Cav's Place

With the launch of two very ambitious missions, this month should have been incredibly exciting for the future of Mars exploration. Unfortunately, while Curiosity started its journey without problems, Phobos-Grunt failed to do so and is now very likely to fall back to Earth. Even worse, its fuel tanks are filled with several tons of highly toxic substances, which would obviously cause even worse problems upon impact if they would survive reentry, on top of the obvious ones caused by huge objects falling from the sky.

I watched the launch of Curiosity on-line yesterday and was left wondering what amount of planning and work could make something like this appear actually quite boring. Everything seemed to go perfectly even in spite of the signal loss experienced for long stretches of time, which meant that the flight and spacecraft parameters could only be verified intermittently. I’m sure that the people from NASA were quite stressed over it, but from where I was sitting, casually watching the broadcast on my computer, everything appeared to go so smoothly that it was almost an anticlimax, the lack of data making it even more boring, as there was nothing to see for a good part of the 45 minutes between launch and the spacecraft’s separation from the Centaur upper stage.
Granted that the hard part is still ahead, the landing standing out as particularly difficult due to the ingenious but also complicated and risky landing system, never before used during a mission. Considering the problems previously experienced during attempted landings on Mars, that’s guaranteed to be an extremely tense moment and I wouldn’t be particularly surprised if it’ll fail in some way. On the other hand, since we’re talking about NASA, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’ll succeed perfectly either. All I know right now is that, if I’ll still be around and able to do so, I’ll be following the developments as closely as possible next August and hoping for the best.

The only real problem I have with this mission is the nuclear generator used for the rover when we can’t completely rule out the possibility of any sort of life still existing on Mars, and especially at a time when we really need to make the move towards green and sustainable energy here on Earth, which is a process that could be greatly aided by developments initially meant for space exploration missions. After all, Opportunity is still making its way around Mars powered by nothing but solar panels, seven years and ten months into a mission originally supposed to last for only three months, not to mention that Juno is also supposed to be able to power itself with nothing but solar panels as it orbits around Jupiter, so it is possible!
I’m not saying that this mission’s goals could have currently been achieved without the use of a nuclear generator. Considering Curiosity’s size and weight, the amount of power required by its instruments and the selected landing site, that’d have quite obviously been impossible. However, I believe that the priority should have been figuring out how much could be achieved without risking to contaminate another world and aiming only for that. Putting something like this on a planet where some sort of life could possibly still exist, and also a planet that we plan to colonize in the not too distant future, is extremely unwise. For one, the landing itself could result in a disaster, and then it’s quite obvious that there is a significant risk of some sort of radioactive leak at some point in the future, even if long after the rover will cease to function.
Yes, there have been other probes sent to Mars which used nuclear generators, so there is likely some contamination already, plus that a fair amount of solar radiation does reach Mars’ surface, but we shouldn’t add to it, particularly when we’re specifically looking for spots where the right conditions for life could have existed. We should know better now than we did in the past, so we shouldn’t keep messing with other worlds when we’re not absolutely certain that they are not home to any life forms whatsoever. We should be trying to figure out how to fix the damage we have already done, and are still doing, to this one, not expand this negative influence to others as well.

But enough about Curiosity. The other important event related to the exploration of Mars that took place this month should have been the launch of Phobos-Grunt, the main goal of which was to land on Phobos, scoop up some soil samples and then send them back to Earth. Unfortunately, the only successful part of the mission was the actual launch. The spacecraft was successfully placed in Earth orbit, but then neither of the two planned upper stage burns meant to take it towards Mars took place. As a result, it is still orbiting the Earth and, according to current estimates, likely to reenter the atmosphere in early 2012, still carrying several tons of highly toxic fuels.
The only good news was that ESA successfully established contact and briefly communicated with the spacecraft, proving that it was still operational a few days ago. However, further attempts resulted in as many failures, reducing the already very slim hopes of regaining any control over the spacecraft even further. What this means for us is that it’s no longer a question of how much knowledge could humanity still gain from this mission, but of how much can we reduce the risks of it causing any significant damage when it’ll fall back down, likely a month or two from now.

In the end, we have a lot to look forward to, assuming Curiosity will manage to land and carry out its mission. And I’m still wondering how much planning and effort it takes to make launching what’s essentially a car to Mars look boring. Far more than the Russians were willing and able to put into poor Phobos-Grunt, obviously, as they certainly made it very interesting. But it’s probably better than if it would have happened the other way around, as having Curiosity and its nuclear reactor fall from the sky in a random location would probably have ended up causing even more harm than Phobos-Grunt and its highly toxic fuel will, assuming any of it will make it back down in one piece.