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America Returns To Mars After 21 Years (Long)


All articles are from the July 11, 1997 issue of the "JPL Universe"

Ron Baalke
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America returns to Mars after 21 years
Rocky landing site "everything we hoped it would be," says Golombek

By MARK WHALEN
     Twenty-one years after the Viking spacecraft made history 
with their journey to the red planet, JPL's Pathfinder spacecraft 
has triumphantly returned the United States and planet Earth to 
Mars.
     With its airbags cushioning a 16-or-more-bounce landing a 
mere 19 kilometers (12 miles) from the center of its expected 
landing site, Pathfinder touched down on Mars at 10:07:25 a.m. 
Pacific Daylight Time on July 4.
     "What a great way to celebrate our country's birthday," said 
Vice President Al Gore, who called JPL later that afternoon to 
congratulate the project for their success.
     "I couldn't hope for a better landing," said Brian Muirhead, 
Pathfinder's flight systems manager and deputy project manager. 
"The team is ecstatic. This is way beyond our expectations. I 
don't think any of us expected it to go as well as it has. 
Everything looks absolutely perfect."
     The first photographs taken by the spacecraft's Imager for 
Mars Pathfinder (IMP) camera -- released at a 6:30 p.m. press 
briefing to gasps of awe and enthusiastic applause -- were 
combined to form a panorama showing the Sojourner rover on its 
petal in the foreground of a desert-like landscape, strewn with 
rocks and boulders of all sizes, and mountains in the distance.
     The good news and confidence of team members continued to 
build despite glitches involving the deployment of the ramp for 
rover Sojourner's descent, as well as communicaations between the 
spacecraft and lander. The problems were quickly rectified and 
mostly forgotten once the science results started to roll in.
     As new IMP images were analyzed by science team members, 
they became familiar enough with the surrounding landscape to 
name some of the more distinctive rocks and boulders  they wanted 
Sojourner to study using its primary science instrument, the 
alpha proton X-ray spectrometer (APXS). 
     Just three days after landing, Sojourner traveled 36 
centimeters (1.2 feet) to analyze "Barnacle Bill," a distinctive 
rock about 20 to 25 centimeters (eight to 10 inches) tall that 
looks almost as if it is covered with barnacle-like objects. 
Images returned later showed the rover backed up against the rock 
with the APXS. "We have proof that Sojourner sort of nestled up 
and kissed Barnacle Bill," Pathfinder Project Scientist Dr. 
Matthew Golombek later joked. 
     Additional images streaming back each night provided 
scientists with wonderful surprises. IMP Principal Investigator 
Dr. Peter Smith of the University of Arizona said that views 
showing that angular rocks in the foreground, all leaning in the 
same direction, suggested they were ejected from a nearby 
impact crater. "We have a view of Mars that we have never seen 
before," Golombek said. "We really have a grab bag of rocks, 
varying in color, texture, fabric, sizes and shapes. They are 
completely different from the Viking landing sites and from each 
other too."
     A variety of smooth round rocks suggested that they were 
transported by water in Mars' early evolution. 
     "In the initial analysis of these images, we see multiple 
episodes of flooding, not just one catastrophic event, but many," 
said Dr. Ronald Greeley of Arizona State University, a co-
investigator on the IMP team, in a July 7 briefing.
     Interdisciplinary scientist Dr. Michael Malin later 
amplified those observations, saying the floods were so 
catastrophic that they would have filled up the Mediterranean 
basin here on Earth. Evidence, he said, can be seen in the 
variety of rocks, sediments and "puddles" left in the Martian 
soil that materials from the highlands were swept into this flood 
basin. 
     The whirlwind of near-instant science started following a 
near-perfect entry, descent and landing (EDL) phase, including 
the cancellation of the last trajectory correction maneuver, 
which could have occurred either 12 or six hours prior to 
atmospheric entry but was deemed unnecessary. Flight Director Rob 
Manning reported with glee the news that the spacecraft landed on 
its base petal, eliminating Pathfinder's need to stand itself 
upright before deploying its petals.
     "What are the odds [of that happening]?" Manning shouted to 
the audience of mission controllers. 
     The problems with the airbags covering the area for ramp 
deployment, however, did not dampen the enthusiasm of Pathfinder 
team members, but only served to slightly delay the beginning of 
science activities.
     A command was sent to the lander at 7:08 p.m. PDT on July 4 
to pull the obstructed petal up about 45 degrees, further retract 
the airbag underneath the petal, then lay the petal down again. 
Data relayed later that night indicated that the maneuver was 
successful in clearing the airbag from the petal.
     And on the evening of July 5, it was revealed that all was 
well with rover-lander communications. The problem was thought to 
have represented a software synchronization problem with the 
rover's modem. But it was found that Pathfinder's flight computer 
had reset itself at the end of the first day of activities about 
10:30 p.m. on July 4. The automatic reset apparently alleviated 
the faulty communications between Sojourner and the lander.
     Dr. Tim Schofield, principal investigator of the atmospheric 
science team, said early data from the landing showed that it was 
about 220 degrees Celsius (minus 64 degrees Fahrenheit) at the 
landing site, representing temperatures somewhat warmer than they 
were during Viking.
     As the first images of Ares Vallis were revealed, Smith 
asked onlookers and the public to try to imagine looking through 
the IMP's eyes. "In this sense, we are all on Mars," he said.
     "JPL's image processing lab deserves full credit for helping 
to create the images," Smith said. "They have never before had 
anything of this magnitude to put together."
     "These pictures are breathtaking," said NASA Administrator 
Daniel Goldin. "I just spoke to the science and operations teams 
and they're feeling really good about themselves. And well they 
should."
     At the close of the day July 4, Muirhead was asked why he 
