Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And on February twenty one,
Speaker 1: NASA celebrated upon receiving word that the Mars rover called Perseverance,
Speaker 1: had touchdown safely upon the Red planet. And if you
Speaker 1: listen to Monday's episode, you heard me cover the basics
Speaker 1: of the rover, including all the instruments in tech that
Speaker 1: it's carrying. Today, I thought I would talk more about
Speaker 1: the journey to launching that rover and what it's been
Speaker 1: doing up on Mars since it touched down a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago. Now, when it comes to space missions,
Speaker 1: a lot of factors come into play. There's the tech, obviously,
Speaker 1: I mean without the tech, we wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: get to space or do anything useful once we're out there.
Speaker 1: But there's also money and politics, two factors that can
Speaker 1: actually make or break space missions. In fact, the whole
Speaker 1: purpose of the space race, when you really boil it down,
Speaker 1: was because of political pressures between the United States and
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. We had a lot of benefits that
Speaker 1: came out of it that had nothing to do with politics,
Speaker 1: But the money would never have been there had it
Speaker 1: not been for that political pressure. Personally, I wish it
Speaker 1: were otherwise. I would love it if just the pursuit
Speaker 1: of knowledge was enough for us, But we live in
Speaker 1: the real world. NASA, or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
Speaker 1: is a US federal government agency, and as such, it
Speaker 1: is particularly subject to the whims of politics and budget committees,
Speaker 1: and that means it can be really tough to make
Speaker 1: long term plans, as changes in the government can really
Speaker 1: shake things up from one group of leaders to the next.
Speaker 1: This is no small matter. The person in charge of
Speaker 1: leading NASA gets that job through political appointment. The President
Speaker 1: of the United States appoints the nominee, who then must
Speaker 1: receive approval from the US Senate. This administrator is both
Speaker 1: the head of NASA as well as the top advisor
Speaker 1: when it comes to matters involving space. Every four years
Speaker 1: in the United States we have presidential elections, and when
Speaker 1: those elections lead to a change in which political party
Speaker 1: is holding the executive branch that is the president, well,
Speaker 1: that typically means we also will see a change in
Speaker 1: leadership at NASA. Since the agency's founding in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, there have been thirteen official administrators and another
Speaker 1: eleven acting administrators, meaning they were filling in the position
Speaker 1: while a new administration was in the process of choosing
Speaker 1: a successor. Oh and uh. Of those acting administrators, Alan
Speaker 1: love Lace, actually served as that role twice. So leadership
Speaker 1: at NASA has changed twenty four times since the agency
Speaker 1: was founded in October night. If we were to average
Speaker 1: that out, it would mean that the head of the
Speaker 1: agency changes every you know, two point six years or so. Now,
Speaker 1: if you've listened to tech stuff for a while, or
Speaker 1: if you've listened to a show I used to do
Speaker 1: with aerial casting called Business on the Brink, you've heard
Speaker 1: stories about companies that were plagued with issues that either
Speaker 1: caused or contributed to a sort of revolving door situation
Speaker 1: at the executive leadership level. And when you've got top
Speaker 1: leadership changing frequently, it can be difficult to maintain momentum
Speaker 1: or a long term strategy. And when it comes to space,
Speaker 1: you you have to plan long term because the amount
Speaker 1: of time it takes to conceive, develop, produce, and execute
Speaker 1: a mission can span several years or even more than
Speaker 1: a decade. Long term plans are hard y'all. Many of
Speaker 1: NASA's long term plans have focused on Mars, and I
Speaker 1: would say we're still firmly in the phase of learning
Speaker 1: about Mars itself. We know a lot about the planet already,
Speaker 1: but there are many questions that we still have. So
Speaker 1: let's do a quick rundown on stuff we already know
Speaker 1: about Mars. And first let's get the obvious stuff out
Speaker 1: of the way. It's the fourth planet out from the Sun,
Speaker 1: which makes Earth and Jupiter. It's next door neighbors. It's
Speaker 1: smaller than Earth. The diameter of Mars is a bit
Speaker 1: more than half of Earth's diameter. The Earth has about
Speaker 1: ten times the mass of Mars. This also means that
Speaker 1: the gravity on Mars is less than what you would
Speaker 1: experience here on Earth. On Mars, you would weigh about
Speaker 1: thirty eight percent of what you weigh here on Earth.
