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August 20, 2008

Setback and comeback of a certain researcher

On May 25, 2008, NASA’s Mars Lander Phoenix activated parachute to reduce the velocity and gracefully floated toward the landing target of Martian North Pole, when Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter circling around 190 miles above the surface took dramatic photos of descending Lander by its powerful camera. In a history of space development, it was really the first time to have succeeded in such photographing other than on earth.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/080710-phoenix-hirise.html

Right after the photo taking, Phoenix succeeded in landing. It was Peter Smith of Arizona University, a project leader, who proudly held up his head at the press conference. Today’s story is about “setback and comeback” of Peter over a period of ten years.

On December 3, 1999, the land control center lost radio contact from NASA’s Mars Polar Lander (MPL) after the last transmission before entering Martian atmosphere. The mission targeting at the South Pole ended up in a complete failure. Peter Smith was one of the team members of MPL. Two years earlier, he became well known to have leaped to fame as a very best engineer leading the image processing team of Mars Pathfinder mission. After the landing failure of MPL, however, NASA canceled all Martian missions on which were installed the equipments concerning Peter’s research work. Mars Lander that was scheduled for launch in 2001 was also called off. As a result, NASA gave up taking the historically valued images of Mars, and so Peter consequently lost several tens staffs of image processing team only left with four.

In the middle of the Mars simulation experiment conducted in August of 2001 on Devon Island, North Polar Region of Canada, he complained to his fellow researcher, “I don’t know what’s gonna happen, if I can continue research on Mars”. Dark days followed for Peter.

And then, however, NASA propositioned all of sudden, “The hardwares meant for the cancelled mission of 2001 Mars Lander could be used for the first Mars Scout project.” Peter hurriedly made a mission plan to reuse the hardwares for 2001 mission. And the spacecraft was named “Phoenix” in a sense of rebirth of MPL. It is really a reborn mission out of dead ashes. Peter’s dark days turned to hopeful ones looking forward to future.

Abbreviation of Mars Phoenix Lander stands for the same MPL. The new MPL was to aim at the other side of Mars to the North Pole contrary to the old mission destination. Almost all members of the new team organized by Peter were those of Mars Polar Lander.

Now, Phoenix discovered the water on Mars and has opened up the curtain of the new age for Mars exploration. I feel a premonition that we will soon obtain information about Martian life. Peter Smith will be amply repaid for his hard efforts before long. On the contrary, there are many researchers who stayed depressed as ever, among whom Peter has happily come back and must be appreciating the importance of keeping “dream and passion”.

I welcome your opinions on this column to the following E-mail address.
matogawa@planetary.or.jp

(Translated by The Planetary Society of Japan)