Mariner 4, launched just twenty-three days later, made it close to Mars but its low-resolution camera sent back little useful information.
Kincaid also knew the history of Russian spacecraft sent in the direction of Mars. The Soviet Mars 1 probe failed to make it out of Earth’s orbit. Mars 2 and 3 made it to the red planet, but the probes they dropped went dead immediately. Mars 4 missed the planet entirely. Mars 5 made it into orbit, but the pictures it sent back were even poorer than Mariner 4’s. Mars 6 made it there also, but its lander sent back some very confusing data on the way down before going dead. Mars 7 missed the planet.
All in all, a Mars mission had been the one place in JPL new engineers did not want to be assigned. Even with all the hubbub over Pathfinder’s Rover running around, the cursed history of Mars exploration affected even the rational scientific types who came to work at JPL.
Of course, that had all changed with the message from the Guardian Two computer at Cydonia. Now everybody wanted to know everything there was to know about Mars, and that region in particular, and there really wasn’t anything to tell or show them other than the distant images taken from orbit and from the Hubble.
Unfortunately, the Hubble couldn’t see much. Even at the best refraction possible the Hubble could show Mars only as a four-inch sphere. Not exactly enough to show details, particularly about the Cydonia region. And Pathfinder and its Rover were stuck where they had landed, much too far away to do any good. Thus the fallback to the only current orbiter around the planet: Viking II.
Kincaid oversaw the action as his crew began moving Viking II so it could take a look at Cydonia, but his mind wasn’t on it. He was wondering how much these aliens having a base at Cydonia had to do with all the disasters that had plagued the American and Russian Mars missions. As an engineer he was not a big believer in coincidences, particularly when it came to mechanical objects. The various malfunctions and failures that had plagued the American and Russian Mars probes went far beyond statistical possibility due to random chance.
Kincaid had known that for years, he just hadn’t known why. He’d heard the other whispers around JPL and NASA over the years. The strange lights that had shadowed Apollo 11. The disturbing fact that no space shuttle was allowed to downlink a live video feed — it had to be sent through a special NSA office at NASA where it was viewed first and, perhaps, edited. The questions about the fuel tank failure on Apollo 13. So many inexplicable occurrences had taken place over the years in the space program. Kincaid was not a religious man who believed they were all acts of God. He was a scientist and he believed that there was always a cause that could be explained. Now it was obvious, though, that they had been missing some of the important data that was needed to formulate the explanation.
Kincaid could see the status of the Viking II orbiter on the large display board in the front of the room as the rockets began moving it. He could also see the status of the other current Mars mission besides Pathfinder: Mars Global Surveyor. It had been launched in November of 1996 and reached Mars in September of 1997. The only problem was that Surveyor had been hit by the same gremlin as the other missions. A solar array had never completely deployed and because of that, the aerobrakes had not worked properly when it arrived at Mars, the craft thus failing to attain a stable orbit around the planet. It was up there and they had been doing the best they could over the last several months to achieve a working orbit, but they were still several months away from accomplishing that. So far they had been satisfied with not completely losing the craft either by having it shoot off away from Mars or really screwing up and putting it into Mars’s gravity well and having it impact with the planet.
No one had looked past Viking yet, but Kincaid knew they eventually would, and when they did, he had no doubt that Surveyor’s mission profile would be changed and the powers-that-be would want Surveyor sent over Cydonia, even if it meant losing the orbiter completely on a one-shot deal. And it would be Kincaid’s job to make the change.
Surveyor had a payload of six scientific instruments designed to check out the planet’s surface. It also carried a powerful camera that would be able to photograph the surface in greater detail than ever before. And it held more than that. Kincaid glanced over at a mirror that lined the left side of the control center. He knew there was someone behind it watching what was happening, and not just someone from JPL. There had been a stranger there for every major launch and mission since Kincaid had been at JPL, and he had no doubt the current situation had brought the stranger back again.
“All right, people,” he called out, catching the attention of the duty crew. “Let’s get our heads out of our asses and think. Let’s get beyond Viking II. I want a projected TCM for Surveyor that will put it over Cydonia, initiating correction one hour from now through next week.” Kincaid could see the grimaces on the faces of his crew. A TCM was a trajectory correction maneuver, and it required considerable math to figure out how long and what kind of burn would be needed to change the craft’s current path to the desired one, especially difficult with Surveyor because of its current erratic orbit.
He knew that if his last order bothered them, the next one was going to burst some blood vessels, but it had come straight from the NSA and he was under strict orders from NASA to comply. Once more Kincaid glanced at the mirrors on the wall and wondered who was behind them and who had made this strange request.
“I want the IMS extended, turned on, and focused on Cydonia. At the range the probe currently is at, we should get some good shots back every so often when it comes close. Not as good as what Viking will get directly overhead, but it will give us an idea what’s going on, plus be a backup for Viking.”
His senior payload specialist’s mouth had dropped open at the first sentence, and the man had remained speechless while he assimilated what he was being told to do. IMS stood for Imager Mars Surveyor. It was a stereo imaging system that was loaded into the orbiter. It consisted of three subassemblies: a camera head, an extendable mast designed to rise up once the craft was in stable orbit, and two electric cards, one of which controlled the camera and arm motors and the other that processed the images.
“Jesus, Kincaid,” the man finally blurted, “you can’t open the payload with the probe still spinning like it is!”
“Why not?” Kincaid asked.
“It’s not designed to work that way.”
“I know how it’s designed,” Kincaid said. “I know as well as you do. And I don’t see any real problem with extending and turning the camera on early and taking a look-see. Just because it wasn’t designed to work that way doesn’t mean we can’t do it.”
“But we’d have to extend the able mast,” the payload specialist continued. “I don’t think we can do that with rotation like it is.”
Sometimes Kincaid wondered about the new breed of engineer they were getting here. He had severe doubts as to whether they would have been able to improvise and gotten Apollo 13 home, as those whom Kincaid had worked with three decades ago had.
“You don’t think?” Kincaid repeated. He turned to a mock-up of the probe on his desk. “I think you can. If you open this panel the camera will extend. Right?”
“Right, but—”
“But the centrifugal force multiplies as the mast extends,” Kincaid finished the sentence. “We do have control over the mast, don’t we? We don’t have to extend all the way. Just enough to clear the door panel.”