Speaker 1: Of course, your mass would remain the same. Mass doesn't change,
Speaker 1: but your weight would change. And we call it the
Speaker 1: red planet because it's red, So that okay, that that
Speaker 1: that makes sense. And it's also a planet, so that
Speaker 1: also I mean that it tracts. And we know why
Speaker 1: it's red too. It's red because of the regulars on Mars,
Speaker 1: that's what we call the rocks and the loose soil
Speaker 1: on the surface, it happens to be rich with iron,
Speaker 1: and as we know, rust is the product of oxidation.
Speaker 1: So it's time for some chemistry, all right. So the
Speaker 1: simple formula is that you get iron or f E
Speaker 1: on the elemental table and you get an oxidizer. Here
Speaker 1: on Earth, the most common combination tends to be iron
Speaker 1: water and oxygen. Water is more like a catalyst. In
Speaker 1: this case, iron exposed just oxygen does oxidize, but the
Speaker 1: process is fairly slow. Water speeds us up a lot,
Speaker 1: and if the water has a lot of electrolytes, which
Speaker 1: is not just what plants crave, then the process happens
Speaker 1: even faster. That's why iron exposed to salt water will
Speaker 1: rust pretty darn quickly. Now does that mean the iron
Speaker 1: on Mars rusted in a similar way, perhaps due to
Speaker 1: torrential rainstorms. Well maybe that's one hypothesis, but there are
Speaker 1: other possibilities, such as solar radiation breaking down molecules like
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide into oxidants that rusted the iron over the
Speaker 1: course of millions of years, or there might be several
Speaker 1: reasons combined that led to the oxidation process, but Mars
Speaker 1: is reddish color was one of the reasons scientists suspected
Speaker 1: that water is or was on the surface of the
Speaker 1: planet before we were able to actually verify. Oxidizing reactions
Speaker 1: can be either endothermic or exothermic. That means that, depending
Speaker 1: upon the actual reactants, you might need to add heat
Speaker 1: to cause the oxidation process to start, or the process
Speaker 1: itself might really ease heat. So with iron oxidation, you're
Speaker 1: talking about an exothermic reaction, meaning it does generate heat.
Speaker 1: If you expose a very tiny speck of pure iron
Speaker 1: to an environment that has oxygen and maybe some water
Speaker 1: vapor like you know our atmosphere does, well, that spec
Speaker 1: will oxidize very quickly and release more heat than can
Speaker 1: disperse through that tiny tiny piece of iron. We're talking
Speaker 1: like itty bitty little flecks of iron. So you end
Speaker 1: up getting a super hot fleck of iron because the
Speaker 1: heat can't disperse quickly enough, and that ends up being
Speaker 1: a spark. Anyway, that's kind of getting off track. More
Speaker 1: to the point. The fact that Mars has rust on.
Speaker 1: It tells us that iron and some sort of oxidizer
Speaker 1: have to be or at least had to be present,
Speaker 1: and it brought up the possibility that the planet has
Speaker 1: or had water on it. This would be one of
Speaker 1: the facts that we were trying to establish for a
Speaker 1: long time with various observations and Mars missions, and we
Speaker 1: did eventually mind ice on Mars. Mars is also very cold.