thought things went so well.
     "If (Project Manager) Tony Spear were here [at the 
briefing], he would say, 'Test, test, test,'" Muirhead said. "We 
had a good, robust design, but the team kept testing the 
software, the airbags, everything. We never stopped trying to 
make things work better."
     Even before many of the more detailed, high-resolution 
pictures were available, Golombek thought that the landing site 
"looks about ideal."
     He also noted that scientists "couldn't wait to get their 
hooks" into some of the rocks they had seen, and after the first
images were released just before 11 p.m. July 5, showing 
Sojourner with its six wheels firmly planted on the flour-like 
Martian terrain, geologists and others would soon get their 
chance from about 190 million kilometers (120 million miles 
away).
     The rover exited its rear ramp, which was tilted at about 20 
degrees from the Martian surface. It would not have been able to 
roll off had the ramps exceeded a 30-degree tilt.
     Sojourner made the trek down its ramp in two stages, first 
crawling halfway down and stopping to take a photograph of the 
ramp, then continuing its 4-minute journey to the surface. 
Additional images showed rover wheel tracks in soft Martian soil 
and the rover standing about 10 centimeters (0.3 feet) from the 
end of the ramp. The lander's camera also took photographs of the 
rover's exit. 
     Once off the ramp, Sojourner unlatched the APXS and 
positioned it face down in the Martian soil to take 10 hours of 
measurements overnight. 
     Sojourner's meeting with Barnacle Bill for APXS analysis on 
July 6 was preceded by the JPL operations team waking up the 
rover by playing "Final Frontier," the theme song from the TV 
show "Mad About You," in keeping with the way Johnson Space 
Center controllers wake up space shuttle astronauts.
     The chemical measurements obtained from Barnacle Bill 
surprised scientists and raised questions about the duration of 
volcanic activity occurring on Mars in its early formation.
     Dr. Rudolph Rieder of Germany's Max Planck Institute for 
Chemistry, principal investigator on the APXS team, reported that 
Barnacle Bill was unusually rich in silicon, which is more 
characteristic of Earth rocks than Martian rocks. On Earth, 
volcanic rocks contain significant amounts of free silica in the 
form of quartz.
     "It turns out this rock has some rather peculiar chemical 
characteristics, which make it very unlike the other SNC 
meteorites," said Dr. Hap McSween of the University of Tennessee, 
who is a participating scientist on the APXS team. (The SNC 
meteorites are those found on Earth that are believed to be of 
Martian origin.) 
     "In particular, it has a very high content of silicon or 
silicon dioxide (quartz)," McSween said. "It appears that 
Barnacle Bill falls into a category called "andesites," which are 
among the most common volcanic rocks on Earth."
     Andesites are mixtures of very fine crystalline and other 
minerals that are formed through a process known as 
differentiation, which is the process by which crustal materials 
deep within a planet's interior are repeatedly melted and 
remelted, thereby shaping and reshaping the surface of the 
planet. Mars today has very few volcanoes and no continental 
plates like those found on Earth to suggest it was internally 
active for very long. Barnacle Bill's chemical signature may 
throw that theory into question.
     Images presented July 7 included the first photograph of the 
lander taken by the rover. The image showed final retraction of 
the airbags in a very high, puffy clump that blocked most of the 
lander from view. 
     Meanwhile, the IMP camera provided a new perspective on 
rocks and hills on the Martian horizon now that it is deployed on 
its mast and photographing the site at an elevation of 1.0 meters 
(3.2 feet) above the lander, Smith said.
     Looking south at a pair of sloping hills called "Twin 
Peaks," which are about a mile away, Smith pointed out new 
observations made possible by the fully deployed IMP camera. A 
depression in the landscape in front of the peaks suggests the 
presence of a channel. "This is actually a channel back behind 
those rocks; we're on the edge of a channel," he said. 
     A high-resolution closeup of the Martian soil near the base 
of the lander also revealed a texture perfectly preserved in the 
Martian environment. Dr. Jim Bell of Cornell University, Ithaca, 
N.Y., explained the calibration targets that are used to achieve 
the true color of the Martian landscape. Color variations 
allow scientists to identify different types of minerals that are 
present in the environment. The bright reddish color of the soil, 
for example, points to the presence of oxidized iron in surface 
materials.
     "The surface of Mars is rusting," Bell said. "We don't know 
when or how fast it's rusting, but we hope to find these things 
out. Not all of the surfaces are the same, though. There's lots 
of diversity and variation in the landscape. We can see some 
surfaces that are much less red, for example, and more consistent 
with volcanic rocks."
     Golombek noted on July 7 that "we have the perfect 
spacecraft, the perfect rover and the perfect instruments," and 
reiterated that statement the following day, confirming that all 
those components were "in excellent health."
     Sojourner used the APXS to study the soil located between 
Barnacle Bill and a larger rock called Yogi. As Universe went to 
press Wednesday, team members were planning to position the APXS 
on Yogi on Thursday, July 10, with data expected by Friday. 
Several scientists commented that a smooth depression of soil 
around the rock resembles a moat. 
     The project expected to acquire by Thursday evening a new 
color panorama image, which will show everything from the lander 
up to the horizon.
     Muirhead noted that one of the keys to the success of the 
mission "has been the speed with which we're able to communicate 
with the spacecraft and, in turn, deliver products to the 
public."
     "This was derived from the incredible work done by the 
ground systems team, led by Al Sacks," he added.
     Muirhead also had kudos for those in JPL's multimission 
image processing lab, "which, under Bill Green's leadership, has 
exceeded the state of the art in image visualization in color and 
stereo, and on a time scale that Viking could not have imagined. 
We do in minutes and hours what Viking did in days and weeks." 

