The Rock From Mars (17 page)

Goldin and his top lieutenants cut the space shuttle workforce by thousands of jobs while maintaining the same rate of launches. This prompted charges that he was jeopardizing safety, even though he was personally avid in his advocacy of safety and prudence. As for the embattled space station project (the supposed destination for the shuttle), Goldin had shaken the aerospace world to its struts by staking his reputation on a radical overhaul that he vowed would finally break the project free of bureaucratic gravity and into orbit at an acceptable cost.

Veterans at Johnson Space Center in Houston rolled their eyes when Goldin began to “meddle” with their preparations for a daunting shuttle mission in which astronauts were to install a complicated set of instruments to fix the Hubble Space Telescope as it orbited Earth. Goldin ordered up unprecedented numbers of equipment tests, imposed record hours of crew training, and marshaled layers of technical reviews by outside experts. Some of the same NASA veterans who criticized him for these “distractions” later expressed grudging respect when the 1993 repair mission turned out to be virtually flawless. It yielded what was arguably the agency’s most spectacular success since Apollo—a restored Hubble that would keep churning out revelations and iconic images of the universe for more than a decade.

In August 1993, the $1 billion Mars Observer (in the pipeline before Goldin’s advent) vanished just as it arrived at the red planet. The loss provided fodder for Goldin’s anti–Battlestar Gallactica approach, which others had termed “faster, better, cheaper” (or a common variant, “smaller, faster, cheaper”). Instead of pinning the agency’s hopes on those huge-but-rare missions, Goldin decreed that program designers must take advantage of the latest developments in the rapidly evolving microelectronics industry. NASA would launch more spacecraft, more often. There was to be a flotilla of innovative missions that would study Earth as well as the rest of the solar system, with tightly constrained budgets and disciplined managers.

Under Goldin, taking risks was back in style; failure
was
an option—as long as it didn’t involve incompetence or fraud. Failure henceforth (under the Goldin doctrine) should reflect a well-executed effort to push the envelope. If one of these little suckers failed because it was groundbreaking, well, it would be a learning experience, and that’s what NASA was supposed to be all about.

At the time of Goldin’s meeting with McKay and Gibson, the agency had a series of Goldin-style missions in development, many of them part of a revamped Mars-exploration program. One was an experimental robotic package scheduled to bounce onto the surface of the red planet on airbags—airbags!—a year later, on the Fourth of July 1997. Much of the buzz was about how it would probably become another NASA fizzle. Its name was Pathfinder.

Goldin acknowledged that in his initial zeal, he had sometimes hurt people unnecessarily, and he regretted that. “Guilty as charged,” he would confess years later. “But you don’t learn if you don’t try.”

Seemingly fearless on the surface, Goldin actually felt driven by some combination of fear and ambition. He felt his decisions would shape U.S. space exploration for decades to come. At times it seemed the whole program could go down—and it would have happened on his watch.

He had another motivation. A shameless romantic since boyhood in his enthusiasm for space adventure, the tough guy from the Bronx still considered the human drive to leave the home planet a “biological imperative—wired right into our DNA.” This was where his heart was. His fondest dream, he would tell people, was for his grandson to walk on another world someday. Goldin wanted Mars for young Zachary Michael and his generation.

Goldin had kept up with the new picture of the natural world that was coming to light, the same revelations that had emboldened Chris Romanek to think his hush-hush radical thoughts about the carbonates in the rock: living things could thrive in extreme places previously thought to be barren; and astronomers had finally confirmed the existence of planets around stars other than the sun. Goldin’s personal vision, outlined in numerous public appearances, heralded a day when NASA scientists would unveil for the citizens of Earth the first image of another blue planet like our own, around a star far beyond the sun, where mighty Earth instruments might detect the chemical signatures of life-forms harbored there.

