chooses those that they think are the best for the money and can actually be built - there are many instruments we want that are just too difficult to build so that they can be light enough and low power enough to go on a rover AND work at freezing Mars temperatures AND actually produce good results.  When the proposals are chosen, the selected teams get money to implement what they promised.  Our camera proposal was chosen.  

Problems come up.  Problems are solved.  Designs are changed.  Things are removed.  Things are added.  It has taken 8 years to go from the selection of proposals to the launch of MSL!  (It was actually delayed by 2 years due to some technical problems that emerged in the detailed design, implementation, and testing of the rover.)  

While the engineers are building the rover and instruments, the scientists are learning what the instruments can do, calibrating them, choosing where to land, dreaming up new hypotheses to test, etc.  Many individuals on the team are both engineers and scientists - they have a scientific question that they build an instrument to address, or they build an instrument and find science questions that can be addressed by their analyses.  Other team members are one or the other.  The thing we all share is a focus on mission success.  If the instruments fail, the scientists don’t get their data.  If there weren’t interesting science questions, the engineers wouldn’t have a cool rover to design, build, and test.  

We are now at that critical point where everything changes.  The hardware is all built and about to land on Mars.  The goal on MSL now is to operate the rover and its instruments as productively as possible on another planet.  Curiosity is a robot; every single action is controlled by software.  The software is designed to do some things on its own, like Entry, Decent, and Landing (EDL).  It has to be able to do that autonomously because, right now, it takes 14 minutes for a signal to go from Earth to Mars.  It only takes 7 minutes to land.  Thus, we can’t help Curiosity during EDL; she has to do it on her own.  However, once Curiosity is on the surface of Mars, things can go more slowly.  The team on Earth can decide what to have the rover do, and we can send commands up asking her to do different things each day.  

Putting the daily commands for Curiosity together is now our focus - this is called Operations.  Four times per martian day (called a sol), one of two orbiters around Mars will talk to Curiosity.  In the martian afternoon, the orbiters will receive data from Curiosity and in the martian morning, they will provide commands to Curiosity (and receive more data).  These data include the health of the rover, various essential engineering details, and scientific results.  As soon as these data are relayed back to Earth, the science and engineering teams pore over all the details.  If something is wrong with the rover, Tiger Teams are assembled to figure out what is actually wrong and how to fix it.  If nothing is seriously wrong, the science team uses the new data to plan observations for Curiosity to make the following sol.  Every single observation has to be requested.  For example, if you want to know if there is a rock nearby, you have to ask for a picture and wait a sol (or more) for that picture to come back and then look at it.  Since we need to know where we are, images are taken very frequently.  If we want to know the composition of that rock, it takes more planning.  If we have an image, we know where the rock is, and the ChemCam instrument can then be used to vaporize a bit of the rock with its laser.  It takes another sol to vaporize the rock and get that information back.  If we want more detailed results from the APXS instrument on the rover arm, the scientists have to decide where on the rock they want to analyze.  Then the engineers have to figure out how to move every joint on the arm to get the APXS instrument to that position safely.  If it can work, the scientists and engineers work together to make the detailed software commands that tell Curiosity how many turns of each motor and in what order to move for the instrument to end up safely in the right spot and then make the analysis.  Once everything is proofread and any new commands are tested on the twin rover in the “Mars Yard” at JPL, the commands are sent to Curiosity to execute.  As you can imagine, this takes time!

Every single sol, the engineers and scientists go through this process - making sure the rover is safe, deciding what to have Curiosity do, writing the commands that will be executed, proofreading them many times, and sending them off.  We call these “tactical” activities.  We have roughly 16 hours between the time we get data from Curiosity until it’s time to send up the next set of commands.  It takes a lot of people to do this well!  And the team will be doing it every sol for one Mars year (~2 Earth years)!

As you can imagine, it is easy to get caught up in the details.  However, we have those big science questions that NASA used to define the mission.  The mission has to address those questions; it has to stay on track and not spend all of its time looking at everything that might be interesting.  Thus, there is a management structure for “strategic” planning.  The people who led the instrument teams and a few people appointed by NASA make up a committee that sets the strategic timeline for the mission.  For MSL, the long-term goal is to investigate the rocks that make up Mount Sharp in Gale Crater.  Thus, the committee might give the guideline that the rover can characterize a particular set of rocks for 3 sols, but then has to move toward the main science target.  The tactical planning then has some long-term structure.

My first job in operations is as a Long Term Planner (LTP).  A LTP is assigned to work with the tactical process each sol.  Their job is to make sure the tactical process is consistent with the strategic guidelines.  For example, the LTP would intervene if the tactical planning started a set of analyses that would take 5 sols, but Curiosity was supposed to be moving on in 3 sols.  The LTP also makes sure that important discoveries made by team members during the tactical process get incorporated into the strategic plans.  For example, if those 5 sols of analyses were in response to the discovery of a new feature that was really important for the science goals, the LTP would make sure the guiding committee knew about the discovery, possibly suggesting modifications to the strategic plan.  In addition, the LTPs facilitate scientific discussions and interpretations.  After the activities for the next sol are chosen, the LTP leads a Science Discussion during which team members share the discoveries of the sol, plus discuss interpretations of data, new scientific hypotheses, possible investigations that should go into the strategic plans, etc.  This is a place for heated debates, consensus building, and new insights.  Finally, the LTPs are responsible for keeping track of many details such as things that got forced off the tactical plan due to power or time constraints but are really important, the names of sites and features, etc.  


It’s a great job!