Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Polette
Speaker 1: and I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as usual, senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Hey there, all right, so today we are going to
Speaker 1: talk about stuff what beepsy stuff? What beeps? What we
Speaker 1: shoot off into space to hit the red planet that
Speaker 1: is near us sometimes near us And well it's funny
Speaker 1: because there there is another science podcast around here somewhere.
Speaker 1: Stuff to blow your mind. Yeah, we're not talking about
Speaker 1: them because we decided, well occasionally we talked about the
Speaker 1: same stuff because we're fascinated by it, and we decided
Speaker 1: that we didn't care if they talk about this. There's overlap,
Speaker 1: because we wanted to talk about the Mars rover. Yes,
Speaker 1: and and specifically we're talking about the Curiosity rover, which
Speaker 1: successfully touched down on the surface of Mars, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that the way of delivering said rover to the
Speaker 1: surface of Mars was I think the scientific term is
Speaker 1: absolutely freaking crazy. I was gonna say nuts, but that'll work.
Speaker 1: That's that's the short version of the full scientific term. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And we want to talk about why is it such
Speaker 1: a big deal, why is it so hard to get
Speaker 1: to Mars and sort of talk about some of the
Speaker 1: historical missions that led up to Curiosity as well as
Speaker 1: the Curiosity mission itself. So, um, do you let's say that,
Speaker 1: let's say we're talking about the success failure rate of
Speaker 1: missions to Mars. Um depending not pleasant to talk about,
Speaker 1: depending upon how you define success or failure. Uh. One
Speaker 1: of the more common statistics I've seen, or are figures
Speaker 1: I've seen, is that twenty three out of thirty eight
Speaker 1: missions sent to Mars failed in some way. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: which gives it a pretty dismal success rate. Are you
Speaker 1: Are you speaking of all missions to marrows? So anybody
Speaker 1: who's ever shot something at the Red planet? Anyone anyone
Speaker 1: on Earth? Okay, we just we can't just pointing that out.
Speaker 1: We can't really talk about anyone from outside of Earth.
Speaker 1: We don't know. Good point, but I meant not the
Speaker 1: United States. Of course. We are located in the United States,
Speaker 1: And I just wanted to point out that you're not
Speaker 1: talking you're talking at Earthling. The United States success failure
Speaker 1: rate is better. It's thirteen successes out of eighteen tries
Speaker 1: prior to curiosity, I think it is. It is important
Speaker 1: to point out too, that the United States has been
Speaker 1: later to the let's throw stuff at the red planet party,
Speaker 1: and so maybe part of the failures of the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union is well, part of them is due to the
Speaker 1: fact that the Soviet Union is no more. But when
Speaker 1: they were very active at this, they were maybe not
Speaker 1: so good at it. They were the probably be better
Speaker 1: at it now. They were the only ones doing it
Speaker 1: at the time they were. So you might say, well,
Speaker 1: why is the why is this success rates so low?
Speaker 1: On Mars is hard, it's it's hard to get to
Speaker 1: and and here's the Moon might be a little closer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's I'll give you some figures here. So the average
Speaker 1: distance between Earth and the Moon is about two hundred
Speaker 1: thirty eight thousand, nine hundred miles or three four thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred kilometers. That's about how far it is from
Speaker 1: Earth to the Moon. And it takes a few days
Speaker 1: for us to send something to go land on the Moon. So,
Speaker 1: for example, astronauts aboard and Apollo Capsule. Take a few
Speaker 1: days to get there, and to get there in a
Speaker 1: few more days to get back. Um, but that's that's doable.
Speaker 1: We did do it, so clearly it's doable. It's a vacation.
Speaker 1: Getting someone to Mars, getting anything to Mars takes a
Speaker 1: lot more time. Now. Part of that is because the
Speaker 1: distance between Earth and Mars is not constant. And the
Speaker 1: reason for that is that you know, both planets are
Speaker 1: going around the Sun, right, but they're going at different
Speaker 1: speeds and their orbits are different sizes. So there are
Speaker 1: times when Earth and Mars are aligned and they are
Speaker 1: about as close as they possibly can be. And there
Speaker 1: are other times where Earth is on one side of
Speaker 1: the Sun and Mars is on the other side of
Speaker 1: the Sun and they're about as far apart as they
Speaker 1: possibly can be. So the distance varies dramatically. At the closest,
Speaker 1: Earth and Mars are about thirty three million, nine hundred
Speaker 1: thousand miles apart, or fifty four million, six hundred thousand kilometers,
Speaker 1: So to compare again to the Moon, the Moon was
Speaker 1: two eight thousand, nine hundred miles away, more Ours thirty
Speaker 1: three million, nine hundred thousand miles away. So that's not
Speaker 1: a day trip way further, and that's that it's closest
Speaker 1: at its furthest away Mars is about two hundred forty
Speaker 1: nine million, one hundred sixty thousand miles away or four
Speaker 1: hundred one million kilometers away. So if you're gonna make
Speaker 1: a mission to Mars of any kind, um, then you
Speaker 1: need to do a lot of thinking about it and
Speaker 1: and planning beforehand, because you need to decide, Okay, what
Speaker 1: are we gonna send there. We're gonna send a rover, um,
Speaker 1: and how how much is that gone away? Well, it's
Speaker 1: going to weigh about this much? How much you know? Rocketude?
Speaker 1: Do we need to throw at it? Okay? So you
Speaker 1: got your You've got your rocket tude and your This
Speaker 1: just makesic me think like some sort of nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: side scrolling video games. I'm going to write that, um
Speaker 1: and you're over. You know what, you know what you
Speaker 1: wanted to do, you know how to get it there? Uh?
Speaker 1: You start having to think about all sorts of other stuff. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: so how much gravity? Uh does Mars have? How much
Speaker 1: difference in the weight is there going to be once
Speaker 1: this this rover gets there? How are you know how
Speaker 1: much atmospheric interference is going to be there. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to plan how long it's gonna take
Speaker 1: for you to shoot this thing into space and get
Speaker 1: to Mars, and how it's going to stop when it
Speaker 1: gets there. Oh, and then you have to take a
Speaker 1: new account. If you know roughly how long it's going
Speaker 1: to take, where are the two planets going to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to figure out when it's from there and go, Okay,
Speaker 1: they're gonna be at their closest here, so we have
Speaker 1: to launch it then to make that happen. Technically, you
Speaker 1: even have to launch it before then because you have
Speaker 1: to do what's called a transfer orbit. So so by
Speaker 1: the let's let's say, let's say we've got to the point.
