This Week in Space 169: The Day Mars Died

Summary

Podcast Summary: "This Week in Space 169: The Day Mars Died"

Podcast Information:

• Title: All TWiT.tv Shows (Audio)
• Host/Author: TWiT
• Episode: This Week in Space 169: The Day Mars Died
• Release Date: July 18, 2025
• Description: Leo Laporte and co-hosts bring together prominent technology personalities to discuss the most critical issues in the tech world in a fun, relaxed, and informative manner.

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1. Introduction and Historical Context

The episode begins with Rod Pyle and Tarek Malik introducing the theme, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Mariner 4 mission and reflecting on the Apollo Soyuz historic docking 50 years prior. The hosts set the stage for a deep dive into Mars exploration history and its implications.

Notable Quote:

Tarek Malik [00:00]: "Coming up on This Week in Space, we're looking at 50 years since the Apollo Soyuz historic docking."

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2. The Legacy of Apollo Soyuz and Mariner 4

Rod Pyle reminisces about the Apollo Soyuz mission, highlighting its role as a symbol of détente in space exploration. He contrasts it with the current international cooperation aboard the International Space Station (ISS), noting the diverse nationalities involved and the challenges posed by geopolitical tensions.

Notable Quote:

Rod Pyle [04:39]: "50 years ago we had the Apollo Soyuz flight... shaking hands, sharing some borscht and some jokes and then going their separate ways."

Tarek Malik emphasizes the evolving legacy, hopeful for renewed international partnerships despite current conflicts.

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3. Starliner Mission Delays and SpaceX Competition

A significant portion of the episode discusses recent developments regarding Boeing's Starliner spacecraft. The mission, initially slated for the end of 2025, has been postponed to early 2026 due to technical challenges, specifically related to thruster issues.

Notable Quote:

Rod Pyle [07:05]: "Starliner in or out of the doghouse? Where do we stand with this darn thing?"

Tarek provides updates, noting that the next Starliner mission will proceed without astronauts, focusing instead on testing and cargo delivery.

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4. Reflecting on Skylab's Legacy

The hosts briefly touch upon the recent 40th anniversary of Skylab's re-entry into Earth's atmosphere, expressing hope that the ISS remains intact amid varying geopolitical climates.

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5. The Mars Meteorite Auction

Tarek Malik shares an exciting personal experience regarding the largest Mars meteorite sold at Sotheby's for $5.3 million, breaking the estimated price. This meteorite, discovered in Niger’s Sahara Desert in 2023, represents a significant milestone in extraterrestrial specimen collection.

Notable Quote:

Tarek Malik [09:24]: "So this was discovered in 2023 in Niger in the Sahara Desert... billed as the biggest... it did sell for $5.3 million."

Rod humorously suggests leveraging the meteorite for NASA’s Mars sample return missions, highlighting its immense value. Tarek envisions its place in a museum, preserving its legacy for future generations.

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6. In-Depth Interview with Rob Manning, Chief Engineer Emeritus

a. Rob Manning's Career at JPL

Rob Manning provides a comprehensive overview of his nearly 45-year career at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Starting as a technician and draftsman, he ascended to roles such as Chief Engineer for multiple Mars missions, including Pathfinder, Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity rovers.

Notable Quote:

Rob Manning [13:37]: "I've been working my way up through the ranks... becoming a chief engineer for the Mars Pathfinder mission."

b. The Impact of Robotics on Mars Exploration

Manning reflects on the success of American Mars missions compared to the Soviet Union's attempts, which often fell short. He credits NASA's iterative learning approach, allowing engineers to build on past mistakes and enhance mission success rates continuously.

Notable Quote:

Rob Manning [17:06]: "NASA has let the same people, effectively the same community of people learn from their mistakes... the probability of it working goes up."

c. Mariner 4: Technical Challenges and Discoveries

The conversation delves into the Mariner 4 mission's technical aspects. Manning explains the challenges faced in deploying the first close-up images of Mars, including the complexities of the vidicon camera system and data transmission limitations.

Notable Quote:

Rob Manning [37:16]: "It's hard to get it right... it took a long time for them to keep looking, hunting that down."

d. The First Mars Images and Their Cultural Impact

Rod and Rob discuss the profound impact Mariner 4's images had on humanity's perception of Mars. Initially romanticized as a habitat with potential life, the stark, cratered landscapes revealed by Mariner 4 shifted public imagination, dampening early hopes of encountering life on Mars.

Notable Quote:

Rod Pyle [27:42]: "Mariner 4 flew by Mars, sent back a scant 22 and a half very low-res pictures, but everything spun on a dime. And the news was Mars is dead."

e. Personal Anecdotes and the Influence of John Cassani

Manning shares personal stories about John Cassani, a pivotal figure in the Mariner program. Cassani's fearless advocacy and technical leadership were instrumental in overcoming the mission's hurdles, inspiring a culture of resilience and innovation at JPL.

Notable Quote:

Rob Manning [74:01]: "He wasn't shy about speaking truth to power... John was the leader, technical leader for those."

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7. Technological Insights from Mariner 4

The discussion offers a deep dive into the technological innovations of Mariner 4, including the use of vidicon tubes for imaging and the spacecraft's navigation challenges. Manning elaborates on how these early technologies laid the groundwork for future missions, despite their limitations.

Notable Quote:

Rod Pyle [47:28]: "So you have to have it figured out before the flyby or you're going to be taking pictures of empty space instead of the target."

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8. Future of Mars Exploration and Private Sector Involvement

Rob Manning contrasts the traditional NASA approach with the emerging private sector’s methods. He highlights the importance of maintaining innovation and resilience in mission design, cautioning against underestimating the complexities of interplanetary travel.

Notable Quote:

Rob Manning [78:22]: "You need to be a little arrogant and a little bit stupid... you can be innovative, but try to do your best to understand why we are the way we are."

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9. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

The episode wraps up with heartfelt thanks to Rob Manning for his invaluable insights. Rod and Tarek encourage listeners to stay engaged with space exploration developments and support future missions through platforms like Club Twit.

Notable Quote:

Rod Pyle [81:24]: "Dare mighty things, right? Got us to Mars over and over. Let's go back again, right?"

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Key Takeaways:

• Mariner 4's Legacy: The mission marked a turning point in Mars exploration, dispelling early hopes of a habitable Mars and setting the stage for more sophisticated future missions.

• Rob Manning's Contributions: Manning's extensive career at JPL underscores the importance of perseverance, learning from past missions, and fostering innovation in space exploration.

• Technological Evolution: Early challenges with technologies like vidicon tubes have paved the way for advanced imaging and navigation systems used in contemporary missions.

• Future Prospects: Continued international cooperation and emerging private sector initiatives hold promise for the next era of Mars exploration, building on decades of scientific and engineering advancements.

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the episode's rich discussions, technical insights, and personal anecdotes, providing listeners with a thorough understanding of the topics covered without needing to listen to the podcast.

Transcript

[Tarek Malik]

Coming up on this Week in Space, we're looking at 50 years since the Apollo Soyuz historic docking. I check out the biggest piece of Mars on Earth. And Rob Manning, JPL engineer extraordinaire, chief engineer emeritus, is going to walk us through Mariner 4, 60 years after our first close up of Mars. Check it out.

[Rod Pyle]

Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit. This is this Week in space, episode number 169, recorded on July 18, 2025, the day Mars died. Hello, and welcome to another episode of this Week in Space, the Day the Mars Died edition. I'm Rod Pyle, editor in chief at Astor magazine, and I'm joined by my fellow Martian, Tarek Malik, also editor in chief, themuch larger space.com. how are you doing?

[Tarek Malik]

Hello.

[Rob Manning]

Hello.

[Tarek Malik]

Happy Mars Day. I guess it's not Mars Day. It's just Friday.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, actually it is, because we have. We're coming up in two days. We have Apollo 11 day, which is landing on the moon on July 20th. But that was also the date that Viking 1, the Viking 1 lander, set down, which is, oh, Viking landing on Mars. We often forget about Viking, but I don't because I'm an old man and I was there. In a few minutes, we'll be joined by another guy my age, Rob Manning, who's one of our favorite returning guests, former chief engineer, now chief engineer emeritus at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. And we're going to talk about the 60th anniversary of America's first successful spacecraft to Mars Mariner 4 in 1965. However, before then, please don't forget to do us a solid. Make sure to, like, subscribe and do all the other podcast things that make us feel loved because we love you and we need your support and so forth. Now we have an encore joke from Paul Woolley.

[Tarek Malik]

Encore. Encore.

[Rod Pyle]

I thought you were going to scream. Paul. Isn't it?

[Rob Manning]

Paul. Paul. There we go.

[Rod Pyle]

There we go.

[Rob Manning]

Paul. Willie.

[Rod Pyle]

Hey, Tarik.

[Tarek Malik]

Yes, Rod?

[Rod Pyle]

Why did the Mars rover apply for therapy?

[Tarek Malik]

Why? Why did they do that?

[Rod Pyle]

Because it had abandonment issues. Oh, no, that was a few weeks ago I used that. Okay, I don't remember. Because it was a recycled joke. A fresh one from Nate Tanner.

