“A leap enabled by work” is how Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, described it. Like him and several million other people, I watched the scene in the control room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory when their rover called Perseverance landed on Mars last week.
A leap enabled by work. The most striking thing about that idea, I think, is the lack of adjectives. It gently counters all of the drama: the livestream and the countdown; the clapping, cheering, and fist-bumping (so many fist bumps); the flair, dare I say particularly American, in the way this milestone was marked and in the emotive language used to talk about it since. The drama is built out of heroics and exceptionalism - the narrative and spectacle of the Mars landing playing straight into the American cultural identity. It’s undeniably inspiring. I’ll admit to letting out an exclamation when the rover touched down safely. A tear or two even welled up when the team later talked about fitting Perseverance with a microphone so that visually impaired people could listen to Mars, if not see it. The people who executed this project speak frankly of their excitement, joy, and pride in their accomplishments. In general, these emotions seem to be ones that Americans are uniquely attuned to and comfortable expressing, which endears them to me despite my best efforts to be cynical.
Thomas Zurbuchen wasn’t immune to the elation, but he still left out the adjectives. (It feels right to note that he is a Swiss astrophysicist.) Not a “great” leap enabled by “hard” work. Not a “historic” leap enabled by “spectacular” work. The simplicity of his comment appeals to me. At the end of the day, even something as remarkable as landing a state-of-the-art robot on another planet is accomplished through work. Just work. This interests me more than the excitement and exceptionalism. I tuned into the Perseverance livestream with minutes to go until landing; I didn’t live the years of work that led to this moment. I had the gratification without the delay.
We all know the cliches about patience, uncertainty, risk, failure - but what does that kind of patience actually feel like? For a decade and a half, Adam Steltzner led the engineering work to design the sky crane system that helped Perseverance land. There is no proper testing environment on Earth to try out this system. The sky crane worked; the engineering team is “thrilled”. That isn’t hard to imagine. But how has it felt to be Adam Steltzner for the past 15 years?
I’m asking myself this week if scientists are the least egotistical among us, because they need to live day to day with the inherent faith that their work, the results and usefulness of which are unknown, is still worth pursuing. There’s faith, or naivete, needed to start a project that won’t see fruition for years or whose impact might not be measured within your lifetime. Or, maybe this latter is exactly where the egoism comes in: the desire for a “legacy”, to contribute to human knowledge even after one’s death. (NB: “leaving a legacy” is a good thing to google if you want to be stressed and irritated.)
I think this faith in the future is a major reason why space exploration captures our imaginations. Especially as awareness of our climate crisis grows, the future on Earth feels finite. Ours is a different and much scarier countdown. We’re facing shrinking resources, climate-driven mass migration, and changing landscapes. Now that a new pandemic has reminded us so harshly of the fragility of plans, it’s psychically soothing to believe that we’ll still be here long enough to send the next rover to Mars. (Cold War existentialism and the stakes of the Space Race feel highly relevant all of a sudden.)
Thomas Zurbuchen also referred to the humanity of aspiration, which I understand as an innate capacity for imagination and creativity that we all have as humans. Aspiration is another kind of faith, one that believes in our ability to operate outside of our accepted circumstances, to reject and change those circumstances altogether, or to change ourselves.
My best efforts to be cynical again protest that no, there’s nothing heroic about aspiring to explore our galaxy, because we’re just plagued by exhaustion and disillusionment with our worn-out world and that’s why we like the idea of a fresh start on Mars. But I think it’s less about a “fresh start” and more about that faith, the spark of a future - one that’s interesting and promising and worth planning for.
All photos: NASA. Loads more to explore at https://www.nasa.gov/perseverance
Unsolicited Recommendations
One of my favourite things about newsletters are lists of recommendations for books, films, music, you name it. Right now I’m into:
Zadie Smith’s trim book of essays, Intimations, written in the first months of 2020. She’s as clear-sighted, intelligent, and personal as ever.
The case of the “Freshwater Five” and why their convictions of smuggling £53M-worth of cocaine might have been a miscarriage of justice, via a special series on the Today in Focus podcast from The Guardian.
Seedy Maple Muffins from Claire Saffitz’s cookbook, Dessert Person. Obsessed.
Questions to Ask when your parachute doesn’t deploy.