Roving Mars : Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet

by Steve Squyres

The author shares a real-life adventure story that began with but a dream. Now we know what its is like to roam across the planes of Mars.

Genres: Space, Science, Nonfiction, Astronomy, Engineering, History, Technology

422 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Rod Pyle]

How it's done from the guy who did it. A fun read.

[Ralph McEwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The tale was told very well. Even though I knew the successful ending I felt the anxiety of the people designing the projects and seeing them through to the discoveries at Mars. Well worth the read.

[Jerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Welcome to Meridiani. I hope you enjoy your stay.”

I have always had a soft spot for exploration biographies, whether it’s Mongolia, Unknown Land or A Vagabond Journey Around the World. That’s how Steve Squyres sees the Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity: his stand-ins for walking Mars as geologists ought to walk unknown lands.

And this book is definitely about the mission, not about the personal problems in the team members’ lives. Front-and-center are the engineering problems and the political problems they had to overcome to get roving equipment on Mars during the period when Mars and Earth were in the right positions; had they failed to get a 2003 launch, the next reasonable launch opportunity would only be coming around in another couple of years.

I found a couple of hooks of my own to hang on his journey as well. When they’re in Pasadena, they stay at the Saga Motel, for the same reason I used to: it is (or was) cheap, reasonably clean, and close to food, the Huntington, and, in their case, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

And during the planning, one of their technology providers was based in New York City very close to the World Trade Center. After September 11, they decided to send part of the World Trade Center to Mars. Since there was no free space nor free weight on the rover, this meant incorporating the parts into the design. So the twisted aluminum plate from Ground Zero became cable shielding, and the place that did the work was “the machine shop in Round Rock, Texas, outside of Austin” where they built many of the parts for the rover’s Rock Abrasion Tool.

Some of the interesting tidbits include that the floors at JPL for controlling each rover were nearly identical. And the engineers and scientists were often very tired, because they were working on Martian Time which had the effect of jet lag. So they color-coded the floors to make it as obvious as possible if you were on the wrong floor.

Squyres is very excited about the opportunity to rove Mars, even remotely, and he conveys that excitement very well in his writing. The book covers the period from his first getting the idea of roving Mars, through the first year of roving. It is extremely emotional and he gets the emotion across well, too.

Everything ends up being tradeoffs. Exploring one feature means not exploring another; taking time here means less time to get there. You can get there faster, but that means spending less time “doing science” along the way. A heater gets stuck on—this means less power for everything else. You can shut down functions to conserve energy, but this means one of the instruments might get damaged from the cold.

Throughout is the tension about their mission: has there been water on Mars? What is the evidence? What are the alternative explanations for the evidence?

“I will attempt no science analysis, because this looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before in my life.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book hoping for a long form version of an absolutely fantastic lecture that I saw Steve Squyres give in 2019. He is a really engaging speaker and has a vast collection of interesting stories about the challenges of operating a rover and doing science on another planet.

Unfortunately the book was a slog. It still gets 3 stars because interesting insight that you can't get anywhere else, though.

The book goes in rigid chronological order. This can be really tedious sometimes- for example a big chunk of the beginning of the book is about proposal writing and academic competition. This is decidedly not a thrilling topic. The chronological strategy works better later as you get to experience the step by step worry about failure and excitement of discovery, almost like a diary. Then at the end the book just .... stops. The rovers are still operational when suddenly the book comes to an end.

Occasionally the tone gets a little tiresome as the author goes a little over the top in an effort to make characters engaging for casual readers.

Anyhow, this worked much better as a one hour lecture with visual aids and animations and a "greatest hits" tour of the scientific and engineering challenges, but if you really want to know what goes into designing, building, and operating a planetary rover, this is the book for you. An enormous amount of work is needed to launch a robot on a rocket, open a parachute at supersonic speeds, bounce on airbags for a kilometer, then spend years driving around and measuring the composition of rocks, all with a 26 minute round trip delay on remote control instructions. Twice. At a time when the track record for planetary rovers was dicey at best. It's legendary, and I'm glad a record exists of how it came to be.

