Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will gather at computer monitors late Saturday, waiting for signals that an air bag- encased probe has bounced safely onto Mars. Then it will be time for a machine they sent 300 million miles to get down to work.
The first of two golf-cart-sized rovers, Spirit, should land about 8:35 p.m. California time on Jan. 3. After nine days of tests, the vehicle will venture to the center of Gusev Crater, a bowl about as big as Connecticut that may have held a lake, to seek evidence of an environment that might have nurtured life. Opportunity, a sibling rover, is on course to reach the red planet three weeks later.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is devoting a growing share of its budget to robotic missions as officials rebuild the agency's manned program following the Columbia shuttle disaster in February. Mars alone claims about $600 million of the annual allocation of at least $15 billion for the next four years. Spending on solar-system exploration is projected to rise 47 percent to $2 billion a year by 2008.
Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean said in an interview that while he would be "sweating now" were he managing the rover missions, because of past Mars exploration failures, the robotic prospectors are "going to whet the appetite, in particular if they make any kind of unusual discoveries."
Boeing, Lockheed
The loss of Columbia and its crew of seven means the agency that built its name on feats such as the Apollo moon landings is counting on robots to rekindle interest in exploration. Contractors such as Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp., and suppliers including ILC Dover and Ball Corp., stand to benefit.
Boeing and Lockheed, through their United Space Alliance venture, are NASA's main contractors. They will be the most obvious beneficiaries of more robotics work, said John Douglass, president of the Aerospace Industries Association, a Washington- based trade group for more than 200 companies.
Scores of smaller contractors may also gain, from the California Institute of Technology, which operates the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA, to closely held ILC Dover of Dover, Delaware, which made air bags to cushion the Mars landings. Beer-can maker Ball's aerospace unit built cameras and antennas for the rovers, whose missions are costing about $800 million.
"Obviously, companies that are in the space business are going to prosper under that regime," Douglass said in an interview.
The U.S. also may spend $3.1 billion during the next four years to develop nuclear-propulsion systems for visits to Jupiter's moons.
Debate Intensifies
Spirit's journey comes amid a debate involving lawmakers and former astronauts, and intensified by Columbia's loss, about what humans should do in space after the shuttles are finally retired and the International Space Station is finished. No consensus has yet formed behind options that include a return to the moon and a manned flight to Mars. The view on robots is clearer.
Annual sales at Ball's aerospace unit have risen 35 percent in the past two years, to a record of $491.2 million in 2002, mostly because of work for NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said David Taylor, chief executive officer of Ball Aerospace. He said the company expects revenue to rise again this year in part because of NASA.
"I would like to see a continued and maybe increased emphasis on space, be it human space flight, interplanetary work, space science or earth science," Taylor said in an interview.
NASA's budget for 2004 is split almost equally between space flight and science, aeronautics and exploration. By 2008, science and exploration spending would reach $9.53 billion, while space flight would get $8.25 billion, according to budget documents.
Pull of Mars
The attraction of Mars was made plain on Aug. 27, when astronomers around the world aimed telescopes as the planet made its closest approach to Earth since Neanderthals roamed Europe 60,000 years ago. Australian towns projected the image onto screens, and as many as 10,000 people lined up at a California observatory.
Spirit and Opportunity, which is due to land on the opposite side of Mars, will snap panoramic views of the planet's terrain during their three-month missions.
Mars' proximity is inspiring scientists to draw up even more ambitious missions. NASA plans to launch the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, for identifying future landing sites, in August 2005; two small, unmanned "scout" missions starting in 2007; and a long- duration science laboratory that would lead to an attempt to return Martian rocks and soil to Earth.
In the next decade, the agency aims to send the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter to explore for evidence of water. The mission is intended to demonstrate Project Prometheus, a program to develop electric propulsion powered by a nuclear fission reactor that could allow spacecraft to more easily search remote parts of the solar system. Boeing and Ball are working on concepts for the orbiter.
Human Connection
"When you look further out, there's some really intriguing things that NASA is trying to do," Douglass said. "There could be some deep space probes, some more Martian exploration, a return to the moon with robotic systems."
The agency's science work is linked to further human endeavors, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said in a telephone interview.
"It is the pathfinder mission necessary to set the stage for human intervention, human involvement and human participation in exploration in general," O'Keefe said.
Meantime, JPL engineers are keeping their eyes on the two rover missions, mindful that more than two-thirds of all missions to the planet have failed and the European Space Agency has lost touch with the Beagle 2 probe that was supposed to land Dec. 25.
"There is no way you can avoid having an accident or a risk," said JPL Director Charles Elachi, in an interview at NASA headquarters in Washington. "If you are successful all the time, you should be questioning if you are trying hard enough on pushing the limits."