Speaker 1: By the way, it takes about two years for Earth
Speaker 1: and Mars to line up so that they are at
Speaker 1: their closest, and then it will take another two years
Speaker 1: before they are at that same position relative to one another.
Speaker 1: So there's a two year gap between when uh, your
Speaker 1: closest when you're not. And close is important because that
Speaker 1: determines how much fuel you're going to need to get
Speaker 1: whatever it is you're sending to Mars. There, and fuel
Speaker 1: is heavy because we depend on you know, uh, these
Speaker 1: these chemical fuels that are you know, these solid chemical
Speaker 1: fuels that that weigh a lot. They give off a
Speaker 1: lot of energy and they are about as efficient as
Speaker 1: we possibly can be with chemical uh fuel, But um yeah,
Speaker 1: their weight factors into the whole calculation. So you want
Speaker 1: to use as as little fuel as possible to get
Speaker 1: your your spacecraft to Mars to be as efficient as
Speaker 1: you possibly can be. This is also why it's really
Speaker 1: difficult to talk about a manned mission to Mars. I'll
Speaker 1: get to that in a second. But um, so you
Speaker 1: when you when Earth and Mars are closest together, if
Speaker 1: you were to launch at that point, well, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't just point the rocket at Mars where Mars
Speaker 1: is right now, because it is not gonna be there
Speaker 1: by the time the spacecraft would have made its way
Speaker 1: to that point. You know, both planets are still moving
Speaker 1: around the Sun, so your spacecraft would be going to
Speaker 1: where Mars used to be, not to wear Mars is
Speaker 1: going to be. So you actually have to planet out
Speaker 1: ahead of time to make sure you are being as
Speaker 1: economic as possible with your fuel use. So yeah, a
Speaker 1: paraphrase the great one. You have to launch the rocket
Speaker 1: at where the planet's going to be. Yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: gotta shoot for where it will be, not for where
Speaker 1: it is. So I'm sorry, go ahead, I was just
Speaker 1: gonna say. So, essentially, there is a lot of thought
Speaker 1: that has to go into this before you even build
Speaker 1: the rocket, before you even build the rover. You really
Speaker 1: have to think about what you need to do to
Speaker 1: make it happen. And so you know, when you shoot
Speaker 1: something at the Moon, the factors are lessened somewhat by
Speaker 1: the distance and and the proximity of the moon. You
Speaker 1: know what, you that the orbit and all those things
Speaker 1: are are are lesser and the more complex a project gets,
Speaker 1: you know, the more factors you have to deal with.
Speaker 1: And it's just that that's going to make it more
Speaker 1: difficult to reach Mars than it is to reach the Moon.
Speaker 1: And if you were trying to reach Pluto, for example,
Speaker 1: the factors get even more difficult. I mean, Pluto's got
Speaker 1: such an odd orbit anyway. So I mean this is
Speaker 1: this is you know, this isn't rockets. It is rocket science.
Speaker 1: So it's it's complex, not brain surgery. So the yeah,
Speaker 1: so it takes about it takes about between seven and
Speaker 1: eight months to get from Earth to Mars using the
Speaker 1: methods that we have available to us today. There are
Speaker 1: scientists who have suggested that we look into using a
Speaker 1: nuclear powered propulsion system in order to get from Earth
Speaker 1: to Mars, which would significantly reduce the way of your
Speaker 1: vehicle because you wouldn't have to have so much chemical
Speaker 1: fuel aboard. But then there are other problems of course
Speaker 1: with the idea of the nuclear propulsion system, especially if
Speaker 1: you're going to use some sort of chemical propulsion to
Speaker 1: get you off the the surface of the Earth into
Speaker 1: low Earth orbit before you engage the nuclear propulsion system.
Speaker 1: Having explosives next to a nuclear device makes people nervous.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. There's also the possibility that people
Speaker 1: have said of of building the spacecraft in lowerth orbit,
Speaker 1: so you would have space missions that would go out
Speaker 1: build this craft and lower Earth orbit, and then you
Speaker 1: solve the problem of having to escape Earth's gravity. Uh.
Speaker 1: You engage the nuclear propulsion system then, and that also
Speaker 1: gets around it. At any rate, so you've got about
Speaker 1: seven to eight months to get to Mars, depending on
Speaker 1: exactly what you're sending there and and the timing involved. Ah,
Speaker 1: this is and here's the reason why a manned mission
Speaker 1: to Mars would be really, really cult Let's say that
Speaker 1: we sent Let's say we we built the spacecraft that
Speaker 1: that is capable of carrying a party of about six
Speaker 1: astronauts to Mars. That tends to be about the number
Speaker 1: of crew members that is considered ideal. UH. This comes
Speaker 1: from NASA, and NASA says that ideal number is somewhat
Speaker 1: reached by you want to have enough of mix of
Speaker 1: people so that you can balance out any personality issues.
Speaker 1: You also want to have enough so that you can
Speaker 1: represent multiple nationalities because you have to have a lot
Speaker 1: of partnerships with other countries in order for these projects
Speaker 1: to come through. So there's a political element to it
Speaker 1: as well. UM. So, let's say we've built the ship
Speaker 1: that could hold six people, UH, that can hold all
Speaker 1: the supplies they would need to get to Mars and back.
Speaker 1: It would still take thirty two months from the time
Speaker 1: you launched to the time you touched down back on
Speaker 1: Earth to do am Ours mission. And the reason for
Speaker 1: that is that because it takes seven to eight months,
Speaker 1: you know, assuming that you're going for pure fuel economy. Again,
Speaker 1: to limit the weight of your spacecraft takes seven to
Speaker 1: eight months for you to get to Mars. By the
Speaker 1: time you land on Mars, the Mars and the Earth
Speaker 1: are no longer in that ideal situation where you can
Speaker 1: easily get from one to the other. In fact, at
Speaker 1: that point, by the time the Curiosity Rover landed on
Speaker 1: the surface of Mars, Mars was further away from the
Speaker 1: Earth than the Earth was to the Sun. So by
Speaker 1: the time you land, the Earth is further away from
Speaker 1: you than the Sun would be if you were still
Speaker 1: on Earth. So you have to wait for that timing
Speaker 1: to be right again so that you can launch from
Speaker 1: Mars and get back to Earth. That takes almost two years,
Speaker 1: so from the time you leave to the time you
Speaker 1: get back thirty two months past, so that's a that's
Speaker 1: a very long mission, and that during that whole time
Speaker 1: you would also have to be able to to not
Speaker 1: only provide all the resources your astronauts would need to
Speaker 1: stay alive on the surface of Mars, which not a
Speaker 1: very friendly planet for us, not too terribly accommodating. It's
Speaker 1: not the worst, but it's not it's not the best either.