                         ###
_________________________________________________________________

Donna Shirley
Reflections of the leader of the Mars program

     In an interview conducted before Pathfinder's July 4 
landing, Mars Exploration Program Manager Donna Shirley shared 
her thoughts with Universe about public interest in Mars 
missions, the future of the program, and her job, which she has 
held since 1993.

By MARK WHALEN

     The interest in Pathfinder and the rest of Mars program is 
really intense. Do you think that's because there hasn't been a 
lander mission since Viking, or after this will it continue?

     I think the Aug. 7, 1996 announcement of the Mars meteorite 
showing the possibility of ancient life on Mars was the thing 
that set off a lot of the frenzy. But I think the frenzy was 
there to be set off. Even before that, I was getting a steady 
stream of requests for interviews, speaking engagements and so 
forth -- as is everyone else working on Mars missions. Everybody 
loves and is fascinated with the rover, people (see demos of) the 
airbags bouncing; they think it's incredible -- and very risky -- 
but actually that doesn't make it any more risky than any other 
landing on Mars, because landing on Mars is hard. 
     Pathfinder is generating more interest, for instance, than 
Mars Global Surveyor (MGS). Although it's a great mission, MGS is 
"just another orbiter" in the public's mind. But when MGS 
actually starts aerobraking, it's going to be very exciting. When 
it goes faster and faster and people start adjusting to it, I 
think they will be interested in that aspect of it, as they will 
when daily weather reports start coming in from Mars and the hi-
resolution pictures come in from the camera.
     Mars '98, I think, will be jazzy because we're landing near 
the south pole; we haven't even had close-up pictures of the 
area. The 2001 mission is going to be neat because we've got 
another rover, which is going to take off across the horizon.
     Every 26 months we launch something, but actually there's an 
exciting event or series of events just about every year. So 
we're going to have this continuing stream of interesting stuff. 
Whether people will stay interested, I don't know.
     But movies about Mars are being made now, and they're using 
us as technical consultants. For instance, we expect there to be 
at least two movies about human missions to Mars coming out in 
'97-'98 time frame.

