The camera on the MarsMicro rover shook. The larger robotic arm jiggled free of its moorings and slid off the rover and bounced on the Martian ground.
“What the heck was that?” Dr. Cooper said. Our team was again gathered around engineers, monitors, touchscreens and joysticks at Mission Control in Pasadena.
The rover stopped momentarily, while a JPL engineer raised the arm and locked it back into place. “Hit a rock, maybe,” the ground navigator, aka GN, said.
“I don’t see any rocks,” Cooper said. “And there’s no wind strong enough to gust that hard.”
The rover rolled onward, less than two kilometers, a little over a mile, from the awaiting BRR, which was parked on the same flat Capris Chasma liftoff pad Odysseus used. The rover’s camera offered a jittery view of the sandy-brown Valles walls as it approached a narrow, sloped ravine that connected the two Valles chasms, Coprates and Capris.
Though it didn’t bother me, everyone else looked dizzy from watching the rovercam.
“Can you pan the area with the drone?” Dr. Levitt asked.
“Don’t know,” the GN said. “Batteries are low and its solar collectors are dusty.”
“How’d that happen?” Brando asked. “I thought it was covered.”
“It is, but the dust figures out a way to get in,” the GN said.
The rover’s electrostatic repellant system didn’t include the drone; a core-sample extraction drill; and a couple of smaller solar-powered tools stored under covers, designed to resist the dust with special coatings. The rover’s robotic arms covered these tools after each use.
“I always tell people who want to ‘colonize’ the place—” The GN air-quoted “colonize.” “...women are gonna hate it. Trying to keep a house clean with that kinda dust.”
Standing behind him, Dr. Shonstein made a “WTF face.”
“We could charge the drone with the rover’s batteries maybe, but under the circumstances—” the GN continued.
“We’ve got seismic activity,” another engineer said from three stations away. “Insight readings translate to about a two Richter.”
“Explains some things,” the ground navigator said.
Insight landed on the planet with a seismograph and other measuring tools years ago. Unlike the rovers, it couldn’t move and stayed put. The seismograph still worked, sending a continuous stream of readings back to Earth, albeit with a four to twenty-four minute time delay (no EPR quantum bridge technology back then). Earth was close enough now to Mars that the delay was averaging about ten to twelve minutes.
Marsquakes, it turns out, are like everything else on the planet: undramatic compared to their counterparts on Earth. They average less than one to four on our Richter scale, mainly because the planet has none of the tectonic plates that put the shake in earthquake. Its surface rather quivers, like a dog’s flesh when you tickle it.
“Good news. I’ve got power left in the drone batteries,” the GN said. “Let’s give this baby a whirl.”
The drone rose shakily, hovered then dropped, then rose again. “C’mon,” the ground navigator said. “Come on!” It ascended high enough that we had a decent overhead view of the rover and something we had never seen—at least, I had never seen. Rocks, large and small, not looking like they’d been sitting in the same place for a gazillion years, but rolling across the sand.
“Shit!” The ground navigator jammed the joystick, almost tilting the rover on two wheels as it swerved to avoid one.
“If a rolling stone gathers no moss on Earth, what does it not gather on Mars?” Dr. Marcum said.
“Dust,” Shonstein quipped.
The rover shook so hard it stopped on its own.
“What’s wrong?” Dr. Levitt said.
“Lost drive power,” the GN said.
“Are we stuck?” Dr. Shonstein said.
“I hope not,” the GN said.
The rover shook again, and we heard rumbling from the audio.
“These aftershocks aren’t weakening,” Shonstein said. “Isn’t it just the opposite on Earth?”
“Usually,” Levitt said. “But without tectonic plates, one marsquake is just like another.”
Our moon doesn’t have tectonic plates either, and quakes there are known to shake the entire surface and last for hours instead of minutes. After the Insight mission, we knew Mars had quakes too, ironically ascertaining that they were an important source of the hydrogen Crimsy needed to survive. I remember how Dr. Levitt used this information in her presentations about the need to bring back rocks and sand. A study published in our home-team journal, Astrobiology, found that a marsquake “could produce enough hydrogen to support small populations of microorganisms,” said one of the authors, a Yale geologist named Sean McMahon. He said something else Levitt the geologist repeated over and over to Congress members, NASA officials, SpaceTek, and Alexander Sparks: “The best way to find evidence of life on Mars may be to examine rocks and minerals that formed deep underground around faults and fractures, which were later brought to the surface by erosion.”
Now, the force that had helped the barren planet support life threatened to kill our painstakingly preserved samples.
“I’m no engineeer,” Marcum said, as we watched our quaking rover sit idle beneath the drone. “But is there any way to divert power to the drives? Say, from the cameras, the incubation chambers, anything else?”