Speaker 1: You would also have to figure out how to protect
Speaker 1: them from things like radiation. The longer you're out in space,
Speaker 1: the more likely you are to encounter various forms of
Speaker 1: radiation that we are protected from here on Earth due
Speaker 1: to factors like their's atmosphere and its magnetic field. So
Speaker 1: you'd have to figure out how do you protect the
Speaker 1: astronauts from things like gamma radiation out in space so
Speaker 1: that they don't turn into Incredible Hulk or cosmic race
Speaker 1: so they don't come back as the Fantastic Six, because
Speaker 1: there would be two more than the four. Um. I
Speaker 1: also thought you were going to point out that there
Speaker 1: need to be enough people aboard so that when the
Speaker 1: aliens do start bursting out of them that you know
Speaker 1: there's somebody left at the end of Yeah, you have
Speaker 1: to have that dramatic person at the end so they
Speaker 1: can come back and tell the story and and and
Speaker 1: blame the corporation from the documentary Alien um the uh. Yes,
Speaker 1: So there are there are a lot of factors that
Speaker 1: make it really really hard for us to send a
Speaker 1: manned mission to Mars, which is why the missions that
Speaker 1: we've sent to Mars so far have been unmanned missions.
Speaker 1: And uh even those have not had a great success rate.
Speaker 1: Although again the United States success rate is significantly higher
Speaker 1: than if you were to to think of the entire world, UH,
Speaker 1: which is mainly the USSR or SO Union at the time,
Speaker 1: UM now would be Russia and the various countries around Russia. UH.
Speaker 1: The Japan also has attempted to send missions to Mars,
Speaker 1: and there was I think a European mission as well.
Speaker 1: So the the first attempt to send a mission to Mars,
Speaker 1: an unmanned mission to Mars was in nineteen sixty by
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union and it was called corrobl four KO R, A, B,
Speaker 1: L and R in the in our alphabet. I don't
Speaker 1: read Ceilic, so I couldn't tell you the other version.
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, that was in nineteen sixty. It did
Speaker 1: not even it didn't reach Earth orbit, so that was
Speaker 1: a failure early on. It did not um even make
Speaker 1: it into lower orbit, much less out into Mars. I
Speaker 1: actually saw that one listed as Mars Nick Mars Nick
Speaker 1: interest s n I k uh, so this is the
Speaker 1: information I got was from NASA, So I was going
Speaker 1: from an article and wired, so, yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is from NASA. So they had to actually that went
Speaker 1: around the same time. Corrabl four and five according to NASA,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure I had different names in the Wired article.
Speaker 1: The first attempt by the United States was in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four with the Mariner three UM, which was it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be a fly by mission. So this
Speaker 1: is a spacecraft that's supposed to pass by Mars and
Speaker 1: take photos as it goes by. Uh. That one was
Speaker 1: also a failure. The the shroud failed to jettison, so
Speaker 1: it did not make it to Mars. But shortly thereafter,
Speaker 1: the Mariner four was a successful fly by mission and
Speaker 1: it returned twenty one images of Mars to Earth. So UH,
Speaker 1: the United States first attempt was a failure, but the
Speaker 1: second attempt succeeded. UM. There were a lot of attempts
Speaker 1: since then. UH. Some of them, many of them were flybys, UM.
Speaker 1: Some of them were meant to be orbit ters. UH.
Speaker 1: A lot of launch failures, a lot of orbits that
Speaker 1: were obtained, but then the device failed before it could
Speaker 1: really retrieve a lot of information. The first success really
Speaker 1: for the Soviet Union UM was the Mars five which
Speaker 1: was in nineteen seventy three, and that was that returned
Speaker 1: sixty images of the planet and it but it only
Speaker 1: lasted nine days. Yeah, Mars to actually attempted to put
Speaker 1: a lander on the surface, but not so much with
Speaker 1: the success. Yeah, the orbiter actually arrived into the orbit
Speaker 1: of Mars, but yeah, the lander did not did not
Speaker 1: land successfully. One of the challenges again that I had
Speaker 1: read about, especially with the recent coverage on curiosity again
Speaker 1: recent as of the time or recording this um, is
Speaker 1: that the the atmosphere of Mars is very very unlike
Speaker 1: that of Earth. It's very thin. Yes, so you know,
Speaker 1: if you think about, uh, for example, the Space Shuttle
Speaker 1: coming back in or the Mercury and gemin emissions. I
Speaker 1: love doing that because Jonathan wins Is every time I
Speaker 1: see geminy, some of the astronauts called it that though, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, using the heat sheet and coming in and
Speaker 1: having the heat shield, you know, burning as it comes
Speaker 1: through the Earth's atmosphere. Uh, Mars's atmosphere does not act
Speaker 1: as a slower downer, not not as much. It does.
Speaker 1: It does slow down the vehicle, but not as much yet.
Speaker 1: Think I was going to say that, Okay, well you
Speaker 1: said and as you said that, you said it wasn't
Speaker 1: a slower downer. I went to correct, Well, not as
Speaker 1: I was going to say, not as much as it
Speaker 1: does here, and with gravity being so different there too.
Speaker 1: Um it is those are our factors that the the
Speaker 1: scientists have to take into account. Um. I am not mistaken.
Speaker 1: You know there have been times when we tried to
Speaker 1: use a big cushiony bouncy ball to try to protect
Speaker 1: something and it didn't work out to But we have
Speaker 1: had rovers land using that approach. Um, it's an air
Speaker 1: airbag approach is really what it isn't airbags? Uh? Well, yes,
Speaker 1: the the atmosphere on Mars is thinner that it is
Speaker 1: on Earth, and it does not slow entry vehicles down
Speaker 1: to the same extent as we would have here on Earth.
