Space Exploration, began with dreaming.
Thousands of years of humans staring into the Heaven and wondering...
how did this begin?
What else is out there?
The earliest answers were given in myth and poetry.
Now, they are sought by space-edge technology.
And while each mission increases our knowledge,
it also leads our imagination farther and farther.
How did life begin?
Did it happen more then once in the Universe?
The answer may lie on Mars.
Roving MARS
Mars today is desolate, dry and barren,
and at first glance, has little bit in common with our own Planet.
And yet for more bit
we see what look like dry up lake beads and canyons.
Clues, that 3 or 4 billion years ago,
Mars may once have been wetter and more Earth like.
And since life's blast in here on Earth,
the question is:
Did it ever take place on Mars?
To answer this question, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
brought together a team of scientists and engineers
who's mission was to discover if Mars ever had what was needed to support life.
A geologist and astronomer at Cordell University,
Steve Squyres was chosen to lead the scientists team.
As principal investigator, he will direct the team search
for life's most essential resource: Water.
I've been working on a question of water on Mars for 28 years.
You can't learn what you need from a telescope.
You must be a geologist.
A geologist is here like a detective...
at scene of the crime.
A... something happened here long time ago.
What happened?
Was a warm? Was a wet?
Could life have been existed here?
The key is in the clues and the clues are in the rocks.
On Earth a geologist can find a interesting rock,
cracked open with a hammer and just look of what's inside.
But we're not ready to send a human geologist to Mars yet.
So we had to build a robot geologist.
And the only place this could be done
was the NASA's Jet-Propulsion Laboratory,
where some of the most innovative engineers in the country work.
We're talking about a robot, a rover that can go to Mars
land on the surface,
take a look around and then cut the cord and go.
Carrying everything it needs with it,
cameras, instruments, communication equipment, everything.
Something that can look inside rocks
and that can tell us what clues those rocks hold.
This place to me, is almost sacred.
This is the place where our rovers are assembled for the last time
before they live this Planet.
Everything that we do in this room, must be perfect.
Over 4 thousand people worked on this mission.
For every single piece of this spacecraft down to the tinniest one,
there was a person somewhere who conceive it, who nurture it,
who took it from a concept, to something real.
It's taking this team 3 years to design and build and test this rovers
and we still have work to do.
We can only launch, when the 2 planets are properly aligned
and that's just a month away.
But we still have tests to run.
We're working in shifts, we're working almost around the clock
and we don't know if we gonna make it.
Is no one person who could really get his arms around the whole thing and say:
I understand everything about this vehicle.
It's now burst the balance of our brains.
Well, this rover is... is more than roving geologist,
this rover also has to be... a... a spacecraft.
It actually have to fly itself from Earth to Mars
in addition, it has to do the very subtle and quick timing control,
of whole thinks it happen as it enters and lands the vehicle.
We had to stuffed all that intelligence and capability
into that little six wheels vehicle back there
a... so that it can get there safely on it's own.
I call our spacecraft, "the Origami spacecraft"
which means that's really a complicated series of folds.
We, had to punch holes on the Lander panels for the wheels to stay through.
We had to fold everything in this complicated shapes
to get this system to fit inside this tetrahedron.
It's beautiful, but had a price,
and at that price, in this case is complexity.
There've been missions to Mars since the 60's,
there've been dozens of them.
But 2/3 of those missions failed.
Mars is a spacecraft graveyard.
A spacecraft has to travel about, 300 million miles to get to Mars
at about 60,000 miles/hour.
But it still take 7 months to get there.
Trying to hit our landing side from that distance
is like shooting a basket ball from Los Angeles to New York,
and having it go through the hoop, without touching the rim.
The smallest mistake on our part could put whole mission in jeopardy.
Two of the last 3 missions to Mars were failures.
One spacecraft burned up in the Martian atmosphere,
the other one crushed on the surface.
This time NASA decided to send two identical spacecraft
to double our chances of success.
The two rovers were named: "Spirit" and "Opportunity."
The rovers have very different personality, they did even when they were babies,
back when we were first building them.
Spirit was our troublesome first born.
Every test we run it seems that we run it on Spirit first
and the first time we try something it usually doesn't work.
So, we run this tests on Spirit and they fail
and we try to fix things
and we run another test and that will fail too.
By the time we got to Opportunity, we learned stuff.
But things were much more smoother.
The biggest problem was that, we underestimated the size and weight of the rovers.
Once we realized how big they really had to be,
we also realized that the landing system we planned to use
couldn't get them to the ground in one piece.
As the rover get heavier, the Lander get heavier,
the aero shove get heavier,
the whole thing get heavier and heavier and heavier.
From the very beginning on this mission it seem like nothing was going right.
