Science Definition Team work room, 2013. Photo by S. Milkovich
In February 2013, I had a new routine: upon arrival at JPL each morning, poke my head into a small corner room in the Flight Projects building before heading to my office across Lab. Over the next few months, the walls – and eventually windows – of that small room were coated in pages and pages of powerpoint printouts.
We rearranged those pages over and over during the next few months, standing back and staring at the wall as we continually asked ourselves: did the chain of logic ring true? was there a missing logical step? If so, what was it and who on the team could champion it?
Eventually we wrote up the report of the Mars 2020 Science Definition Team, setting out the scientific purpose of the next NASA flagship mission to the surface of Mars, but not before a giant word document full of 15 people’s many track changes destroyed my harddrive.
I carried the torch of “scientifically selected and returnable samples” through rover development and into implementation. Sometimes I was arguing with the engineers who didn’t understand why this rover had to be so operationally efficient. Sometimes I was arguing with the scientists who wanted to fall back upon exploration and operations styles of previous rovers. But I tried to hold true to the vision of the science definition team: focus on the technical needs to support collection of scientifically returnable samples, because of the revolution of understanding of our place in the universe that could result.
As chronic health issues and work politics started taking over, I handed the torch over to members of the team I had assembled, a mix of scientists interested in engineering and engineers who wanted to enable science. Proud of the people whom I brought onto my team who rose to the challenge. Some of them had stumbling blocks thrown in their way, but they carried the torch of scientifically selected returnable samples into other corners of the mission.
In February 2020 the rover was sent to Florida to prepare for launch, and in March 2020 we all went home. My pre-existing health conditions make us all on high alert, and I can count on one hand the number of times I left the house in the next year.
July 2020 we watched the launch from home over the internet – waking my young son up at 4 am, he told me “I didn’t sign up for this.” I wept because it successfully launched, I wept because I couldn’t be with the science team members from the US and Spain and France and Norway to celebrate after all my years of championing them to the JPL engineers, and I wept because I had poured all my energies into this inanimate project for years and wasn’t sure what I had to show for it.
On 18 February 2021 we landed on Mars. Last time I was part of a team that landed on Mars, I was surrounded by the Curiosity Science team and feeling their energy in the room. The time before that, I sat in a hotel in NYC with the members of the Caltech-Occidental Concert Band, and clutched a pillow as we watched Mars Phoenix land before heading out to perform at Carnegie Hall. This time, the energy was at a remove. Everything seems at a remove these days – the reality of Perseverance on Mars, the discussions of the science team about what to do next with the rover. I sit in the home office that I share with my spouse as the pandemic rages around us. Reality is masking and hand sanitizer and vaccines and school policies, and hoping that our parents stay healthy.
February 2022: in the last year, we have explored the floor of Jezero Crater, and discovered its history of lava flows interacting with water. We have collected samples and are getting ready to drive to the Jezero Delta. I am filled with memories of senior JPL staff standing up in reviews, telling us that there was no way that we’d be able to collect a cache in one Mars year (two Earth years). That we couldn’t keep the science team focused, that we’d have too much in-fighting and be too distracted by the interesting rocks we encountered. And yet here we are, well on our way.
One upon a time, this rover was paper printouts on a wall, a word document with so many track changes that it crashed my computer and made me get a new harddrive. When I showed up to graduate school in 2000 I was handed a book called “Water on Mars” by Dr. Mike Carr as a foundational text to orient myself. Thirteen years later as we wrapped up the Science Definition Team Report, Mike himself told me that he’d been on Mars Sample Return concept discussions for decades but this was the first one that he thought might actually make it happen.
Someone from the Science Definition Team sent me chocolates after we submitted our report, and I still don’t know who.
We have an actual rover on the surface of Mars.
The science team is prospering and they don’t need me anymore; I hold new science team member’s hands and give them the information they need to find the data and join the conversations. There is strength and joy in setting others up for success, and in watching them succeed. There is despair in standing on the sidelines and watching others march past full of purpose.
Whatever happens in the future, whatever paths I may travel, I will never forget that once upon a time there was a powerpoint file on my laptop that grew into a rover on Mars, and potentially to rocks brought back to Earth to teach us about the origin of life.
We came in peace – and complexity – for all humankind.
Dr Sarah Milkovich
Feb 18 2022
This image was acquired on Feb. 17, 2022 (Sol 354) by the Perseverance Rover, Jezero Crater, Mars. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU.
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