Mars – Close Read

Space is necessarily multifarious, ISRO

Here’s a great example of why space-exploration is a multifarious industry where it takes excellence on multiple fronts at the same time to make each mission a success, even on seemingly unrelated fronts. The example also shows the pride of financial frugality can last only for so long.

Despite many firsts, ISRO mum on MOM’s findings – Times of India

Answering a specific question after the launch of Astrosat, India’s first astronomy satellite, on September 28, Isro chairman AS Kiran Kumar told TOI: “I cannot get into the specifics. I can, however, say there are several firsts that MOM has found. But it is only fair that the principal investigators (scientists who made the payloads) claim it first in scientific journals.”

Isro was to make this data public on September 24, MOM’s first anniversary in the Martian orbit. The agency, however, had a low-key event on the day and did not reveal anything.

Equipping instruments to be able to capture and relay 1 TB of data a year is only half the job done, the other being to be able to process and publicise it. And without the need to innovate rapidly nor clamour for public support, I don’t think ISRO will ever reform this slow-moving attitude. This is NASA really cashing in – there’s no reason ISRO should be able to, too. Later in the same piece,

So between September 24, 2014 and September 24, 2015, when MOM completed one year in the Martian orbit, it could have taken 456 pictures, of which Isro has made public 13 pictures, with some repetitions of the same spot on Mars.

Defending my review of ‘The Martian’

I wrote my first movie review for The Martian and I wonder if I’ve done it some disservice, although I think it is defensible (from myself, not anyone else). In a wonderful interview of Salman Rushdie published in Mint recently, the author says it’s not his responsibility to tell the truth or document history, but only to exercise his creative imagination. Similarly, it was never on Andy Weir or Drew Goddard (who wrote the script for the movie) to present a realistic picture of interplanetary space exploration in their works. But Weir did and that’s where the book scored.

My apparent disservice to the review was done in two ways: by repeatedly comparing the movie to the book, and by expecting the movie to be closer to the truth than an improbable adventure, which Ridley Scott, the director, is fond of transforming tales into. The book’s story progresses on Earth like a traditional novel and on Mars as a series of log entries that the stranded astronaut Mark Watney leaves in a video journal. The log entries are not available for every day but Watney/Weir provides for the gaps between them to be filled by hints at the end of previous log entry. As a result, the book presents a continuous picture of what Watney is up to. For me, that became a very important part of the book: the tedium. It provided a fullness to the story and was emotionally satisfying, too, especially to someone who’s spent the last few years covering many space stories and knows it to be a part of space-based lifestyles. Without the tedium, the story swings closer to fiction. Without the tedium, and while watching the movie, I constantly interrupted myself with questions about what Watney was doing while the plants grew, how he was able to put the trailer-rover together so quickly, etc.

Speaking for myself: the book was worth celebrating when it hit the mainstream press because it was different. It was awesome not because it was a science-fiction adventure set on Mars but because it was an adventure set on Mars. It brought humankind’s future journeys to Mars much closer home and situated the experience in plausibility, not freakishness. Scott, in my opinion, presented a movie that downplayed these aspects, leaving the audience with one overwhelming takeaway: Mark Watney survived for what seemed like a week on Mars while time flew faster on Earth as NASA went not-quite-berserk trying to bring a marooned man home.

I say “not-quite-berserk” for two reasons. In the book, I believe Weir was careful in choose Mark Watney’s personality to be goofily optimistic in order to circumvent the many psychological issues that could erupt when a man is forced to live it out on Mars for 500 days. But Goddard’s recreation isn’t quite Watney – Damon gets quite emotional in scenes where Watney didn’t, and is prone to soliloquising now and then. Such personality traits betray a person who’s a little less optimistic than Watney was and just that much more prone to a stronger psychological impact. In other words, there must be a trait-wise price to be able to soliloquise but Goddard/Damon take the liberty to be like Watney in some situations and like someone else in others. That doesn’t sit well.

Second, the casting of Sean Bean as an apologetic Mitch Henderson. I quote from my review, written for The Wire:

In the movie, Henderson is essayed by Hollywood’s favourite fall-guy, Sean Bean, who’s got more resignation wrought on his face than gumption. Spoiler alert: after the scene where he gets Commander Lewis and her crew to mutiny but is pulled up by Teddy for breach of procedure, Bean looks shifty and apologetic. In the book, Henderson’s giving Teddy the lowdown, which is more emotionally satisfying and likely closer to the truth for a man of Henderson’s character: a man given to taking risks with five astronauts on a half-planned rescue mission between the orbits of Earth and Mars. In fact, through all parts of the movie where NASA is involved, there’s not enough tension in the air, not enough of a clash of emotions, not enough sleeplessness.

With Henderson being what he was in the movie, there wasn’t enough of a drive for the conclusion to be reached at NASA, at least in the span and with the spirit that it did.