As formerly top secret designs in optics and other Cold War technologies made their way to civilian hands, it appeared that a new golden age of astronomy had, in fact, blossomed. All of a sudden, mere human mortals seemed remarkably close to tracing the evolution of the known universe from its beginnings in a “big bang” forward through its manufacture of the first seeds of life, to the awakening of consciousness on at least one blue world, and beyond that all the way to the fate of the cosmos somewhere in infinity.

In these advances, Goldin and his science lieutenants glimpsed a worthy new mission for the agency, one that would surely revive dwindling public support—and funding—because it sought to answer some of the most profound questions ever posed about human existence. It would be a grand collective quest, summed up in the word
origins.
And for some time now, the perfect catalyst for this vision had been wending its obscure way—from Robbie Score to Duck Mittlefehldt to Chris Romanek to Gibson, McKay, Thomas, Clemett, Zare, and the other collaborators—and now to the upper reaches of the U.S. government.

Just as Goldin’s passionate, brutal, charismatic, sensitive,
in
sensitive, infuriating, inquisitive personality had dominated and reshaped the space agency since his arrival, it now channeled the institutional waters in which the claims of possible ancient life on Mars were surfacing.

Given his years in classified military programs, Dan Goldin could appreciate the secrecy in which the investigation of the rock had proceeded. Only after they got their paper drafted, in the spring of 1996, did the McKay team slip word of their claims to key superiors at NASA’s Washington headquarters.

Senior among these confidants was NASA’s head of space science, the soft-spoken Wesley T. Huntress, Jr. He had worked at headquarters for eight years and had survived what he (and others) called the Great Purge in the science office soon after Goldin had taken over. Space science at NASA, despite its lustrous record of robotic explorations of the solar system and other achievements, was as low in the engineer-dominated agency pecking order as it had ever been. Having already gone through a drastic staff reduction, the program was facing an even worse budget drain. Huntress seized on the emerging “origins” concept as a way to rejuvenate the whole enterprise.

Huntress had worked with Goldin for four years now, long enough to know how to get along with him. He reacted to Goldin’s onslaughts like the self-contained New Englander that he was: that is, he didn’t react. If he felt off balance, he didn’t let Goldin see it.

What made this effort worthwhile for Huntress was Goldin’s remarkable vision, which Huntress heartily admired. Huntress felt that it was up to him and his staff to figure out the locus where Goldin’s vision overlapped reality—on the Origins program or any other undertaking. At that intersection, they could make something happen. There was a certain amount of fun in that, because it allowed them to think creatively.

So early one morning in April 1996, Huntress looked up to see several of the top people in his directorate standing around in his doorway. They were not on his schedule. “Wes,” said one, “we’ve got to tell you about this paper.” They started talking about signs of ancient microbes in a Martian meteorite. His eyes lit up. Not only was it a profound discovery, if valid, but it fit right in with his team’s work on the new way of approaching the big, fundamental questions, all linked under the beguiling heading of “origins.”

Wide-eyed with excitement, Huntress’s group went over what was in the paper as relayed by McKay and Gibson in Houston. They included a series of cautionary notes: the evidence was not conclusive, the paper had not yet been reviewed by independent experts or accepted for publication, and so on. Huntress asked how long the process would take. At least a few weeks and probably a few months, they told him. He said, “Okay, I’m not going to worry about this yet. If the paper isn’t accepted by
Science,
it’s not credible. So get back to me when it’s credible.”

Some at headquarters had been hearing rumors about the McKay team’s work, though not the details, since the 1995 planetary science conference in Houston, where they had discussed it publicly in sketchy, tentative, and preliminary form. The notion that they had found
organic material
on Mars—never mind biology—would be a huge deal if confirmed. The Viking landers had failed to find any such thing at levels as precise as a few parts per billion.

Huntress was not about to take such a flamboyant claim to Goldin until it had a stamp of approval. He frankly doubted that this would ever happen. The notion was completely wild. Huntress forgot about the rock and went about his business. Spring turned to summer.

