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tonight what we're gonna try to do we're
gonna take an exploration an exploration
of the planet's surface of Mars and
we're gonna look at that planet through
the eyes of Rovers and the first Rovers
we're going to talk about are Spirit and
Opportunity the to Mars exploration
Rovers
and then we're gonna switch into
curiosity a larger Rover and its job is
to do something a little different but
first we have to go back in time and
we're gonna go back approximately ten
years a little bit more than ten years
and we're going to discuss what happens
and how speer an opportunity made it to
the surface of Mars so we're gonna fly
over to Kennedy Space Center in Florida
and we're gonna go and we're gonna get
real close and personal with their Delta
two rocket now this is a delta 2 rocket
it's built by the Boeing Company it has
three stages to orbit and around the
bottom side of this vehicle there's nine
air-lit solids so this is gonna help us
get a little bit extra lift so that we
can get to Mars as rapidly as possible
and if you don't mind counting down with
me five four three and a minute and
thirty seconds were in orbit around
Earth as you see we're starting to drop
away some those air let solids once
those air let solids fall back away they
get recycled they get picked up once our
first stage burns out we're gonna let go
we're gonna light our second stage once
we light our second stage that we let
that first stage fall back to the ocean
it becomes an ecosystem for the fish we
light our second stage at this point the
spacecraft has very little stability so
we're gonna spin it up we spin it up to
about 12 rpm more or less like a
quarterback that there's a nice tight
spiral we're gonna get really good
flight through the air will light our
third stage this puts us on a direct
trajectory to Mars we're gonna do what
we like to call the quiescent period the
boring period of traveling through
interstellar space okay so now seven
months later here we are traveling at
sixteen thousand miles per hour toward
the surface of Mars we lose our crew
stage because we don't need it anymore
it's pointed us directly at Mars we're
ready to go we're gonna hit our landing
site we're traveling at 16,000 miles per
hour and we hit the upper atmosphere of
Mars when we hit the it upper atmosphere
of Mars the friction as we come through
literally burns a hole in the upper
atmosphere the heat shield in the front
of our rover gets to about the surface
temperature of the Sun 1600 degrees
centigrade at this point we're going to
start what I like to call reverse
origami we're gonna pull up at a pair
this is supersonic parachute and that's
gonna start changing our angle of attack
from being directly in to being more
vertical with the surface of Mars at
this point we're gonna slow down to
around three to four hundred miles per
hour we're gonna lose our heat shield
because we don't want that heat to come
back into our vehicle and we're gonna
lower our Lander more or less on a
shoestring once we find the surface we
blow up the airbags that takes about a
blink of an eye about half a millisecond
and then we're gonna fire some retro
rockets when we get to about forty
meters above the surface slow down to
zero miles per hour
cut the cord and bounce and we bounce
and we bounce now the first bounce of
this vehicle could take us over I use
the Empire State Building we can bounce
anywhere from a mile and a half to two
miles each successive bounce is taking
away a little bit of energy which slows
us down after we lose all of our energy
we come to a stop we're gonna deflate
the airbags so the vehicle senses that
we've stopped we deflate the airbags
what you saw happen in a few seconds
there takes about 45 minutes in real
time the next thing that we're gonna do
is we're gonna open up our Lander pedals
we're gonna open up these Lander pedals
now what you're gonna have see happen in
about 30 seconds happens in 45 minutes
the next thing that we're gonna do is
we're gonna open up the solar rays and
if you don't mind out a little watch to
we got one more thing to do which is one
more party okay just once it gets over
Center oh okay hold on I must have seen
this a thousand times
doesn't matter how many times I see you
I get very excited when it works but my
team and I were the team that designed
that and if it didn't work we had a very
very bad day on Mars the movement so
when it works like getting a little
tight so open up the solar arrays now we
can power the vehicle we're starting to
charge up the batteries the last things
that you're gonna see happen on this
first day is we pull up our pan cam mass
what we call the PMA and we deploy our
high gain antenna so we can talk
directly back to earth the last thing
that you're going to see the rover do in
this animation is just going to take a
panoramic image one of the things that
you want to do when you've landed in a
new place is find out where you are so
we're going to take this beautiful image
and we're going to start transmitting
that back to earth so the next day what
we're going to do is we're going to
stand up the vehicle deploy the front
wheels and we're going to change more or
less our perspective on the surface when
we design spirit an opportunity we
design the eyes to be at five foot two
that's approximately the level of a
human being walking on the surface of
Mars so now when we take images and we
get our panoramic images it's going to