[Tarek Malik]

Nate.

[Rod Pyle]

Hey, Tarek.

[Tarek Malik]

Yes, Rod?

[Rod Pyle]

How did Pluto react when Neil DeGrasse Tyson said it wasn't a planet anymore?

[Tarek Malik]

Oh, I don't know. Was it sad?

[Rod Pyle]

It said, I think Neil DeGrasse Tyson is fat.

[Tarek Malik]

What? That's not nice.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, a little bit of a reach there. Now, I've heard that some people Want to.

[Tarek Malik]

He's good now, by the way. It's good. I don't know. He's in shape.

[Rod Pyle]

Thank you. I've heard that some people want to abandon us on Mars. It was joke time in this show. But you can help set us your best words for most of different space jokes to TwistWit TV.

[Tarek Malik]

He's also got the best space vests too. That's pretty cool.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, but Gene crayons, you know.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, there's that. Yep. All right. Yeah, stand corrected.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh my God. How do these guys get these gifs up so quick already?

[Tarek Malik]

All right, headlines, headlines.

[Rod Pyle]

Headline news.

[Tarek Malik]

Headline news, headline news. I got that. Science.

[Rod Pyle]

Never did we get so much use out of something it took me so little time to make. Hey, Tarik.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah. Let's zoom through these because we've got a show ahead.

[Rod Pyle]

50 years ago we had the Apollo Soyuz flight, or as they called it in Russia, the Soyuz Apollo flight.

[Tarek Malik]

That's right.

[Rod Pyle]

Which was the final use of Apollo hardware. Now for those of us, you know, there's, there's, I'm noticing in, in the press and social media sites a fair amount of misty eyed looking back at, oh, it was the final flight. And that was so cool and all that at the time, I think the public, it was a little bit of a yawner. You know, we had been on these incredible missions of exploration to the moon. We had had three crews up at Skylab which was rescued from near disaster because of a launch that put broke some things. And then came Apollo Soyuz, which was cool, primarily at least from the public view because it was detente in space. It was the Americans and the Soviet Union docking two spacecraft, shaking hands, sharing some borscht and some jokes and then going their separate ways. But it was kind of a, it felt just personally it felt a little bit like kind of a sad ending to this, this amazing program. But it's been what? Well, 60th 50th anniversary, right?

[Tarek Malik]

50, 50 years later, we've got an international space station where we flew one of the most international missions I've ever seen. Just like a week ago. You know, you've got Russians and Americans in space overseeing a station that also has, I think it had, let's see, we had India's space agency's first astronaut, Poland, Bulgari, Hungary. Hungary. And then there's more all up there. So I think that the legacy is far reaching given where we are now. I know there's a lot of stuff with Russia and Ukraine and stuff that's throwing a lot of Mix a lot of waves in that international cooperation. Hopefully we'll get through all of that and that conflict will end and then they can resume. Or maybe there's another partner that's going to rise up and be even more cooperative and more, what's the word? What's it when you're good. Beneficent? Yeah, more good.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, you know, it would be great if we could work with China because I think honestly they wouldn't say so, but I think China would, would, would turn off their relationship with Russia in terms of space in a hot, hot minute if we could find a way to work together cooperatively because really there isn't a lot left going on in Russia. They've got some old hardware, they've got some capability, but they've had huge brain drain through retirement and other things, their budget tiny and their spacecraft break.

[Tarek Malik]

So, yeah, you mentioned Skylab, by the way. And we just passed the 40th anniversary of the Skylab fall from space into, into Australia. So.

[Rod Pyle]

All right, let's, let's hope we don't.

[Tarek Malik]

Do that with the iss.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, speaking of falling from space, Starliner got a brief moment back in the news. That's right, yes. We finally got an announcement after many months of silence.

[Tarek Malik]

This is, it's been since March, can you believe it, that they said anything, like publicly at all?

[Rod Pyle]

Competition for SpaceX to deliver astronauts to the space station. And I, the headline I picked was Starliner in or out of the doghouse? Nuk Nuknuk. Where do we stand with this darn thing?

[Tarek Malik]

Well, that was the question. You know, back in March, NASA and Boeing put out a statement that said that they were looking firmly into early 2026, no longer looking at the end of 2025 for the Starliner 1 mission, the next Starliner mission. And they were trying to decide if they get all of the testing done that was slated for this summer and then if they would put people on it. Or not.

[Rod Pyle]

Or not.

[Tarek Malik]

We actually reached out to them like a week or two ago, Boeing and NASA and they're like, hey, no, like what we said in March, that, that's what we said, you know, and so.

[Rod Pyle]

That'S the latest news.

[Tarek Malik]

That's what they told our writer, Josh Dinner, who, by the way, wrote this great story because during the Crew 11 upfronts for the Crew 11 mission, which is launching by SpaceX at the end of this month, as we're recording it, July 31st is the launch date there, they did give an update on their plans for Boeing and, and they did confirm that not only is Starliner launching in 2026, that the, that next launch will also not have astronauts on board. So they're stepping back and they're doing another, like, cargo kind of slash test flight for this, this version for whatever fixtures they're going to be making. And, and so it's, it's a, a pretty definitive, like a stake in the ground. Now that, that is when the next mission is going to do. Now the testing is going to be set for the summer to test like the doghouse stuff that, that, that they were, they were tracking for the, the thruster issues to see if they can manage the temperatures there so that they don't pose a problem again and have like a lot of the glitches that.

[Rod Pyle]

They saw on this last temperature on the thrusters.

[Tarek Malik]

Exactly, exactly.

[Rod Pyle]

And, and I guess what I read anyway was they're, they're redesigning the material for the SE valves seem to be a problem for them, even though they've been building them for space for 60 years. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens. There was a good story on Ars Technica, not by Eric Berger, by another writer about, you know, we're counting down to the end of the space station.

[Tarek Malik]

So is it still worth it? Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

How many flights can they get done in time? Yeah, why don't you pick the third story? Whatever you like the best.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah. Well, I would just point out, I mean, there's a lot of great stuff. There will be the Apollo 11 anniversary on Sunday, July 20th of this year. Going to be a protest scheduled at NASA headquarters by NASA workers, by NASA workers, contract and employees who are protesting both the mass layoffs as well as the budget cuts there. It'll be interesting to see what that turnout is like and if it has any impact into the ongoing budget discussions. But I did kind of want to end on a high note and I would just add that I did get the chance to see the biggest piece of Mars on Earth this week, Rod, because it was here in New York City. And I got a little video.

[Rod Pyle]

Now, is this the new meteorite?

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, it's, it's not a new meteorite. It's. I mean, it's, it's newly found. They found it in 2023, newly on sale. Yeah, there's, there's a bit of a video in the background from, from, from my visit earlier this week at Sotheby's. Is it, is it Sotheby's or Sotheby's?

[Rod Pyle]

Doesn't matter.

[Tarek Malik]

Okay. Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

How big is this piece.

[Tarek Malik]

It is 5 50. I think it's like £56 or £54, something like that.

[Rod Pyle]

This is multi, multi million dollar specimen. Right.

[Tarek Malik]

So I'm glad you asked. It was actually up frog. This is the big, the big suspense building. Here I am walking through their, their exhibit. All this stuff was. And there it is. You can see it in, in real time. That's.

[Rod Pyle]

Wow. It got its own gallery. Look at that.

[Tarek Malik]

Own gallery. There's no barrier. I could have just grabbed that thing and ran out of that building. Right. I can't carry £50.

[Rod Pyle]

That I'd find a way. Look at that.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah. So, so this was discovered in, in, in 2023 in, in Niger in the Sahara Desert. And it's the largest chunk of Mars, single chunk of Mars that, that I guess has been on display and up for auction ever. They're billing it as like the biggest. It did sell for $5.3 million and that is above their top estimated price of $4 million.

[Rod Pyle]

You know, we should have bought it and taken it to head NASA headquarters and said, we've just solved your Mars sample return problem.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, I know, I know.

[Rod Pyle]

Only $10 million.

[Tarek Malik]

So it was very exciting to see. I feel like Indiana Jones, that it does belong in a museum, but maybe.

[Rod Pyle]

Still the one moment of Indiana Jones you'll ever have in your life, my friend.

[Tarek Malik]

But maybe you don't know. I could discover a tomb. Right? My life's not over yet.

[Rod Pyle]

You've been in my office.

[Tarek Malik]

A space tomb, hopefully. Yeah, but we' maybe they'll donate it to a museum somewhere and then we'll, we'll all get to enjoy it forever.

[Rod Pyle]

All right, well, we are going to buzz off now to a quick break and then we'll be back with Rob Manning, chief engineer Emeritus from NASA JPL, to talk about the 60th anniversary of Mariner 4 to Mars. Stay with us. This episode of Grilling JR with Jim Ross is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart choice. Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.

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[Rod Pyle]

And we are back with Rob Manning, Chief Engineer Emeritus, which is a title I can only covet in my dreams of Pasadena's NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Hello Rob. Thanks for joining us today, Rod.

[Rob Manning]

It's great to see you again. It's great to be back here. It's really cool.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, it's always a treat for us because you're the most fun a guy can have talking to an engineer for sure. So can you just give us for, for people that haven't heard you speak before, give us a kind of a rundown of your career at jpl?