     How is the progress of the human exploration and development 
of space (HEDS) program to integrate robotic and human 
exploration of Mars?
     It's progressing like gangbusters. As a matter of fact, Norm 
Haynes (Mars Exploration Program director), Roger Bourke (HEDS 
and international mission engineer) Mark Adler (Mars Program 
architect) and Sylvia Miller (Mars advanced studies manager) were 
in Houston in mid-June, talking to our partners in HEDS. In 
particular they are addressing the 2001 and 2003 missions, which 
are going to be carrying experiments to prepare for human 
missions to Mars.
     On 2001 there are three experiments: radiation detection; a 
toxicity instrument; and in-situ propellant production. The 
latter is an experiment to deal with the issues of making fuel 
out of Martian atmosphere. They're probably not going to make any 
fuel, but will evaluate the processes to see if they'll work in 
the Martian environment.
     But now HEDS plans in '01 to bring about $50 million to the 
table to pay for the instruments and the additional resources 
required to keep the lander alive to do the experiments. 
Originally we planned to let the lander "die" when the rover left 
it. In '03, they may want to do more than that. 
     The '05 sample return mission is important to the HEDS 
program, because if you can get rockets autonomously off of Mars 
to return to Earth, then that gives you an indication that you 
can get people off (of Mars) as well.

     A straight return from the planet rather than to an orbiter 
first?

     The current studies indicate that in order to keep the cost 
down, we would have to launch on a relatively small launch 
vehicle -- something like a Delta 3-class. If that is the case, 
we can't figure out how to get a direct return mission onto that 
launch vehicle. So with what we know now, we believe that we'll 
have to send an orbiter for the ascent vehicle to rendezvous 
with.
     And even that requires quite a bit of technology 
development. A series of workshops has already started with other 
government agencies and industry to look at propulsion technology 
to make things small and light, which X2000 and New Millennium 
are already trying to do for electronics.
     
     Has there been a heavier emphasis than you expected to step 
up human exploration Mars missions?

     [NASA Administrator] Dan Goldin has said what I think is the 
correct thing, which is to target the human missions for the 
second decade of the new millennium. The issue is when we go in 
that decade. There are people who think we should go right away, 
but it's hard to figure out how we would pay for that, and 
whether the technology would be ready.
     There are others who say we shouldn't go until we've 
established whether there's life on Mars, "because when you send 
humans, they're going to pollute the planet, no question about 
it." There are other people who say we shouldn't go for a long 
time, until we've established conclusively that there isn't any
life on Mars. 
     In between there is the right answer. There are people who 
want to go back to the moon first, before sending humans to Mars, 
and that tends to be the old Apollo crowd.

     In this context, what's the connection between the moon and 
Mars?

     None. There is no such connection. There are people who say 
we have to practice living on the moon before we can live on 
Mars. But the technologies are totally different, the resources 
you would use are totally different. I think it's a spurious 
argument. It's sort of like religious wars between Macs and PCs - 
it's a philosophical rather than technical issue.
     It turns out that energetically it's not that much easier to 
get to the moon, but of course you could get back faster, so it's 
"safer" to go the moon. But it's much more interesting to go to 
Mars.

     When some people say "go right away," what is right away?

     Bob Zubrin has written a book ("The Case for Mars") that 
advocates -- as have other books -- that we go to Mars in 2005.
     But I don't think it's technically feasible to do that. The 
authors of these books seem to think that by shouting they'll 
make it happen, but it's actually monetarily infeasible. When the 
space station gets operational, then there will presumably be a 
funding wedge that we'll be able to use for new adventures. 

     How much will the space station work have to do with 
astronauts going to Mars, especially the issue of the extended 
length of time in space?

     There are three sets of things you have to do to before 
sending people to Mars:
     - You must explore it with robots. You have to scout the 
terrain to find safe and interesting places for the humans to go.
     - You have to figure out how to get humans there, which 
involves things like surviving a three-year trip in zero gravity. 
Or do we have to have artificial gravity of some sort?
     - The technology. We're working on a lot of the technology 
for robotic missions like the 2005 sample return; propulsion 
technology would be useful for human missions as well. But there 
are other technologies -- those for life support and so on -- 
that really have to be developed on the space station, for 
example, recycling food and water. 
     You need all these things to send a human mission to Mars 
that's anything but a stunt. I don't think many people are 
interested in investing that kind of money for a stunt.
     The Apollo program invested a large amount of money, but it 
was driven by the Cold War. And in the absence of a Cold War, 
there's nobody we're competing with. 
     A lot of people say, fine, we'll do a humans-to-Mars mission 
cooperatively, and I think that's certainly doable. But the 
economies of the rest of the world are not about to fund a giant 
stunt either. The Japanese, Europeans and Russians are all 
wrapped up with the space station, which is standing firmly in 
the doorway of going to Mars.
     When station is done and operating, we presumably can start 
using some of that money to get ready to go to Mars; we need it 
for technology development and life sciences.

     You've been in the job for about three years. Has it been 
what you expected?