Maybe a physical copy of the book would have more pictures? The kindle version did not, so you had to use your imagination to follow the verbal description of various geological features as well as robotics designs.

[Kee Onn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very detailed memoir of the Mars Exploration Rover missions. It starts from conception and proposal, facing numerous failures and setbacks in funding, meticulously chronicled by the author and giving the readers a front-row seat on the decision-making process at NASA and JPL. When the project is greenlit, hardware shenanigans are abound and the team are in a constant race against the deadline to finish the two rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Eventually, the rovers finally made it to launch, landed successfully and reaped new knowledge about Martian geology, with Opportunity making history as the longest-living robotic rover on Mars. Written in accuracy but not trapped in technicality, this book also effuses an unbridled passion of the team in succeeding in their mission and ushering in a new era of Mars exploration.

[Cade · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was better than I expected. I read and thoroughly enjoyed Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account from Curiosity's Chief Engineer, but I expected to like this book less as it is written from the scientist's perspective rather than the engineer's. In reality, Steve Squyres comes across as more personally invested in the success of these rovers than Rob Manning was in Curiosity. This lends the text a certain impassioned urgency that makes it surprisingly compelling and readable. As it describes the various times the project seemed in jeopardy from technical challenges, assembling and testing delays, and even NASA bureaucratic whims, it felt suspenseful even though the final outcome is obviously well known.

Despite the fact that it is the scientist's perspective, this book spends a considerable amount of time on the development and building of the MER rovers. While it didn't explore the engineering problem-solving process as thoroughly as Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account from Curiosity's Chief Engineer, there was still a significant amount of material on several specific engineering challenges faced and the solutions they developed for them.

At the other end of the mission, Manning's book about Curiosity includes only brief info about the activities during the actual science mission. This book however includes first-person, diary-style, day-by-day accounts of the first few months of science operations on both rovers. This was a privileged perspective of an aspect of the mission that I hadn't previously read much about, and I appreciated it more than I expected to. I would love to see the author write another chapter summarizing (in much less detail) the life of these rovers from where this book drops off to the final days of Opportunity's operation (which may or may not already have occurred as of this writing).

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roving Mars was really great.

Though I assumed it would have been more about the day to day operations on the Red Planet's surface, the book seemed to focus more on the events leading up to the actual experiments. In particular, the author does a great job conveying the magnitude of psychological torture and administrative whimsy associated with trying to get the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity to their destination.

In fact, a large portion of the first part of the book is about all the failed proposals (and even spacecraft) that led up to the MER mission. Each is presented in extremely sharp contrast to the seemingly small victories along the way, which make things very emotional even for the reader.

In full disclosure, my eyes got a little moist during the part where they get the signal from Spirit that it had survived touchdown. If I were Squyres in mission control that day, I think my heart would have exploded.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty in there about all the stuff that can (and does) break when you're operating a multimillion dollar, space-hardened, rolling science lab from a few hundred million miles away. With the level of complexity the mission team has to deal with, it truly is amazing that they can get anything accomplished at all.

What was funny about the book was how it ended just after the primary mission objectives were satisfied only about 90 sols (Martian days) after landing and how tenuous those days had been.

Meanwhile, Spirit operated an additional 2100 sols until it's last communication in March of 2010. Even more amazing is that Opportunity continues to send back good science almost 2600 sols (7 earth years) over its 90 sol warranty!

Overall, Roving Mars is a great story of using explosives to put big remote controlled cars on another planet. How could that not be awesome?