[Rob Manning]

Sure. Antiquity. So I start off JPL on rock, remarkably as a, as a. Oops, can you hear me? Okay, okay. I started off as a, as a technician and a draftsman at JPL 40 nearly 45 years ago. And I've worked my way up through the ranks working first as doing electronics, electronic systems. Came out of Caltech as a student and then and learned how to make electronic systems for spacecraft. And for some reason I've managed to find myself becoming a chief engineer for a Mars Pathfinder mission, a little mission to land, a low cost mission to land a little rover and do some science and some pictures on the surface of Mars after a 20 year hiatus from after the Viking missions that landed on two missions on Mars in the 70s. So, so I, and then after that I've been, I've been doing a lot of chief engineer work as chief engineer for, well, essentially not quite cheap and didn't have the title but for a Spirit and Opportunity rover as well as chief engineer for Curiosity Rover as well as the Mars Program office and then eventually chief engineer for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for six years. So as a consequence I just, I know a lot of the Mars stuff and I've been working, I've worked on many of the Mars missions In fact maybe the majority of them that came out of the United States. And so it's and had to had involved in Phoenix Insight landing to Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Odyssey, Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Observer. It didn't make it to Mars. And including the ones that didn't work. Mars Polar Lander, Mars Climate Orbiter, the infamous ones that had that didn't work in 1999. But anyway so it's been fun. I missed that I was too young for the to work on the Mariner series spacecraft. I did, I did work also in Galileo into Jupiter before it was my first cut of doing electronics and then a Cassini mission Magellan to Venus Cassini Saturn I should say and, and many others. So I've been. I know a lot about. I've been lucky to be in the right spot in the right time and learn about how to make spaceships and how to, how to land them, how to. How to drive them around another planet.

[Rod Pyle]

Hey Tarek, look, we have a modest guest. Yeah, how nice is that? So actually by my math and, and there's a very good reason I'm not an engineer. But by my, my back of the. Of the. Of my hand calculation, you've been involved with NASA's Mars exploration for about half its total time.

[Rob Manning]

Yeah, about right maybe.

[Rod Pyle]

But you're right the majority of the missions because the success rate really picked up in the 70s. Okay, well my next question was your history with Mars and every probes is Pathfinder. But you kind of covered that before I let Tarek jump in with his burning question. I wonder if you might just have a capsule thought on sort of the legacy of. Of robotics on Mars through jpl. I mean other countries have tried. The Soviet Union actually started flinging stuff towards Mars many years before the. And over and over and over again and has never had a complete success.

[Tarek Malik]

Mars 2 had a beep.

[Rod Pyle]

It's hard right?

[Rob Manning]

March two. Yeah, March two made it. Yeah. And it lasted a few seconds.

[Rod Pyle]

That's why I said complete success.

[Rob Manning]

But I mean. I mean it's, you know, to be honest with you, having a few seconds is. Says a lot. You know you have to do a lot of right do get a lot of things right in order to get something to last even for a little while. So you, you know I, I give him a. I give him a score. You know they. Not an A, but it's up there. I mean they got, they got to Mars anyway. It's. Yeah, it's. Oh man, I. That's Such a loaded question, Rod. My, from the point of view of science, I mean, and we'll talk about Mariner 4 later. But, but you know, this has been, you know, you can only go to, humans can go to the, to a place for the first time once. And we've been incredibly, I guess the word is blessed to have been been to have the privilege, funded by, thank you American taxpayers to, to, to explore and learn and share this with everybody and share it with, with families, schools, kids, people from really all over all walks of life. And it's not just a thing we do first for a few handful of secretive scientists. Not at all. It's something that we, that's out there, our pictures go out there to the world and we, and what we learn about it, we share. And, and so it's a, it's such a great privilege and so I've been very lucky to be part of it. I mean what, what's, you know, you know, you know, you mentioned, you know, you probably noticed that a lot of organizations are attempting to go to the moon and, or land there. And, and sometimes they work, oftentimes they don't. And, and you know, you see, well, JPL's contributions have been relatively successful over the last few years. It's not always been that way. And you do build on it. I think one of the key things that, that really has made this program amazing, I mean it's for me is that NASA has let the same people, effectively the same community of people learn from their mistakes, make a step, take, take those lessons and feed them into the next mission and the next mission, the next mission to. Eventually the probability of it working goes up and the complexity goes up and the scope goes up. And of course with complexity and scope goes money, things like that. So they are getting more expensive? Well, not really. Actually they were pretty expensive at the beginning too. They've always been pretty expensive. But over time this accumulation of knowledge and experience has really paid off. Listen, can you imagine having a chance to, to make and do another mission after you've, after you've maybe got the last mission off by the skin of your teeth and all the things you can think, oh, well, I'm not going to do that again. Oh boy. Remember that, guys? Yeah, that was pretty scary. Let's not do that. Okay? Okay, let's not do that again. Okay, let's go, let's do something else. Let's fix it. And so we were able to build on those experiences not perfectly. Guess what? Because we're human beings, we make Mistakes. So things still go wrong and still things still break. But altogether, what a privilege it's been. And so we've got a chance to build on those capabilities and take them through for decades. And I hope people will say that it paid off from the taxpayer's perspective as well. It's not just giving Rob Manning this incredible experiences that only a 12 year old would dream of. It's about hopefully taking everyone with us, taking people for a ride. I mean, they talk about we should put flags on Mars. Well, we've been planting legs on Mars and there are people who go to Mars every day virtually through their machines and extensions of themselves on Mars, and that's just not true of Mars, was also true at other planets, other places we've gone. But these extensions of ourselves have, have really opened up doors to these new worlds and revealed a lot of complexity. And it's really informed a lot about what we know about our own Earth, our own place, our own home. And it's been just, you know, I can't say I can go on and on. I can give thousands of examples, but, but I'll stop there.

[Tarek Malik]

No, I, I want to see the Martians. That's, that's what I want my taxpayer money to go. I want the Martians. Right.

[Rod Pyle]

So see there, that fossilized femur up there?

[Rob Manning]

Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

Or, or, or, or get it out of the archives. Why were you hiding it, Rob? Are you part of the system? Is that what it is?

[Rob Manning]

Yes. I'm not going to tell you.

[Tarek Malik]

Before we get too much into the, the history because clearly there's a lot of legacy to build on. I did want to ask because, you know, I usually ask, I think I asked a version of this last time you, you were on the show as, as well about your, your path to space because clearly you are a Mars guy, you know, as an engineer. But were you a Mars boy as well as a kid? Is that something that you thought about on your road to space? Or, or, or was it something evolved?

[Rob Manning]

Well, Mars seemed like a long. Excuse me. Yeah, Mars seemed like a long ways away from, for me. And by the way, if you can hear if there's some sound that there's some gardening out going on behind me, but there's a, when I was growing up in the early 60s, Mars was not. You didn't. Mars is what you write about in, in, in Heinlein's books or, or Ray Bradbury or Arthur C. Clarke or, or you know, all these great writers, Isaac Asimov, you know, these are the people I read about. And so space was distant. But the thought, you know, the vision we had as a kid, I had as a kid is about just getting people off of Earth and maybe being in a space station or maybe maybe walking on the moon. Oh, that would be really cool for humans to actually go to the moon. So my scope was closer to Earth in my head. But space was definitely a huge thing. And the thought that maybe I might be able to have a role in that is. Is. Was almost impossible to believe. But. But it was something I imagined as a kid. And I daydreamed about this all the time I was in space, all the time I was in this. I grew up in this beautiful island in Puget Sound. And we. I'd walk through the woods near the. Near the beach and we'd look up. I'd look up the sky, this beautiful blue sky with the clouds, white clouds going by. And when. And I. And I. Although it was beautiful right there, I was flying. I was in space. I was already out there. I was imagining being above us, flying above the blue sky and seeing the universe with my own eyes.

[Tarek Malik]

Wow.

[Rod Pyle]

We have to go to a break, so everybody hold your Mars spacecraft and we'll be right back.

[Narrator]

This episode brought to you by Red Canary when cybersecurity threats hit fast, you need an MDR partner that moves faster. Red Canary delivers 24.7expert MDR support, total visibility and actionable insights. Plus it helps you detect four times more threats so you can stay ahead without burning out. Red Canary clears the noise and has your back every hour, every incident. Get the backup you deserve. Visit redcanary.com difference to learn more.

Ever notice how ads always pop up at the worst moments? When the killer's identity is about to be revealed during that perfect meditation flow on Amazon Music, we believe in keeping you in the moment. That's why we've got millions of ad free podcast episodes. So you can stay completely immersed in every story, every reveal, every breath. Download the Amazon Music app and start listening to your favorite podcasts. Ad free included with Prime.