     It's very different from what I expected. We started under a 
misunderstanding about what a program at JPL really meant, as 
opposed to a project. We have worked for the last 2 1/2 years 
with Headquarters to try to define what it means for there to be 
a program at a NASA field center like JPL -- in particular, at a 
science field center. What does Headquarters do if we're managing 
the program? For instance, they're used to reviewing the projects 
individually.
     As a program office, we ought to be reviewing the projects, 
rather than Headquarters, and it's taken a while for them to get 
comfortable with that. The Headquarters staff is decreasing, so 
there's an increasing number of things we have to pick up for 
them as the scope of the program increases, and it involves Codes 
S (Office of Space Science), U (Office of Life and Microgravity 
Sciences and Applications) and M (Office of Space Flight). 
There's much more of a role for us in working with JSC, which has 
the space station and shuttle programs.
     So the definition of what a program is and what people's 
roles are has taken a long time, and is still not completely 
there. 
     The second thing we've been grappling with is how to get the 
projects to consider themselves part of the program. For 
instance, it took almost two years to get the Mars Surveyor 
Operations Project going - that's our unified operations for all 
Mars missions. The two years were spent in defining what a 
multimission project is and how it all works, and what its role 
is vis-à-vis the development projects. That took a lot longer 
than I had hoped.
     The question now is, how much does one project have to feel 
responsible for supporting future projects? This would involve 
doing things that might not benefit that project necessarily, or 
cost it more money, but will be good for future projects and keep 
their costs down. The problem is when you're budgeting on a 
project-by-project basis -- which has always been the case before 
this program -- each project has only so much money. The program 
doesn't have a reserve the way a project does.
     With a project, for instance, if a spacecraft gets in 
trouble, a project manager can take money out of the instrument 
budget and move it. But we are not currently allowed to take 
money from one project and move it to another project. These 
issues make it difficult to really have an integrated program.
     We have been working on how we can get a program office 
reserve here at JPL that we can move around and fund things to 
get one project to do what will benefit a future projects rather 
than themselves. But each project is a line item in the budget, 
so to move money between projects takes a congressional decision. 
That's another problem we didn't realize how hard would be to 
overcome.
     There's no hope of combining any Pathfinder money with 
Surveyor money, since Pathfinder is under the Discovery program. 
But within the Surveyor program, for instance, MGS underran quite 
a bit, and we would like to apply that money to other projects. 

     Besides funding issues, what else does the program office do 
in project integration areas?

     The program office operates like an integrated program in 
that we get the project managers to talk to each other and share 
information -- not as much as we'd like, but we're getting there. 
A really exciting thing that happened was that Pathfinder, MGS 
and Surveyor '98 had a combined joint science group meeting a few 
months ago. Initially each project said, "Well, I don't know why 
I'd want to meet with those other guys; we've got our own science 
to worry about," and so on. But it was a wonderful two-day 
meeting. It included the Japanese, who will have a Mars mission 
in '98, and was very stimulating, interactive and worthwhile. 
     I've been asking these guys to do that for a year or two; 
they finally did it, and it was a great experience. We're going 
to continue doing that -- looking at the science of the program, 
as opposed to just the science of each project.
     That's where we get the bang for the buck. That's what the 
purpose of the program is -- to gradually build up our knowledge 
of Mars to have these projects working together cooperatively so 
that when we get 10 years down the line, we really understand 
Mars, rather than just having done a bunch of papers and 
scientific studies.
     Another problem we have is how to update this knowledge 
frequently enough so we can use it to design the next mission. 
Since each project has been independent and they've been 20 years 
apart, no problem. Graduate students do work and write papers and 
someone submits a review paper and it all comes together.
     We have to do it every 26 months, or more often. In fact, 
Rich Zurek -- the Õ98 project scientist who is also a co-
investigator on MGS -- is doing some really groundbreaking work, 
pulling together a team of scientists and engineers who will do 
the modeling to be able to actually analyze what we know about 
Mars' atmosphere, right now, and make a prediction from it for 
MGS aerobraking. This means that, initially, every 40 hours they 
have to predict what the atmosphere is going to be on the next 
pass. And then every 20 hours. Then it finally gets down to two 
hours as they're aerobraking in a tighter and tighter orbit. This 
would make the MGS aerobraking more likely to have the spacecraft 
end up where we want it to end up. 
     But the process of getting the scientists together and 
working together to analyze a whole set of data and quickly 
turning around a conclusion is a brand-new process. When we have 
instant science from the scientists at encounters, each 
experiment delivers its own deliberations, and the project 
scientists try to pull it all together into some sort of general 
conclusion. But to actually pull it together and try to make a 
calculation that's going to influence the design of the next 
mission or the design of the next orbit is something that's never 
been done before. And that's very exciting.
     Now, how do we set up the program to do that routinely? At 
Headquarters, the development and the science are divided under 
two different offices. I don't know if that should change or not.
     Marcia Neugebauer, a retired JPL solar physicist, says that 
her community does this all the time. So, we're going to be 
looking into what it is that the solar physicists do to write 
review papers and have workshops fairly readily and then be able 
to draw conclusions from it.
     The Earth Observing System scientists will have to be able 
to do that also, because they are going to be trying to predict 
crop failures, global change and so on; they already have some 
processes for doing that, and we're going to try to see if we can 
introduce those processes into the Mars program.