There’s one more reason, too, and though it may seem too stringent, I think it applies. Hollywood’s space-movies have been setting the tone of the genre with scientific accuracy, which I think is the right way to go because it does a world of good for the genre: by showing it’s possible for the story to be great without resorting to imaginative failures in the “fabric of science”. So, claiming to be accurate but then leaving out small things that could’ve been included implies Scott was willing to bend the story to fit traditional cinematographic attitudes that probably made it easier for him to recreate particular emotions. A couple instances:

The huge dark-grey cloud that descends out of nowhere on the edges of the screen during thoughtful soliloquies – Mars is not known to have such dense cloud cover, much less an atmosphere that could support such large quantities of water vapour. However, their appearance did make for a ponderous mood.
The groaning noises of metal grating against metal could be heard in space during the last few minutes of the film – This is impossible because space is a vacuum and can’t transmit sound. But when the audience gets to hear them, it makes for foreboding moments as a crew prepares to rescue Watney.

I’d have liked it if Scott had tried other ways to recreate the emotions (Gravity used the silence, remember?).

These are the reasons why I didn’t like the movie. While you may dismiss them as being defined by my intricate expectations, I do think it wasn’t losslessly done.

Water found in Martian soil

During its first 100 Martian days (sols), NASA’s Curiosity rover had studied the atmosphere and soil of the red planet in some detail. The initial results from these studies trickled in on September 26 and 27, 2013, in a special issue of Science. The most significant find appeared to be that finer Martian soil had up to two pints of water per cubic foot, which the author of one of the studies called an “excellent resource for future explorers”. The water molecules appeared to be ‘locked up’ in amorphous minerals of basaltic origins. Another sign of water was the presence of carbonates, picked out when the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument heated a sample and found carbon dioxide among the vapours. Carbonates are usually formed in the presence of water. With the presence of methane having been declared trivial on the planet earlier this week, finding water rekindled hopes of the red planet having once harboured life. However, direct signs of this, such as organic molecules, remained elusive in the studies.

Read my report for The Hindu on this.

The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, shown here at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, analysed the samples of material collected by the rover's arm. — The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, shown here at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, analysed the samples of material collected by the rover’s arm. Image: NASA-GSFC

After less than 100 days, Curiosity renews interest in Martian methane

A version of this story, as written by me, appeared in The Hindu on November 15, 2012.

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In the last week of October, the Mars rover Curiosity announced that there was no methane on Mars. The rover’s conclusion is only a preliminary verdict, although it is already controversial because of the implications of the gas’s discovery (or non-discovery).

The presence of methane is one of the most important prerequisites for life to have existed in the planet’s past. The interest in the notion was increased when Curiosity found signs that water may have flowed in the past through Gale Crater, the immediate neighbourhood of its landing spot, after finding sedimentary settlements.

The rover’s Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS), which analysed a small sample of Martian air to come to the conclusion, had actually detected a few parts per billion of methane. However, recognising that the reading was too low to be significant, it sounded a “No”.

In an email to this Correspondent, Adam Stevens, a member of the science team of the NOMAD instrument on the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter due to be launched in January 2016, stressed: “No orbital or ground-based detections have ever suggested atmospheric levels anywhere above 10-30 parts per billion, so we are not expecting to see anything above this level.”

At the same time, he also noted that the 10-30 parts per billion (ppb) is not a global average. The previous detections of methane found the gas localised in the Tharsis volcanic plateau, the Syrtis Major volcano, and the polar caps, locations the rover is not going to visit. What continues to keep the scientists hopeful is that methane on Mars seems to get replenished by some geochemical or biological source.

The TLS will also have an important role to play in the future. At some point, the instrument will go into a higher sensitivity-operating mode and make measurements of higher significance by reducing errors.

It is pertinent to note that scientists still have an incomplete understanding of Mars’s natural history. As Mr. Stevens noted, “While not finding methane would not rule out extinct or extant life, finding it would not necessarily imply that life exists or existed.”

Apart from methane, there are very few “bulk” signatures of life that the Martian geography and atmosphere have to offer. Scientists are looking for small fossils, complex carbon compounds and other hydrocarbon gases, amino acids, and specific minerals that could be suggestive of biological processes.

While Curiosity has some fixed long-term objectives, they are constantly adapted according to what the rover finds. Commenting on its plans, Mr. Stevens said, “Curiosity will definitely move up Aeolis Mons, the mountain in the middle of Gale Crater, taking samples and analyses as it goes.”

Curiosity is not the last chance to look more closely for methane in the near future, however.

On the other side of the Atlantic, development of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), with which Mr. Stevens is working, is underway. A collaboration between the European Space Agency and the Russian Federal Space Agency, the TGO is planned to deploy a stationary Lander that will map the sources of methane and other gases on Mars.

Its observations will contribute to selecting a landing site for the ExoMars rover due to be launched in 2018.

Even as Curiosity completed 100 days on Mars on November 14, it still has 590 days to go. However, it has also already attracted attention from diverse fields of study. There is no doubt that from the short trip from the rim of Gale Crater, where it is now, to the peak of Aeolis Mons, Curiosity will definitely change our understanding of the enigmatic red planet.