spew like a human being with standing on
Mars looking around we're looking for
scientifically exciting sights spirit an
opportunity or roving geologist their
job was to follow the water to look for
water that may have flown on the surface
of Mars and we're going to do that
through the history of the rocks go up
taste the rocks touch the rocks feel the
rocks if you can break the rocks try to
figure out do the rocks tell us
something about the history of Mars so
now the last thing that we have to do is
drive the rover off the lander you're
gonna see the lander change its position
a little bit get ready for the rover to
drive off on these things called bat
wings we drive off on those bat wings
and we get six wheels on the surface of
Mars we call spirit the bad sister and
not because she was bad in any way but
we drive off the lander we go up to the
first rock the rock was called Anna on
deck we took out our arm we touched the
rock and as soon as we touch the rock
spirit did not call home
it's like et went hi no phone home
so we were worried that we didn't
understand what was going on with spirit
remember that boring period of driving
through interstellar space that I told
you about seven months so during that
seven month period of time
we had one of the biggest Solar Flare
solar activities that we've ever seen
right so lots of gamma rays bad stuff
I'll call it the Sun burped bad stuff
goes flying through interstellar space
so what did we do first time ever when
we were flying a spacecraft deep space
we actually rebooted the computer so we
turn it off turn it back on and then it
goes hey I'm here and we're like all
goodness gracious thank you okay it
calls back home we're like great great
great it has all this great stuff it
starts recording everything that it's
doing all of its maneuvers it records
all the things that have felt all the
bounces on the surface everything
everything thing eight days later drives
off it touches a rock and it's memory
got full and once its memory got full
the computer wouldn't boot up and we
actually told it to erase its memory
through all of that stuff through
quieten space away and then do whatever
you want me to do the rock and then
spirit became okay spirit opportunity
were I'll tell you they were designed to
go to the surface of Mars and explore
the surface for 90 days and travel up to
600 meters spirit was on the surface
communicating for more than five years
traveled a little less than five miles
opportunity the good sister landed a
month later has been on the surface for
over a decade and continues giving us
great information daily and she's
traveled over 25 miles so why do we go
to Mars why is Mars such an interesting
place to explore and the image that you
see behind me on the left is Mars and on
the right is Earth looks like we're
river or water may have run at some
point time in this image I've switched
it around on the left is Earth on the
right is Mars that image on the right is
the largest known volcano in our solar
system the rocky planets it's called
Olympus Mons it's on the surface of Mars
it's approximately the size of the state
of Arizona go back to the early 70s 76
77 and we landed the Viking landers on
the surface of Mars we have Mars
Pathfinder which landed in July 4th of
1997 and then we had Phoenix and then
you have the two landing sites for spare
an opportunity
this topographical map let me show it a
different way for those that like
planetary maps you can see where we
landed and the other thing that you see
in this is the yellow places or places
that we've landed the ones in white were
the possibilities for curiosity land so
now we're on the surface well spirit
opportunity caught some very interesting
things on the surface from orbit we
could see things that look like large
tracts long tracts on the on the dust
and the surface and we always postulated
that they would have to have these dust
devils but we had never seen them we
believe that this is one of the reasons
the vehicles have lasted so long every
so often when these dust devils would
come by and clean off my solar rays and
make us happy and we make more power and
now the Rovers can continue to do their
science very interesting scientifically
this is one of the most important images
that we took with the opportunity
vehicle it was the first time ever
remotely with a robotic vehicle that we
took an image on the surface at the
exact same time we took the image from
orbit so now we can actually do
atmospheric science from the ground and
from orbit at the exact same time so
with opportunity the good sister it
travels 300 million miles bounces along
the surface of Mars and lands in a
crater there's nothing there it's just
nothing except one rock and the rock is
not from Mars it's a meteorite from
somewhere else now the interesting thing
is we've seen quite a few of these now
on the surface of Mars we do know that
they're from one of the four rocky
planets or some of the asteroid belt we
do know that but where they're actually
from we don't know okay they probably
were around sort of early formation of
the the planets but we don't know but
they're very interesting very exciting
the rover is now here in endeavour
crater it's been in Splore endeavour
crater for at least a year now we've
driven down into the crater we're at a
new location inside the crater we're
seeing a lot more of these clays right
so now we know that in this location all
