At Cornell's Space Sciences, cheers and champagne after the Mars landing

By Bill Steele

Elation over the successful landing of the rover Spirit and the early transmission of pictures from the Martian surface stretched across the country -- from the mission manager, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., to the Cornell campus, where so much of the rover science package was developed.

Starting at about 10:30 p.m. EST Saturday, Jan. 3, projectors were set up in the Space Sciences Building displaying NASA-TV images on large screens in three rooms. While several dozen interested members of the public watched in a large room on the first floor, about two dozen astronomy department faculty and students, along with members of the Ithaca press, assembled in room 423 to await the landing.

Sighs and brief applause greeted reports that signals were being received at various stages of descent through the Martian atmosphere. Then came a period of silence when no signals were reported for some 10 minutes after touchdown. When the image on the screen showed JPL mission control officials jumping up and down and cheering, everyone in room 423 took a deep breath, waiting to learn what had happened. It was almost 30 seconds before the announcement was made that a clear signal had been received from the rover. Then the room erupted in cheers. "It's the difference between the speed of light and the speed of sound," someone quipped.

A champagne bottle was quickly popped and plastic glasses passed around; there was no formal toast. People just quietly touched glasses and murmured "cheers" to one another.

Since much of the rover science team was at JPL, the gathering consisted mostly of astronomers involved in other projects. Donald Banfield, a rover science team member, fielded numerous media questions. He and his colleagues observed that the Mars landing was good news for everyone. "It was a real nail biter, not just in the drama of the moment but also in the nation's will to support space exploration," he said. "This was a key step. had this failed and Opportunity failed as well it would have been very bad for Mars science in particular, space science in general and NASA as well."

A graduate student on the processing team announced that he would be up all night waiting for the first images to come in for processing. (The image data is first received by JPL then passed along to Cornell's new Mars image processing facility in Space Sciences to produce calibrated, scientifically useful pictures.) "Just like the old days," someone remarked, "when astronomers always had to work at night."

Banfield and a few others stayed around until about 5 a.m. to see the first results. "For the rover to come down, give us a scare and then immediately send back pictures was pretty amazing," he said.