July 2014

Curiosity on the Red Planet

Exclusive Q&A with Author Rod Pyle on Mars Exploration

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Curiosity

Exclusive Q&A with Rod Pyle

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Next week will mark the second anniversary of the Curiosity rover landing on Mars. Author Rod Pyle's latest book Curiosity: An Inside Look at the Mars Rover Mission and the People Who Made It Happen sheds light on the historic mission through firsthand interviews with the scientists who made Curiosity a reality.

We sat down with Rod for an exclusive chat about the future of Mars exploration and how he became such a space fanatic.

Exclusive Q&A with Rod Pyle

The Promethean: The second anniversary of the Curiosity rover is coming up August 5-6. What has this mission accomplished over the last two years?

Rod Pyle: There are multiple achievements in Curiosity's mission. The landing via sky crane was a major milestone - delivering a one-ton rover with a nuclear power supply right on its wheels was a big moment. Since then Curiosity has covered about 5 miles of increasingly tough terrain, taken three drilled samples from rocks and more scoops from the soil, and evaluated these samples

as well as Martian air and to determine that the planet at one time in the past had an environment conducive to life.

For your book Curiosity, you interviewed so many of the people behind the scenes who made the mission a reality. Did anyone stand out to you?

The people who work on this mission strongly self-identify as a team, and it's hard to pick out an individual. But of the people I spent time with, two that made a strong impression were John Grotzinger, the project scientist, and Rob Manning, the chief engineer. Grotzinger went from being a key member of the science team on the MER rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, to the man who oversees 480 other scientists for Curiosity. It's a huge job with multiple levels of responsibility, and he handles it in a disarmingly good-natured and patient fashion. And the man can shift from talking to a room full of fellow PhD's to the rest of us in a flash.

Manning had different challenges. He and his team were charged with multiple design issues that included figuring out a way to land the monster rover. Braking rockets, parachutes and landing hardware--in this case, the rover's wheels--were all under his purview. And as he explained when referring to the landing system, sky crane, "The first thing we had to do with NASA was to pass what I call the 'laugh test...'" But in the end, his team prevailed and the landing was so successful that the Mars 2020 rover will use an identical system. It's a brilliant design.

What's Curiosity up to now? And what's next?

Curiosity has recently left an area called The Kimberly, where the rover took more drilled samples and evaluation, and is moving into an area called Zabriskie Plateau. Not long ago they were traversing a region with sharp, pointy rocks embedded in the sandy surface, and these were wreaking havoc with the wheels. Curiosity is crossing the last two miles to Mount Sharp now, and more spiny obstacles are in its path. The challenges are not insurmountable, but will require patience and detailed planning on the part of the navigation team to succeed with a margin of safety. Within a few months they should exit the "red zone" and enter the magnificent foothills of Mount Sharp, their primary goal.

Where are we headed with our overall program of Mars exploration?

There is a new orbiter arriving at Mars in a few months, MAVEN, that will measure atmospheric composition and loss over time. Then, the Mars 2020 rover, which is still being planned, should arrive at the end of the decade. It will carry instrumentation even more specialized and advanced than Curiosity's, with an ever increasing focus on finding life on the red planet. Mars 2020 may also be tasked to gather drill-core samples and place them in storage for eventual return to Earth. Finally, private companies like Elon Musk's SpaceX are planning both robotic and even crewed missions to Mars in possible cooperation with NASA. It's an exciting time for Mars exploration!

You've written another book on Mars exploration, Destination Mars. What draws you to this topic?

Having grown up during the Apollo lunar landing program in the 1960's and early 70's, I was thrilled by those missions of exploration. I've enjoyed writing and creating documentaries about those missions and NASA's unmanned Mars program for decades, and cannot imagine any other endeavor that would be even half as exciting and rewarding.

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About the Author: Rod Pyle

Rod Pyle (Pasadena, CA) is the author of the widely acclaimed book Destination Mars--called "the best recent overview of Mars missions" by the Washington Post--and also Destination Moon, Missions to the Moon, and a popular audiobook called The Space Race. He has produced numerous documentaries for the History Channel and Discovery Communications, including the widely praised Modern Marvels: Apollo 11. He has been an assistant professor at the University of La Verne and a lecturer with NASA's Johnson Space Center.