across the meriem Plains there was a lot
of water deep water
did you see the change in salinity same
thing for spirit as we drove up husband
Hill we started to see this change in
salinity in the soil it was a failure
that actually told us that
the wheels on the spirit rover stopped
working and so we started dragging it
and by dragging it we created this
trench on the surface of Mars and as we
were creating this trench when we turned
around and took images we saw the actual
albedo of the light that was coming off
the soil change and that started to tell
us something's going on so we started
doing more investigation and we saw this
salt level change as we started to get
higher in elevation on it on the
mountain and what it means is as the
water was receding it got much more
salty and that told us that there was
water there very salty water and that
there was water in both of these
locations so now we know that Mars was a
very wet place at one point time in the
past and we're going to change gears and
talk about curiosity a little bit
curiosity was launched on November 26th
2011 and landed August 5th
we've traveled for nine point nine point
four nine point five kilometers on the
surface as of saule 774 curiosity was
designed to drive 20 kilometers and be
on the surface for one Martian year so
we've already made one Martian year so
we've already made part of our prime
commitment to NASA and that it's been
awesome it's been an awesome couple
years how did we get there so it's a
little different very very similar
launch sequence but it's a different
launch vehicle so instead of a Boeing
vehicle this is a Lockheed Martin
vehicle it's called an Atlas rocket it's
built by Lockheed it has really just two
stages to orbit so you've seen we've
already gotten to orbit you saw that
particular part now this second stage of
this vehicle is much more capable it has
some retro rockets on it has some
thrusters on it so now it can spin us up
and it can point us directly at Mars so
we did the last kick and then that's
gonna fall back and burn up in the
atmosphere what doesn't burn up becomes
ecosystem for fish and now we're gonna
start going around so now we're on a
direct reject erita Mars you're gonna
see us light up the solar arrays that
around the cruise stage that's gonna
actually charge up our batteries and
then what we do is we supercharge the
batteries and we discharge them and then
we keep them about 80 percent the rest
of the way now we're traveling a little
bit slower because we don't have the
same lift capability with the Lockheed
vehicle so we're traveling at 14,500
miles an hour it takes a little bit
longer because Earth and Mars are a
different orientation deploy a parachute
again we're gonna lose that heat shield
because we don't want to get the heat so
coming back into our vehicle but now
everything's changed we lose the heat
shield and instead of been lowering a
lander with airbags we're actually going
to cut
some cables and bolts more or less and
let our Rover fall toward the surface
fire up some rockets and fly we added a
new science instrument called the Marty
camera this camera is actually taking
images about 32 frames per second so
we're gonna zoom in on the camera and
you're gonna look at what what's going
on so as we're falling toward the
surface the camera is taking images of
the surface of Mars overlaying them
figuring out what is our downrange
trajectory and velocity and there's
there any obstacles that are in the way
once we figure out there's no obstacles
in the way we're gonna lower our Rover
on three shoestrings and an umbilical
cord weaving gingerly hit the ground and
once we send slack in the cables the
cables go slack we cut the three
umbilical cords and the descent stage
fires up and flies away designed to go
600 metres away from the vehicle it'd be
bad if it came back and crashed on us
that would be really bad now we're on
our wheels we're ready to start
exploring so now instead of having a
drive off a lander we're ready to go the
very first day last things that we have
to do is pull up our remote sensing
masts what we call the RSM and pull out
our high gain antenna the high gain
antenna for this vehicle was delivered
to us by the Spanish as a gift it's an
asset the last thing you're gonna see
here is as we start driving around with
curiosity is that curiosity is a
different vehicle instead of being a
roving geologist
it's a roving biologist it's job is to
look for past places on Mars that could
have sustained life we get to shoot a
laser at the rocks now why did we do
that instead of having to go over and
touch every rock and taste every rock
and like we said before we can actually
fire the laser at the rock burn the
surface of the rock and look at the gas
that comes off and from the gas we can
see what the chemical composition of
that rock is what are the elements that
are there the other thing that we did
with curiosity is we added a drill now
this is the first time that we'll be
able to drill robotically on another
planetary surface now we have drilled
before with human beings on the surface
of the Moon anyway what you're seeing
here in the video is what we call x-ray
fluorescence we're actually shooting
x-rays through the rocks we agitate them
and we can see how the actual chemicals
are held together what is a crystalline
structure and that actually tells us a
lot about what's going on in the rocks
on the surface of Mars some more of the
