Thread by @People_Of_Space

So ... more Mars everyone? Well you came to the right place.... @search_mars @howellspace @Thievesbook @NovelAudio

#Mars #CountdowntoMars #Perseverance

And I am going to tweet about some of the people we have spoken to - it's their day, not ours..... although.......

@search_mars @howellspace @Thievesbook @NovelAudio For those of you waking up in the U.S., what a day it will be.

Yours truly appeared on a podcast with the always excellent @LibbyJackson__ and @AlexMartin

https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1362382607921672200?s=20

I have also done a piece about the work that scientists in Manchester have been doing on Martian - and other! - meteorites

https://twitter.com/ManchesterMill/status/1362335300203208705?s=20

especially "Black Beauty" -- one of the more unusual in of the pieces of Mars which have fetched up here

As journalists, @howellspace and I have been very lucky to have had access to a lot of people over the years. Call it “write privilege”, if you like. I kept all my notes from when I was a reporter (in the eighties and nineties) so have the historical record, too

Another point to make is that we scribes and storytellers are not the story. Today is not about the writers, wannabees and social media mavens. It is the day for the people who have sent the machines to be in the spotlight

Here I include Adam Steltzner, the original rock star rocket scientist, graduate cum laude of the seven minutes of terror. We asked him did he think there is going to be life on Mars? Likely so, he said. “Whether it still exists or not, I have a hard time knowing.”

People called Bruce, too – Banerdt, who was was a grad student when Viking landed, as was Bruce Jakosky; both are now the project scientists for InSight and MAVEN respectively, which are looking at the Red Planet from the inside outwards up to how it interacts with the sun

I once asked a JPL manager what a “project scientist” does: “They sit in a room and listen to people bitching and then try to keep everyone happy.” For that, they are usually imbued with the wisdom of Solomon

We also talked to Abigail Fraeman, who was seventeen when her father brought her a telescope: the rest, they say, is history. She gets to drive remotely on Mars with the Curiosity rover

And in the weeks you'll be hearing a lot more from Briony Horgan, professor at Purdue, who will have a nail-biting day today - but knows all about the curious chemistry of Jezero crater where #Perseverance will land

We also have talked to people here in the U.K. and do say hello to @fegbutcher @ZachDickeson and @SeismoAnna who are also the toppermost of the poppermost of the more recent researchers on Mars

And mention must be made of the extraordinary Jessica Watkins, former rover driver and now astronaut likely to be sent to the Moon. And, probably the first human to walk on Mars!

Alas, Jessica was deep in purdah for training so we weren’t able to talk to her: but the ever superb @alexwitze has and here we go. A very fine profile. nature.com/articles/d4158…

And as we say in the book, somebody reading this may eventually make the journey there. Keep us posted, eh?

So – what can be said about Perseverance that hasn’t filled the airwaves today, the pages and, of course, our very own book*

* available at all good bookstores

Firstly, it is not a re-run of Curiosity – where that earlier mission has looked at "bulk samples", this one is more about zooming in on interesting features and zeroing in on them with microscopic precision

Secondly, the moment it lands, the clock is running to return samples to Earth – as Adam Steltzner told us “It will [need] three missions to get the job done”

Thirdly, it is the first time that JPL will be addressing the question of life on Mars head on – for the first time since the Viking missions in 1976

Yet it is still a leap into the unknown. The flight teams know they have their work cut out for them – and we can watch it all unfold on social media

So whatever happens later today, we are all watchers, listeners and participants - it is the same for us, as it is for the EDL team at JPL or the NASA Administrator

And for what it all means, it's ultimately poetry - take it away T.S. Eliot

"We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time."

Godspeed, JPLers!

And later, some rather more prosaic thoughts on how day's like today are reported - where I can honestly say, like those in mission control, I stood on the shoulders of giants