These Whatcom scientists are working on NASA’s new Mars rover mission
When viewers on Earth see images from NASA’s Perseverance rover after it lands on Mars Thursday, Feb. 18, they’ll be looking at the Red Planet partly through the eyes of a Western Washington University researcher and her team of students and alums.
Melissa Rice, an associate professor of planetary science in WWU’s geology and physics and astronomy departments, has been working with NASA and its Mars rover programs for several years. Rice earned her doctorate in astronomy at Cornell University in 2012 and was a NASA Astrobiology Institute Postdoctoral fellow at Caltech from 2012-2014.
Rice and her students helped design the Perseverance’s bug-eyed Mastcam-Z cameras, choosing the filters that determine the color of light that the robot and eventually viewers on Earth will see as the rover — about the size of a small car — rolls across the Martian landscape.
“I’m talking to a robot on another planet,” Rice told The Bellingham Herald in an interview last week.
She’ll also be among the scientists who decide which rocks the Mastcam-Z will examine and photograph with its twin-lens zoom, wide-angle and 3-D photo and video capabilities.
“We’ll be deciding how far the camera will zoom in to get the highest detail,” Rice said. “There’s a chance that I’ll be the person who requested that the rover take that picture.”
Perseverance is Rice’s fourth NASA rover assignment, including Spirit, Curiosity and Opportunity, but it’s the only project that she’s been part of from the beginning.
Extraterrestrial life
Its primary mission — with its tiny drone companion Ingenuity — is to take photos, collect data such as the sound of Martian wind, and stash rock samples that another spacecraft will bring to Earth sometime in the next decade.
What they’re looking for is evidence of life.
“Did Mars ever have life on its surface and are we alone in the universe?” Rice said at a Friday, Feb. 12, webinar describing WWU’s role in the Perseverance mission.
“I don’t know if anyone can ask a more profound question than that. That’s something we can only answer if we bring those rocks back to Earth,” she said.
As head of the Western Mars Lab, Rice works with undergrad and graduate students in fields such as geology, geophysics, physics, engineering, computer science and chemistry.
Because they’re studying the history of water on Mars in addition to looking for life, Perseverance will land at Jezero Crater, which has clay-like soil and seems to be part of an ancient river system.
“Go out into Bellingham Bay or the Mississippi Delta — it’s just teeming with life,” Rice said at the webinar.
And the surrounding soils are excellent for preserving fossils or other evidence of life, she said.
Mastcam-Z
One of her former students, Darian Dixon, now works with Malin Space Science Systems, which makes cameras and other technology for unmanned spacecraft.
Mastcam-Z is an amazingly complex and yet durable machine, Dixon said at the WWU webinar.
“Mars is a brutal environment. It’s incredibly cold. It’s not a place where you set up a Nikon and it’ll work,” Dixon said.
At home, on Mars
Working from home has expanded for many people in a variety of fields amid the new coronavirus pandemic.
But it’s nothing new for Rice, who regularly logs on from home and tells Curiosity what to do as part of her regular operational shifts.
Her students will take over some of those duties for the near future, as Rice turns her attention to the Perseverance project.
She and the Perseverance team will be working on Mars time, with its 24-hour and 40-minute days.
“That puts us out of sync with Earth schedules,” she said.
But working from home means that Rice will miss the camaraderie that comes from in-person collaboration.
“Normally, everyone working on the mission would be physically together, having dinner together, sharing in the successes,” she said. “We are going to be operating this rover from our living rooms.”
And the pandemic meant that she and her students couldn’t travel to see the Perseverance’s July launch.
Gee-whiz moments
Still, Rice thrills are the prospect of learning more about the history of one of Earth’s closest neighbors.
“For the first time, you’ll be able to listen to the winds on Mars and hear the sounds of the wheels crunching over little rocks,” she said.
And with the drone, viewers on Earth will experience a true “Wright Brothers moment” as the tiny helicopter will be the first aircraft to fly in the atmosphere of another planet, Rice wrote in a Feb. 5 essay for The Seattle Times.
“Fingers crossed for a smooth and safe landing,” Rice told The Herald.