Speaker 1: So you have to come up with other ways of
Speaker 1: slowing your injury vehicle entry vehicle down, uh, if you
Speaker 1: don't want to go boom on the surface of the planet.
Speaker 1: And there have been a lot of different attempts to
Speaker 1: do that. So previous attempts involved using parachutes, which can
Speaker 1: slow you down a little bit, but even then the
Speaker 1: atmosphere is so thin that you're going uh. They for example,
Speaker 1: the Curiosity rover deployed the largest supersonic parachute NASA has
Speaker 1: ever built, which wayed I think a hundred pounds total
Speaker 1: that was that was able to slow down the vehicle
Speaker 1: to two miles per hour. Uh, And I don't have
Speaker 1: the kilometers per hour conversion. They're right in front of me.
Speaker 1: So I apologized for that. But anyway, even at that speed,
Speaker 1: there was no way the rover could land and maintain integrity.
Speaker 1: It would have smashed to little, tiny pieces. So they
Speaker 1: had to find another way of slowing down. Uh. There
Speaker 1: are other elements literally on Mars that make this difficult.
Speaker 1: One of the potential things you could do is use
Speaker 1: rockets to slow down your your entry vehicle. But the
Speaker 1: closer you get to the surface of the planet, the
Speaker 1: more those rockets are going to disturb the dust that's
Speaker 1: on the surface. That dust can cause lots of problems.
Speaker 1: If you have sensitive scientific equipment. This equipment might get
Speaker 1: gummed up by dust. The dust could damage it so
Speaker 1: that it's unusable, which means that you might land successfully,
Speaker 1: but you can't actually retrieve any data because your instruments
Speaker 1: are fouled by dust. Um The dust itself could also
Speaker 1: be corrosive, so there's some real problems there. So you
Speaker 1: have to figure out, well, if you can't just use rockets.
Speaker 1: Then you have to find some other balancing features so
Speaker 1: that you can lower the rover itself onto the surface
Speaker 1: without getting the rockets so close to the surface that
Speaker 1: they start to disturb the dust about KOs peract of
Speaker 1: twenty two kilometers per hour, thank you so uh in
Speaker 1: some cases the way that the rovers we have landed. Now,
Speaker 1: we we've also launched orbiters that just orbit Mars and
Speaker 1: take uh scientific measurements from orbit. So we've got some
Speaker 1: of those in orbit already. UM. In fact, we've got
Speaker 1: a couple that we launched not too long ago, we
Speaker 1: being the United States. UM. The the there's the Mars
Speaker 1: Reconnaissance Orbiter, which was launched in two thousand five and
Speaker 1: uh it's already returned more than twenty six terra bits
Speaker 1: of data about the planet. There's also the Odyssey Mars Odyssey,
Speaker 1: which was launched in two thousand one, UM, and both
Speaker 1: of those have contributed a lot to our scientific knowledge.
Speaker 1: The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has aboarded a special camera called
Speaker 1: the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment or high RISE, and
Speaker 1: the high Rise actually caught a great photo of the
Speaker 1: Curia the rover as it was landing with the parachute deployed,
Speaker 1: so you can actually see the parachute. You can see
Speaker 1: the capsule that contained the rover. You can if you
Speaker 1: look really carefully, you can even see the heat shield
Speaker 1: that was jettisoned off the bottom of the rover. We'll
Speaker 1: talk more about that whole procedure in just a minute. UM. So,
Speaker 1: one of the things you could do is you use
Speaker 1: rockets to slow yourself down further from the parachute, so
Speaker 1: the parachute gets you down to a certain speed, the
Speaker 1: rockets can slow you down a little bit more. And
Speaker 1: then as you get closer to the surface, you need
Speaker 1: to find a way of lowering the rover itself so
Speaker 1: that the rockets don't disturb the dust too much. One
Speaker 1: way of doing that is to lower the rover uh
Speaker 1: to essentially drop it with all these air bags around it,
Speaker 1: which cushioned the blow, and it lands and then it
Speaker 1: retrieves the air bags and or or emerges from the
Speaker 1: air bags and continues on its mission. That's how the
Speaker 1: smaller rovers um landed from the smaller ones being things
Speaker 1: like the Spirit and the Opportunity, UH, the Phoenix Lander,
Speaker 1: things like that used those sort of approaches because um,
Speaker 1: they were they were small enough where it wasn't that
Speaker 1: it wasn't as huge a challenge. With the Curiosity Rover,
Speaker 1: you're talking about a one ton vehicle, and at that size,
Speaker 1: the size of the air bags you would need are
Speaker 1: so huge that you would really run the risk of
Speaker 1: even if everything worked properly, you would run the risk
Speaker 1: of fouling the drive system of the Curiosity Rover because
Speaker 1: it has to get out of this enormous air bag.
Speaker 1: So that was considered too risky. Another approach is to
Speaker 1: put uh these pretty much like stilts, like landing stilts,
Speaker 1: so that when the the rockets lower the the descent
Speaker 1: vehicle down, the the stilts touch ground and keep the
Speaker 1: rockets at an elevation high enough so that they aren't
Speaker 1: disturbing the dust too much, and then the rover can
Speaker 1: dropped down from there. Again, with the Curiosity Rover, it
Speaker 1: was so large and heavy the stilts would have had
Speaker 1: to have been way too tall to do this in
Speaker 1: a way that would have been easy to do, and
Speaker 1: also it would have really made it difficult to ensure
Speaker 1: that the Curiosity would be undamaged as it came down,
Speaker 1: So they had to come up with a different way
Speaker 1: to get the Curiosity rover onto the surface of Earth.
Speaker 1: And it was insane. A sky crane. Sky crane, Yeah,
Speaker 1: sounds that sounds like some kind of strange, other worldly company.
Speaker 1: And so we'll walk you through how how this unfolded.
Speaker 1: And it's still incredible to me that this worked well.
Speaker 1: I think, um, and I don't mean this in any
Speaker 1: way to be a slight to the scientists behind this.