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[Rod Pyle]

All right, coming back from one of my most lame transitions ever. So you know, Rob, you touched on something that has kind of blown my mind for decades now because I think a lot about my mortality. And you know, you and I are the people in the room here today that are old enough to remember the classical Mars. You know, the Mars before we, we understood the ugly truth of the solar system. And I mean there's beauty and wonder in the solar system, but when I was a young man, when you were a young man, you know, people were still looking at Venus. Maybe not the hardcore scientists, but a lot of science writers and dreamers saying Venus is probably hot and swampy and it might have dinosaurs and all that kind of thing. And Mars, it's a little colder than Earth and you know the air is going to be thin, maybe 1/10 Earth's atmosphere. But we can go there and maybe you can walk around without a pressure suit and you know, breathe out of an oxygen bottle like Robinson Crusoe on Mars or something. And then this amazing probe kind of came out of, well for my awareness, kind of came out of nowhere.

[Rob Manning]

Nowhere.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, Mariner 4 and flew past Mars, sent back a scant 22 and a half very low res pictures, but everything spun on a dime. And the news was Mars is dead. Mars is the moon.

[Rob Manning]

Oh, I know.

[Rod Pyle]

Mars is an arid desert planet. There's nothing there, so get over it. And of course the scientists are still rocking and rolling because they're like, yeah, look, we got that radio occultation experiment. So we measured the atmosphere and we got these pictures back and that's fantastic and everything but the romantics among us are going to. You killed my planet.

[Rob Manning]

Yeah, that's true. And they were. And even, you know, there's even people even after then who, who didn't give up the idea there was life on the surface of Mars. By the way. It just, it just, it. There were just no canals and cities or forests. There's some, maybe something else was there. So it wasn't exactly dead. But what happened was, you're absolutely right. The imagination about. So the imagination is amazing thing you can imagine. We, you know, and that's what I was doing as a kid. I was imagining these worlds, these places and just, just, just, you know, and, and, and it was, it was so fun, so free. I mean we, so in some sense mariner4 when it pictured that one image that the, of the crater with the, with craters and craters on it, this like destroyed people's hopes of, of an imaginative world. They thought they, they didn't, you know, it turns out didn't have to actually give up, give on, give up on, give up on those imaginary, those visions but completely, but it's, it wasn't the world they were hoping for. There weren't people to talk to there. But he certainly did, it did take the wind out of the people's sails and their imagination. So they had to imagine more far off places to go and other parts of the other solar systems because clearly if Mars wasn't any good and Venus is already kind of not looking so trashed. Yeah, it's looking a little too hot, a little too much pressure. But going out further other solar systems and other places became, became the way of thinking about it. And of course that was the same time that Star Trek was out and they were using their imagination of going to other stellar systems. And so that's true.

[Rod Pyle]

That was the same year, wasn't it?

[Rob Manning]

The same year 1965. Right. So star Trek was you know, a huge influence on, on how people thought about where space exploration might be and particularly about how, how humanity might actually evolve in a positive way. It was kind of cool in that sense. But it was, but it was that Mars was a shock and it was. And it really hit people hard and I think, you know, so someone looked for all the world like somebody took the moon and spray painted a red.

[Narrator]

Yeah.

[Rob Manning]

And, and that was it. Okay. We have a red version of our moon. In fact the thing is, the thing is now people start thinking that all the moons of all the other planets look the same. We're all, we're all just, I mean they've already had that, we're convinced of that for Phobos and Deimos on Mars. But maybe all these Galilean satellites were also equally boring. And so it really actually put, took the wind out of sails for not just Mars, but for interplanetary work altogether. Fortunately we had missions already. The ball had bounced, started bouncing for Voyager even before Mariner 4 started. Of course the grand tour hadn't been invented yet but the notion of getting money for going out the outer planets, the momentum had already been built for that. So Voyagers were already on their in some sense the momentum because Voyager was actually the last Mariner series spacecraft. Don't talk about that. And it's actually the same, actually the same designs, just modified. Each Mariner spacecraft had a little. Had new augmentations or additions or upgrades from previous ones. But, but it was, it was so, it really. Just so that those Mariner 4 images really took the land of sales for planetary exploration period, to a large extent. If it wasn't for the momentum already built, it would, it may have actually put the brakes on Voyager for that matter.

[Rod Pyle]

So just to set the stage, Mariner 4 launched in 1965 after a failed launch by Mariner 3 a few weeks earlier. And. But up till that time, just a.

[Tarek Malik]

Quick correction, it was. It was in December, was it not, in 64? Because it took six months to get there.

[Rod Pyle]

Yes, sorry, it did.

[Tarek Malik]

Okay.

[Rod Pyle]

Flew by in 1965. Thank you. Wait a minute. Slapping hand.

[Rob Manning]

Okay.

[Rod Pyle]

But it was because I got all wound up in the bigger idea, which is, you know, up till that point, you know, Mars really became a target of telescopic study in the mid to late 1800s. And then here comes Percival Lowell with all his money to Arizona. I'm going to build a telescope to study Mars and wrote a series of increasingly fanciful books between the 1890s and early 1900s by the time he was done. And if you read those books today, you can kind of see how he got there with what he knew at the time. But he had an advanced species of Martians that were building canals to duct water from the poles down to the arid equatorial regions to help grow crops. And they had televisions and teleporters and all kinds of stuff. Great reading, a little fanciful, but, you know, that persisted well into the 20th century. And then in the, I think late 40s, here comes Palomar, Mount Palomar Observatory. So we're getting pictures of Mars through this 200 inch telescope, but it's still looking through Earth's atmosphere. So you're still kind of seeing this wavering red blob and you can, you know, use spectroscopes and other things to, to get a little bit more science down off of the planet. But really, even when Mariner was flying, some of the, the maps we were using dated back 40, 50 years and there wasn't a lot known. There was still talk, and correct me if I'm wrong, Rob, but there's still talk about the wave of darkening, which they thought might be plants growing and then dying off during the seasons. Still not quite certain about how much water there was in the atmosphere. Temperature was kind of better known, but there was still this possibility of, if not intellectually advanced life, at least more complex life forms. And the canal question hung over everything, which was leftover from Giovanni Schiaparelli, who called the lines he saw on Mars canali, which we of course looked at and said, oh, canali. That sounds like canals. That means intelligent people. So here's this classical Mars. And then as I alluded to before, in this kind of one moment, Mariner four goes by. So if you don't mind, maybe you could just kind of walk us through how, how this began and what happened when they flew by.

[Rob Manning]

Well, the, the. The big thing was. So Mariner 4 was actually a modified version, same with Mariner 2 and 3, but there were modified versions of, of the Ranger spacecraft, if you remember crashing relentlessly into the Moon or missing the moon or something. It was, it was, it was a, it was a series. I forget what was it? Mariners. I'm getting my. I think it's Ranger. Six of them. Yeah, the first, I think there were nine.

[Rod Pyle]

But the first.

[Rob Manning]

They're not fixed. Failed. There was a big space between six and five. I think the first five died. And they said, okay, enough jpl. You got to get your act together. So they went stop and refactored it. But, but they pulled off one of the spacecraft. The, I think the first Mariner 2 was actually pulled off in the actual line. They took later on a version and modified it more further to create actually a Mars version of that. But if you look carefully, you'll see the structure and the architecture and the layout of the Ranger missions in the, on the Mariner series spacecraft. They're all there. The control system. They looked many, many identical pieces of electronics. Some of the structure. They had to add a lot of things like new solar panels. They put those, those, those veins. Weather veins on the ends of the right solar panels. Steering veins, yeah, actually, to, to minimize a solar tor. Impact of solar torque so they can keep the attitude. The vehicle from being pushed out of the way. But, but they realized that, that they wouldn't have. They run out of fuel if they had to. If they had to keep moving the spacecraft, point the antenna, keep the panel pointed toward Earth because of the pressure of the solar. That the, the solar protons or photons had on, on the solar panels. So they had to do these little tricks to make that happen. So they had to do a lot of modifications, a lot of things. And, and their control systems were not good. And, and so it was. But it was pretty darn exciting because there's a lot, There was a lot of it, like many of our missions, a lot of things that were skin of your teeth. Close calls. And I think you'd mentioned this in your article, Rod is the, the Canopus tracker had. So, so it's interesting is that if you're, if you're. One way to control your orientation in space is to have a sun sensor. Nice thing about the sun.

[Rod Pyle]

It'S hard to miss, right?

[Rob Manning]

It's hard to miss. And it's really bright. And so there, the, there's a, there's a little sun sensor which basically measures the angle the sun and like a bunch of fan detectors that can measure the sun in this axis and another one identical, it's 90 degrees. That measures it this way. And from that, if you, if you move the spacecraft so the sun is kind of pointed along a particular point. Now all you need to know is the roll, how much it's rolling. But to get the roll, the orientation you need to know look at stars. And there's a really bright star in the southern hemisphere called Canopus. And if you know how far the mission is, you know where the, where to point. If you had a little tiny telescope that had kind of like a sun sensor, except just focused on that one star, you put that, you point that thing at the right angle relative to the Sun. And so as you go around the orientation of the sun, this Canopus tracker will bump in, will bump into Canopus eventually. And so if you spin really slowly about the sun, eventually the detector will say, whoa, it's getting real bright. It's bright, bright, bright, bright. Oh, it's getting dim again. Oh, go back, go back, go back, go back. The vehicle would control itself that way. However, it's easy. Canopus isn't that bright. I mean, if you have like paint particles and other things floating around, you know, our spacecraft, if you're not careful, they look a little bit like Pig pen from, you know, Charlie Brown. Right.