On July 12, 1996, the same little crowd appeared at Huntress’s door at around eight
A
.
M
. One of his deputies said, “Hey, Wes? You know that paper about life on Mars? It’s going to get published.” Huntress felt his jaw go slack. This time, for the first time, they had a copy of the actual paper to show him. They discussed the timing of the public announcement. The scheduled release date was August 16, just weeks away. Huntress thought, “Holy shit.”

Huntress called Goldin’s secretary. “Kelly, I’ve got to see Dan. It’s a number one priority.” Soon he was sitting in Goldin’s top-floor office.

The news rocked Goldin back in his executive chair. He peppered Huntress with questions. Huntress answered them, and showed Goldin some microscopic images that would be appearing in the magazine.

Goldin activated a special team, which included representatives from public affairs, key political and policy people, and scientists. They launched a flurry of activity to plan the handling of this information grenade. Those in the know started referring to the object of their attention only as “the rock.” Their operation became as secretive as the McKay team’s had been.

From the time they got word that
Science
magazine would publish the McKay paper, the inner circle at headquarters was concerned that the story be “contained.” If it leaked, they would blow their chance at what needed to be an orderly and carefully constructed story for the public. Huntress’s worst fear was that the rock would become fodder for tabloid sensationalism and misinformation—“Killer Microbes from Mars!” Just as Orson Welles had once unwittingly terrorized listeners with an all-too-realistic fictional radio broadcast about a Martian invasion, the story of the rock, if mishandled, might alarm even rational people.

A key meeting took place on Friday, July 26, in Huntress’s suite. Laurie Boeder, head of NASA public affairs (a Clinton administration political appointee) was there with other top scientists and public affairs people, with McKay and Gibson hooked in by phone. Boeder went over the strict rules
Science
had about releasing their information. One concern in the room was that NASA had paid for the research. So the question on the table was: Do we trust
Science
to be able to contain this so it doesn’t leak? Or do we jump the gun on them and release the story before it can leak? The instant response around the table was: No, we’ve got to let the scientific process play out—but freakin’ don’t let this leak.

The group talked about the press conference that NASA would hold in conjunction with
Science
’s announcement and how they had to prepare at a relatively rapid clip. They decided to invite at least one prominent scientist to sit on the stage along with the McKay group and provide the appropriate caveats.

The other issue the group dealt with that day was the politics of the situation. The country was in the midst of a presidential election campaign. Boeder explained that the
Science
announcement would coincide with the news cycle in which Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, at the San Diego convention, would accept the party nomination. The Democratic Clinton administration might be accused of high-level orchestration, of trying to steal headlines from the rival party.

Goldin, when presented with the dilemma, told his team emphatically not to upset the magazine’s normal process. As Huntress saw it, the administrator, to his credit, was determined from the get-go not to make this into a political thing, or a “NASA thing.” Goldin called the editor at
Science
to discuss the issue with him, and they agreed on that point.

But the question of the release date and the conflict with the Republican convention was above even Goldin’s pay grade. He had to take it to the White House. He set up an appointment with Leon Panetta, the White House chief of staff, and asked Wes Huntress to come along.

On the morning of Tuesday, July 30, Goldin and Huntress arrived at Panetta’s office. When they walked in the door, Goldin laughed at himself as he said, “Leon, I’m here to talk to you about life on Mars.”

In addition to his own personal zeal for the subject, Goldin was armed with talking points he had asked Huntress to provide: the McKay group’s findings could turn out to be the most important scientific discovery of the twentieth century; additional work would need to be done to confirm the result; until that happened the result would be controversial; wide-scale media coverage could be expected when the story broke.

“NASA and the Administration will be thrust into the middle of this debate,” Huntress had written, adding that the agency would have to take on the role of the “keenly interested skeptic. . . . We must avoid a frenzy of activity that could end up as a real embarrassment should this result not hold up under scrutiny.” The notes listed logical follow-up activities, such as dispatching robots designed to look for more direct evidence on the surface of Mars, eventually trying to bring actual rock and soil samples back from Mars, and searching the solar system for other evidence of life.