Things That Make You Go Wow!

Tim Rutten's latest column reminded me of what I consider to be one of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's finest accomplishments: the twin robotic rovers sent to Mars to do a little geological prospecting. It was thought that the two mechanical critters would move around a few feet, gather and analyze some Mars dirt, and, after a couple of months, that would be that. Well, that's not how it worked out.

...the scientists and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge announced that the rover Spirit's seven-year exploration of Mars had come to an end. Originally designed to send back data on a few hundred yards of the Red Planet for just three months, Spirit roamed for miles over years before giving up the ghost to a bitter Martian winter. Its epic journey fundamentally changed our understanding of the most Earth-like of the other planets. And its robotic twin, Opportunity, continues to explore the other side of Mars.

"What's most remarkable to me about Spirit's mission is just how extensive her accomplishments became," said Cornell University's Steve Squyres, the rovers' principal investigator. "What we initially conceived as a fairly simple geologic experiment on Mars ultimately turned into humanity's first real overland expedition across another planet."

While the project certainly wasn't done on the cheap (which is one reason the two rovers have lasted far more than the three month time frame), it was far less expensive in real dollars than the man-on-the-moon and the shuttle projects. It was also less costly in terms of human life. Yet the two rovers have arguably provided us with equivalent amounts of information and surprises.

Yes, as Rutten points out, many would prefer actual human exploration of the universe around us. We would like to see with our own eyes, touch other worlds with our own hands, but that is simply not possible for technological and (just as importantly) economic reasons right now. Humans will have to rely on surrogates such as Spirit and Opportunity to do our exploration for us. That these two surrogates have done so brilliantly is a testament to human ingenuity and the human passion to know.

So, to the engineers and scientists of JPL: thanks for a job well-done.

Inquisition

One of the most remarkable and satisfying successes in the last ten years has been the Mars Rover project run out of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Flintridge/La Canada, California. Two little robots designed to work for 90 days scuttling across the Mars landscape are still operating four years later, taking pictures and collecting samples. The remarkable part is that those rovers were designed and are being "driven" by scientists and engineers back here on earth. NASA should be proud of the work done by the hard-working folks at JPL. Instead, NASA is busy hounding them. From Tim Rutten's op-ed column in today's Los Angeles Times:

The problem began -- as so many have -- in the security mania that gripped the Bush administration after 9/11. Presidential Directive No. 12, issued by the Department of Homeland Security, directed federal agencies to adopt a uniform badge that could be used by employees and contractors to gain access to government facilities. Most agencies let the directive become a dead letter, too complex and expensive to implement.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, however, is one of the Bush administration's true believers, and his first reflex always is a crisp salute. He directed Caltech, which has a contract to run JPL for NASA, to make sure all of the lab's employees complied. The university initially resisted, then caved when NASA threatened to withdraw its contract. Worse, the government demanded that the scientists, in order to get the badges, fill out questionnaires on their personal lives and waive the privacy of their financial, medical and psychiatric records. The government also wanted permission to gather information about them by interviewing third parties.

In other words, as the price of keeping their jobs, many of America's finest space scientists were being asked to give the feds virtually blanket permission to snoop and spy and collect even malicious gossip about them from God knows who.

Investigators wanted license to seek information as to whether "there is any reason to question [applicants'] honesty or trustworthiness." At one point, JPL's internal website posted an "issue characterization chart" -- since taken down -- that indicated the snoops would be looking for "patterns of irresponsible behavior as reflected in credit history ... sodomy ... incest ... abusive language ... unlawful assembly ... homosexuality." (We'll leave it to others to explain a standard that links incest with unlawful assembly.) ... [Emphasis added]

Why on earth would NASA be so concerned with the private lives of the scientists at JPL? After all, less than 10% of the work done at the relatively small lab is classified. Well, Mr. Rutten and the scientists at JPL have a pretty good idea what's behind this witch-hunt.

Many at the lab believe that there's more than governmental overreaching at work here. They point out that Griffin is one of those who remain skeptical that human actions contribute to global warming, and that some of JPL's near-Earth science has played a critical role in establishing the empirical case to the contrary. They see the background checks as the first step toward establishing a system of intimidation that might be used to silence inconvenient science. [Emphasis added]

Inconvenient science: now there's a nasty phrase, but an apt one. There are still people who don't want the rest of the world to know that the sun doesn't actually revolve around the earth, and many of them have been hired by the Bush administration.

One year and three days to go.