[Rod Pyle]

It kind of launched with its own little constellation.

[Rob Manning]

Remember how many times we had the Apollo astronauts? There seems to be something following us. Oh, little, little bright, little twinkly thingies. They're just. I know what those are. They're surrounding us. They're floating around. Well, they're, they're just basically stuff that's kind of roughly in orbit around your vehicle and affected by the, the magnetic field and, and, and just basically trapped there. Or sometimes they'll wander off, but it's easy to. So that's what happened. So when some particles and stuff got in front of the field of view and that thing, that thing actually locked onto those and they're like, huh, this isn't. This appeared to be Canopus. What happens? It disappeared. It seemed to wander off in the wrong direction. Canopus doesn't usually do that. And so, so it took a long time for them to keep looking, hunting that down. But it was the same technology actually. Voyager has a Canopus tracker. I mean it became part of the whole, the toolkit. You just have to kind of realize it has these features of locking onto things that aren't stars.

[Tarek Malik]

I was, I was really struck by the duality of Mariner 4 and the fact that they. Well, you know, that they launched. No, that they, they launched Mariner 3 and Mariner 4. And Mariner 3 failed. And then Mariner 4 is based, you know, an evolved Mars version of Mariner 2, which went to Venus. Yeah, Mariner 1 also failed to go to Venus, you know, and so there's like a mirroring and like an acceptance, I guess of the challenge. We think Mars maybe landing on Mars or getting to Mars for granite. Maybe now.

[Rob Manning]

Well, but we shouldn't.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, no one should.

[Rob Manning]

It's hard stuff.

[Tarek Malik]

We couldn't do it.

[Rob Manning]

It's hard to get it right. I mean, I have to admit I am a personal fan of this idea of dual redundant missions where you have two missions that they may have some slightly different science, where they cover different parts of the planet or look at different things. Spirit and Opportunity rovers, you know, they're identical. Rover, you know, I tell you, how convenient was for me to be able to say, well, no, they're not single fault tolerant individually and it's any. The whole bunch. No, thousands if not millions of failures could happen on any one of those rovers and they would die. But I have another rover there. Yeah, it's on the other side of the planet, but who cares? It's on Mars. And so, and so. So this ideal of dual missions, the duality you're talking about is a real plus. It's a real plus because you can, if one fails, you can go like, shoot, why did it fail? What went wrong? Can we figure out a way to avoid that on the other one? And it's interesting, you can oftentimes, if you know what happened, there's things you could do to kind of skirt that by how you operate it and so. And you know, carefully, like hitting your head with a hammer. Best way to hurt yourself.

[Rod Pyle]

What a great thing to have the budget for two missions at once. And speaking of budgets. We have to support ours by running to a quick break. So we'll be right back.

[Narrator]

This episode brought to you by Red Canary. When cybersecurity threats hit fast, you need an MDR partner that moves faster. Red Canary delivers 24. 7 expert MDR support, total visibility, and actionable insights. Plus it helps you detect four times more threats so you can stay ahead without burning out. Red Canary clears the noise and has your back every hour, every incident. Get the backup you deserve. Visit redcanary.com difference to learn more.

Ever notice how ads always pop up at the worst moments when the killer's identity is about to be revealed during that perfect meditation flow on Amazon Music, we believe in keeping you in the moment. That's why we've got millions of ad free podcast episodes so you can stay completely immersed in every story, every reveal, every every breath. Download the Amazon music app and start listening to your favorite podcasts. Ad free included with Prime.

[Rod Pyle]

So this is one that's, that's really gotten to me for years. I'm sorry. I have many passions about this mission just because I've written about it a lot, I guess. But when I was a kid, my father used to give music lessons. One of his students was a kid named Alan Layton, and his father was Robert Layton. Yeah, it was on the, the Mariner 4 imaging team. He was an astronomer at Caltech. And so I got to hang out with him when I was a kid. Of course, you know, at the time.

[Rob Manning]

You'Re going to tell that story right? Online. Online alive.

[Rod Pyle]

Which one?

[Rob Manning]

Oh, you're going to tell the same story, are we?

[Rod Pyle]

Which one?

[Rob Manning]

Oh, the one you're telling right now.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, no, it's what got me about this was, you know, he said originally, you know, we weren't going to send a TV camera on Mariner 4. And I said, what? Yeah, so it was going to go out as Mariner 2 did to Venus. It was one of those, you know, what your people call squiggly line missions where you get back this, this cool data but, but not pictures. And Layton, being an optical astronomer, said, well, you know, this is an incredible opportunity to do more than any 10 big Earth telescopes could do. And, and in his opinion, we owed it to the taxpayer. So kind of, as I recall, late in the game, they started working very rapidly to add a TV camera and at this point, a studio TV camera over at, you know, TV City in downtown Los Angeles, where CBS was or something, these cameras were about the size of a small dishwasher, a very large microwave. They Were big. They had lens turrets and all that kind of stuff.

[Rob Manning]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

And vidicon tubes were kind of delicate glass vacuum tubes with a photo with a photosensitive pickup on the back. And I think they were in clusters for burgeoning color at that point.

[Rob Manning]

No, just one.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, was this one?

[Rob Manning]

Yeah, These are first ones. Yeah. It's amazing.

[Rod Pyle]

So. But they had to figure out a way to, I think, oversee the manufacturing and testing of something in fairly short order for this mission. Correct.

[Rob Manning]

Yeah. No, this is. It is so funny. The arguments went so much that people didn't want a camera really. It was just that the squiggly. It's so much easier to build a mission with squiggly lines because. Because it's, it's, it's. It's the. The total data rate is so much less. And you can get it. You can. You can take turns measuring different samples, sampling different analog channels like, like plasma wave and other things and actually get it down and get in real time. You didn't need any things like the trouble with telescope with a camera even, even with a fairly slow exposure on a. On a vidicon tube. And the vidicon tubes are only about this big. Right. They're really small. They have a screen. It's a screen. People don't realize. It's actually a television tube. Just like, just like the TVs that we had as kids. Little TV tube that kind of worked backwards. Now, whereas a TV, the electron beam would go through and then basically write scan back and forth. And was brighter where. Where it was stronger beam where the. Where the pixel needed. Right. So there's phosphorus painted little dots painted on the screen. In fact, there are three colors of dots. And if you carefully aim it, you can pick which color you. The. The beam is aiming for. And you can do that. And that's, that's. And they do it fast enough, their eyes don't notice it. And it looks like a real moving picture. And now what. What's cool about vidicon tube is it's basically the same thing in reverse. Basically, you. You project an image on the end of your video tube and then you have another. Exactly like the same electron beam scanning it, but this time the electron beam is sensitive to the brightness of the light that's on the screen. And the amount of current on that beam drops if there's not much light. If there's a lot of light, it gets stronger. And if you just measure that and send it down, you get a squiggly line just like it just like other squiggly lines where you measure things but then you have to do it for that line, then that line, then that line and you have to go all the way down. Oh by the way, only one color. One color. And to get the other colors you have to take do this all over again with a different color lens. Color. We put it between the lens and the, and the light. So basically from the lens I think. And so it's basically blocks all the other colors except for red. And so red goes on there. Then you take. So you have to take three colors, three different pictures to get a single.

[Rod Pyle]

So but Mariner was just black and white, right?

[Rob Manning]

Black and white. So they only had one. They didn't have a color wheel. We call it color wheel but that's how they got colored later on like on Voyager. But the trip was that that's a lot of data compared to just I'm listening to the plasma wave up and down it goes. So this is like so just a huge amount of stuff. What do you. And you can't get it down to earth that fast. So you have to put it someplace. So you need a tape recorder to shove this stuff in. They need a mechanism to play the tape recorder usually backwards in reverse from. We don't actually go back and rewind and play it again. You go back, you play the whole thing backwards. It comes out the other way and then it goes under a tape recorder on Earth. It's a huge amount of data and it's a huge amount and it over overshadows the squiggly line data that the other scientists wanted. So the other scientists are worried that they're going to lose their data. If you put a TV camera, put one of these little vidicon tubes in there, they're not going to be able to get their data because they're. Because the TV is such a hog and it's a hog in other respects. Not just data, it's also hog in money because you have to have this complexity of this extra tape recorder. You need a complexity of, of getting the data down and it's, it's so it's going to threaten the viability of the mission itself. So they're like ah, give you man TP cards, television. Oh and by the way they're going to take all my mass because they're going to grow in mass. It's going to go from a, it's going to be something small and it's going to grow it from microwave oven to a refrigerator just like you said, I mean, because they really hadn't really mastered the art of making these things reliable because they're so dinky, they're really small and you have to get it focused nicely. So that was the. So there was a lot of risk and there's a lot of development. So there are people at JPL who became really good at designing or at least monitoring that. Companies who are good at designing these vacuum tubes designed specially for these applications. Everything was very bespoke, all designed by hand. Because in those days we didn't have computers to help us design stuff.

[Rod Pyle]

But two outside rules.

