February 4, 2019: My great-grandmother Schneider was reportedly fond of saying that “a birth, a death, and a marriage always happen close together.” After years of planning, all the components on the Mars 2020 rover were now nearing completion, and soon the rover would be “born” and ready to stretch its legs in a clean room on Earth. But in Endeavour Crater on Mars, 5000 km away from Jezero Crater where the Mars 2020 rover would touch down in two years, we had not heard from our old robotic colleague Opportunity since June when a thick dust storm blocked the sun and stole life-giving power from its solar panels. The storm’s retreat left a thick coating of dust that not even the trusty, gusty winds on Mars could remove in time to save the rover. After a 15-year mission that was supposed to last 90 days, it was looking more likely that its service had finally come to an end. But we had a new rover to make ready. And as part of the planning leading to launch in July 2020, the mission operations staff had begun the long process of marrying the science team into a cohesive unit, capable of operating the rover efficiently and with an eye toward capturing as many samples as possible from the red planet for eventual return to the earth.

A birth. A death. A marriage. I wager that Grandma Schneider never thought her bit of old wisdom would ever apply to Mars.

Months of preparations by the Mars 2020 mission operations staff would culminate in today’s first practice “sol” (martian day) as part of an exercise named the Rover Operations Activities for Science Team Training (ROASTT). In this test, a team of scientists and engineers had secreted themselves away to an undisclosed location in the desert southwest, and began taking pictures and other data from a mobile platform that simulated the view provided by a rover. Simultaneously, a team of scientists stationed around the world would meet remotely by telephone and computer video links to simulate nearly two weeks of rover activities, exercising all the software and communication tools needed to remotely operate the spacecraft. Many of us had experience with operating the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover, currently exploring the base on Mt. Sharp in Gale Crater. Some also had experience with the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) missions—Opportunity and its twin Spirit, which had lost its battle to the martian elements back in 2011. Still others began their careers with Mars Pathfinder back in 1997 and its plucky little rover Sojourner. A few stalwart gray-beards went as far back as the Viking missions of the late 1970s.

Others of us had experienced these types of tests in preparation for the MER and MSL missions. In 1999, NASA sponsored a Mars rover simulation in Silver Lake, California with a robotic prototype rover called Marsokhod. In 2001, a similar field experiment was done with a rover called FIDO to practice for what would become the MER rover missions. I had been on both sides of the experiment: Sometimes I was in the field acting like a rover and taking data requested by a remote team hundreds of miles away. Sometimes I sat comfortably in air-conditioned rooms, analyzing data that came in on a daily basis, interpreting what it meant and helping figure out what the “rover” should do the next day. The goal was always to test the abilities of both the on-site and off-site teams to maximize the scientific return from a remotely-operated rover. Like any good field trip, however, the ancillary goal was to get to know your colleagues—your team—and how best to combine sets of expertise while navigating the terrain and the rover.

So what did we know about the area in which the ROASTT would be conducted? We had been shown the location of the “rover” in orbital images and the intended path toward different points of interest in the rugged desert terrain. We had been shown the “downlink” of data from “Sol 99” which revealed a narrow channel with rubble and small cobbles at the rover’s wheels, flanked by jumbled conglomerates of rock and dirt comprising the banks of an apparent channel eroded into the terrain. In the distance, layered and tilted outcrops of rock were known to be the target of a 30-meter long drive that would happen on Sol 100. A portion of the team was dedicated to the “Campaign Implementation” (CI) aspect—figuring out what strategies and priorities should dictate how and where the rover should conduct its business of exploration and discovery. They had formulated a plan for Sol 101, the first real day of the test. I was filling the role of the “Tactical Science Lead” (TSL), tasked with organizing members of the team responsible for crafting a rover activity plan for the sol that met the overall goals handed to us by the CI team.

At 07:07 AM at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where the main mission operations hub was housed, engineers released the contents of the Sol 100 downlink to the team. I had the luxury of living in Maryland where the corresponding 10:07 AM release time was a bit more manageable. From the first look at the images, it was apparent that the drive on Sol 100 had been a success and we were less than 10 m away from “Waypoint 2”, a region identified from orbit that would provide access to the highest position in the area where exposed, layered outcrops of rock were thought to contain clay and carbonate minerals of interest to the science team—and prime targets for sampling!