The air bags were like the air bags on your car but way more expensive.
They inflated explosively around the vehicle and they cushion the landing.
The first time we tested them, they tore open and deflated.
Setbacks we know there are going to happen
I always tell people, when you start this projects...
a... the same thing probably what happened to Lewis and Clark
and captain Cook and their exploration.
A... what is guaranteed, is that there will be setbacks.
This rovers have to land using a supersonic parachute.
The parachute design we tought will work,
rip to shreds.
The lander had gotten so heavy that the chute just couldn't handle it.
We were practically out of time,
and all we had was a chute design that will destroy the spacecraft,
when we try to land.
We had to build a whole another set of new designs,
no less than 3 or 4 designs we had to test in the 3 months that fallowed
in our mad rush to make it to launch-pad.
We're running out of money, we're running out of time.
A... well, I mean the drop was successful
see a... the fact that the parachute exploded,
not a good thing.
Well yea, rather have it happen here than...
- Mars. - Yea.
That's right. Unfortunately, strictly speaking that chute that just exploded
- was the chute that we were planing on taking on Mars. - Yea
Mars is a tough place to send a spacecraft.
The average temperature is 60 degrees below zero.
It goes down to 100 below zero at night.
There could be dust storms to darken the sky for months at a time.
But if the rovers make it,
they'll give us the experience of what it whouldl be like to be on Mars.
We'll be able to look off to the distance and say: Yea! I like to go there!
And then I should say: Go!
And see what we find.
The rovers arm has the same dimensions as human arm,
with the shoulder an elbow and a wrist.
The arm tucks up tight
under the front of vehicle, for when we're driving around.
But when we get to a rock that we want to examine,
the arm, unstows...
and reaches out,
using all of his joints
to place the instruments...
on a rock... and begin the study.
The hand has four fingers.
One is a microscope,
two are spectrometers to tell us in detail what the rock is made off.
And a fourth one is call, "The Rat,"
the rock abrasion tool.
To examine the rocks, we've got to get to them
and Mars is very bumpy.
So, to deal with the bumps, our engineers came up with something called a rocker-boggy suspension system.
It's a very clever design that allows each of the six wheels
to go up and over a rock independently,
while the rover itself, hardly tilts at all.
Ok, come on in guys.
Now, stay clear! Watch it, watch it.
Stay clear of this thing 'cause it's going to move in a second... watch, watch the wheels.
Watch the wheels, watch the wheels...
It goes way beyond this single mission.
The eventual goal is to send humans to Mars.
But the first person to walk on Mars is not an astronaut today.
It's someone in high school, or in elementary school.
So, it's turning in place, then when it gets line up just right, we gonna drive it backwards.
We've invested so much work, so many years,
so much of our hopes and our dreams, in this rovers.
And then when you think about were they're going,
the ride they gonna get on the rocket,
the transit trough the space
what it's gonna be like when they're parachute goes out at Mack-2 going to the Martian's atmosphere?
You standing next to this little robot, and you realize
it's gonna spend eternity on the surface of another World.
It's going to another Planet, for real.
And once they're going, that's it.
After the rovers Launch we'll never going to see them again with our own eyes.
We've done everything we can to prepare them for the dangers they'll have to face.
But it's gonna be very hard to say: Good Bye!
Spirit will be Launched first, then Opportunity three weeks later.
Mars and Earth are both orbiting the Sun so they're always moving relative to each other.
Every 26 months there's a brief interval when the planets are lined up, just right.
At that time... only at that time,
we have enough rocket fuel to make it.
So, this is our one shot.
5; 4; 3; 2; 1.
We don't fire rocket load to all the way to Mars, we don't need to.
We just place this space-craft on a trajectory to Mars
and let it cruse for seven months and 300,000,000 miles,
until it reaches the Planet.
Once it's been pushed on its way to Mars by the Launch vehicle,
it has to, a... maintain its orientation towards the Sun
and needs to be able to correct its orientation and direction
So that would hit Mars and, and... get to this
very very tinny a... spot on Mars that we're aiming for.
So all that has to take a place over the course of the seven month journey.
-
Then it's when the really challenge begins.
Mars is so far away, it takes about ten minutes for a radio signal
to travel one way, between Mars and Earth.
That's only six minutes from the first hit on the top of the Martian atmosphere,
to over bouncing on the surface.
So, there's nothing we can do to help when it's time to land.
The rovers are on their own, we are just passive pationately interested observers
waiting for the radio signal that shows, whether or not they survived.
...not going to be an issue.
The curent reported temperature is above zero degee Celsius,
wich a... is close to the limit... the flight allowable limit however...
Landing a spacecraft on Mars is so complicated. There are so many things that can get wrong,
the flight computer has to know precisely the right time to deploy the parachute.
