Forget the Man on the Moon. Ben Clark has Mars on his mind -- along with the Phoenix lander

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July 13, 9:47 PM

by Ernie Tucker, Denver People Examiner

 

 

Ben Clark and Mars

Ben C. Clark is beyond that. He’s a man with Mars on his mind.

Even though the biophysicist has spent time on lunar endeavors – including helping one of the NASA astronauts get qualified so he could go on a mission around the Moon – he always seems to come back to the Red Planet. However, he is modest, and doesn’t claim any special title. Although he’s been involved in the mission of NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander, which touched down on the Red Planet on May 25 after a 200 million mile journey, he downplays own role.

“Everything here is done by teamwork. No one person knows everything that needs to be done to make a spacecraft,” says Clark, adding that at times, some 1,000 people are involved in the space enterprise. His demanding role is clear: “We have people like myself who worry that the science gets executed.”

Still, the man who recently retired as Chief Scientist in Flight Systems for Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Littleton, undeniably brings a wealth of knowledge to these operations.

“I started in the space program in 1961, after college, and four years after Sputnik” [the Russian space satellite], he says. He came to Lockeed’s predecessor in 1971, when the company had just won a mission to Mars. He was part of a group that developed an instrument that measured the composition of the Martian soil. That device flew on Viking, the first of two probes launched in 1975.

Yet it isn’t just the devices that matter. The entire flight plan became the basis of the current Phoenix lander. Engineers relied on that 1970s-era flight as the model for the way to enter the Martian atmosphere via a soft landing. So after decades of trying another, supposedly more economical approach, the Phoenix Mars lander returned to the same methods as its granddaddy, the Viking. For Clark, who witnessed, both, “it’s pretty gratifying to see.”

As if he wasn't involved enough, he has headed up a group which works on future missions concepts. As a result, one of the leaders of the Phoenix lander science team chose him to be on that group.

So far, so good, he pronounces.

“I think we’ve done really, really well. There’s always room for improvements because of some of the instrument problems. But we landed in an area that was safe” in ground like what is seen in the Arctic regions of Earth, he says of the Phoenix. “It’s a giveaway that there’s ice in this soil.”

Ice means water -- a potential sign of life -- so ice is key.  “That’s exactly what we were searching for in this mission.” The ice was very near the surface, just under a few inches of soil, he notes. “We’ve gotten some results from the key instruments, and some of them were surprising to us,” including the fact that that portion of the planet isn't as salty as expected.

“One of the exciting things about Mars. Every time you predict what you think is going to happen, you’re usually wrong,” he says with a chuckle.

Clark has worked on many other projects, and influenced others. It was while he was in the Air Force and stationed at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico that he got a call from pilot Bill Anders who wanted to become an astronaut – and needed someone to help him become an expert in radiation. Clark tutored him, and Anders successfully applied to NASA – ending up on Apollo 8, which in December, 1968, thrilled Americans as the three crewmembers became the first humans to view the far side of the Moon.

He doesn't dwell in the past, though.

“I’ve been spending a lot of nights and days into the operations that are going on” with the Phoenix, led out of Tucson. The lander now supplies power, takes data from the instruments and transmits to the orbiters. And its 90-day mission continues.

Clark's mission, however, has been disrupted by retirement.  And while he may be hanging up the slide rule for now, he’ll probably come back as a consultant. The pull of space -- particularly the Red Planet -- is just too strong.

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