“Divert power from the incupods?” Shonstein said. “What are you talking about?”
“They use power.”
“We don’t even know if more power would help,” Cooper said. “Something may be broken.”
“Nope,” the ground navigator said. “Just finished a systems check. We just lost power to the drive. The incubators, the cameras, onboard computer, drone launch, the robotics are all a go.”
“Back to my question,” Marcum said.
“Are you out of your mind?” Shonstein said. “We can’t cut power to the incupods.”
“Why not?” he responded. “Just long enough to board the rocket.”
“Can we divert power? Would that even work?” Brando said.
“We can send power from any system on the rover to any other system on the rover,’ the GN said. “It’s a key fail-safe.”
“I say we try it,” Brando said. “Crimsy should be good to go for a couple hours, at least.”
“No way,” Shonstein said.
“She’ll die like this, Bex,” Brando said. “What choice do we have?”
“This is not a choice,” Shonstein said. “It’s not worth the risk.”
“We have no drive power, ma’am,” the GN said. “We need to get power from somewhere.”
“Do it,” Levitt said.
“Marcia!” Shonstein said.
“Brandy?”
“I see where Rebecca’s coming from, but—”
“You see where I’m coming from?”
“Do it!” Levitt said. “We’ll debate the merits later.”
The ground navigator pressed two touchscreen controls, then stopped. “Tell you what. Let me try turning off everything but the incubators,” he said. “Let’s unfold the rover’s backup solar collectors, too.”
“A sitting duck with wings,” Marcum said. “Excellent idea.”
“Solar and nuke are on different drive networks, so it’s worth a shot,” Cooper said.
“The ground is still shaking, professor,” the GN said. “We’re sitting ducks, regardless.”
We watched from the drone cam as the rover’s small solar panels unfurled on both sides, while all but the incupods’ power was diverted to the drive motors. The ground navigator pushed the joystick forward and held it. “Hopefully, she’ll move,” he said.
The rover did move, prompting a mission control cheer silenced by the biggest shake yet. The large robotic arm slipped from its moorings again, sliding across and breaking one of the solar panels. We were a moving-but-motley sight: rover dragging its arm and a broken wing, creeping across a godforsaken ground, swerving around sliding rocks and swirling dust.
“Is that the next problem? The dust shields go up and we lose control?” Shonstein said.
“Shields are off, ma’am,” the GN said. “We don’t need them this late in the mission.”
“How come you call me ma’am and him professor?” she said sternly, indicating Marcum. The two men looked at her. “I’m just kidding,” she said. “Thanks for saving Crimsy.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” the GN replied.
The rover started into the ravine out of the Coprates Chasma, robotic arm swaying over the right-side solar panel, which was gradually breaking up.
“Gonna need to stop when we have enough power to put the arm back,” the ground navigator said. “Drone’s got good power though. Air flow must have blown the dust off the collectors.”
The rover stopped shaking and accelerated into the ravine. Then it stopped. “Well damn,” the GN said. “What now?” He swung the drone around for a picture of a good-sized rock in our path. He pressed the touchscreen power controls and the robotic arm rose.
“That gonna kill our power supply?” Brando asked.
“We’ve picked up a little solar,” the GN said. “Still running on fumes, but more fumes than before.” The GN swung the big robotic arm around to the rock, opened its claw, and tried lifting it. The rover went up instead. He also engaged the smaller arm, but to little effect. “This ain’t gonna work,” he said. He lowered the arms, retracted the working solar panel, and tried pushing the rock to the side with the rover itself. It bucked up against the ravine wall, but the rock gradually slid.
“We gonna have enough room to pass?” Levitt asked. The ravine was less than a meter wider than the rover. With the rock, I couldn’t see much leeway.
“We’re gonna try, ma’am—professor,” the ground navigator said.
“I’m good with Dr. Levitt,” she said.
“I’d settle for Doc,” Shonstein said.
The arm pushed the rock over as much as it could. Dexterous driving and a side wheelie maneuver took the rover up and over the rock’s edge and we continued up the passage. Though we had every camera angle on a giant monitor all of Mission Control could see, I peered down at one of the desktop monitors to view the most awesome sight yet, coming into view as the drone topped the ravine’s crest: the Big Retriever Rocket, dock door down, ready to accept our hobbled habitué. Mission control CHEER as everyone saw it. Then we got stuck at the ravine’s crest, in view of the BRR. The tires spun, the rover slid backward. Only one tire had traction. The other three dug deeper ruts. “Okay. Let’s back it down the hill,” the GN said.