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Squyres's style makes the reader care about tiny calibration issues, etc, and see their importance to the MER mission. He leads us from conception through some successful points in the rovers' exploration of Mars and grips us the whole way. There were times where I got very anxious, even though I knew that both Spirit and Opportunity successfully landed and operated for far longer than expected. If you're at all interested in space, "space stuff," or wonder about the program, I really recommend.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting read, although it seemed more like a snippet of an autobiography of the author than the story of the Mars Rovers. I enjoyed the book much more once the Rovers were actually being built, and thought it was the best when it was describing the Rovers on Mars.

Squyres is also excellent at describing complicated problems so that they are easily understandable. If you are interested in Mars or the Rovers, I would definitely recommend this book.

[Clay Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed the telling of the human stories involved in the rover missions.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to hurry and read what I could in this book because I delayed starting it, and now it's due and on hold for someone else to enjoy. I was able to skim though much of it, and then read the last 90 to100 pages or so.

I enjoyed the journal-style entries Squyers includes as he details the day to day life of working with the rovers, both on Mars time and on Earth time. I liked reading and feeling his personal connection with this project. I also appreciated that the writing wasn't overly scientific, that it was easy to understand for people like me with a limited knowledge of engineering and geology.

The addition of pictures with captions helped add context to the book, as well as gave insight into some of the humor of the people working with the rovers.

I do wish the book followed the rovers longer, but I suppose you can't hold out on a book like this indefinitely. The end was a bit abrupt, at least to me, but there was that hopefulness of a story to be continued (Thank goodness for the internet!).

This is a book I plan to return to again later, to read more fully.

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an amazing story of the Mars Rovers: Spirit and Opportunity from the beginning of one man's dream, through concept, development, construction, liftoff, landing and operation through the first year or so on Mars. At the end of the book, the author speaks about how the rovers will eventually die in months. Little did he know that Spirit would operate for over 6 years and Opportunity would be active for over 14 years until it was finally silenced by a huge Martian sandstorm. The author was the Principal Investigator for the rover projects. His book was very well written and kept my attention. It was kind of a suspense thriller. Despite know that the project was ultimately a success, reading the book, I always had the sense that something was going to go wrong and derail it. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in space exploration.

[Robert Ham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent day to day, nuts and bolts story of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, by the guy who ran the mission. I swear the first 100 pages and ten years are one failure after another, and the part leading up to launch is one problem after another, and you'll wonder how anything EVER gets done in the space program. Once they get to Mars everything is in slow motion, and the book ends abruptly the first year--the real success of those rovers, which were designed to last ninety days, was yet to come. Opportunity lasted FIFTEEN YEARS. I knew all this when I started reading, but it in no way dampens the suspense and excitement of the read. Highly recommended for those interested in the Space Program.

[Jesse Dickerson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book! Steven Squyres does an awesome job of narrating his teams journey of developing a rover and proposing a rover mission to Mars. He does a great job of keeping the reader excited even as he talks about geology (which is not a subject I'm extremely interested in) he portrays the excitement of launching to Mars and landing on the red planet. This book also reminds me of a really good book I read in 2019 called Lunar Lander by Thomas J. Kelly in which he describes the arduous journey of placing a man on the moon. It's extremely interesting to see the differences (and similarities) between how NASA and jpl operated back then and how they operated in the 2000's, both books are definitely good reads for anyone interested in engineering and astronomy.

[Mike Medeiros · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great personal reflection on one of NASA's most successful and technologically complicated non-human missions (you could argue that for their time Voyager 1 and 2 are at least equal). Steve keeps the details of the strive to win the contract, the build, testing, launch and actions of the rovers (with JPL of course)in accessible writing. But remember we are dealing with highly technical, scientific and specialized fields so there is inherently a great deal of jargon and acronyms. Still worth the read for anyone interested in the exploration of space or just what humans are still capable of accomplishing when we are willing to dedicate the money and resources.

[Jacob Watters · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book immensely from the start up until shortly after the first River successfully lands on Mars. The narrative was engaging, but once the author switched to his daily log notes/narratives I found the reading boring and verbose. He should have reread such notes and summarized them as opposed to pulling directly from his journal entries. So the first 2/3rds were great! And after several days of trying to read the remaining third, I just called it quits. But the science and events through to the first landing I found deeply engaging.

