Beginning in 2004, a team of geologists and other planetary scientists did field science in a dark room in Pasadena, exploring Mars from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) by means of the remotely operated Mars Exploration Rovers (MER). Clustered around monitors, living on Mars time, painstakingly plotting each movement of the rovers and their tools, sensors, and cameras, these scientists reported that they felt as if they were on Mars themselves, doing field science. The MER created a virtual experience of being on Mars. This book examines how the MER has changed the nature of planetary field science. NASA cast the rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, as "robotic geologists," and ascribed machine initiative to remotely controlled actions. Clancey argues that the actual explorers were not the rovers but the scientists, who imaginatively projected themselves into the body of the machine to conduct the first overland expedition of another planet. The author investigates how the design of the rover mission enables field science on Mars, explaining how the scientists and rover engineers manipulate the vehicle and why the programmable tools and analytic instruments work so well for them.
What it's like to explore Mars from Earth: How the Mars rovers provide scientists with a virtual experience of being on Mars. Geologists in the field climb hills and hang onto craggy outcrops; they put their fingers in sand and scratch, smell, and even taste rocks. Beginning in 2004, however, a team of geologists and other planetary scientists did field science in a dark room in Pasadena, exploring Mars from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) by means of the remotely operated Mars Exploration Rovers (MER). Clustered around monitors, living on Mars time, painstakingly plotting each movement of the rovers and their tools, sensors, and cameras, these scientists reported that they felt as if they were on Mars themselves, doing field science. The MER created a virtual experience of being on Mars. In this book, William Clancey examines how the MER has changed the nature of planetary field science. Drawing on his extensive observations of scientists in the field and at the JPL, Clancey investigates how the design of the rover mission enables field science on Mars, explaining how the scientists and rover engineers manipulate the vehicle and why the programmable tools and analytic instruments work so well for them. He shows how the scientists felt not as if they were issuing commands to a machine but rather as if they were working on the red planet, riding together in the rover on a voyage of discovery. Learn more about the book here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZQSWSZnTYs&feature=youtube_gdata
This book describes the most complex machine ever sent to another planet: Curiosity. It is a one-ton robot with two brains, seventeen cameras, six wheels, nuclear power, and a laser beam on its head. No one human understands how all of its systems and instruments work. This essential reference to the Curiosity mission explains the engineering behind every system on the rover, from its rocket-powered jetpack to its radioisotope thermoelectric generator to its fiendishly complex sample handling system. Its lavishly illustrated text explains how all the instruments work -- its cameras, spectrometers, sample-cooking oven, and weather station -- and describes the instruments' abilities and limitations. It tells you how the systems have functioned on Mars, and how scientists and engineers have worked around problems developed on a faraway planet: holey wheels and broken focus lasers. And it explains the grueling mission operations schedule that keeps the rover working day in and day out.
An examination of how the daily work of NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers was organized across three sites on two planets using local Mars time. In 2004, mission scientists and engineers working with NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) remotely operated two robots at different sites on Mars for ninety consecutive days. An unusual feature of this successful mission was that it operated on Mars time—the daily work was organized across three sites on two planets according to two Martian time zones. In Making Time on Mars, Zara Mirmalek shows that this involved more than a resetting of wristwatches; the team's struggle to synchronize with Mars time involved technological and communication breakdowns, informal workarounds, and extra work to support the technology that was intended to support people. Her account of how NASA created an entirely new temporality for the MER mission offers insights about the assumptions behind the organizational relationship between clock time and work. Mirmalek, herself a member of the mission team, offers an insider's view of the MER workplace and community. She describes the discord among MER's multiple temporalities and examines issues of professional identity that helped shape the experience of working according to Mars time. Considering time and work relationships through a multidisciplinary lens, Mirmalek shows how contemporary and historical human–technology relationships inform assumptions about the unalterability of clock time. She argues that the organizational connection between clock time and work, although still operational, is outdated.
This is the comprehensive story of NASA’s pioneering Mars 2020 mission, which at this moment continues to break ground on the surface of the Red Planet. The book takes readers through every stage of the Mars mission, describing its major goals and objectives, the cutting-edge technology and instrumentation onboard the Perseverance rover and other spacecraft components, and the members of the scientific team who steered the mission along the way. Mars 2020 is the first to actually take samples of the Red Planet and prepare them for subsequent return to Earth. The chapters therefore delve into how and why Jezero Crater was selected as the optimal landing and sample collecting site to meet the mission objectives. Featuring dozens of high-resolution images of the mission, this book gives readers a deeper understanding of the technology underlying Mars 2020 and why its work is so important for planetary science and space exploration.