[Tarek Malik]

Speaking of by hand, there was that first TV image from Mariner 4 of Mars. You know, I think dear listeners, you heard Rod and Rob talking about how this camera was black and white, but there is a color image that I actually met what a year as a little college, you know, cub reporter when I was visiting JPL's press, you know, press corps. They were walking me through like how they did everything, how they shared images with the public. And they took me into the back room where the, the image specialist and I can't remember his name, Rod, you'd probably know him, but he, yeah, Yuri.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah.

[Rob Manning]

Oh, Yuri. Oh yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

He's like this is the room. This is where we got the big thing and we hand colored the picture of Mars. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's. We've got it John. We've got it online. Line 46 there if for folks that are, that are watching there. But that's, that's, that's on display at jpl. You can still see it.

[Rob Manning]

There it is, it was, it was in color only because they, they pick color range of a spectrum of pastel colors. Right?

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

It's a cool story. I mean so just again for context, this, this, there's a paper printout of this first digital image. This 200 pixel, right? Digital image.

[Rob Manning]

Well, well do you remember those old like line printers and they had to do scissors and they had to because the spaces were so big they had to cut them out. And each, no one had, it had a octal number that would represent the brightness of that pixel. And they had to light it up and they line it up vertically across and they took, took their colored pens or colored pastels and colored each pixel with based on the numbers. So, so it's like paint by numbers. Exactly the same thing.

[Rod Pyle]

And I don't know if this is apocryphal or not, but I did read one account that said that a couple of. Because you know, this is this is NASA jpl and they're in their ad hoc days. Right. So a couple of guys said, oh, I got an idea and drove down to Pasadena Art Supply, which was open for many decades, since closed, and said, we need some, some grease pencils and pastels. I said, okay. And they said, we got orange and yellow or green and brown. And they were like. According to them, there was a toss up moment in their thinking it would have been a really different experience between green and brown. I don't know why they'd pick green and brown, but. Or maybe it was they only had green and brown. That had to go back to find the orange and yellow or something. There was some hang up there. But you know, to. When I first went into the comms building and saw that thing hanging there, realized what it was. It was like this holy relic moment for me.

[Rob Manning]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

Because it was such a cool thing that they did. And then the actual image finally gets printed out and dried and hung up. And it was really close except that it was black and white.

[Rob Manning]

And this is in color and a little stretched out this way. Yeah, they had you cut them a little bit closer together. But you're absolutely right. You may ask the question, why did they do that? And then. Because the. So remember now, these images, they come down two ways. They come in, they were coming into the tape recorder first and then they. Over the next hours, like six or seven hours, a good chunk of a day, right. Rod, you know the numbers. I forget. And it comes and they, they play it back. Then it takes a fair amount of time to process that stuff. Process that. Because we didn't have a bunch of computers back then to help us. And so, but the data was there and they just, the imaging team just printed it out on their teletype, you know, the line printer. And, and so they said, you know, we don't have to wait, we can just do it now. What you just need a bunch of this, A gradation of color, of a single color. It doesn't have to be blue, green, whatever. They pick brown, I guess orange. But. But it was. But the funny thing is when they finished that, and I'm sure Yuri mentioned that, right. That they. I said, look what we did. Don't show anybody. We don't know if that's right. I mean, part of it, they didn't know what they're looking at. For example, that bottom part of that image. Is it possible you pop it back.

[Rod Pyle]

Up again, the big white blob.

[Rob Manning]

Well, the black. No, all the black stuff down Below that's, that's black space. So that's a, that's the limb of Mars. And, and so if you, to the middle, the lower part of the black part, the dark brown actually in this picture, but it's actually black. The lower left hand quadrant, you can sort of see lines in the, in the, in the, in the black, in the brown. In this case, cows. And that's, that's the atmosphere. That's the, that's the, that's the, you can sort of see. So what you're looking at is if you turn upside down, you see you're looking out over, over, over the curvature of Mars.

[Tarek Malik]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay.

[Rob Manning]

Yeah. So it's so, so. But they didn't know that, didn't know what they were looking at.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, and to be fair to this to the squiggly line scientists, just to cap off your, your, your TV camera story.

[Rob Manning]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

I think each image took eight hours to send down and they had to do it twice. So I. Now that you contextualize this way, I have to lighten up on my. They wanted to send it without a TV camera because it actually probably made a lot of sense to those guys.

[Rob Manning]

Well, it made sense because the, the price is right. Too.

[Rod Pyle]

Right.

[Rob Manning]

Because it's. Adding a television is a huge step up in complexity. And so, and it wasn't just the ground software. You know, this whole, you know, how do you get a tube that doesn't shatter itself during launch?

[Rod Pyle]

The launch vibrations, all the phosphorus off the back.

[Rob Manning]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, making things that can survive a launch vibration. You know, you don't put glass out there. Are you kidding me? Why would you put, why'd you put little. Yeah. So you need, had to be very, had to be very good at holding it, stiffening it up, making sure it doesn't vibrate, and all the issues associated with the contaminants and everything else that, associated with, with making a tube that, that doesn't leak. I mean, it's really hard to make a tube, by the way. That's, that's, that's why in the old days, remember the old deals, we're talking to old people. Like old people. We used to have stereo, stereos with all these tubes in it. But the typical lifetime of a stereo amplifier with all those glass tubes, vacuum tubes were, was about a year or two before you got, you lost one of those tubes and you had to go find another one and they all burned out on you. Kind of like the old light bulbs.

[Rod Pyle]

Except worse and something Tarek has never seen is the tube testing console at the grocery store where you'd take your vacuum tube out of your stereo or your television set and you'd go look at little book and you'd. You'd fit it in the right plug and it would test it and then it would sell you another one. But speaking.

[Tarek Malik]

I had a. I had a stereo with tubes. I take it. My mom gave me her stereo and it had two.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah. Okay.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, when it warmed up.

[Rod Pyle]

All right. I know you have many questions. We've. We've been ignoring you. So we'll be right back in this next break. That was how I was getting the segue to listen to little Tarek.

[Narrator]

So stand by this episode brought to you by Red Canary. When cybersecurity threats hit fast, you need an MDR partner that moves faster. Red Canary delivers 24.7expert MDR support, total visibility and actionable insights. Plus, it helps you detect four times more threats so you can stay ahead without burning out. Red Canary clears the noise and has your back every hour, every incident. Get the backup you deserve. Visit redcanary.com difference to learn more.

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[Tarek Malik]

I don't know whether to Feel thankful or feel patronized, Rod. All right. I'm just saying that I had a stereo with a, with a turntable and everything that had tubes is all well.

[Rod Pyle]

And people still seek those out. That's a head scratcher for me. I've got a tube amp in storage somewhere. Rob, what is the, is it because the sound is warmer or something?

[Rob Manning]

Taste, it's whatever you like to hear. I mean, I, I, I, I think in some sense they, they do have different roll off properties. So there is different, slightly different sounds. So, but it's a matter of what you like. You know, we've, we, we've lived in our digital world for so long. We know how to render things with incredible precision. But some sense these tubes actually alter the sound to, in ways that people enjoy and it's, yeah, we should get.

[Tarek Malik]

The sounds of Mars through those tubes. That'd be awesome.

[Rod Pyle]

So Tarek, when you ask your next question, we also got one from Wizardly on Discord. What were the highest and lowest tech parts of the Mariner missions? So we'll get to that. After you.

[Tarek Malik]

That's actually good. We talked a lot about TV camera and I'm very curious about everything else that we learned from Mars from Mariner 4 because this is where, you know, we've been, people might be, you know, might have missed it. It's a flyby. It's not. You didn't go into orbit, right. With Mariner 4. This was like a zoom. You take all your pictures and then you know, that's it. Mom's not gonna pull over so that we can get out and take a picture of the dinosaur. So, you know, like the roadside dinosaurs, like in California we used to drive by those all the time.

[Rod Pyle]

The cement dinosaurs.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, yeah. And so, so, so, you know, this is like that, that first close up. Look, Rob. What, what? There's like a couple occultation experiment that we got. We mentioned there's a few others. Like it's, it's what, what did we learn that was the first of all of this stuff?

[Rod Pyle]

So.

[Rob Manning]

Well, I think that, I think the big ones first of all realizing there are certainly no canals on Mars and no trees, no cities, but, but also this kind of shock that. And Rod, you mentioned, this is, that is the discovery that that Mars atmosphere is a lot thinner than they thought. Yeah, so, so Wernher von Braun's idea of landing a dozen or so astronauts on a glider on unprepared surface on skids may not been in the safest. They do. You know, I calculate, I calculate that when you, if you were to land on the Rapture actual Mars atmosphere with a large glider, you'd be going very close to a thousand miles an hour.

[Tarek Malik]

Oh my God.

[Rob Manning]

On skids, unprepared surfaces. What are the odds? Yeah, can you imagine? There's nothing. It would be a bad day. It'd be a bad day. And I think we learned that Mars is going to be more challenging than I thought in terms of how to get to the surface of Mars because you don't land on Mars like you do. They're hoping to be able to land on Mars, but an extension of how we do it on Earth. Maybe not with parachutes, but certainly with wings or something. But even parachutes won't turned out won't do the job by themselves without something else.

[Rod Pyle]

So that you've landed on Mars five times by my count. Right.