Speaker 1: I think they were a little astonished. Well, the reaction
Speaker 1: that we saw at the and as we learned that
Speaker 1: the Curiosity had in fact landed successfully. And by the way,
Speaker 1: by the time we knew that the Curiosity was succes
Speaker 1: us full in its landing, it had been on the
Speaker 1: surface of Mars for several minutes. Because again Mars is
Speaker 1: further away at the point of the Curiosity landing from
Speaker 1: Earth than the Earth is to the Sun. It takes
Speaker 1: it takes about eight minutes for light from the Sun
Speaker 1: to get to Earth. It takes fourteen minutes for electromagnetic
Speaker 1: communication to get from Mars to the Earth. Internet now
Speaker 1: fourteen minutes for that information to get to us. It
Speaker 1: takes seven minutes from the time the landing capsule enters
Speaker 1: the Martian atmosphere to the point where curiosity would touch down.
Speaker 1: That means there's a seven minute gap where things have
Speaker 1: already happened and we do not know what they were. Yes,
Speaker 1: so it was seven minutes of terror, which is I
Speaker 1: think brilliant. There was a wonderful video NASA put out
Speaker 1: that was very dramatic, almost almost comedically so because it
Speaker 1: was like it was like a thriller movie, right, But
Speaker 1: it was all about the seven minutes of terror. The
Speaker 1: fact that you have to build a vehicle that's operating
Speaker 1: autonomously for for you know, there's nothing you can do.
Speaker 1: You can't make any adjustments because it's going to take
Speaker 1: fourteen minutes for that information to get to you, and
Speaker 1: then any information you send back it's going to take
Speaker 1: fourteen minutes for it to get there. So by the
Speaker 1: time you send any sort of information, by the time
Speaker 1: you react to a changing condition, it doesn't matter. Things
Speaker 1: have changed too much for that to have any effect. So, uh,
Speaker 1: the capsule enters the Martian atmosphere, there's seven minutes until
Speaker 1: it touches down, and then seven more minutes before we
Speaker 1: find out that anything about it. The first thing that
Speaker 1: happens is the atmosphere starts to slow down the capsule,
Speaker 1: and like we said, it's a thin atmosphere, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't slow down that much. It is, however, thick enough
Speaker 1: to cause lots of heat from friction. So it's it's
Speaker 1: a double whammy for NASA, right breaks exactly all the
Speaker 1: heat none of the break. So you have to build
Speaker 1: a device it's capable with standing the heat, but I
Speaker 1: have to make you have to take into account the
Speaker 1: the fact that the atmosphere is not going to slow
Speaker 1: it down sufficiently enough for it to make a safe landing.
Speaker 1: What a headache. So that's already tough capsule winners. The
Speaker 1: atmosphere starts to heat up, it has to have a
Speaker 1: heat shield to protect the innerds because electronics don't react
Speaker 1: well to heat. Said that a billion times, uh not literally.
Speaker 1: And then the once it reaches a certain altitude, uh,
Speaker 1: it deploys the parachute, which slows down the the vehicle
Speaker 1: even more. And so it started to slow down once
Speaker 1: it hits the atmosphere. Actually takes a little while before
Speaker 1: it starts to slow down, but it does slow down
Speaker 1: hitting the atmosphere, the parachute slows it down further. Once
Speaker 1: it slows down as much as it possibly can with
Speaker 1: the parachute. It jettison the parachute, which is important because
Speaker 1: then it activates rockets. So if it activated the rockets first,
Speaker 1: then there's the danger of actually colliding with the parachute
Speaker 1: and fouling the whole system. So jettison's the parachute. Parachute
Speaker 1: flies off, and then the rockets make a horizontal adjustment
Speaker 1: so that the descent vehicle is not going to be
Speaker 1: in the same path as the parachute. UH, it ejects
Speaker 1: the it detaches the the heat shield as well. Actually
Speaker 1: I think that even detaches while the parachutes deployed. UH.
Speaker 1: And there are sensors on the bottom of the rover
Speaker 1: which can help guide the whole system so it lands
Speaker 1: in the best spot. Now, they were aiming for the
Speaker 1: Gael Crater, which is was a it's a crater that
Speaker 1: was created on Mars about three billion years ago with
Speaker 1: a meteor impact, so they wanted to land the rover
Speaker 1: in there. So the the sensors on the bottom of
Speaker 1: the rover detect where the right landing area is, the
Speaker 1: rockets position it properly and start the descent, continuing to
Speaker 1: slow that that the scent so that you're not plummeting
Speaker 1: to the surface. At about twenty meters above the surface
Speaker 1: of the planet, the rover descends on a on a
Speaker 1: set of cables from a crane that's in that descent vehicle.
Speaker 1: So you've got a crane essentially mounted on rockets lowering
Speaker 1: a one ton vehicle. The cables I think we're about
Speaker 1: seven ms long, and so it would then the rockets
Speaker 1: would then slowly allowed this entire thing to descend until
Speaker 1: the wheels of the rover made contact with the Martian soil.
Speaker 1: At that point, the bridles holding the cables to the
Speaker 1: rover were jettisoned, and then the the the descent vehicle
Speaker 1: with the rockets would then launch itself about four away
Speaker 1: to crash on the surface of the planet so that
Speaker 1: it would not um cause any problems to the rover
Speaker 1: because you don't want to tell just we've gently set
Speaker 1: the rover down. Oh, and then our descent vehicle landed
Speaker 1: on our rover. That's a bummer. That would have been
Speaker 1: a bad thing. So the descent vehicle went about four
Speaker 1: away and crash landed. Uh, and the rover was safe
Speaker 1: on the planet. And we found out about it seven
Speaker 1: minutes after it happened, and everyone did a little dance
Speaker 1: and cheered and jumped and hugged each other. I don't
Speaker 1: think they did a little dance. I think they did
Speaker 1: a big dance. They did do a big dance. And
Speaker 1: there are gifts out there that show this that were
Speaker 1: very very popular. As soon I mean like seconds after
Speaker 1: the footage at the Internet, there were already memes about it. Yeah. Yeah, well, Um,
Speaker 1: like I said, I think they were a little surprised,
Speaker 1: but in a in a positive way, like they came
Speaker 1: up with an excellent solution, but without ever you know,
Speaker 1: trying it in practice. Um, you know it on Mars.
Speaker 1: They weren't certain, especially with their past success rate, whether
Speaker 1: it would work for sure or not, or would it
Speaker 1: deliver the rover in excellent condition, which it did, so
Speaker 1: they were they were very very happy out about that.