A unique insight into corporate team building within a global giant. Lessons from Mars challenges the prevailing orthodoxy of corporate team building and offers an alternative framework along with a set of tools and techniques. Based on the author's 20-plus years of experience working with teams and six years of research specifically on Mars teams, the book offers a unique view into this closely-held private company and how it has unlocked the power of collaboration. '...it turns out that while women are from Venus, valuable lessons in corporate management are from Mars, Inc.' Roy Sekoff, Founding Editor, The Huffington Post
For centuries humankind has fantasized about life on Mars, whether it’s intelligent Martian life invading our planet (immortalized in H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds) or humanity colonizing Mars (the late Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles). The Red Planet’s proximity and likeness to Earth make it a magnet for our collective imagination. Yet the question of whether life exists on Mars—or has ever existed there—remains an open one. Science has not caught up to science fiction—at least not yet. This summer we will be one step closer to finding the answer. On August 5th, Curiosity—a one-ton, Mini Cooper-sized nuclear-powered rover—is scheduled to land on Mars, with the primary mission of determining whether the red planet has ever been physically capable of supporting life. In Getting to Mars, Roger Wiens, the principal investigator for the ChemCam instrument on the rover—the main tool for measuring Mars’s past habitability—will tell the unlikely story of the development of this payload and rover now blasting towards a planet 354 million miles from Earth. ChemCam (short for Chemistry and Camera) is an instrument onboard the Curiosity designed to vaporize and measure the chemical makeup of Martian rocks. Different elements give off uniquely colored light when zapped with a laser; the light is then read by the instrument’s spectrometer and identified. The idea is to use ChemCam to detect life-supporting elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen to evaluate whether conditions on Mars have ever been favorable for microbial life. This is not only an inside story about sending fantastic lasers to Mars, however. It’s the story of a new era in space exploration. Starting with NASA’s introduction of the Discovery Program in 1992, smaller, scrappier, more nimble missions won out as behemoth manned projects went extinct. This strategic shift presented huge opportunities—but also presented huge risks for shutdown and failure. And as Wiens recounts, his project came close to being closed down on numerous occasions. Getting to Mars is the inspiring account of how Wiens and his team overcame incredible challenges—logistical, financial, and political—to successfully launch a rover in an effort to answer the eternal question: is there life on Mars?
The firsthand account of the trials and tribulations of engineering one of the most complex pieces of space technology, the Mars Rover Curiosity, by its chief engineer Rob Manning In the course of our enduring quest for knowledge about ourselves and our universe, we haven't found answers to one of our most fundamental questions: Does life exist anywhere else in the universe? Ten years and billions of dollars in the making, the Mars Rover Curiosity is poised to answer this all-important question. In Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account from Curiosity's Chief Engineer, Rob Manning, the project's chief engineer, tells of bringing the groundbreaking spacecraft to life. Manning and his team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tasked with designing a lander many times larger and more complex than any before, faced technical setbacks, fights over inadequate resources, and the challenges of leading an army of brilliant, passionate, and often frustrated experts. Manning's fascinating personal account--which includes information from his exclusive interviews with leading Curiosity scientists--is packed with tales of revolutionary feats of science, technology, and engineering. Readers experience firsthand the disappointment at encountering persistent technical problems, the agony of near defeat, the sense of victory at finding innovative solutions to these problems, the sheer terror of staking careers and reputations on a lander that couldn't be tested on Earth, and the rush of triumph at its successful touchdown on Mars on August 5, 2012. This is the story of persistence, dedication, and unrelenting curiosity.
The Red Planet has been a subject of fascination for humanity for thousands of years, becoming part of our folklore and popular culture. The most Earthlike of the planets in our solar system, Mars may have harbored some form of life in the past and may still possess an ecosystem in some underground refuge. The mysteries of this fourth planet from our Sun make it of central importance to NASA and its science goals for the twenty-first century.ÊÊ In the wake of the very public failures of the Mars Polar Lander and the Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999, NASA embarked on a complete reassessment of the Mars Program. Scott Hubbard was asked to lead this restructuring in 2000, becoming known as the "Mars Czar." His team's efforts resulted in a very successful decade-long series of missions--each building on the accomplishments of those before it--that adhered to the science adage "follow the water" when debating how to proceed. Hubbard's work created the Mars Odyssey mission, the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Phoenix mission, and most recently the planned launch of the Mars Science Laboratory.Ê Now for the first time Scott Hubbard tells the complete story of how he fashioned this program, describing both the technical and political forces involved and bringing to life the national and international cast of characters engaged in this monumental endeavor.Ê Blending the exciting stories of the missions with the thrills of scientific discovery, Exploring Mars will intrigue anyone interested in the science, the engineering, or the policy of investigating other worlds. Ê
"Making Time on Mars is a book about people, robots, processes and intuitions working together to make time on Mars. In early 2004, for over ninety days NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers mission set their daily work activities on Earth according to "Mars time" clocks. Two local Mars times, one for each of the two Mars rovers, drove work timelines for all mission members. A successful mission that resulted in new discoveries and scientific knowledge, it is a fascinating case of how time and work relationships are produced through cultural features shaped by everyday work activities, organizational infrastructure, and social and historical context. Though time is an organizing principle in most workplaces, it is not traditionally a particularly exciting part of daily work. But, within the context of a mission to Mars, familiar time and work relationships are rendered strange, and strangely familiar. This book is based on empirical data collected during a one-year ethnographic field study conducted at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory by the author, who was a mission member, and included working on Earth according to Mars time. An interdisciplinary disciplinary lens (anthropology, communication, history, organization studies, and science and technology studies) is used to examine organizing and conducting robotic science exploration on Mars. The book includes chapters on the historical context of the MER workplace (NASA and JPL); MER team people, robots, and workspace; the primary technology (time) for organizing co-located and remote workgroups; context on the limitations of the time/work relationship; professional identity and human-robot relationships that shaped working according to Mars time. The book's intent is to give the public a closer look, and a broader view, on a project that was publicly funded and with goals that included producing knowledge about natural work that would benefit all. It is also the intent to show, through the cultural production of Mars time for remote telerobotic science work, how contemporary and historical human-technology relationships inform assumptions about clock time as an unalterable, natural phenomenon. The organizational relationship between clock time and work, while still operational, is outdated. Organizational and societal values shape people's choices (and consequences of those choices) at work that include formally addressing problematic technology, holding institutions or individuals responsible for breakdowns, developing informal workarounds, and taking on additional work to support the technology that was intended to support people. These values and choices constitute some of the cultural norms that are part of the socio-technical infrastructure supporting space science and exploration. These relationships warrant examination and experimentation to uncouple what is natural about time from what can be changed in order for technology to support rather than drive human temporality at work"--
