“High Flight”

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laugh­ter-sil­vered wings;
Sun­ward I’ve climbed, and joined the tum­bling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hun­dred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sun­lit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shout­ing wind along, and flung
My eager craft through foot­less halls of air.…

Up, up the long, deliri­ous, burn­ing blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where nev­er lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lift­ing mind I’ve trod
The high untres­passed sanc­ti­ty of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

John Gille­spie Magee, Jr.

On Sun­day night, a one-ton, SUV-sized, plu­to­ni­um fueled robot land­ed on Mars.  NASA launched the rover 8 months ear­li­er, aim­ing to have it land in a Mar­t­ian crater which allows access to stra­ta from ear­ly in Mar­t­ian his­to­ry, and has fea­tures shaped by flow­ing water, and thus may con­tain ide­al con­di­tions for the detec­tion of life on Mars. 

Curios­i­ty, the robot­ic rover, land­ed about 2 kilo­me­ters from the bulls­eye NASA had paint­ed for it, hav­ing tra­versed about 600,000 kilo­me­ters of space. Sim­ply get­ting Curios­i­ty to its land­ing site on Mars intact was a mas­sive engi­neer­ing feat, involv­ing an Atlas V rock­et, heat­shields, a para­chute, retro­rock­ets, and a sky­crane to low­er the rover from a plat­form float­ing in the sky (in the image above, you can see Curios­i­ty hang­ing from the para­chute on its way down; the pho­to was tak­en by a satel­lite NASA placed in orbit sev­er­al years ago).  And that bit was nec­es­sary just so the real­ly remark­able part could start.  Once it land­ed, Curios­i­ty sent a sig­nal back to Earth, relay­ing it through one of the satel­lites we’ve placed in orbit around the alien plan­et, and the satel­lite sent the sig­nals on to Earth-based satel­lite dish­es.  Soon, Curios­i­ty will unleash its high-gain anten­na, and will be able to com­mu­ni­cate with Earth direct­ly as well.  NASA engi­neers will send orders to Curios­i­ty, and the robot will com­bine those and its own autonomous sys­tems to nav­i­gate across the alien land­scape and con­duct sci­ence exper­i­ments.

With its plu­to­ni­um-fueled pow­er plant, its robot­ic arms, and its rock-destroy­ing lasers, Curios­i­ty’s goal is to sur­vey Mars and dig into the plan­et’s past.  It will track the geol­o­gy of the plan­et in greater detail than any pre­vi­ous rover or lan­der has done.  It will take pic­tures with high­er res­o­lu­tion and greater sen­si­tiv­i­ty than any pre­vi­ous mis­sion to Mars.  It will mon­i­tor radi­a­tion and the envi­ron­ment around it, get­ting us clos­er to a sense of what it would be like to stand on Mars.  Rather: get­ting us clos­er to a sense of what it will be like when humans stand on Mars.

The tools Curios­i­ty car­ries are designed to search for organ­ic com­pounds, the chem­i­cal sig­na­tures life might have left behind.  They are the tools that will tell us what forces shaped Mars over bil­lions of years. But they are also tools nec­es­sary to make plans for pro­tect­ing humans when we fol­low Curios­i­ty to our sis­ter planet. 

Lit­tle won­der that thou­sands of peo­ple crowd­ed into Times Square at mid­night to watch Curios­i­ty land. 

Lit­tle won­der that I teared up as I tried to explain what this all meant to my 3 month old son. 

What a won­der­ful world he’ll grow up in! 

What won­der­ful worlds, in fact.

We sent Curios­i­ty to learn, but we also did this because excel­lence is a virtue, and you excel by exceed­ing your lim­its.  How appro­pri­ate, then, that the Mars land­ing hap­pened dur­ing the Olympics: both are expres­sions of that human striv­ing to expand the realm of the pos­si­ble.  Some do that by ded­i­cat­ing them­selves to run­ning faster than any­one who ever lived before, oth­ers by leap­ing high­er or far­ther than any­one else.  The Curios­i­ty land­ing was the longest of long jumps.

And there will be oth­er, longer, hard­er jumps.  Some­day, humans will walk in the Gale crater, and mark Curios­i­ty’s land­ing site with a plaque, and his­tor­i­cal preser­va­tion­ists will pro­tect its track­marks.  What we learn from Curios­i­ty today brings us clos­er to that dream.

Why would any­one want to go to Mars in per­son?  Here’s Carl Sagan, speak­ing to future Mar­t­ian explor­ers:

I don’t know why you’re on Mars. Maybe you’re there because we’ve rec­og­nized we have to care­ful­ly move small aster­oids around to avert the pos­si­bil­i­ty of one impact­ing the Earth with cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quences, and, while we’re up in near-Earth space, it’s only a hop, skip and a jump to Mars. Or, maybe we’re on Mars because we rec­og­nize that if there are human com­mu­ni­ties on many worlds, the chances of us being ren­dered extinct by some cat­a­stro­phe on one world is much less. Or maybe we’re on Mars because of the mag­nif­i­cent sci­ence that can be done there — the gates of the won­der world are open­ing in our time. Maybe we’re on Mars because we have to be, because there’s a deep nomadic impulse built into us by the evo­lu­tion­ary process, we come after all, from hunter gath­er­ers, and for 99.9% of our tenure on Earth we’ve been wan­der­ers. And, the next place to wan­der to, is Mars. But what­ev­er the rea­son you’re on Mars is, I’m glad you’re there. And I wish I was with you.

What will we find on Mar?  Life? Maybe.  Signs life once exist­ed?  More like­ly, but that’s not what Curios­i­ty is there for.  New insights into con­di­tions on Earth bil­lions of years ago, when life first emerged?  Like­ly.  Unex­pect­ed insights into how Mars works?  Cer­tain­ly.  And that’s what this is about. 

Dis­cov­ery. Curios­i­ty. Wonder.

The won­der I feel as I pon­der Curios­i­ty’s improb­a­ble jour­ney is the won­der I feel when I look at Gabrielle Dou­glas sail effort­less­ly through the sky.  Both are expres­sions of the human utmost, and a chal­lenge to all who come later.

There are, inevitably, those who would cheap­en and triv­i­al­ize these accom­plish­ments.  Talk­ing heads on Fox News felt oblig­ed to con­sid­er whether Gab­by’s out­fit was suf­fi­cient­ly patri­ot­ic, forc­ing feats of awe-inspir­ing ath­let­ic per­fec­tion into a stale polit­i­cal piss­ing match.  Mean­while, Dis­co. ‘tute scriven­er David Kling­hof­fer thinks NASA spent $1.7 bil­lion and years of inter­plan­e­tary engi­neer­ing “in an effort, how­ev­er doomed, to refute intel­li­gent design [cre­ation­ism].”  

It must be sad to live life bound so tight­ly to a par­ti­san agen­da, to be inca­pable of tak­ing joy in the joy­ous, being awed by the awe­some, feel­ing won­der in the wonderful. 

Sci­ence, like many of the best things in life, is not about the end­point. It’s about the jour­ney.  Thanks to NASA, Curios­i­ty’s jour­ney has just begun, and thanks to NASA, the Olympians, and all of us who join them in their jour­neys, curios­i­ty’s jour­ney will car­ry on as well.

Images via AP and NASA.