DIRTY DRILLS?: NASA's Curiosity rover is shown here during final testing at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It was shipped to its Florida launch site in late June 2011.
Image: NASA/JPL
All NASA spacecraft sent to other planets must undergo meticulous procedures to make sure they don't carry biological contamination from Earth to their destinations.
However, a step in these planetary protection measures wasn't adhered to for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity, now en route to the Red Planet, SPACE.com has learned.
The incident has become a lessons-learned example of miscommunication in assuring that planetary protection procedures are strictly adhered to.
The issue involves a set of drill bits carried by the Curiosity rover, which launched Nov. 26 to Mars. When project developers made an internal decision not to send the equipment through a final ultra-cleanliness step, it marked a deviation from the planetary protection plans scripted for the Mars Science Laboratory mission. [Photos: Watching the Mars Rover Curiosity Blast Off ]
That judgment, however, didn't reach NASA's chief protector of the planets until "very late in the game," said Catharine "Cassie" Conley, NASA's planetary protection officer. "They didn't submit the request for the deviation not to comply with their planetary protection plan until several months ago," she emphasized.
Conley told SPACE.com that the initial plan called for placing all three of the drill bits inside a sterile box. Then, after Curiosity landed, the box would be opened for access to the sterilized bits via the rover's robot arm, extracted one by one and fit onto a drill head as the mission progressed.
But in readying the rover for departure to Mars, the box was opened, with one drill bit affixed to the drill head, Conley said. Also, all of the bits were tested pre-launch to assess their level of organic contamination. While done within a very clean environment, that work strayed from earlier agreed-to protocols, she said.
"That's where the miscommunication happened," Conley said. "I will certainly expect to have a lessons-learned report that will indicate how future projects will not have this same process issue. I'm sure that the Mars exploration program doesn't want to have a similar process issue in the future. We need to make sure we do it right."
Equatorial target
Conley said the deviation from protocol was reinforced by science and project officials concluding that Curiosity's target landing spot, Gale Crater, is free of potentially life-harboring ice — at least at depths that the drill bits would penetrate.
"That reinforced the reasonableness of not having the drill bits sterilized, because there's unlikely to be 'special regions' in the Gale Crater landing site," Conley said.
The $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission was designed to comply with a requirement to avoid going to any site on the Red Planet known to have water or water-ice within 3.3 feet (1 meter) of the surface.
Adhering to cleanliness standards is a way to make sure the mission does not transport Earth life to Mars. Doing so preserves the ability to study that world in its natural state and also avoids contamination that would obscure an ability to find native life on that planet, if it exists.
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8 Comments
Add CommentIf Curiosity's main mission goal is to find trace evidence that life used to, or could, exist on Mars, then why send it to a region that isn't "special"? Seems like Conley was attempting to cover someone's butt. Maybe i'm wrong...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe science goal is to further characterize the climatic and geophysical evolution of the Martian environment itself, not look for life. Thus the landing site wasn't chosen for its current potential habitability but for the range of accessible evidence of past conditions. Lots of formations are exposed there which cover a large timescale and interesting ancient conditions. Nobody is 'covering up for' anyone. If you wanted to go to a site where life might likely exist now you'd mostly care about liquid water/ice that is currently present, but those sites are possibly less likely to tell you much about the history of the planet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"That judgment, however, didn't reach NASA's chief protector of the planets until "very late in the game," said Catharine "Cassie" Conley, NASA's planetary protection officer. "They didn't submit the request for the deviation not to comply with their planetary protection plan until several months ago," she emphasized."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOk maybe I'm just stupid but she then goes on to add perhaps "they should have asked me first". It seems to me that she should be doing her job..... it appears they did ask MONTHS IN ADVANCE.
I know I'll just read my paperwork AFTER the rocket launches.
Is it any wonder that private companies can outperform NASA with idiots like that working there.
Tricorders would not address Captain Kirk in the familiar. They would say "Captain".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is not clear in the story is WHY the box of sterile drill bits was opened.
Live Long And Prosper
Terry Thomas...
the photographer
Atlanta, Georgia USA
This article relates to a concern that I've long had concerning humans visiting Mars. If you put a human on the planet you put a whole human ecosystem on Mars. Somethings bound to survive out on/under the surface. How then would you ever know if you're looking at Martian or Earth life, especially if Mars seeded Earth long ago. It seems to me a much better procedure would be to go to Phobos or Demos, burrow in and run rovers, planes, chem and bio labs, etc. down on the surface from there. We'll see!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this--Michael
So, let me get this straight. By the time we get to Mars, the life we find, slime mold, might have a previous claim to the land?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere's the profit in that? Quizzle me that, Batman!
How many weeks do you think it takes to build a Mars rover? Or maybe you're thinking days?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOk, so maybe it is just stupidity, but just to clarify, the rover has been in space for half a month - it was shipped to the launch site half a year ago! This didn't happen yesterday.
Most of us Baby Boomers have allowed ourselves to be brainwashed into believing that "Mom, apple pie, and launch the Mars Rover!" is the way to go.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the process, the planet is being trashed by more and more launches, as the industry WORLDWIDE increases, to launch even PRIVATIZED space vehicles, based upon the tried and tested technology of the environmentally-disasterous Space Shuttle era.
At this point, I question the need to go into outer space at all, to accomplish the very thing that we're collectively seeking to do in the first place.
This veil of hypocrisy of the space program being for the 'betterment of all Mankind' must be lifted, to reveal what is REALLY going on with the trashing of the environment at large.
I've just written an article about what I feel are "Four Factual Errors about the Space Program" - including a much better, cheaper and more reliable way that NASA already had to land their 'Curiosity' rover on Mars.
http://darinselby.1hwy.com/4spaceprogramerrors.html
Other follow-up material to study as well:
http://darinselby.1hwy.com/floattospace.html
http://darinselby.1hwy.com/NASASatelliteReEntryDanger.html
http://darinselby.1hwy.com/MonsterMarsRocket.html
Do share with me your thoughts.