[Rob Manning]

Not me personally, I have never been there. But yes, I do, I do. I'm joking. Yeah, I've been there virtually with my robotic friends and it is a real pain. But that's what sort of discovery like oh crikey, it's going to be really hard to land on Mars in the future. And so it really kind of changed and it really changed modality from a lot of different perspective because it looked like with much less atmosphere, there's less likely that to have a more dynamic place. Where would the water be? How could you have had water if there's no atmosphere there? There's only 1% the density of Earth. You know, maybe Mars was never wet. And it wasn't until we got later images From First Mariner 9, then Viking orbiters that that we realized that Mars has had been altered by vast amounts of water flowing on its surface, which kind of changed this dynamic even more. Again, flip flop, you know, and so we're. But that was years later, half a decade. No, a decade later. So it was, but it was, I think those are the two biggies that we learned. I mean, and of course from a technology perspective, it was, it was modeled a lot after Mariner 2 in terms of the technologies for guiding your vehicles. One of the challenges for, for your getting your spacecraft cross is knowing where your spacecraft is.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah.

[Rob Manning]

There are actually two issues. Knowing where the planet is and knowing where the spacecraft is.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah.

[Rob Manning]

So how do you figure out where your space, your planet is? We take pictures of Earth, right. With a camera mount, you know, and a telescope on polymer. You center it in your screen. So what, what direction is that absolute as L elevation at that point, at that long latitude Longitude and that date. What is that? Well, it's, it's roughly that. It's kind of fuzzy. How is the gimbal? Did the gimbal set calibrated properly? Well, normally we don't actually try to get the accuracy from that thing. We just look at relative to other stars. Cranky. I mean, so it was like. It's so it's really. There's a fuzziness in your understanding of the direction to Mars and even larger fuzziness in terms of a ruler, in terms how far Mars is away from you. You have to use. Rely on models such as Professor Kepler, who, who. Johannes Kepler, who, Who gave us the equations for orbital dynamics, orbital space as shapes. And we could use those to help estimate where things are. But it's going to be off by many, many kilometers. Many, many, many kilometers. And so, so they had to aim a good distance away for those are two reasons. Out of focus. The focus were not that great. One is it was actually taken from a good distance away. They didn't want to get too close to the darn planet and bump into it. So they, they kind of erred to be on one side of Mars and they. The trouble with that is how do you know where to point the camera and when to point the camera, when to go click? That's also a real challenge because you, because it's not just because if you, because you're moving by so quickly. If you go click, click, click with it. And you've got Cassegradian telescope that. We put this in front of this Vidicon television, by the way we use word television. They called it television in those days. It's a television image, not a television motion picture. It doesn't move. So just a click. We're done. Put in the tape, you know, put in the tape recorders. You're recording it. So, so they're so there. It's. It's really challenging to get, to get your vehicle to do all those things to do the, to do the motions. Click, click, click. And the telescope is. You're far away. If you were on the vehicle looking at Mars that was going by, it's not that this planet going whoa, way past you. It's more like this, this, this dot going, this, this quarter going by in front of you. And you're trying to like, click, click, click, click. Maybe it's a little bigger than a quarter, but it's not very big. It's pretty small. It's pretty small in front of you. So it's, it was a tough challenge. And those kinds of things were really pushing the envelope of getting the measurements right and doing the right metrology, measuring angles of the vehicle, knowing where things are. The one good thing is as they approached Mars, they did something like they started doing some Venus, too. And you get a better understanding where Venus was relative to your vehicle by you taking pictures of the vehicle. And you take the pictures in a direction that you think, because that copus is up there, the sun's over there. Okay, I'm going to take this picture in this direction. Click where is Mars in the. In the frame, the picture I took. And from that, you can figure out if you know how the camera is pointed on the vehicle very precisely. You can count the number of pixels where you put it, where the center of Mars showed up. You can sort of estimate, in fact, you can estimate even less than a pixel because it's a blur. You can estimate, we call something called point spread function to see how the blur is kind of spread out. You can estimate where the center of that blur is, even inside of a pixel to try to make a better job of doing angles. So people whose job it is to do this incredible checking and double checking of all these very tiny double measurements.

[Tarek Malik]

That's a lot of math. That's a lot of math.

[Rod Pyle]

Is your head hurting, like, fine yet? So just, just to clarify, Tarek, and then I'll let you get back to your. Your question. This is not a real time. Oh, we got a picture back. We're pointing in the right direction or we're not listening to the adjustment. This is a. You have to have all this figured out before the flyby or you're going to be taking pictures of empty space instead of target.

[Rob Manning]

Well, that's right. And that's kind of. Yeah, it's easy to do. I mean, in the case of Manor, one of our marriagers Ranger spacecraft, we're supposed to take pictures on the way to moon. It took all its pictures before it got to the moon. Oh, no, inside the fairing on the way up to outer space. Oh, I got pictures of the moon.

[Rod Pyle]

These are problems that the Soviet Union had where they'd reprogram their spacecraft and then they couldn't reprogram them.

[Rob Manning]

Yes.

[Rod Pyle]

When Mariner mine arrived and there was a dust storm on Mars and the Russians, you know, blew their wad shooting pictures of dust.

[Rob Manning]

Dust. Yeah. No, that's true. And thing is, people might say, well, that's silly. Why wouldn't they program? Well, it turns out Kepler's laws say you should be there in Roughly the right spot so you can program, you know when things are going to happen. Nice thing about Kepler's laws and position in orbit, you can predict where things are going to be with some pretty remarkable precision in the future if you, if you know what the thrusters are doing and you don't and there's no one pushing your spacecraft around. So that's what the Russians were counting on. And there's a lot of complexity by having it pre programmable. And in those days because it didn't have. We didn't have very complicated computers. All the computers we put on our spacecraft in those days were very simple things. They couldn't even do computing. They couldn't do arithmetic. So simple. All handmade bespoke specifically for the mission. And so it was again everything's wired by hand, designed by hand by individuals. Then we had huge amounts of technicians at JPL doing so we had more technicians doing things like wiring and checking solder joints and making sure all the wires went to the right spot and all hand assembled. Even the circuit boards were hand laid out. They didn't have computers to do that either. So is in many cases we didn't have circuit boards. We just had wires. Wires would come out to a little stub and they would take a little soldering, solder a wire from here to here and then glue it down and glue it down the back of the board. So it's just a bundle of wires down there that any one of which could break. So that's one of the things we started doing is putting a little bit of redundancy. There wasn't a lot of redundancy on Mariner 4, but there were some. But it was easy to break.

[Tarek Malik]

That's great. And I guess really quickly I would probably want to run down there was like a magnetometer to study the magnetic field.

[Rob Manning]

Oh yes.

[Tarek Malik]

Oh yeah. A dust detector for the dust environment radiation detector. Right. And a solar plasma probe. So a lot of. A lot of different things.

[Rob Manning]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

They got for the first.

[Rob Manning]

Yeah. And discovery that there's not much of a magnetic field on Mars is a pretty big deal.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Rob Manning]

That tells a lot. And by the way what's so cool is that we're JPL and was really. Because Ranger was going on at the same time as the Mariner program. JPL was the people were just learning this on the fly. And we had at the time the. The leader for Mariner 4 was a fellow by name of John Cassani who a couple weeks ago passed away sadly at the age of 90, 92, 93, something like that. Legend still working? Yeah, he was still working, yes. I was working with him as recently as last summer. And he started In I think 56, I think 19. 1956, as a young engineer. And he was, he was the manager for the, for Mariner four. And to make that happen, to make those decisions. So he's the one that struggled to get this camera put on and to, he was, he agreed, he's the one that had to agree that we're going to put that on there. But, but he became a, a fan of cameras ever since he's been. And, and he huge influence on all of us in terms of being among the inventor, how you do this stuff, how do you build these things? How do you test them? How do you, you can't. Can you test your spacecraft on Earth? Can you test it by being able to turn around? They actually tried testing those things, testing our thrusters to see whether it would work and get enough in our big thermal vacuum chamber. That didn't work out. So they just realized that some things you just can't test, you just have to do the best you can and build it up. And so it was a lot of things like that, how much margin you put in your design, what the temperature ranges. Things need to be checked out to make sure they work because some parts of the vehicle are really hot, other parts are really cold. It's, it's just, it was just a really, it was, it was a free for all really to figure this out and the kinds of things you need to do that they were just basically inventing at the time and that we've all benefited from those experiences that those people had. And John was the leader, technical leader for those. And he's, he was a big inspiration because he's, he was project manager for Galileo, for Cassini, for many other missions, and an advisor to me. And he, he, you know, spirit and opportunity would have ever happened if it wasn't for John, it turned out. I'll tell that story some other day.

