Escaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age

Book Preface

The Mars Science Laboratory was on track to land on the Red Planet at 10:30 p.m. PDT on August 5, 2012, after traveling over 10,000 miles per hour for 283 days. The mission—known as MSL—carried the largest, most complex and scientifically advanced spacecraft ever built to land anywhere other than Earth. The rover’s name was Curiosity, and its charge was to determine if the conditions for life had ever existed on our neighboring planet, thereby shedding light on humanity’s place in the universe.

The most critical phase of the mission was entry into the Martian atmosphere. After traveling through space at temperatures as low as 455 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, the spacecraft carrying the car-sized roving laboratory would be heated to 2,300 degrees, slowing her speed to a soft touchdown. Only about half of the missions ever sent to the Red Planet had successfully gone the distance and returned signals once they arrived.

The rover’s size required a newly invented landing system of parachutes, a crane, and retro rockets to perform a precise choreographed automated routine that took seven minutes which NASA described as “seven minutes of terror.” Even though the landing signal is transmitted to Earth at the speed of light, the very long distances meant that by the time Earthlings received the signal that Curiosity had touched the atmosphere, the rover would have already been alive or dead on the surface. I’d experienced both failed and successful Mars landings while working at NASA, but I felt a special sense of attachment to this mission.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) built and operated the spacecraft for NASA, and the head of the Lab, Dr. Charles Elachi, had briefed me on problems with MSL nearly four years earlier during the fall of 2008. I was then leading the transition team at NASA for the newly elected Obama administration, and the mission was scheduled to launch the following summer. MSL was already $400 million over its $1.5 billion budget, and the window of opportunity to send spacecraft to Mars opens for a few weeks every twenty six months. Missing the upcoming window would delay the launch until 2011 and increase the price tag to $2.5 billion dollars—a 60 percent cost overrun.

My transition role at NASA was advisory, so I was not the decision maker on the issue. But MSL would be carried out by the new administration taking over in a few months, so the JPL Director had come to Washington, DC, to get a read on the appetite the future President might have for a schedule slip. It wasn’t my call, but Charles asked how I thought the incoming administration would want to proceed. My reaction was unequivocal. If it were up to me, the team should not be pushed. The best plan was to take the time and resources necessary to give it the utmost chance for success. In my view, landing a $2.5 billion dollar spacecraft successfully on Mars was infinitely better than losing a $2 billion dollar mission.

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The extra time was taken, allowing the engineering and science teams to comb through every aspect of the spacecraft, and MSL was finally on the launchpad in November 2011. By then I was the NASA Deputy Administrator and on hand to escort VIPs and show my appreciation to the team. Curiosity lifted off on her journey to Mars from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida two days after Thanksgiving. With its successful launch complete, the next waiting game began.

Eight months and 350 million miles later, as the spacecraft closed in on her destination, all the action was on the other side of the country, in JPL’s Space Flight Operations Facility (SFOF) in Southern California.

I’d arrived a day early to speak to well-wishers gathered at the Pasadena Convention Center for a conference called Planetfest. The event was held every few years, timed to coincide with extraordinary occurrences of cosmic magnitude. I’d attended my first Planetfest when Voyager—one of NASA’s longest running interplanetary robotic explorers—had its closest encounter with Neptune in 1989. Planetfest was sponsored by the Planetary Society, an advocacy and educational organization founded by the late Dr. Carl Sagan in 1980.

I’d been a member since the mid-1980s and had the chance to work with their leadership, including Carl Sagan himself before his untimely passing in 1996. Dr. Sagan believed that the discovery of life forms beyond planet Earth would be transformational; he was a free spirit who relished speaking truth to power. He passed on his values and beliefs to me and millions of others. I was thrilled when Bill Nye (the Science Guy) became president of the Planetary Society in 2010. He was already a good friend, and, as a former student of Carl’s, it seemed fitting that he was at the helm. Bill had initially invited me to speak at Planetfest about NASA space policy. He followed up to ask if I would also help the Society honor Dr. Sally Ride, who passed away two weeks before the conference.

I knew it would be a challenge to speak about Sally without becoming emotional, but I gathered myself in order to honor her legacy. Sally played an important role in the space program and in my own life. I focused my talk on how she influenced the programs that were allowing NASA to innovate to make greater strides for the future of humanity. Like Carl Sagan, Sally cared more about having a positive influence on what was to come than reminiscing about the past.

Seeing several hands still raised with questions after my prepared remarks, I looked for my executive assistant Elise Nelson to let me know if I was running over my allotted time. I found her standing near the stage with a security guard, so I did my best to wrap up and find out what was happening.

When I approached Elise, the guard told me we needed to follow him and leave the room quickly. As usual, there were a handful of people waiting to talk with me after my speech, and though it felt rude not to linger, I did what I was asked and kept walking.

My mind went first to some sort of catastrophic event on the International Space Station (ISS), or with one of our Earth-based facilities. Then I thought about Curiosity. Had we lost the spacecraft after getting so close? When I inquired where we were going, the guard said I would be told as soon as I was safe. His comment made no sense. If I wasn’t safe, there must be some sort of bomb threat, so why was I the only one being escorted out?

I wasn’t even being taken outside but rather to another part of the building. We reached an empty conference room and the guard ushered us in, saying he’d be at the door if we needed anything. We were to stay inside the room.

Once Elise and I were alone, she said there had been a threat made against me and she had been told to get me out of a public space immediately. NASA security in Washington, DC, had directed her to have me call them when I was “secured.” I was shaking when I placed the call, starting to realize that the situation might be serious.

The NASA security team explained that a threatening letter with a white powdery substance had been received at NASA Headquarters addressed to me. The person who opened the envelope in the mail room was being held in quarantine while the substance was tested. I was to remain in lockdown until the threat level could be assessed.

Elise and I had formed a close bond after sharing many wonderful experiences in our travels and we did our best to make light of the situation. The wait wasn’t long before my phone rang and we were told the test had returned a negative result for anthrax or any other toxin. I was relieved for the mailroom personnel who’d been exposed and wondered what the letter said that caused security to think I needed protection 2,300 miles away.

I’d made some powerful enemies in my first three years on the job, but this was the first time I knew of physical threats. The NASA security team took the safety of the Agency’s leadership seriously, and I hoped it was just an overzealous response to a random act. I turned my attention to the more immediate and interesting topic to contemplate; the spacecraft headed for its attempted Mars landing the following day.

On August 5, 2012, as I watched the JPL team from the viewing gallery over mission control, my thoughts were with the people who had spent over a decade of their lives working on the mission. Their success had the potential to reveal answers to some of humanity’s oldest and deepest questions. As the Curiosity rover approached its atmospheric entry, I braced for the spacecraft’s own seven minutes of terror.