     Was the Mars '96 failure catastrophic for the Russian space 
program? Will they continue in future Mars missions to contribute 
as much as they and NASA had planned?

     Well, certainly it was a disaster for them; whether is was 
catastrophic remains to be seen. It was not only a disaster for 
the Russians; all of Europe was riding on that mission. France 
and Germany, for instance, had put tens to hundreds of millions 
of dollars into it, and that was lost. The Europeans are 
currently talking about flying a mission in 2003 that would fly 
many of the experiments that were on Mars 96 - they're trying to 
figure out how to recover the science and make use of the 
instruments that were developed for it.
     The Russians are flying two experiments on Mars Surveyor '98 
-- one on the orbiter, one on the lander, and they are discussing 
the possibility of flying a mission in 2001, which would have a 
rover on it that would use either MGS, Mars '98 or the 2001 
orbiter as a communication relay.
     We'd provide the communications for them, but they would 
launch and operate their own rover on the surface, and they would 
share data with us. Now, that mission remains to be seen. That's 
a big commitment economically for them, and I don't know if it 
can be done.
     Certainly, the space station is at the forefront for the 
Russians more than the science program is.

     Since the Russians are having problems keeping their 
financial commitment to the space station, does that carry over 
to their participation in Mars missions?

     It seems that the way they choose missions in Russia is a 
process like the way we choose missions here. It's complex and 
arcane. The strongest science contingent there is 
astrophysicists, and so the planetary scientists tend to lose out 
in their science deliberations on what projects to do.
     The ability of their infrastructure to build planetary 
missions is not clear, based on the failure of Mars'96. There's a 
lot of odds against the planetary scientists, unfortunately, even 
though they do good work. But we don't know what's going to 
happen.
     Right now it's not a particularly active topic, other than 
their interaction with the Mars Surveyor '98 mission, which is 
currently in assembly and testing. They are building part of the 
PMIRR instrument, and have delivered on time and good-quality 
stuff, and it will be flying, as far as we know. An engineering 
model of the lander instrument has arrived and is being 
evaluated.

     What are your observations of the Mars project teams?

     Tony Spear (Pathfinder project manager) and Glenn Cunningham 
(MGS project manager) are very interesting because they're poles 
apart in management style. Glenn's very organized, very precise, 
and his project has developed an awful lot of new processes, just 
as Tony's has. Tony's much more freewheeling; he tends to depend 
more on the creativity and inventiveness of the people and their 
ability to get out of trouble, things like that.
     And both methods so far have worked. Both projects came in 
on or under budget. The kind of job the Pathfinder Project had to 
do was probably enhanced by having a team of bright, young 
creative people with a few old salts sprinkled in to dispense 
wisdom. It's real exciting to watch them in action.

     Has your job been fun for you?

     The most fun thing has been the rover, because it's a small 
team, making something happen that's never been done before. And 
Pathfinder's like that. All the Mars projects are small, doing 
all kinds of new stuff that's very exciting.
     The program office job has been exciting in that we're 
breaking new ground programmatically, trying to do things 
nobody's ever done before -- not in the hardware sense, but in 
the management sense. In fact, I was inspired to write a book; 
the working title is "Managing Martians and Other Creative 
Teams." It's done; I've got an agent who's marketing it and 
everything. It's about managing creativity. I was inspired to 
do that by the stuff that's been going on in the program for the 
last three years. And Alice Fairhurst and I are teaching a class 
called "Managing Creativity" here at JPL, based on my book and 
Alice's book, which is called "Effective Teaching, Effective 
Learning."
     We are teaching it again at JPL in October. Goddard Space 
Flight Center and Headquarters are interested in the class, too.
     I've really learned a lot, coalesced a lot of stuff in this 
job, but it's not as much fun as being on a project. It's much 
more political.

     How does your program fit into the bigger picture at JPL?

