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May 2, 2011 05:50 pm PDT
Original Link: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/RawDUY41Tg4/martian-summer-robot.html
Martian Summer: Robot Arms, Cowboy Spacemen, and My 90 Days with the Phoenix Mars Mission
In the Summer of 2008, Brooklyn writer Andrew Kessler lived a space dream. He spent 90 days embedded in mission control on a NASA mission to Mars. His offbeat and often humous book, Martian Summer, captures the real-life drama of the mission and its passionate crew as they attempt to dig up permafrost on the North Pole of Mars. This excerpt is the first chapter of a three-month epic that changed our understanding of Mars and sheds a new light on the importance of curiosity-based research and NASA missions. For more information: Visit the author at his monobookist bookstore in New York City's West Village or online at Kessleronmars.com Martian Summer: Robot Arms, Cowboy Spacemen, and my 90 days with the Phoenix Mars Mission Author's Note: This is a book about Mars and the humans that make rocket science possible. This is not the most accurate account of this NASA mission. For that you'll want to review the science papers or other Mars related literature. Instead, this is an account of winning the nerd lottery: The luckiest fanboy in fandom gets a shot to spend three months with unfettered access to mission control. It's just your average summer trying to capture the story of 130 of the world's best planetary scientists and engineers exploring the north pole of Mars. It's a warts-and-all look at the Phoenix Mars mission from a regular guy who loves space. Part 1 The Phoenix of Tucson INTRODUCTION Date: June 04, 2007 The story begins two months before the launch of the Phoenix Mars Lander. One year before the landing. It takes ten months to fly at 74,000 mph to arrive on Mars. It's far. The subject of the story is a Martian photographer. "Don't call me that," Peter Smith, the world's greatest Martian Photographer says dryly. "It really diminishes the science." This is a story about the world's greatest Mars picture taker and his robot, Phoenix. "And don't make me look like some wacko mad scientist," Peter says. He has a hard enough time with the mission's image as it is. Peter is particular about the mission's image because he knows how getting it right has the potential to inspire children and adults alike. More than half his team is here because they grew up watching Apollo and Viking missions. "What's going to inspire the next generation?" He wants to know. We're sitting in the backyard of Peter's Tucson home. We're getting off on the wrong foot and I can't stop imagining Peter working in his Martian photo studio posing little aliens on the red planet. Stupid, I know. Peter is intimidating. He is tall--very tall--with a shock of white hair, bushy eyebrows, big mustache, a robust Buddha-like belly and an alpha-male cowboy swagger. He towers over me and says little. Only grimacing and asking if I'm sure I'm up for the task, correcting me when I say things like 'Martian photographer' or make other interplanetary gaffs. I blabber to fill the silence. It's not uncommon to feel this way when you first meet the brilliant, geeky-- "Please don't make us look like geeks, either" says the brilliant John Wayne of space. "Go collect some firewood for dinner," he says. I do it. When I return, Peter breaks the wood with his hands, starts a small fire and tells me a story....
Original Link: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/RawDUY41Tg4/martian-summer-robot.html
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