If it deploys it to high when the parachute opens,
the wind forces, will just rip it to shreds.
If we deploy the parachute too low of an altitude
it won't open in time and will just crush right into the ground.
The trick is, every time there's some critical event,
the parachute deploys, the heat shield falls away
we change the frequency of the radio signal.
That's why Polly's, sitting in the Council and she's looking for this changing frequencies.
And when the numbers changes,
she knows that this event, has happening...
that event has happening.
Flight Director Jason Willis... reporting that, all systems are go for enter descent landing.
We are roughly, 11 minutes 48 seconds from landing at the Gusev Crater,
in the Southern hemisphere of Mars...
Atmospheric entry...
and... three... two... one...
We just pass 1 minute of atmospheric entry, on altitude of 21 miles
speed velocity of 12,084 miles/hour.
We are now at an altitude of 73 miles...
moving at the speed of 12,192 miles/hour...
expecting parachute deploy... in 5 seconds...
four, three, two, one. Mark.
We are waiting confirmation the parachute has deployed.
Parachute it's been detected.
Heat shield deploy demanded.
Spacecraft reporting the heat shield has
Planed separation event it has been detected...
Spacecraft reported Lander had separated, moving at speed of 173 miles/hour,
we are near terminal velocity.
Expecting retro-active remission on my mark. Mark!
At this point/time, we should be on the ground.
Any signal that we receive from now indicates the vehicle would be alive,
on the ground and bouncing.
The spacecraft has to survive all the bounces, for landing to be a success.
No signal at the moment.
Stand by!
Signal strength is fairly intermittent.
We don't see a signal at the moment.
Saw an intermittent signal that indicated we were bouncing, however...
however we currently do not have signal from the spacecraft.
Please, stand by.
This time we're approximately 10 minutes after landing
vehicle should've brought to a stop right now.
The equal central stations have gone so we can't wearies searching for the signal.
- We see it! We see it! - What do we see? - We got the signal!
The first thing we have to do after we land is open our solar panels to the Sun so we have some power.
This charges up the batteries.
After that we can deploy the camera mast, so the rover can see
and deploy the antenna, so the rover can talk to us.
The first pictures from Mars.
- What is that? - That's looking down on our vehicle.
We could not have imagine...
returns as early as this...
as clear as this...
as successful as this...
and in the volume that it has been.
Ladies and Gentlemen... Mars!
We send Spirit to Gusev Crater
a crater in the Southern highlands on Mars.
It's 100 miles in diameter.
What makes it special is that emptying into it, is a giant water carved channel.
So, Gusev is a hole in the ground with the dry river flow into it.
There has to have been a lake on this crater once upon the time.
We send Spirit there to seek out sediments.
To look for sedimentary rocks that will lay down long ago in that lake.
Once we landed I think the scariest part of the whole mission,
was the initial unfolding of the rover.
There're so many gears and springs and motors and hinges and latches,
that have to work just right, or you're down.
Once everything's deployed, we're ready start looking around.
We can look off the distance with our cameras, and weather infrared spectrometer
and we can learn a lot from the distance of 50 yards, 100 yards.
About what the rocks look like, and what they're made off.
Then, if we see a rock that has a texture, or composition look interesting to us
we can drive over to it, and checked out in detail.
For driving, the rover has this kind of goo-goo eye cameras
that it use it to take images of the terrain in front of it.
They got wide lenses and they provide sort of the fish eye view.
Spirit uses this pictures to make its own decisions, about how to drive.
It will drive forward and then will take a look to the rock and say: "That's too big, I have to go around that."
Or maybe it'll see some new sealing and just move on.
Then we can actually program different levels of courage, or cowardice into the rover,
telling him how aggressive it should be,
depending how dangerous we think the terrain is.
This rovers are so complicated that it takes hours to get a set of commands right.
So, we operated them with normally set commands to them, just once a day.
The first rock that we've looked at, was this one.
We named it adirondack.
When a rock sits on a surface of the planet they can undergo what's call, "Weathering"
When is exposed to sun-light, or humidity or wind,
the surface of the rock could be modified, and the evidence of how it formed, could be destroyed.
So, to get to the clues you need, you have to get inside the rock,
below the weathered surface.
The key to understand it adirondack was the rock abrasion tool.
The rat, gives us the ability to grind into a rock, exposing the unaltered evidence inside.
So we put a rat hole in the add around deck and then we hit it with everything we had.
We looked at it with our camera, we looked at it with a spectrometer, we looked at it with a microscope.
adirondack is a piece of lava, it's not a sedimentary rock.
And every other rock around is a piece of lava too,
this was a huge disappointment.