     Along with all of the things I've been trying to do with the 
projects and make them work as teams, Norm is working with the 
other directorates so they can be part of JPL working as a team. 
And the big challenge is that if we're going to do sample return 
missions and the 2001 and 2003 missions, we have to make the 
technology relevant. 
     And the technologies never had to be relevant before; it was 
all, "OK, we're going to do fun stuff and we're going to do 
really good stuff; if somebody else wants to pick it up, that's 
fine."
     New Millennium was created because there was a gap, for 
example, between the Galileo project -- which can't fly anything 
modern because it's risky -- and the projects that will fly 
cutting-edge technologies. So it's perceived that we've got to 
have a program to fly technology so that these new projects can 
pick it up. 
     Tom Gavin (Cassini spacecraft manager) created and developed 
a bunch of new technology for that mission; for example, the 
Cassini radio is being used by Pathfinder, Mars Surveyor '98 and 
Stardust. 
     And we got our computers for the rover from Cassini - it's 
just little processors that are being used -- so Cassini really 
has done a lot of that gap-bridging. 
     It turns out that the projects we're flying are happening so 
fast, that we can't wait for New Millennium. And the connection 
between the New Millennium and Mars projects has never been made 
very well, up to now.
     Part of Norm's challenge is how to get the whole technology 
program focused on the sample return mission, on Pluto, on 
whatever project needs it, so that the technology is really 
relevant and timely, so that the stuff comes out at the time we 
need it.
     And you may or not need to fly it. We're flying all kinds of 
things on Pathfinder, for instance, that have never flown before, 
because it's part of the mission. So it's not clear that most of 
it has to be flown first; it could be developed under New 
Millennium and then flown on Mars missions, Pluto missions or 
solar probe missions, SIRTF, or whatever you've got. 
     Norm is working with Charles Elachi (director, space and 
Earth science programs), Rody Stephenson (director, technology 
and applications programs) and Gael Squibb (director, 
telecommunications and mission operations) to have an integrated 
program such that the technology really counts, that every dollar 
you spend on technology is directed to go into something that we 
need to carry out these "faster, better, cheaper" missions that 
we've signed up to do.
     The Mars projects do it at their level. At the Laboratory 
level, the Mars program looks at coordination, integration, bang 
for the buck and effectiveness. And we're doing it across the 
agency. The teamwork (on the 2001 mission) between codes S, U and 
M -- that's never happened before.
     So, we're in a very exciting era of new programmatic 
strategies that the agency has never had before; I don't know if 
anybody's ever had it before -- I don't know if the military or 
DOE or anybody like that has ever been moving in the direction of 
a whole enterprise focus at working together to get missions done 
and doing what you need to do to rather than every center for 
itself and every program for itself. 
     That's the exciting part about this job. We're leading the 
agency in many new ways: doing business, looking at things, 
managing things, cooperation, partnering. I think the Mars 
program is doing an awful lot of what JPL's reengineering teams 
are doing. We're partnering with Lockheed Martin; we have a 
strategic alliance with them through 2003; we're partnering with 
Ames and Langley on aerodynamics and aero-entry, because we've 
lost that capability at JPL. I came to JPL to work on that kind 
of stuff, and we just don't have that capability anymore, but 
Langley and Ames do. There are also a number of partnerships 
with Sandia National Laboratories, and international 
partnerships.
     We're leading the charge in that whole strategic alliance 
regime, which is underpinning a lot of modern business practice. 

                          ###
_________________________________________________________________

"Quotable quotes"

     "Congratulations to all of you on behalf of President 
Clinton and all the people of our country. Congratulations to all 
members of the [Pathfinder] team. What a great way to celebrate 
our country's birthday. It's just amazing that you were able to 
put so much technology into such a small vehicle. NASA's 
'faster, better, cheaper' way of doing business is certainly 
being borne out today."
     -- Al Gore, vice president of the United States
     In a telephone call to JPL following confirmation of a 
signal from Pathfinder's low-gain antenna

     "Boy, what a rush! A day like today is what the space 
program is all about."
     -- Dr. Wesley Huntress, NASA associate administrator

     "This morning (July 5) I rushed out, grabbed the newspaper, 
looked at it and said, "OK, we really did do this!'"
     -- Brian Muirhead, Pathfinder flight systems manager and 
deputy project manager

     "We had to pinch ourselves this morning (July 5). Is this 
real or just a simullation? This is definitely an experience all 
of us will remember for the rest of our lives."
     -- Richard Cook, Pathfinder mission manager

     "With the Viking mission, it took us a year to find out 
where we were on Mars. With Pathfinder, it took us one day."
     -- Dr. Matthew Golombek, Pathfinder project scientist

     "Now that we're on the ground, you can tell how we feel by 
our happy faces. We're ready to take her (Sojourner) on a Sunday 
drive."
     -- Matt Wallace, rover team member

     "Watch out world, here comes NASA. Children of the world, 
you're going to have a great future."
     -- Daniel Goldin, NASA administrator