[Rod Pyle]

And I mean, you know him a thousand times better than I do. But I had the chance to interview him for quite a number of hours. And one of the things that always struck me is he wasn't shy about expressing himself really, and he wasn't shy about speaking truth to power. And when I was in your archives going through, going through various memos back and forth from the, the Mariner and the Viking era for this Mars book I was doing, I asked for a bunch of boxes of John Casani memos. And so they rolled them out and they all had like red tape along the side. And I said, but what's that for? She said oh, these are restricted. I said why? She said oh, you'll see. So I had my white gloves on, I opened them up and he used some very compelling language to get NASA to come in line to support what you guys were doing. I mean he was a real fighter for the lab and he, oh yeah, he wasn't afraid to put his, apparently from what I saw again, you know him better, didn't seem to be afraid to jeopardize his career standing to say look, this is what we have to do to make this work and if you don't, it's going to fall apart. So get with it. And I think sometimes, you know, as Tarek and I, and I'm sure you kind of watch the machinations going on in Washington and at headquarters. You know, I kind of, I hope there's somebody there doing that now because I think.

[Rob Manning]

Right. I don't know, we definitely needed people like that to speak, speak truth to power and to do it with unabashedly and you know, totally fearlessly. And that was John all the way. He was, I, I don't know, he, his either self confident or I don't know what he was, but he was, he was definitely one of these people that, you know, this is my opinion, get over it. I mean I'm looking who he put this, this golden record. It was him that, that he worked with Carl Sagan. Carl Sagan and his, and his, and his wife to what's her name? I mean a middle blank.

[Tarek Malik]

And.

[Rob Manning]

Yeah, and who did, who actually muscle a lot of this stuff into reality was her, her energy behind it. But she, John let that happen. And he does not just let it happen. He was encouraging it. He encourages to go ahead and put cameras like on our, on our, on our vehicle on perseverance making those movies about edl. You know, he was, he was a huge supporter of the Mars helicopter, you know, and just trying to get, you know, pushing the state of the art, becoming innovative, don't, you know, taking, taking risks at the right time in the right place. He wasn't, he was not afraid. And that really, and that I think really inspired me and many other people at JPL to, to, to realize that, you know, this is a very scary business. I mean it's nerve wracking. It's nerve wracking to be on national television responsible for billions of dollars of taxpayers money and Trying to land another planet. You got to imagine it's very stressful when everyone's looking at you and expect, you know, expecting the worst. And it, you know, but you got to be. There's a part of you just has to be like, que sera, sera. You know, I'm going to do the best I can. It's not good enough. Not good enough.

[Rod Pyle]

Which mission was it where you had the NASA administrator, and I think it was the Vice President of the United States standing in the control room. Right. While you're trying to get this thing on the ground?

[Rob Manning]

Yeah, it was spir. And spirit. It was spirit. Yeah, Spirit and opportunity. We had. We did have. We did have the national Administrator, Dan golden, in the room for. For Pathfinder Landing, though I think he was hiding with Tony Spear, the Project manager, in the back room, in total fear. No, he wasn't. But they were like. They were like. They were, you know, very nervous, and rightly so. I mean, they're. They're out of control. It's not their control, but, but, but it's. You have to. Again, you have to be a little. You have to be a little bit.

[Rod Pyle]

Nerves of steel.

[Rob Manning]

No, no, it's not. You have to be properly paranoid as, as. As. As Gentry Lee likes to say, properly paranoid and being. Being afraid at the right level and being. Being wise about that. But once you've made your decision and you've tested and you've done the best you can, keep pushing. Make sure you're at the top of the mountain, because that's the hard part is knowing when you're done, because you don't often know when you're done. You don't know if there's something more out there that you didn't find. And when we're seeing that with some of these missions that are not working, that. That don't land well on the moon, for example. These are people who've never done it before who are struggling, and they're. They're just realized they don't know how to get to the top of the mountain. They've never been up there. They don't know that this little valley that they're on is actually not the top. There's more ahead.

[Rod Pyle]

So, yeah, there seems to be a. And I don't want to get off on another tangent because we're running out of time, but there does seem to be, in the private sector, a little hint of how hard can it be? You know, we'll show those NASA guys it's easy, it's cheap. Oh, wait, no, it's not. Oh, I guess they knew something after all. Am I manufacturing this or is there.

[Rob Manning]

Well, I, I think I, I think it's, it's a little, it's a little that. But I think it's mostly, you know, hope. It can be a great strategy, you know, it's a great motivator and you know, especially since I've been guilty of that, you know, you know, Mars Pathfinder we did on a fraction of the, just a tiny fraction of the cost of the Viking landers. We did this 20 years later with the purpose to do a fixed price, low budget mission about the cost of a major motion picture in a fixed price environment and to land on Mars and deliver a little rover and drive around and do a little bit of science and just prove the world that we can actually do there, go there again after a 20 year hiatus and. But to do that we needed. Sorry, my note signs. To do that we needed to have our. We need to be able to. I'm sorry, I mean my sound's not working very well. But we need to be able to be a little arrogant and a little bit stupid. And that really does help to a certain extent. And you could be the nice thing about it. You can also be innovative. You can try out things that no one else would dare to do do because you don't know that you're being daring in the first place. And so that's the kind of, that's the kind of environment that we grew up with and Pathfinder. But over time it's harder to make that happen because of the cost and complexity and the visibility that people are looking over your shoulder and saying, questioning your every move. Rightly so, because we're talking a lot of money and it's not our money, it's your money. And I.

[Rod Pyle]

That's true. But as I recall from speaking to you years ago during another book project, the lack of, not oversight, the lack of scrutiny from the big masters on Pathfinder may have helped keep it inexpensive and rolling along.

[Rob Manning]

It did it, did we basically because we didn't have any. I mean the first major review of the details of interdescent landing was done five days before we landed. These guys are like looking, they're like white as sheets and it's like expecting it to fail.

[Rod Pyle]

By the way, did you tell us this before?

[Rob Manning]

Yeah, I know, it's like. Yeah. So I went through all the, explained all the details of interest in landing and all the testing we did and, and they looked at me like, so you think this is going to work. They thought maybe it was just. No. I said, well, I, I can't say for sure, but we did, we did everything we thought we could do and we finished, finished on schedule. We finished your testing.

[Rod Pyle]

You were in your mid-40s then that would have been like 96.

[Rob Manning]

Yeah. Yes, I got. Got around 40.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, that's. Yeah, that's gutsy. So my last question for you is, you are Rob Manning, chief engineer emeritus. What. What does the chief engineer emeritus do in his next act?

[Rob Manning]

My next stack is just to help out as next next generation as much as I can. And so to try to get the next group of people to feel confident, brave, to learn from the past, understand our patterns, but don't, don't fall prey to heritage or history. Be innovative, but do try to do your best to understand why we are the way we are, what happened and how things work. Figure it all out, then go out and go off road, do what you need to do to make it work.

[Rod Pyle]

Wow, that's cool. That's a cool statement, Tarek, you got anything else?

[Tarek Malik]

No, I mean, that's great. That's great. Dare mighty things, right? Got us to Mars over and over. Let's go back again, right?

[Rod Pyle]

I've heard that phrase a few times. All right, well, I want to thank everybody, especially Rob Manning, for joining us today for episode number 169 that we like to call the Day Mars Died. Sorry, that's a little bit of a downer, but it's got drama to it. Other than the various pages on the web for JPL and NASA at large, where can we keep track of what you're up to?

[Rob Manning]

Rob, I would stick with the JPL pages.

[Rod Pyle]

I think there's still. Your original Mars Pathfinder site is still up with you with the dark beard like I had in the days and all that. Yeah, it's cool because it's optimized for Netscape, Tarek.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, you can find me on space.com as always on the Twitter or X pardon me and blueskyarekjmellenko and if you like video games. And I can hear Rod's eyes rolling out the back of his head, you can find me on YouTube @spacetronplays. I got a great video there about crypto and space dogs. Like real life space dogs and crypto came first. I was very surprised.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay, okay, okay, got it. And I didn't get to finish my lead into. I was going to say, Tarek, where can we see you? Grabbing my suborbital flights online. Yeah, you missed that part.

[Tarek Malik]

Oh, shout out to Stephen, by the way, who followed us on the podcast and then followed me on the YouTube. It's great. Thank you, Stephen.

[Rod Pyle]

One fan at a time. Rob, we're still getting requests for questions to ask you. We're going to have to roll them over to next time, but clearly you are a beloved storyteller. And of course you can find me at pilebooks.com [e-mail] my two increasingly aged website. However, we just did get a shot of money to revamp the Ad Aster magazine site, so stay tuned. Remember, you could drop us a line at TwistWit TV. That's TwisWit TV. We welcome your comments, suggestions and ideas and one of us will answer them, probably me, within a day of receiving them. New episodes of this podcast publish every Friday on your favorite pod catcher. So make sure to subscribe, tell your friends, give us reviews and all that kind of stuff because we love you and you need us to leave us. And don't forget, love us. And don't forget, we're counting on you to join Club Twit in 2025. It's only $10 a month. What else can you get for $10 a month that is as much fun as this was today. Helps keep us on the air and bringing you all this great goodness. $10 a month. Sign up now. Rob, thank you very much.

[Rob Manning]

You're welcome.

[Rod Pyle]

It's my pleasure.

[Rob Manning]

Thank you so much for inviting me. Anytime, you guys.

[Rod Pyle]

And behind the scenes, John Ashley doing a fine job between yawns and love. Peace. And Bobby Sherman to everybody. We'll see you next time.

[Narrator]

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