Speaker 1: The average temperature on Mars is minus eighty one degrees
Speaker 1: fahrenheit or nearly minus sixty three celsius, and the atmosphere
Speaker 1: on Mars is primarily carbon dioxide. We would not be
Speaker 1: able to breathe there. It's a very thin atmosphere too,
Speaker 1: so not not a whole lot of it, and most
Speaker 1: of its carbon dioxide. Mars has two moons, Damos and Phobos,
Speaker 1: both discovered by astronomer A Esop Hall in eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Hall had almost given up looking for moons around Mars,
Speaker 1: but his wife Angelina encouraged him to keep looking, and
Speaker 1: according to the story, he found both of them within
Speaker 1: that week. So I think we all owe Angelina credit
Speaker 1: for this as well. It's no surprise that the two
Speaker 1: moons were difficult to spot. They are two of the
Speaker 1: smallest moons in our Solar system. Phobos is the larger
Speaker 1: of the two by a little bit, and it also
Speaker 1: orbits Mars at a really low altitude of six thousand
Speaker 1: kilometers or just three thousand, seven hundred miles. Now, for comparison,
Speaker 1: our own moon around Earth is three hundred eighty four
Speaker 1: thousand kilometers or two hundred thirty eight thousand, nine hundred
Speaker 1: miles away. So Phobos is super close to Mars, and
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons why it's very hard to spot.
Speaker 1: There's not a whole lot of distance between Phobos and
Speaker 1: the planet it orbits, and it's very tiny, so picking
Speaker 1: it out in the nineteenth century was really hard to do. Dams,
Speaker 1: while smaller, is also a bit further out in its orbit,
Speaker 1: and this also means that the two moons have vastly
Speaker 1: different cycles. Phobos orbits Mars three times per day and
Speaker 1: Dams takes about thirty hours to do a full circuit
Speaker 1: around Mars. Phobus is fate is also sealed. Every year
Speaker 1: it gets a little bit closer to Mars because its
Speaker 1: orbit is decaying and in line and by in time
Speaker 1: I mean like fifty million years or so it will
Speaker 1: either collide with Mars or it might break apart into
Speaker 1: eighty eight pieces, and then Mars will get a ring.
Speaker 1: Come on, we all know Mars deserves a ring. Beyonce
Speaker 1: would agree with me. Both Phobos and Damos always present
Speaker 1: the same face to Mars, which makes them kind of
Speaker 1: like our moon. You know, if you look up at
Speaker 1: the moon, you're always looking at the same face of
Speaker 1: the moon. And by the way, this is a good
Speaker 1: time to remind people that the phrase dark side of
Speaker 1: the moon doesn't mean that one side of the moon,
Speaker 1: either Earth's moon or Mars's moon, is always dark. There
Speaker 1: is a light side and a dark side of these moons,
Speaker 1: but the sides change because of the cycles, just as
Speaker 1: Earth always has a side that is, you know, lit up,
Speaker 1: and another side that's dark. But it's not like it
Speaker 1: stays that way all the time. That's why we have
Speaker 1: night and day. Now, all that being said, it's possible
Speaker 1: that future trips tomorrow Mars might use these moons as
Speaker 1: a forward base. For one thing, If you established the
Speaker 1: base on the side of the moons that always face Mars,
Speaker 1: you've got the rest of the Moon behind you blocking
Speaker 1: radiation from space and the Sun in particular for most
Speaker 1: of the time, which is a good thing because, as
Speaker 1: we all know, space is always trying to kill you,
Speaker 1: and cosmic radiation is one of the many weapons of choice,
Speaker 1: along with stuff like you know, the lack of a
Speaker 1: breathable atmosphere and the effects of vacuums on humans and
Speaker 1: long term effects of exposure to micro gravity. I've done
Speaker 1: full episodes about how space is trying to kill you.
Speaker 1: I guess it's a good time to transition to some
Speaker 1: of the missions that various countries have launched to get
Speaker 1: more info on Mars. There's a lot more that we
Speaker 1: know about Mars. For example, it doesn't have tectonic plates
Speaker 1: the way Earth does. Uh. It has the largest volcano
Speaker 1: is in the Solar System, but none of them are active.
Speaker 1: They've all gone extinct millennia ago. It doesn't have a
Speaker 1: magnetic field the way the Earth does. That has lots
Speaker 1: of consequences from Mars, one of which is that the
Speaker 1: solar wind from the Sun is gradually siphoning off Mars'
Speaker 1: atmosphere over you know, millions of years. So there are
Speaker 1: other things we know, but let's let's talk about some
Speaker 1: of the missions we've sent to Mars to learn more
Speaker 1: about it. The first successful Mars mission was Mariner four,
Speaker 1: which did a fly by of the planet in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five. There have been other attempts that predated Mariner four,
Speaker 1: but NASA's Mariner four was the first to actually make it.