[Silvano Paternoster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice behind the scene story of a mission to Mars. The main scientist behind this amazing achievement walks you through his view of the two twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. A bit technical, but it flows well. Maybe sometimes it really gets boring, but to me, given that I like the subject, this book is worth 5 stars

[Les Hopper · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What I really want, more than anything else, is boot prints in our wheel tracks at Eagle Crater."

So ends a wonderful book about Areology (Martian geology) and a fascinating first hand account of the conception, deployment and initial discoveries of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.

Extremely readable, with a great balance of detail and pace. Recommended for any fellow Mars fanatics!

[Tanwen Cooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nicely written with some cool insights, but get bogged down in technical details in places, particularly when things went wrong.

[Glynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this a while back and I only remember it was pretty boring. A lot of descriptions about proposals and administrative stuff and not a lot else.

[Emma]

Loved the NASA drama, feel like I have had this guy for a professor at one point, feeling like he has a champ of a spouse to do all of this, I <3 planetary geology !!!

[Ushan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Steve Squyres is the principal investigator (chief scientist-engineer) of the Mars Exploration Rover mission, which sent two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, to look for evidence of water on Mars. There were two rovers because the two previous NASA missions to Mars (Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander) had failed, so it was logical to have redundancy in the next mission. Because sending payload to Mars is so expensive, building the rovers and the landers was engineering drama of high order. There is a famous essay by Joel Spolsky that argues that all software abstractions are leaky; here the abstractions leaked to software from hardware, and to hardware from its chemical constituents! In order to make a last-minute change to a rover already packed inside its lander, the lander's petals had to be opened; for this to happen, cables needed to be cut like they would be after the landing, with an explosive charge. The explosive contained the metal zirconium; metallic residue deposited by the explosion caused a short circuit, which blew a fuse. The rover engineers had to go through all the rover and lander components, and figure out whether the momentary high current could have damaged any of them; fortunately, it couldn't. When the rovers were deemed too big, one camera was cut from the list of instruments; the port for it remained. It was later realized that strong wind during the landing could drag the airbags across rough ground, puncturing them. A solution was to put another camera on the bottom of the lander, detecting which way the wind was blowing and compensating for it with rockets, utilizing the spare camera port. There were more malfunctions on the ground, in flight and on Mars, but ingenious engineers and operators solved them all, sometimes with the help of two test rovers that remained on Earth.

The two rovers were built to last for 90 Martian days (24 hours and 40 minutes). Spirit lasted for 6 years before getting stuck in Martian sand long after the book was written, and Opportunity is still going strong 10 years after it landed. They chemically analyzed many soils and rocks in two regions of Mars far from each other, and found much indirect evidence that Mars once had liquid water.

[Traummachine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a bit of an astronomy geek. I don't own a telescope, and I somehow missed the fact that there was just an eclipse(!), so...okay, maybe not that big a geek. Still, my favorite part of my last Hawaii visit, hands down, was seeing the Milky Way take up the entire sky up on Mauna Kea. Amazing stuff.

So when the Mars Rover was big news, I kept an interested eye on it. Not as fascinating to me as Hubble pictures, but still great stuff. But what little I knew was blown away by this book. Steve Squyres may have a funkily-spelled name, but he was the head scientist for the Rover mission. He takes you through everything, from how they initially got the idea for it, how one goes about pitching an idea to NASA (which is very different from what I expected), the heartache and joys of the journey to the launchpad, the pressure and time-crunches they had to face, the drama of in-flight problems that came up, what they were thinking and shooting for in their on-planet missions, etc., etc.

Squyres is a pretty good writer to boot, so if any of this sounds good to you, I can't recommend this book enough. Great stuff.

