Long before NASA's Mars Global Surveyor sent back evidence of water on the surface of Mars, the geologist who built and operates the camera that captured the stunning images knew his design was a winner Long before NASA's Mars Global Surveyor sent back evidence of water on the surface of Mars, the geologist who built and operates the camera that captured the stunning images knew his design was a winner.
| An Eye for Mars |
| The Camera That Found the Watery Evidence: The camera that spotted evidence of water in gullies on Mars has a set of eyes that boggles the imagination. Even from an orbital height of 235 miles (378 kilometers), the camera can spot objects as small as 3 yards (2.7 meters) across. Want to Learn More? |
Michael Malin conceived of the Mars Observer Camera to answer questions about
water on Mars, its climate and its geologic history. And just before the camera flew on an ill-fated mission to Mars, he was sure it was up to the job."I think of the Mars Observer Camera as my eye," declared Malin when his camera was first launched aboard NASA's Mars Observer spacecraft. "I'm on my way to Mars."
This week, Malin and his colleague Kenneth Edgett reported one of the most dramatic space-science findings ever -- liquid water on Mars detected by his camera
on Mars Global Surveyor.
Malin: "I think of the Mars Observer Camera as my eye."
The camera was designed to send back the most detailed views ever taken of its ancient surface and to solve some of Mars' most alluring mysteries. In the end, that has turned out to be the easy part. For Malin, the hard part was getting NASA to send his camera to Mars. That struggle began more than a decade ago.
Was Viking enough?
In the years following the spectacular
Viking missions to Mars, NASA entered a time of austere budgets. But in a last-ditch effort, planetary scientists met in the 1980s to design a series of low-cost, relatively low-tech spacecraft, dubbed Observers, which might escape the chopping block. First up was the Mars Geoscience/Climatology Orbiter (
MGCO) which was designed to attack some of the most basic questions the Vikings left unanswered. Among its modest array of instruments would be sensors to map the composition of the surface, probe the atmosphere, search for a magnetic field and chart Martian weather patterns. But no camera. 
The Viking Lander
At a meeting of the MGCO Science Working Group, Malin was told "there was no need to fly a camera."
"Viking had already taken all the pictures we ever needed of Mars," Malin recalled. "I, of course, felt that was absurd."
An unknown Mars
True, the Vikings had sent back stunningly clear pictures of enormous volcanoes, polar ice caps, vast and intricate canyon system and, most intriguing of all, winding channels that are dead ringers for dry river valleys.
But the next advance in unraveling the details of the planet's evolution was still beyond scientists' reach.
"They laughed at us. They called it the Garbage Can."
On a detailed level, Malin believed, it was no exaggeration to say then that no one knew what the surface of Mars looked like.
Another Mars lurked in the gap between the orbital and surface views snapped by the Viking mission spacecraft. Pictures of that unknown Mars, Malin was convinced, would contain the clues to decoding the planet's history.
Stand where you are
But what kind of camera would take those pictures? It would have to be more powerful than the Viking Orbiters', but how much more powerful?
For Malin, the answer was to be found not on Mars, but on Earth. By the early 1980s he was well into his own solo explorations of our planet's most Mars-like places, including Hawaii's volcanic summits, the dry valleys of Antarctica, and the heart of Iceland, where ice and lava have mingled to form a spectacular array of landforms. All the while, Malin was asking himself how much detail he would need to understand similar places on Mars?
The Mars Orbiter Camera
"It kept coming back that I really needed to be able to see things about this big," Malin said, holding an imaginary loaf of bread; "about 20 centimeters" (8 inches).
But that kind of resolution, typical of the best spy satellites, was out of the question. With declassified technology he could do about 10 times worse; Malin thought that would probably be good enough. The challenge remained the same: design a camera that could pull it off.
The 'Garbage Can'
Malin turned to Ed Danielson, a soft-spoken Caltech engineer who had helped to create some of the most advanced robotic eyes ever sent into space. Together, they sketched out a design for an instrument that would snare objects about 6.5 feet (2 meters) across -- a 10-fold improvement over the very best handful of Viking Orbiter images. Furthermore, it would be small and lightweight. Surely, they thought, the Science Working Group would welcome it.
"They laughed at us," Malin remembers. "They called it the Garbage Can." Not only did they doubt Malin and Danielson's camera would work, they resented their effort.
"I tried to remain as neutral as possible," said the U.S. Geological Survey's Mike Carr, who chaired the study group. Even though Carr himself had headed the camera team for the Viking orbiters, he was surrounded by scientists who feared that even a small camera would be too costly -- not just in terms of precious dollars, but in ounces, watts and kilobytes of data transmission. Carr feared that "it would sink the mission."
By 1984, Carr and his Science Working Group were poised to recommend to NASA that Mars Observer fly without a camera of any kind.
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