TROY — When she was a child growing up in Arizona, Laurie Leshin dreamed of being able to see the mountains of Mars. Now the dean of the science school at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Leshin is helping to guide a $2.5 billion NASA rover across the planet's surface.
The one-ton rover, named Curiosity, landed on Mars in early August and since then Leshin has logged some long days shuttling between RPI and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
Sitting in her RPI office, which is adorned with artwork from her previous stint as a NASA executive involved with planning Curiosity, Leshin marveled at images taken by the rover that confirm earlier findings that Mars once had flowing water. The pictures show layers of rounded rocks — like those commonly found in Adirondack streams — embedded in reddish sediments.
"It is clear that there once was water flowing on the surface of Mars a few billion years ago ... about the same time that life was emerging on Earth," she said. "The question is: Was Mars habitable and inhabited then?"
The Martian climate changed at some point in the distant past and now the atmosphere is too thin and cold to allow for water on the surface, although there are small amounts of ice at the planet's poles, and possibly hidden in deep underground springs.
Leshin came to RPI in 2011 from NASA, where she helped design two tools to help Curiosity look for clues on whether Mars harbored life. One is an Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer, which provides a chemical analysis of rocks and dust, known as regolith.
The other is called Sample Analysis on Mars, which will search for compounds of the element carbon, including methane, associated with life. The unit includes a 1,000-degree internal oven, about the size of a microwave, that can heat samples to detect traces of such materials life may have left behind.
Any potential life on Mars would have been microscopic and cellular, and too fragile to have left behind a fossil record, Leshin said.
The mother of two can trace her fascination with Mars to the Viking probes NASA sent to the planet in the mid-1970s. "I was about 10 years old at the time when I saw those pictures, and I remember that I wanted to reach out and touch those rocks and go to those mountains," she said.
Leshin's job is to be part of a "tactical" team that decides what six-wheeled Curiosity ought to do, how long it ought to do it, and where it ought to go next.
Leshin and other team members make sure Curiosity does not perform functions that could incapacitate it in an environment where daytime temperatures hover around freezing and nighttime lows can plunge to 225 degrees below zero.
"You have to make sure that Curiosity doesn't do things like aim its camera directly into the sun, or drive over a cliff, or find itself on too steep a grade. It is kind of like having a baby on Mars that you have to keep safe," she said. "And when the baby goes to sleep, it is time for you to go to work."
After Curiosity completes the day's missions, it uploads data to NASA, where Leshin and others review it and decide what the rover should do the next day. Those commands are then transmitted back to Mars.
That usually starts for her about 11 a.m. and wraps up by 8 p.m., when the instructions are forwarded to NASA engineers who translate them into computer instructions. Given the distance from Earth, it takes 14 minutes for radio instructions to reach Curiosity.
In the coming months, Leshin will help guide Curiosity toward one of the Martian mountains she first saw in photos as a child. Located in the middle of Gale Crater, where the rover landed on Aug. 6, the mountain is known informally at NASA as Mount Sharp, after the late planetary geologist Robert Sharp, one of Leshin's mentors during her graduate studies at California Institute of Technology.
The mountain, officially Aeolis Mons, is 3.4 miles high, slightly smaller than North America's highest peak, Denali, in Alaska.
The nuclear-powered rover has 4 miles to travel to reach the mountain's base in late summer or early fall, Lushin said. "We are going to drive at least part of the way up the mountain," she said.
The mission is expected to run for about a year, although given Curiosity's plutonium power plant, the rover likely will be able to run longer. Atomic power also gives the rover an advantage over earlier Mars landers, which relied on solar power cells to recharge, and had to shut down during the cold, dark Martian winters. Curiosity can work throughout the year.
Manned flight to Mars is years off. But Leshin said if such a trip were possible, she would take it.
"I would give anything to set foot on that landscape, and reach out and touch those rocks."
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Learn about Curiosity
What, When: Laurie Leshin will give a presentation on the mission as part of The Dudley Observatory's Skywatch Lecture Series at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 22.
Where: Proctors GE Theater
Ticket information is available online at http://www.dudleyobservatory.org
Follow updates on the Curiosity mission on Twitter on @marscuriosity