Appreciating the Spirit

Think of the current Mars exploration adventure this way: Lewis and Clark mount video cameras on a self-propelled longboat and dispatch their vessel -- alone, unmanned and laden with 384 pounds of sophisticated instruments -- up the Missouri River to explore unvisited places. From St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean, the small craft fastidiously drills and sands rocks, analyzes soils and videotapes everything, silently reporting back on whatever it encounters. Except, at some point, the mission must move off the boat to trek across unknown wildernesses on wheels driven by batteries fueled by the sun, often obscured by immense storms of dust, ice, sand and wind of unknown force. Piece of cake.

The landing of the spacecraft Spirit on Mars is amazing -- and inspiring. It’s the most ambitious attempt ever to roam another planet. With most of Earth now well explored, photographed and surveyed for vacation spas, it’s been a long while since the awe of exploring the unknown has gripped so many -- and in real-time, color and 3-D, too. Exploring the terra incognita of budget battles and Iowa caucuses can’t stack up.

Hovering at their computer screens alongside the 210 Freeway in Pasadena, these earnest Jet Propulsion Lab scientists will find who-knows-what on that ground in our sky. Those unknowns will reveal much of the possibility of past and present life in our solar system, where freeways and playoffs do not yet exist. What is known now is the colossal engineering feat: conceiving, building and assembling each piece, then intricately choreographing every step of a seven-month flight and three-month drive on the Martian surface.

Spirit entered Mars’ atmosphere at 12,000 mph, Mach 25. Its skin warmed to 1,600 degrees Celsius while the interior remained Earth-room temperature. At the last minute, scientists radioed the craft to open its parachute 14 seconds early due to atmospheric conditions. So it did. Retro-rockets fired. Air bags inflated. At 40 feet above the planet’s surface, the craft was cut loose, left to bounce at 40 Earth Gs up to six stories high across rock-strewn ground for a mile -- before rolling to a stop, right-side up, and starting its studies in perfect condition. As we said, piece of cake.

Someday, an editorial may look back on this landmark, as we do now on the Lewis and Clark expedition, and chuckle smugly at the quaint society that got so excited over something as simple as sending a robot on a 300-million-mile journey to obediently toddle 44 yards a day across a barren landscape, ordered about by radio commands that take 12 minutes to arrive from Earth.

For now, we can savor the moment with the same childlike awe as JPL’s hard-nosed scientists, exuding arm-waving joy after years of work. Excited engineers who can smile, cheer, joke and, above all, explain their work to lay people? Talk about terra incognita.