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On January 3, 2004, a compact rover named Spirit, cushioned
inside a pyramid of balloons, hurtled through the martian atmosphere
and crash-landed on the dusty surface of Mars. Minutes later,
Spirit sent its first message home. The elation of the
assembled scientists, along with the much more involved engineering
story leading up to the landing, were captured by NOVA producer Mark
Davis in his popular documentary
MARS Dead or Alive.
That elation is the starting point for the sequel, "Welcome to
Mars."
"Welcome to Mars" follows the Mars rovers Spirit and
Opportunity from the second they crash-land on the planet to
many months into their ongoing mission. Davis covered the story from
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as it unfolded and provided a
unique, behind-the-scenes take on this voyage of discovery, whose
primary goal is to find evidence that liquid water once existed on
Mars.
The mission has had its share of drama. The first two weeks after
Spirit's landing were euphoric, with fantastic new images
arriving every day. But just a few weeks into its mission,
Spirit suddenly went silent ... and then, inexplicably,
started spewing gibberish. For three agonizing days Spirit's
engineers worked around the clock, trying to regain control of the
unhinged rover. In the darkest hour, many feared that
Spirit was doomed. Then, just hours before
Opportunity began its own fiery plunge to the surface of
Mars, engineers finally discovered the problem—a simple memory
overload—and saved Spirit from an early death.
The unfolding science has been equally compelling. With
Spirit back up and running, the scientists turned their
attention to the arrival of its twin, Opportunity. After
tearing through the martian sky and bouncing on the surface for
several minutes, Opportunity rolled into a small, shallow
crater at the site called Meridiani. Early the next day, the first
color postcard arrived, and the scientists were stunned to see an
outcrop of layered bedrock just a few yards away. Bedrock is the
holy grail of geologists, holding an unambiguous record of
geological history. This was the first martian bedrock ever
photographed at close range.
Confronted with this gift, the science team collected provocative
clues that they believed could prove there was once water on Mars.
The race to collect the data has been both physically and
emotionally grueling. With two rovers on opposite sides of Mars, two
science teams work in alternating shifts around the clock. Each
rover's day begins when the sun comes up on its side of Mars, and
the scientists on Earth live on the same schedule. The martian day
is 39 minutes longer than an Earth day, and within a few weeks
everyone was in the grip of unrelenting martian jet lag.
The competing scientific interests, the thrill of discovery, and the
accumulating stress has kept everyone on an emotional rollercoaster.
A high point arrived a little more than a month into
Opportunity's mission. The evidence at Meridiani added up,
and NASA was able to announce that, after 40 years of speculation,
solid proof was finally in hand that Mars was once awash in water.
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It all began here: Spirit's lander and deflated
airbags, at the site from which it began its wondrous
explorations of Mars. Its fellow rover,
Opportunity, has met with equal success.
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