Speaker 1: And it's it's something that you can't really test here
Speaker 1: on Earth because the conditions here on Earth are so
Speaker 1: different from on Mars that even if you were to
Speaker 1: build something that works well on on here on our planet,
Speaker 1: you cannot be certain that the same thing is going
Speaker 1: to apply on Mars, because the conditions are too different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know it wasn't just engineered well on paper,
Speaker 1: it actually in practice did did very very well. And
Speaker 1: there's quite a lot of equipment on on Curiosity as well.
Speaker 1: I mean there's seventeen cameras alone, uh and most most
Speaker 1: of those are navigational and hazard cameras, but there is
Speaker 1: a mast. Uh. You know what my favorite piece of
Speaker 1: equipment aboard the Curiosity is, or do I have to
Speaker 1: ask what? What? What is your favorite piece of equipment?
Speaker 1: It's a lady which the laser is used to concentrate
Speaker 1: a very focused beam of of light on rocks in
Speaker 1: the Martian soil. And uh, they does listen very very
Speaker 1: short bursts, like five nano second long bursts, and after
Speaker 1: about seventy bursts of this high powered intense laser, it
Speaker 1: starts to a blate or evaporate the rock that it's
Speaker 1: focused on. And then what happens is a special camera
Speaker 1: actually three different cameras will get information from our three
Speaker 1: different sensors will get information from a telescopic camera that
Speaker 1: will analyze the plasma this rock gives off. And by
Speaker 1: analyzing the plasma through UH spectroscopes, they can determine what
Speaker 1: chemical elements made up the rock itself. So essentially what
Speaker 1: you're doing is you're burning something. Looking at burning is
Speaker 1: an oversimplification, but you're burning something looking at the fumes
Speaker 1: it gives off, and based upon those you determine what
Speaker 1: the stuff is made of. The reason for this is
Speaker 1: one so we can learn more about the composition of Mars,
Speaker 1: but to also look for things that could be foundational
Speaker 1: building blocks to support life. Now, curiosity is not looking
Speaker 1: for evidence of life itself. It is not looking for
Speaker 1: microscopic life because it doesn't have any equipment aboard the
Speaker 1: rover itself capable of seeing things at that resolution. So
Speaker 1: it's not looking for evidence of microscopic life that's currently
Speaker 1: there on Mars. It's really looking for all the elements
Speaker 1: that would need to be in place for life to
Speaker 1: have at least one at one time been supported on Mars. That, however,
Speaker 1: has not stopped all the other memes that have gone
Speaker 1: around where there have been pictures circulated from curiosity, and
Speaker 1: of course uh these pictures of curiosities. Uh. From Curiosity's
Speaker 1: point of view, across the surface of Mars is it's
Speaker 1: big and flat. However, dust so far, the life forms
Speaker 1: I have seen superimposed over that landscape on social media
Speaker 1: include Marvin the Martian from Q thirty two, Spaced Tour
Speaker 1: from uh uh, the Looney Tunes cartoons, uh, the Muppets
Speaker 1: from uh that that that go yep yep, yep, yep,
Speaker 1: yep yep. And I did see a couple of days
Speaker 1: ago some adapts walking across the surface. So the Empire
Speaker 1: is apparently they're already um, very very amazing terrain attack
Speaker 1: transports or something like that. That's what it means. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so from Star Wars UM documentary Star Wars. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: they there are several different cameras. They're they're taking photos
Speaker 1: three d um so the James Cameron contingent is there
Speaker 1: black and white, colorful. The avatars are running around of
Speaker 1: there yep yep. Um. So basically they're they're doing all
Speaker 1: kinds of uh of imaging and analysis of the planet's surface.
Speaker 1: Um and you know there it's it's pretty awesome to
Speaker 1: be able to do this kind of work. This is, uh,
Speaker 1: this is an evolutionary step from what the previous rovers
Speaker 1: we've sent up there, like Phoenix and Spirit and Opportunity,
Speaker 1: where they were all very much geologic uh, instruments, geological instruments,
Speaker 1: really studying the geological formation of Mars and it's geological features.
Speaker 1: Now the Curiosity is more of like a fully fledged
Speaker 1: scientific laboratory that is on wheels. It moves very very slowly. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's got but it's got a lot of sophisticated equipment.
Speaker 1: Like you said, it has that mast that projects above
Speaker 1: the rover itself self gun arm Um. You mentioned the
Speaker 1: chem cam, which is the laser. It's got a chemistry
Speaker 1: and mineralogy experiment or instrument called kemen. They remember we
Speaker 1: talked about the different parts of the Space Shuttle group.
Speaker 1: They love love love acronyms. So the chemin instrument looks
Speaker 1: at minerals to identify why whether water could have been there.
Speaker 1: Then there's the rover Environmental Environmental Monitoring Station or MS,
Speaker 1: which will give you the weather report. Yes it's not
Speaker 1: raining again. Uh. There there's so much aboard and um.
Speaker 1: One of the other things I think has been really
Speaker 1: remarkable about the past few missions to Mars is NASA's
Speaker 1: ability to communicate this information in a way that is
Speaker 1: really exciting to people who otherwise might not really have
Speaker 1: cared that much. The space exploration history in the in
Speaker 1: the entire world has really gone through sort of a
Speaker 1: roller coaster of as far as the public interest is concerned, right,
Speaker 1: because you had the space race for the Moon, which
Speaker 1: was politically motivated, I mean that was that was really
Speaker 1: all uh yuled not literally but metaphorically by the political
Speaker 1: opposition of the United States and the Soviet Union. And
Speaker 1: so once we landed men on the Moon and got
Speaker 1: them back safely, uh, the political uh motivation to push
Speaker 1: people out into space really diminished, which is part of
Speaker 1: the reason why we didn't start immediately looking at Mars
Speaker 1: as being the next step, because a lot of the
Speaker 1: excitement and enthusiasm and funding had gone away because we
Speaker 1: already achieved this other amazing and insanely amazing goal of
Speaker 1: landing people on the Moon. Um. Then, like we had
Speaker 1: the Space Shuttle era, which started off with incredible interest.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was this amazing program, but then Shuttle mission.