Speaker 1: All the others had mission failures. A few years later,
Speaker 1: Mariner six and Mariner seven followed suit, and then the
Speaker 1: former uss ARE launched its own successful orbiter spacecraft in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one. The first space have to land on Mars,
Speaker 1: you know, without actually crashing into it, was the Mars
Speaker 1: Pathfinder with the Sojourner rover, which launched in nineteen and
Speaker 1: landed in n Sojourner remained in operation for less than
Speaker 1: ninety earth days. There wouldn't be another successful landing on
Speaker 1: Mars until two thousand three. That's when NASA had its
Speaker 1: Mars Exploration Rover mission and launched a pair of rovers
Speaker 1: to the Red planet. One was called Spirit, the other Opportunity.
Speaker 1: They launched a few weeks apart in the summer of
Speaker 1: two thousand three and landed on Mars in January two
Speaker 1: thousand four, in very different locations on the planet. Both
Speaker 1: of these Rovers made contact by using a parachute and
Speaker 1: then retro rockets and then massive air bags, so the
Speaker 1: landing was a bumpy one. Mars atmosphere is thin, but
Speaker 1: it does exist, so parachutes are viable presuming that what
Speaker 1: where it is you're trying to land on Mars isn't
Speaker 1: too heavy, and they don't slow you down as much
Speaker 1: as they would on Earth because there's just not as
Speaker 1: much atmosphere to catch and slow you down. These rovers
Speaker 1: also stayed in service a very long time. Spirit gave
Speaker 1: up the Ghost pun intended in but Opportunity remained active
Speaker 1: until the main purpose of these rovers was to look
Speaker 1: for signs of past water activity on the surface of Mars.
Speaker 1: While Spirit would get stuck in two thousand nine and
Speaker 1: finish out its mission as a stationary platform kind of
Speaker 1: like a lander, Opportunity kept working until it was clear
Speaker 1: that it was beyond reach and had expired. The NASA
Speaker 1: Social team shared the message my battery is low and
Speaker 1: it's getting dark, and frankly, a lot of people on
Speaker 1: the Internet got very sad that this robot on Mars
Speaker 1: was going offline. By that time, people had sort of
Speaker 1: a scry a kind of personality and life to this
Speaker 1: robot in no small thanks to the NASA Social team,
Speaker 1: and people got really caught up on how this robot
Speaker 1: was so far from home and all alone and I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I can't read my notes because something's in my eye.
Speaker 1: The Spirit and Opportunity were each doing science long after
Speaker 1: their initial planned missions, which was great, but Mars missions
Speaker 1: don't always go that way. The Phoenix Lander, which wasn't
Speaker 1: a rover but a stationary Mars science platform, launched on
Speaker 1: August four, two thousand seven. It landed on Mars on
Speaker 1: May two thousand eight. It also used a parachute and
Speaker 1: thrusters during landing, achieving a soft landing in the process,
Speaker 1: and it landed near the polar region of the northern
Speaker 1: part of Mars, and scientists knew that it was going
Speaker 1: to have a pretty short useful life, or at least
Speaker 1: was likely to, because, as George R. R. Martin would say,
Speaker 1: winter is coming. The Phoenix Lander operated until NASA lost
Speaker 1: contact with it in November two eight, essentially six months
Speaker 1: after it had landed. By that time, sun exposure on
Speaker 1: that part of Mars was very low, which meant the
Speaker 1: lander couldn't get enough energy for its solar panels in
Speaker 1: order to recharge its battery. But it did do a
Speaker 1: lot of science in those six months, examining the polar climate,
Speaker 1: the composition of the lower atmosphere on that part of Mars,
Speaker 1: and studying the history of water and ice on Mars.