testing that we've got and and here what
you're going to do is we're going to
show the mobility system the mobility
system is very similar to the mobility
system that we had on Pathfinder and the
Mars Exploration Rover right
it's a rocker-bogie suspension system
that we've used on all of the vehicles
that we've had on surface but this one
serves a different purpose it actually
is our landing gear so the wheels that
look like they're one monolithic
structure of aluminum they're not
they're about seven sheets of paper of
aluminum on the outside shell but in the
middle is titanium in the titanium is
there to give us sort of a spongy
flexure feel you're gonna see us doing
some testing we're driving over
obstacles that simulate what we believe
we're going to get to on Mars about 35
centimeter height obstacles we tilt the
vehicle to drive over different surfaces
we drive on the surface we have six
wheel drive four-wheel steering so all
six wheels of the vehicle can drive and
all four wheels can turn tow in about 90
degrees so we can actually turn about
our center of mass so if we wanted to
turn in place we actually could the
vehicle has a top speed of five
centimeters per second it's boogying it
takes us sautée to do it takes us 45
minutes to do a football field that's
how slow we move so it's really really
sloped now when you're 300 million miles
away from the nearest gas station it's
okay to go slow where did we go on the
surface of Mars for curiosity curiosity
went to a place called Gale Crater so
why did we go to this Gale Crater and
the reason we went to Gale Crater is
that we wanted to investigate this place
called Mount sharp and Mount sharp is
this very very large mountain it's 5.5
kilometers in size and what we were
looking for is the difference layers as
you drive up the mountain so we're gonna
land drive to the mountain and then look
at the difference
they say clays we'll just say it as time
periods so early time period to later
time period as you drive up this
mountain trying to see can we see places
on the surface of Mars that once could
have been habitable for life could Mars
in this location around the Gale Crater
sustained life and doesn't have the
building blocks the basic pieces to
actually have life grow in that location
then we got some of the first images
back so this was actually actually the
first drive and you see the name
curiosity after we got to the surface we
started taking selfies
so this is one of the first selfies of
the rover it's a shadow
we weren't really good at it yet then
somebody had some fun with one of our
images Optimus Prime came and visit us
that's fun we have a laser so great we
would laser here's what people think we
do sort of fun here's what we really do
show you the picture on the left
undisturbed soil picture on the right
five laser holes I'll show it to you a
different way we'll show a video so
here's a video of us burning a hole in
the ground
pretty exciting you can see sort of the
byproducts coming off you can't see the
gas but what we're actually doing is
we're burning a hole looking for the gas
so that we can tell what it's made of so
the first thing that happened after
we've got after we landed we drove to
this area on Mars that was very
interesting within the first three
months of being at this location we were
able to say one Gale Crater was wet
number two it can sustain life now we
can't say that there was life there but
we can say that if there was it would
have been able to be sustained there are
all the chemical compositions that are
needed to support life paying homage to
some of our great explorers before us
the footprint balls Aldrin and then
Curiosity rover footprint our first
scoop so we now went down and we scooped
up some of the dirt we're gonna actually
take that inside the vehicle some more
of these analogs
so looks like riverbeds picture on the
left is uncorrect adjustin image that
comes back from the surface of mars
looks like a riverbed you could see
false cover image of Mars that's sort of
in the middle and then an earth riverbed
looks very very similar here's the first
time we're gonna sample we're gonna
drill in surface of Mars I can tell you
this took a long time it took us about
four weeks to actually make this one
little hole there's a picture of the
hole up close the next image is after
we've taken that and we ingest it inside
we can actually separate different
particle size so we can take things that
are down to a couple microns
well sieve those out and then we can
deliver those to different instruments
here's a picture of Mount sharp this is
where we wanted to go it was an early
picture there's a
rock that's out in the distance that
rock is 5.5 kilometers away from a rover
and it's approximately the same size as
a rover and we're thinking oh my
goodness it'd be so great if we can make
it there the other thing that you'll
notice in this image if you're looking
closely is there's clouds Mars does have
clouds just like earth right so there is
moisture in the atmosphere so this image
shows sort of our trajectory to get down
to the start of the mountain and as we
were driving we were starting to figure
out oh my goodness there's parts of Mars
that are really really scary and the
reason they're really really scary is
that the rocks that are on the surface
are different than we've ever seen
anywhere else on the surface of Mars as
we were driving on Mars the spirit an
opportunity we'd hit a rock and we'd