Speaker 1: After Shuttle mission, people started to think of it more
Speaker 1: as something that just happens and less as something amazing
Speaker 1: and special because it was you know, it just seemed like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: another Shellow mission that's going up, which is when you
Speaker 1: think about it, that's a crazy crazy thing to just
Speaker 1: take for granted because the amount of work it takes
Speaker 1: to get people into space is phenomenal. But it did happen. Uh,
Speaker 1: once we started sending missions to Mars and have them
Speaker 1: be a success, you know, there were science fans who
Speaker 1: really thought was interesting, but the general public, I don't
Speaker 1: know that necessarily cut their attention. I think what really
Speaker 1: turned things around was when NASA started to leverage social
Speaker 1: media and began to use social media to to communicate
Speaker 1: scientific facts, figures, discoveries to the general public. That got
Speaker 1: people excited, and beyond that, they began to give almost
Speaker 1: a personality to some of the equipment they sent out.
Speaker 1: That's that's funny. I don't know if Jonathan heard this.
Speaker 1: This morning, UM, as I was driving to the train
Speaker 1: station to come in for this podcast, I was listening
Speaker 1: to National Public Radio NPR here in the United States
Speaker 1: and there was an interview UM with Veronica McGregor now
Speaker 1: Veronica McGregor. She was the person who was in charge
Speaker 1: of updating a Twitter account for the Phoenix Mars Rover,
Speaker 1: and the Phoenix Mars Rover ended up getting an enormous
Speaker 1: number of fans following it and it was able to know.
Speaker 1: Through the Phoenix Twitter feed, NASA was able to communicate
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting scientific information, but Veronica went a
Speaker 1: little step further and gave the Phoenix sort of again
Speaker 1: a personality. And I'll never forget I mean, I remember
Speaker 1: I followed the Phoenix rover and it was truly an
Speaker 1: emotional moment when the second to last tweet that Phoenix
Speaker 1: sent out during its official mission was It's very unlikely
Speaker 1: I'll wake up next spring, but if I do, I'll
Speaker 1: call home. Good luck with your project. And people thought
Speaker 1: about that, like, there's this little robot all alone, not
Speaker 1: really all alone. There are other robots on Mars too,
Speaker 1: but they're really far away. So more or less, there's
Speaker 1: this little robot all alone on the surface of this planet, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, miles and miles and miles away from Earth,
Speaker 1: and it is doing science for us, and it's doing
Speaker 1: it selflessly, and it's about to die because it's solar
Speaker 1: circuits aren't going to get enough juice to keep it going.
Speaker 1: And there's and by the time it comes out of
Speaker 1: that that essentially Martian Winter, for lack of a better term,
Speaker 1: by the time it comes out, it will not be
Speaker 1: able to reboot it system and it will be a
Speaker 1: dead piece of technology. It impacted people, I mean people
Speaker 1: got teary eyed over the idea because they yeah, people
Speaker 1: had had humanized this inanimate well animated but on a
Speaker 1: live object and has no actual feelings or personality. But
Speaker 1: Veronica had really uh imbued this thing with that kind
Speaker 1: of sense of purpose and and personality that people identified with.
Speaker 1: And it made a powerful statement. And I think people
Speaker 1: connected to the space mission in a way they hadn't
Speaker 1: in many years. And NASA has continued that trend. And
Speaker 1: uh the last Twitter post it posted was all in
Speaker 1: binary and it's spelled out triumph ah making a note
Speaker 1: here huge success. Well, they talked to Veronica McGregor this morning.
Speaker 1: She is the social media manager UM and is at
Speaker 1: it again. There there's a team of three women who,
Speaker 1: according to NPR, who work on the Curiosity rovers Twitter
Speaker 1: account UM, which has according to this uh UM Chicago Tribune,
Speaker 1: I couldn't remember Veronica's last name, so I looked it
Speaker 1: up and and this article posted earlier today. As of
Speaker 1: right now, more than eight hundred thousand followers UM already
Speaker 1: for Curiosity, so they will be following through the mission
Speaker 1: just in case. You're curious. According to Veronica McGregor, the
Speaker 1: Curiosity as as she and has a female, she said.
Speaker 1: According to them, they had sort of talked about it
Speaker 1: and they feel they get this feeling that it's a her.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, you go, girl, it's interesting. But well,
Speaker 1: if if you put yourself in the shoes of someone
Speaker 1: who is talking about this, um, you know you you
Speaker 1: kind of have to make a personality as you're building
Speaker 1: your personality, like, you know what, I think, I think
Speaker 1: it's a woman, but I do. I do remember listening
Speaker 1: to or watching videos of the engineers talk about the
Speaker 1: Curiosity and they referred to the entire vehicle as a she,
Speaker 1: which at the time I didn't think unusual because I
Speaker 1: like the votes ships not boats. Well, some boats I
Speaker 1: think of I think of ships were hurricanes, Um, the Enterprise, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Star Trek, that's as she. Well, people have talked
Speaker 1: about the expense of the mission, and I'm sure there
Speaker 1: were people who are going, why on Earth or Mars
Speaker 1: do you care if it's a male or a female?
Speaker 1: Were over All these things personalize it somewhat, and they
Speaker 1: do make it more accessible to us, and they also
Speaker 1: get us inspired to to try new things, to find
Speaker 1: ways to grow better crops or pure diseases, or launch
Speaker 1: the next mission to space. They make us want to
Speaker 1: try something that we haven't been able to do before,
Speaker 1: and it's valuable. The the effects that come out of
Speaker 1: this are across so many different disciplines. So not only
Speaker 1: one we're learning about Mars. Two, we're learning more about
Speaker 1: our solar system. Three, we're learning more about the Earth
Speaker 1: as we learn what things are similar versus dissimilar between
Speaker 1: Mars and Earth. And and go ahead. Four We're inspiring
Speaker 1: future generations of scientists and engineers because this is genuinely
Speaker 1: exciting and people, little kids will think that is amazing.
Speaker 1: Look at what can be accomplished. I want to do that.
Speaker 1: And and five you're promoting science in general to the
Speaker 1: general public. And again, you know, promoting science, I think
Speaker 1: it's an incredibly important thing. It's not the easiest thing
Speaker 1: in the world to do, especially you know, some scientists
Speaker 1: are so focused on their field they may not be
Speaker 1: the best at communicating that that passion and enthusiasm to
Speaker 1: the general public. Even though they possess it themselves, they
Speaker 1: might not be able to communicate it effectively. So bridging
Speaker 1: that gap is really important so that the public understands
Speaker 1: why this is important and gets excited. It also helps
Speaker 1: with funding. Um it might inspire the next private company
Speaker 1: to try and go into something that they wouldn't have
Speaker 1: done before. So yeah, the the this is really a
Speaker 1: true domino effect, right, I mean, it's amazing the sort
Speaker 1: of stuff that can come out of a mission like
Speaker 1: this that may not even be obvious at first glance. Yep.