Speaker 1: It might not have had a very long life like
Speaker 1: Spirit or Opportunity, but it did do a ton of work.
Speaker 1: Then we move up to twenty eleven with the launch
Speaker 1: of the Mars Science Laboratory, better known to the rest
Speaker 1: of us as the Curiosity Rover. This one was much
Speaker 1: bigger than the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. It weighed in
Speaker 1: at more than a ton at least on Earth Martian gravity,
Speaker 1: being about a third of Earth's gravity, and as I
Speaker 1: mentioned in the pre Perseverance episode, Curiosity required an up
Speaker 1: to that point unique approach with a sky crane. So
Speaker 1: think of it as a platform that uses rockets to
Speaker 1: maintain a position above a specific point on Mars, kind
Speaker 1: of hovering above it, and then it lowers the rover
Speaker 1: jeep sized rover down to the ground below with cables.
Speaker 1: Perseverance would use a very similar method, but again I
Speaker 1: covered that in the previous episode, so I'm not going
Speaker 1: to repeat it here, because all chances are you've heard
Speaker 1: it already. In ten, NASA launched the Insight Lander, which
Speaker 1: touched down on Mars in November of that year. Insight
Speaker 1: is kind of like a Martian weather station. It monitors
Speaker 1: stuff like wind, pressure and speed, temperature and so on,
Speaker 1: but it's also measuring seismic activity on Mars, and it
Speaker 1: attempted to get a temperature reading of the planet's interior,
Speaker 1: but it turned out that the clumpy nature of Martian
Speaker 1: soil meant that the temperature probe wasn't able to get
Speaker 1: enough purchase to dig down in order to do the work.
Speaker 1: Mars is hard, y'all. Now, when we come back, we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about the lead up to Perseverance itself, but
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. So as of this recording,
Speaker 1: there have been forty nine attempts to send missions to Mars,
Speaker 1: whether a fly by spacecraft, an orbiter, a lander, or
Speaker 1: a rover, and some of the missions, to be fair,
Speaker 1: had multiple components. So out of all those missions, about
Speaker 1: half were outright failures and some of the remaining were
Speaker 1: really only partial successes. There's never a guarantee that any
Speaker 1: one mission is going to achieve its goals. So when
Speaker 1: we factor all this in that NASA's leadership changes pretty regularly,
Speaker 1: that if you miss a launch window to Mars you
Speaker 1: have to wait two and a half years to try again.
Speaker 1: It even when things line up you might have a
Speaker 1: fifty chance of success, you start to see how the
Speaker 1: odds are stacking up against you. And of course there's
Speaker 1: also the matter of budget. Because NASA is a government agency,
Speaker 1: it has to appeal to Congress for its budget, and
Speaker 1: since twenty ten, Congress has granted NASA the equivalent of
Speaker 1: around half a percent of the total federal budget, or
Speaker 1: between eighteen and twenty one billion dollars depending on the year. Now,
Speaker 1: this isn't just a blank check. The administration at the
Speaker 1: White House gets a big say in where that money goes.
Speaker 1: When Barack Obama announced his administration's space policy, it really
Speaker 1: shook things up quite a bit over at NASA. For
Speaker 1: one thing, it removed all funding for the Constellation program,
Speaker 1: which had as its mission objectives the funding of vehicles
Speaker 1: that could launch crews to low Earth orbit, the Moon
Speaker 1: and ultimately to Mars. But it had gone over budget.
Speaker 1: It was under funded despite being over budget. In other words,
Speaker 1: it was going to be way more expensive than what
Speaker 1: anyone had anticipated, and there had been numerous delays. So
Speaker 1: after a thorough review of the program, UH, the White
Speaker 1: House decided to no longer funded. This, by the way,
Speaker 1: remains a controversial decision. There were some within NASA who
Speaker 1: adamantly disagreed with the decision. There were others who were
Speaker 1: saying that perhaps it was merited. UH. I probably need
Speaker 1: to do a full episode about the Constellation project at
Speaker 1: some point and really dive into all sides of that story. Anyway,
Speaker 1: back in twenty sixteen, the European Space Agency had to
Speaker 1: go it alone with a mission that had intended to
Speaker 1: be a joint effort between the e s A and NASA,
Speaker 1: and the reason NASA was no longer part of this
Speaker 1: dance was because of changes to NASA's budget in general.