[Erik Fjeldsted · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I could have given this book 4.5 stars. The only reason I dropped it down from 5 stars was because I wish there had been more scientific detail of what they found, maybe some charts or tables comparing what they found vs common soils on earth or vs what they were expecting. I think soil/geology is kind of cool which puts me in more of a minority category I think.

I like that he didn't start the book with when he and his team got accepted to build a rover for nasa but instead started at the very beginning. This showed how bad he wanted this to happen and how hard it was as well.

I think with all of the sci-fi movies these days it can be easy to lose grip with reality and how much work goes into sending a river to our nearest planet. The bureaucracy, the engineering, the science, the communication required to get a project like this off the ground is really amazing.

These are the men and women laying down the basic infrastructure; and acquiring the fundamental knowledge needed to make us a multi planetary species.

[Roger Burk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unless I miss my guess, this was written during the first superior conjunction of the mission, when there were ten days out of contact with the rovers and there was some time to rush out a book on the astoundingly successful project. At the time they had already lasted five months, far longer than expected. (Spirit lasted another six years, and Opportunity is still operating as of February 2011.) The book is mostly a simple narration of events, large parts of it evidently taken from the author's journal. It has very little analysis or reflection. However, it does give a fascinating look into the world of the brilliant, hardworking, ambitious, and very competitive people who aspire to be principle investigators on NASA missions, and the perils-of-Pauline life of a spacecraft in systems test and flight prep, where one bizarre anomaly after another threatens cancellation of the mission.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book.

Even knowing how the story turns out you are on the edge of your seat at launch an especially at landing. You learn just how these missions come about and how teams are formed. The perseverance of the author (Steven Squyres) shows true dedication in staying the course in the attempt to put together a winning package for consideration by NASA. The process is daunting. Then, to design and build these remarkable devices and meet the launch date is again quite a ride.

I’m an Engineer but I think this book is for anyone who enjoys stories of perseverance and especially for those who enjoy science.

[Ismena · Rating 5 out of 5]

So I LOVED THIS BOOK !!!
Basically, it is a personal story from Steve on how his dream was to send a rover to Mars. He had few failed proposals and finally, he got the opportunity to send TWO of them! The second half of the book is like a diary of the first few months of recieving data back and analyzing it. Makes you realize how much hard work it is to study things on a different planet, the sacrifices that these people make, the obstacles and problems they overcome is astonishing.
I was captivated the whole time, it was amazing. I wish there was a sequel cause I wanna know what they have been doing since :)

[E.J. Weaver · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you think the only interesting thing NASA does is send people to space, read this book. If you think robotic missions are "boring," read this book.

While most scientists couldn't tell a compelling narrative if their careers depended on it, Squyres has a natural style that pulls out the important moments, the dramatic elements, and the real-life characters of the story of the Mars Exploration Rovers. He puts the science in easy-to-understand terms without glossing over it. He knows how to tell the story without sacrificing the accuracy of the real history of the project.

This book is a quick read, and I guarantee that it will make the MER rovers unforgettable!

[Christopher May · Rating 5 out of 5]

Squyres does a fantastic job of telling the story of the MER mission with its twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. The book is both scientifically rich and dramatically flowing. I found myself turning page after page eager to learn the story of these rovers, all while knowing that both had (in the case of Spirit) or continue to have (Opportunity) long successful careers far beyond their mission design. Learning about the challenges that the team responsible for these rovers faced made for a highly compelling story. I'd love to read a follow-up someday and learn more about the accomplishments of the rovers and their team.

Highly recommended.

[Crusader · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read about the intricacies and sheer amount of blood, sweat and effort that went into making the MER a reality. You get a sense of how important the rovers really are to the people who created them, devoting large parts of their lives to the project.

I gained a new appreciation for just how big an accomplishment the landing of Curiosity is after reading this. The MER rovers paved the way for Curiosity, like Curiosity will hopefully pave the way for the first humans on Mars.

Definitely worth a read if you are interested in space exploration.