Speaker 1: And eventually we're gonna have to get off this rock.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and we should mention also, NASA currently only
Speaker 1: has one other Mars mission planned, which is a launch
Speaker 1: in the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution um SO or
Speaker 1: MAVEN his name of that, And don't they have a
Speaker 1: creative acronym for that? Would Who would have thunk it?
Speaker 1: Maven's purpose is to study the atmosphere of Mars. So again,
Speaker 1: the rovers we are sending are mostly looking at the
Speaker 1: composition of the soil and the geological formations that are
Speaker 1: on Mars and to really look at the various layers
Speaker 1: that some One of the reasons why we landed uh
Speaker 1: the curiosity and a crater is because it can look
Speaker 1: at different layers on the surface of Mars and see
Speaker 1: how it's how it has changed over time. But this
Speaker 1: will be more to look at the atmosphere. We do
Speaker 1: not have any manned missions to Mars planned, at least
Speaker 1: not NASA UM and there are other nations in the
Speaker 1: world that are also planning missions to Mars. NASA has
Speaker 1: only got the one and then after that, who knows. UM.
Speaker 1: We don't have any planned missions to Mars. There are
Speaker 1: some companies. There are some companies that have talked about it, uh,
Speaker 1: and some of the plans are kind of insane. But
Speaker 1: if you really want to hear a pretty crazy idea
Speaker 1: about landing on Mars, my favorite is the first one
Speaker 1: that I could come across, the first published UM plan
Speaker 1: or calculation of what it would take to to send
Speaker 1: a manned mission to Mars, and it comes from Verna
Speaker 1: Magnus Maximilian Friar von Brown or Verna von Brown, as
Speaker 1: most people would know, who was a rocket scientist. Rocket
Speaker 1: scientists during World War Two built rockets for the Germans.
Speaker 1: After the end of World War Two, the United States
Speaker 1: UM essentially took him and put him to work for
Speaker 1: the US rocket program. UH. It was that's a political
Speaker 1: story that is fascinating and you should all write to
Speaker 1: stuff you missed in history class to talk about that. Actually,
Speaker 1: that'd be a fascin fascinating podcast. But anyway, Van Brown
Speaker 1: first made rockets for the Germans and then began to
Speaker 1: make rockets for the United States. And one of the
Speaker 1: things he thought of back in nineteen was what it
Speaker 1: would take to send a manned mission to Mars. It
Speaker 1: wasn't published till nineteen fifty two, eventually became an appendix
Speaker 1: in a novel he wrote, which was a fictional account
Speaker 1: of what that mission would be like. The novel, from
Speaker 1: what I understand, is not um terribly good. I did
Speaker 1: not publish until two thousand and six. But anyway, in
Speaker 1: his in his version, it was going to be a
Speaker 1: ten spacecraft mission where these ten spacecrafts would carry about
Speaker 1: seventy crew members total, and the spacecraft would go into
Speaker 1: orbit around Rs and then the mission the the ground
Speaker 1: mission crews would detach from the orbiting UM spacecraft in
Speaker 1: winged vehicles that had skis at the bottom of them
Speaker 1: and would land at the polar caps on Mars. The
Speaker 1: thought being that the polar caps would be flat and
Speaker 1: so that would be the best place to land. Then
Speaker 1: they would take Mars crawlers to the equator on Mars,
Speaker 1: which would take about eighty days I think, and then
Speaker 1: build base camp there and then would come back to
Speaker 1: Earth when the those orbits would line up properly again.
Speaker 1: So that was his idea. UM didn't happen. It was.
Speaker 1: It was an incredibly um uh. I don't know difficult
Speaker 1: I have difficult project. I mean it would have. It
Speaker 1: would have been much harder than anything else we have
Speaker 1: attempted so far. So but that that was my favorite
Speaker 1: of the proposed Martian expeditions, although there are some other
Speaker 1: ones there's been There was one that was more like
Speaker 1: a reality television show, um which was a private endeavor
Speaker 1: and I won't go into it, but it did sound
Speaker 1: pretty crazy. So there have been some interesting proposals for
Speaker 1: trips to Mars. Mostly it looks like for the foreseeable
Speaker 1: future it's going to be unmanned missions from most of
Speaker 1: the world unless some crazy person with lots of money
Speaker 1: gets behind it and and and does what we think
Speaker 1: is think of as the impossible, which after the curiosity
Speaker 1: were overlanding, I'm not sure my my definition of the
Speaker 1: impossible needs to be adjusted. It was certainly not a
Speaker 1: mission impossible, that's true. So yeah, they I mean, I'm excited.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm looking forward to seeing what other news. It's
Speaker 1: it's funny now that we're again, as it the recording
Speaker 1: of this podcast sort of coming down from the excitement
Speaker 1: of act we're landing there. Now, it's going to be
Speaker 1: fun to see what what they learned. And we've already
Speaker 1: seen some pretty incredible stuff, like we saw there's there's
Speaker 1: video of the landing from the bottom of the rover,
Speaker 1: and they're they're all these great shots that have already
Speaker 1: come back, and this is just the beginning, and of
Speaker 1: course by the time this podcast comes out, I'm sure
Speaker 1: we'll have much more information. I really look forward to
Speaker 1: seeing what Curiosity digs up. Well, the video has already
Speaker 1: been so much better quality. Yeah, that that it will
Speaker 1: be at least inspiring for those of us who are
Speaker 1: just sort of following peripherally rather than you know, um,
Speaker 1: the scientists who are really looking for stuff. I think
Speaker 1: it'll be uh be interesting to the rest of the
Speaker 1: world as well. Agreed. So guys, if you have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics we should cover in future episodes of
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff, I invite you to write us and let
Speaker 1: us know our email address is tech stuff at Discovery
Speaker 1: dot com. Or let us know on Facebook or Twitter
Speaker 1: or handle at both of those is text stuff H. S. W.
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