Galactic goals: team behind Mars mission

The last 3-1/2 years have been the most grueling of Julie Townsend's life. She's forgone nights out with friends, time with her family, sports, travel, even recreational reading; she's let calls from siblings go unanswered, and gone weeks between trips to the gym. All that, for a dream that dates back to childhood: space exploration and the national goal of landing a rover on Mars.

Now, after NASA's Spirit rover navigated the thin Martian atmosphere Jan. 3, bounced to a stop on the racetrack-flat Gusev Crater, and transmitted pictures to earth, Ms. Townsend is realizing that the next few months may be harder still.

"This is what I've been working for my whole life," she says, having spent most of it, since June 2000, designing software to detect and circumvent problems with a space module or exploration craft - complications caused by heat, moisture, wind, or dust. "When the rover landed safely, my parents called the control room and screamed into the phone, 'Honey, we're so excited' - and I said, 'Mom, look what we did: We're on the surface of Mars!"

Along with the 600 or so scientists and technicians here at Jet Propulsion Labs in Pasadena, Calif. - and up to 400 others at aerospace companies and in academia nationwide - Townsend is part of an elite cadre immersed in one episode of the ultimate science project: expanding the art and science of the possible.

It's an immersion so deep, a devotion so headstrong, that it's changed their sense of time itself. Townsend doesn't come to work in tune with the rhythms of the normal American workday: Her watch, and her schedule, is set to time on Mars, where the sun rises later and sets on a dry and desolate world. At one point, working a shift from midnight to 8 a.m., she saw no one for an entire week.

"These people are here working around the clock with intensity and focus because they have a sense of wonder and awe about what is out there" says Charles Elachi, director of Jet Propulsion Labs, which has several space missions running simultaneously with the current Mars mission. Dr. Elachi himself was imbued with a sense of awe while growing up in Lebanon, and still recalls the summers he slept on his patio, gazing up at stars.

"I just always wondered if there are others like us sitting up there. So I got excited about science and space exploration and astronomy, and I guess it never left me. It's the same motivation that unites all of us here."

Elachi, Townsend and others describe the latest mission to Mars as a combination of real-life problem solving; Flash Gordon fantasy; personal and collective quests; and the simple, practical application of new technology.

They also see it as the educational frontier for coming generations. "If anything excites me more than having accomplished this landing successfully, it's going out to schools to excite the next generation about the exploration of space," says Townsend. "This is all about discovery of the unknown, pushing the limits of what you think you can do, seeing places that no one else has ever seen."

Now with one rover successfully landed, and another due to descend elsewhere on the rockscape Jan. 25, Townsend and other scientists say they are caught between elation, exhaustion, and cautious optimism. One key phase is over; but another has just begun.

Teams of scientists and engineers are still analyzing data from the entry, including temperature, wind, and moisture information, with hopes of being still more accurate and safe on the second touchdown. Surprising many engineers, the 384-pound rover landed upright and began communicating with earth immediately. Airbags deflated, solar panels deployed, and camera and antennae began transmitting data and pictures to earth.

After so much preparation for so long by so many, the moment of entry was an almost unbearable moment of truth, an emotional verdict on years of work.

"It was the highest stress you can imagine," says Jason Willis, flight director for entry, descent, and landing. "Everything came down to a single moment. When we finally knew we had done it, we were overjoyed with relief."

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