We came to Gusev Crater looking for sediments that will lay down long ago on a lake,
but what we found, was lava...
volcanic rock.
The sedimentary rock must be there but it's been buried under the lava,
that we can't get to it.
Well, we realized that we hadn't landed on the staff we came for.
We decided, we have to go someplace else.
A mile and a half away, there's this spectacular range of hills,
called "The Columbia Hills."
You got to remember the Spirit was design to go only 600 yards over its life time.
So we set out for those hills not knowing if we ever make it.
Meanwhile, on the other side of Mars Opportunity, was about to land.
When Opportunity landing at eagle crater
it was the 300 million miles Interplanetary hole in one.
We rolled to a stop right in front of layer bed rock.
Bed rock is geologic truth.
Opportunity landed in front of a Martian history book.
When we drove off the land and we look at the soil in front of us
we saw that was littered with what look like little round bits.
An uncountable number of little round things.
We took out a microscope, we riches out and looked at the soil in detail.
And the picture that came down was astounding.
They were perfect spheres.
I will remember for the rest of my life...
how I felt when I saw that first picture.
When we got to the out crop and we looked up at that close
we realized that the spheres are imbedded the in the rock,
like blueberries in the muffin.
The rock erodes away and the blueberries fall out,
and rolls down into the soil.
The blueberries it turns out are made of hematite,
a mineral that on Earth is often formed in liquid water.
Next we found jarosite, which is a mineral that couldn't be formed unless there's been water in the rocks,
so there was water underground here.
Our most extraordinary discovery came when we found ripples in the rocks.
Ancient ripples that formed when water flowed over sand on Mars, billions of years ago.
So there wasn't just water underground here. There was water at the surface.
Opportunity discover that at this place billions of years ago,
Mars was most likeable a habitable World.
It was a place that for some interval time was suitable for some forms of life.
Decades of work pay off of this discovery.
Billions of years ago, there were shallow occasional pools of water.
Don't think of ocean, think of salt flats,
and the water may not have been a pretty blue.
In fact they've been so acid and dissolved iron off the rocks
and maybe wide red pools under a pink Martian sky.
All the discoveries that Opportunity made about water happened in the first six weeks of the mission.
Everything went right for that rover.
I call Opportunity, "Little Miss Perfect."
Opportunity lands in this place were the evidence right there
and driving is like a parking lot, everything is perfect.
Spirit are kind of tough hard working blue collar rover,
lands in this awful rocky rugged place on a lava plain.
a mile and a half from the nearest interesting rocks.
It has to straggle for 5 months just to begin her mission.
Spirit had to work for everything.
Literarily had to climb a mountain on Mars.
We use the power that comes from the sun to operate the vehicle and to charge the batteries,
so the solar rays are essential.
On the way to the Columbia hills Spirit solar rays were getting coated with dust.
We were getting the plan were Spirit was simply gonna die.
Then, one wonderful day we climb up on the crest of the ridge
were we were hit by not one, but several gusts of wind that jus clean the solar rays off.
It was like having a brand new rover.
Spirit got high up in the Columbia hills and started to find staff that was different from anything we see.
There were salt deposits in the hills and there were rocks that clearly had been altered by water.
It took months of working straggle but Spirit finally show us there've been water on both sides of the planet.
She gave us exactly what we needed.
This rovers were design to last only 90 Mars days and they've already done many times that.
They developed personalities. They're work horses.
They say: Push us! Ask us to do more! We can go farther, we can go faster.
So we ask so much more then never ever intended too,
and to our amazement, they do it.
We don't know what will kill this rovers,
they do get old, motors brake...
lubrication goes away and the motors, the wheels may stop turning.
We have no idea what will happen.
But they're not gonna last forever
and as the dust keeps falling, the solar rays keep getting dirty.
What could happen with time, is some day...
we won't be able to charge the batteries enough to keep the rover worm at night.
If that happens, the rovers gonna get to cold
and one morning... he just won't wake up.
Spirit and Opportunity have shown us that once, three to four billions ago
Mars had the essential ingredients for life.
So, the next step is to seek out evidence of life itself.
Right now, we have one example of life: Us.
We may be all there is, we simply don't know.
But if you can show that life developed twice in our solar system
and then you consider the multitude of solar systems out there
it takes no great need of imagination to believe that life may be a common phenomena throughout the Universe.
Our rovers have gone farther, harder and longer then even wader creators believed possible.
They've done heroic work.
But some day we won't need robots.
Some day there'll be humans on the surface of Mars
and boot prints in our wheel tracks.
This mission has put us on a great trajectory to learn more about Mars and about ourselves.
But right now, Spirit and Opportunity are still roving Mars.
It's not just that they exited our wild extremes,
in many ways they are, our wild extremes.