break it or you'd push it over and move
it out of the way in this particular
area the rocks are like cemented into
the ground and then they have this word
I don't know I'm just gonna use it
it's called vent affected rocks other
words the rocks are windblown so if you
can imagine you're covered with water
and as the water recedes the wind starts
working on the rock and as it recedes it
sharpens the rock so the rocks look like
teeth very very sharp teeth and as we're
driving over them or puncturing holes in
the wheels so we thought oh my goodness
one we have to figure out how not to
hurt our wheels and number two we have
to figure out where to drive around
things so you can see we take sort of
this really crazy path and then we get
to the place that's at the end of this
particular image and the scientists had
a choice we could go right effectively
right from the rover's perspective and
go through this area right here which is
a choke point there's really no way to
get out if you get in there or we could
go straight very very bad rocks so he
chose to go right so you're right we're
in a bright we take some images of our
wheels we started to see lots of where
as we were driving over this area called
the hummocky plains and the hole that
you see is at sort of benign the thing
that's actually really scary is the hole
that's underneath that and the reason
it's scariest as we're driving over the
surface what we're going to do is the
the wheel is taking load right it's
moving it's actually getting stressed
and every time you do that you're
actually having this
propagating and we were worried oh my
goodness how are the wheels gonna fail
these cracks are gonna propagate across
the wheel and then part of the wheels
gonna fall off and the part of the wheel
that falls off is it going to hit
anything that's bad because there's
cables all around this so as the wheel
falls apart it's gonna do this so now
what we're doing is selectively on
different soils we're driving the rover
backwards so driving backwards actually
takes a little bit of load off the front
wheels same about about the same on the
minimum wheels and then starts to do
some damage to the back wheels but
that's okay because they're not damaged
at all at this point so we're gonna
start to try to even out the way across
the wheel so that we get a little bit
longer driving the other thing that we
noticed and I told you we went to that
choke point is that with damaged wheels
we could drive over sand dunes better so
climbing over nice light stuff was
actually better with these holes in the
wheel so we turn right we get to the
sand dune now we've done some testing we
know that we could drive over but as all
good engineers and all good scientists
go we go well what happens if there's
really sharp rocks underneath the dune
so we argued for about two days about
driving over this dune and I'm thinking
golly it's only a meter tall so it's a
meter tall you know three feet and the
rover's belly is 75 centimeters so 3/4
of a meter so if it was really just
light fluffy you know sand dune we would
get stuck but the reality is is the
rover would sort of float over it but we
were freaked out for a little while so
we did some testing and then we decided
to go but we didn't decide to go all at
once we put a toe in and then put
another toe in and we drove up to the
top and looked over and we drove back
and then we said okay go so here's the
image from the other side here's the
video of us driving over that particular
obstacle sort of fun but it took us a
while to do that then we have where
we've gone so we land at Bradbury we go
over to Yellowknife Bay and now we're at
the pump hills and the pump hills are
more or less the Gateway to Mount sharp
our first drill at prompt hills now you
can see it really looks sort of clay ish
we do some close-up investigation we can
see these lines looks like secretions
and hard stuff around it the mineral
that we believe that's there and we're
just doing some investigation right now
looks like hematite which only forms
from water here on earth so it looks
like we're finding another place that
was really wet the surface of Mars
and then we can talk about what's coming
next and 2020 we have a new Rover you
can see some of the science that shows
the science suite has been announced you
can see the international collaboration
that's going to happen very very similar
vehicle secured eásá t in terms of size
but has a different mission and its
mission really is going to go to sample
the surface of Mars and capture those
samples and hopefully return them back
to earth so now as I close I'm gonna
show you some of my favorite images from
the surface this image is from curiosity
and you see that star that's out there
it's earth and then high-resolution you
can see the moon and I'll show you my
favorite video my favorite image this is
from the top of husband Hill it's one of
the last things that we got from Spirit
and if we had been able they had a
little bit better camera we could have
seen earth set but I'll show you this as
a video and this is a Sun setting on
Mars and the thing that makes me love
this image so much is literally the fact
that someday a human being will stand on
the surface of Mars and say I'm watching
the earth set and then I'm watching the
Sun set and I can't wait for that day
thank you guys so very much
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you
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