     "I wonder if Carl Sagan is smiling down on us now, having 
fun."
     -- Tony Spear, Pathfinder project manager
     During announcement that the Pathfinder lander had been 
named the Carl Sagan Memorial Station
_________________________________________________________________

Sagan's memory honored at JPL mall wall
     In memory of his contributions to a myriad of JPL and NASA 
space missions, the Laboratory has honored the memory of the late 
astronomer Dr. Carl Sagan with the installation of a memorial 
plaque in the "mall wall," kiosk south of Building 167.
     In a July 3 ceremony attended by Sagan's widow, Anne Druyan, 
along with their daughter, Sagan's grandson and other family 
members, NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin recalled Sagan as a 
unique person, "who always liked to push the boundaries of 
science, and it is symbolic today as we push the boundaries at 
Mars that we dedicate this wall to his memory."
     Goldin added that when he visits JPL in the future, he will 
"come to this wall and think of Carl, who taught all of us to 
dream."
     JPL Director Dr. Edward Stone pointed to the 15-year-old 
mission status board and noted, "There's more to the progress of 
these missions than getting there. This new board will allow us 
to show what we're learning once we get there.
     "Sagan's focus was not only on what we were learning, but 
also the significance and excitement of what we were learning."
     "Carl loved the Jet Propulsion Laboratory," Druyan recalled. 
"Of all the honors coming his way, there is no more of a fitting 
tribute than here at JPL. From our family, thank you for this 
loving tribute to Carl."
     The astronomer, who died of pneumonia Dec. 20, 1996 after a 
two-year battle with a bone marrow disease, was an 
interdisciplinary scientist on the Galileo mission at the time of 
his death.
     He also played a leading role in the Mariner, Viking and 
Voyager  missions. 

                           ###
_________________________________________________________________

Pathfinder lander now "Sagan Memorial Station"

     One day following the Pathfinder spacecraft's successful 
landing on Mars, NASA honored the legacy of Dr. Carl Sagan when 
agency administrator Daniel Goldin named the lander the Carl 
Sagan Memorial Station.
     "Carl Sagan was a very unique individual who helped young 
and old alike tto dream about the future and the possibilities it 
may hold," Goldin said. "Carl always liked to push the boundaries 
too, and the Mars Pathfinder mission, with its rover named 
Sojourner, clearly has done that. Even its very first images 
contain an array of fascinating scientific questions that he 
would have loved to debate. We will explore the area with his 
memory in mind."
     Goldin made the announcement at Planetfest'97 in Pasadena, 
an event organized by the Planetary Society, the public space 
interest group that Sagan founded with former JPL Director Dr. 
Bruce Murrary and Lou Friedman in 1980. 
     Sagan has received NASA medals for exceptional scientific 
achievement and twice for distinguished public service, as well 
as the NASA Apollo Achievement Award. Sagan died on Dec. 20, 
1996, at age 62. 
     The naming is reminiscent of the memorial dedication of the 
Mars Viking Lander 1 in January 1981 to Dr. Thomas Mutch, a NASA 
associate administrator for space science and former leader of 
the Viking Lander Imaging Science Team, who died on Oct. 7, 1980, 
while climbing in the Himalayas.
 
                             ###
_________________________________________________________________

Pathfinder: biggest Internet event ever

     Pathfinder's landing and subsequent science studies on Mars 
proved  to be one of the most closely watched space missions in 
history -- and not just on television or other traditional media.
     Indeed, the Pathfinder Web site and its 20-plus mirror sites 
worldwide had recorded more than 220 million "hits" through July 
8, making it the most popular event to hit cyberspace.
     Mission manager Richard Cook said that feedback he received 
from a major television network was that "in their view, this 
event was without equal in terms of our Web service, how we do it 
and how fast we make it available for people to see it."
     Richard Pavlovsky, Webmaster for JPL's Web site, added, "We 
were prepared for the high volume of traffic, and were pleasantly 
surprised to see that the site was so popular.
     "The feedback we've received from the public for our Web 
service has been overwhelmingly favorable."
     The public hit the Pathfinder sites to the tune of 30 
million on July 4, but was just getting warmed up. Estimates 
range up to 70 million hits on July 5 alone, with traffic in the 
tens of millions every day since.
     The event easily shattered NASA's unofficial record for Web 
popularity, which Pavlovsky said was during the Galileo 
spacecraft's orbit insertion at Jupiter in December 1995, when 
about 5 million hits were recorded for the week.
     In addition, JPL has thus far received more than 1,000 e-
mails at its public e-mail address, called Newsdesk, offering 
congratulations and thanks for the successful Mars mission. 

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