“Careful,” Shonstein said. “Incupods’ on that side,” where the rover was almost touching the ravine’s jagged wall. The drone hovered closer, like an impish tagalong watching and tattling on every move.
“Well I’ll be,” Levitt said.
“What?” Cooper asked.
“Look at the ground under the rover,” Levitt said. “It’s alluvial. This was once a stream or river.”
Then I spoke, with a flash of what I hoped was brilliance. “There should be rockier soil beneath the sand at the crest,” I said. “Let the front tires gradually dig in there while the rear tires stay idle.”
“Makes sense,” Levitt said. “If water flowed over and down, the crest would be the most-eroded, rockiest part. Maybe.”
“We’re on solid ground now,” the GN said, stopping the rover a couple meters from the crest. “Your move.”
“What do we do here, Bill?” Levitt asked. “We have four wheels, individually controlled.”
“Try them in sequence,” Marcum said. “Test each tire for grip.”
The GN rotated each wheel, one by one. The front left and lower right wheels spun the least.
“Jennifer?” Marcum deferred.
Faith (in me). So cool. “Okay—give those two tires the most gas, the other two nothing—yet,” I said. “Test again the minute anything changes.” I spoke from the experience of helping my father get Manny Tranny the non-self-driving vintage pickup truck unstuck on back roads.
The navigator crawled the rover up the ravine toward the crest again, stopping every couple minutes to test each wheel. On one leg of the short trek, the two back wheels had the most traction. Minutes later, the left front wheel had the most traction and got the most gas. And so on, until we were at the crest again.
“Now, leave the rear wheels in neutral,” I said. “Gradually accelerate the front wheels.”
The front wheels dug into the sand at the crest, hitting rockier ground. The rear tires tagged along, not digging, not slowing us up. It was like treading water, arms only, not much leg work. We gradually crested.
“Nobody cheer,” the GN said into his mic. “Don’t want to jinx anything.”
“Yay, Jen,” Brando said. “I’m taking you skiing with me next time.” Couple winters ago, Brando got stuck in a blizzard on I-90 near Snoqualmie Pass. It was Jack London-level scary until first responders rescued him and a few other cars he couldn’t see, incapacitated along the interstate.
The rover rolled into the landing area, at the smooth, flat, boring bottom of a small crater in Capris Chasma. The BRR launch site was a minimalist steel contraption positioned by past rover arms over the dry stream or river bed that became the ravine we were traveling. The crater and stream bed acted in tandem as a flame trap, or in NASA lingo, a “flame trench deflector system” that swept the rocket’s blasting takeoff fire away from the ship. With Mars’ lighter atmosphere and lower gravity, it didn’t have to be as elaborate a flame trench as on Earth. It worked well, but had to be completely free of rocks. Now, it wasn’t. As we might have expected, the quaking surface had littered the launch pad with stones that could fly up during launch and hit the rising rocket.
“Well damn,” the GN said. “Gotta clear the launch pad now.”
“Launch delay, people,” the chief flight engineer announced as he sauntered into the control room.
“How long?” Levitt asked.
“A day, maybe couple days,” the GN said. “Gotta clear the site, run a bunch of systems checks. You know the drill.”
“We do,” Levitt said.
We saw a poignant image from behind a tent-like structure: the Curiosity, 2020, Foresight, and Odysseus rovers, left behind when samples but not rovers were all our rockets could shuttle home. SpaceTek built its business on adaptive reuse of everything from “rockets to rovers” CEO Leon Telos liked to say. The grounded rovers and their robotic arms still worked fine, albeit slowly without EPR technology, as Mission Control rallied them to pick up all the rocks.
Though the delay was an antithetical let-down, the launch more than made up for it. The leftover rovers cleared the site in less than two days. The securely-mounted BRR hadn’t moved or experienced any damage. The GN docked the drone and used the surfeit of robotic arms to remove the damaged solar panel. The semi-retired rovers back in their tent and the landing site clear, all systems were a go. In a ceremony of faux flourish, the GN handed the joystick to Dr. Shonstein.
“Will you do the honors, doc?” he said.
“I would be honored. Dr. Levitt?” she deferred.
“Please,” Levitt replied.
Shonstein took the joystick and positioned our rover like we’d done in simulation. Up the ramp it went, into the BRR, where a flight engineer locked its wheels—and its precious, history-making passenger—securely into place.
“Docking request granted,” he quipped.
It was time. “Why all the long faces?” the chief flight engineer told his team. “Dock door up. Cue music. Let’s get home.”
From the drone and rover cameras, we watched the dock door rise and the Martian landscape disappear to those first notes from Strauss’ Blue Danube. I was tearing up, sentimental fool, but as usual my hurricane remained just offshore.