Speaker 1: Around twenty twelve, the White House budget request US began
Speaker 1: to allocate less money to go towards unmanned missions to
Speaker 1: Mars and more money dedicated toward human exploration and commercial spaceflight.
Speaker 1: New goals included a mission that would ultimately send astronauts
Speaker 1: to an asteroid, something that still hasn't happened as of
Speaker 1: right now. Oh and also some funding went toward the
Speaker 1: launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, something else that
Speaker 1: hasn't happened yet. When the James Webb Telescope was first proposed,
Speaker 1: the target launch was let me check my notes, two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, but if all goes as planned, it will
Speaker 1: launch on Halloween of this year, so better late than never.
Speaker 1: As for that European mission, it was part of a
Speaker 1: program called Exo Mars. The effort involved launching both an orbiter,
Speaker 1: which measures trace gases in Mars' atmosphere, and a lander
Speaker 1: called the Shia Parelli E d M. The orbiter entered
Speaker 1: into its planned orbit without issue. It is still orbiting
Speaker 1: Mars now. In fact, it even got a look at
Speaker 1: the Perseverance, but the lander crashed on Mars and did
Speaker 1: not survive. A second part of this program, originally scheduled
Speaker 1: for eighteen, has since been pushed to twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: and in NASA's absence, the Russian space program rose Cosmos
Speaker 1: has stepped into partner with the E s A. The
Speaker 1: budget cuts did not bode well for projects like Perseverance.
Speaker 1: NASA estimates that all told, the cost of the Perseverance
Speaker 1: mission will be somewhere in the neighborhood of two point
Speaker 1: seven to two point nine billion dollars. The majority of
Speaker 1: that cost went into the development of the spacecraft and
Speaker 1: the rover that was two point two billion of the total,
Speaker 1: and the rest would cover the launch of the payload
Speaker 1: into space, which was around two fifty million dollars, and
Speaker 1: the cost of operating the mission for the projected length
Speaker 1: of service UH the projected mission is to last two years,
Speaker 1: but keep in mind that other missions to Mars have
Speaker 1: had numerous extensions to their missions when conditions allowed it. Still,
Speaker 1: that cost is much lower than the development costs were,
Speaker 1: and the benefits of extending missions when feasible are unknown
Speaker 1: and thus incalculable, and they're usually pretty cool. So while
Speaker 1: we don't know how much it's going to cost in
Speaker 1: the long run, we also aren't really sure of what
Speaker 1: kind of amazing benefits we might see due to those missions.
Speaker 1: NASA began working on the Perseverance mission back in when
Speaker 1: less than one million dollars of its budget went to
Speaker 1: the preliminary stages of defining mission objectives, which in turn
Speaker 1: informed engineers as to the types of tools and instruments
Speaker 1: that the rover would require to carry out its mission.
Speaker 1: For the following two years, the amount of NASA spent
Speaker 1: on Perseverance hovered around the one hundred million dollar mark,
Speaker 1: But in twenty six is really kicked into gear. That's
Speaker 1: when the actual build phase for the project began, and
Speaker 1: from twenty sixteen until last year, NASA would spend an
Speaker 1: excess of three hundred million dollars per year on the project,
Speaker 1: with the peak coming in with more than five hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars of NASA's budget going toward Perseverance. Now what
Speaker 1: certainly an expensive endeavor. I don't want to give the
Speaker 1: impression that Perseverance stands out over all other NASA missions.
Speaker 1: Other Solar System exploration missions like the two Viking spacecraft Cassini,
Speaker 1: and Perseverances, older but smaller sibling Curiosity, are all more expensive,
Speaker 1: especially when you adjust for inflation. If you don't adjust
Speaker 1: for inflation, then it doesn't look that way, but inflations
Speaker 1: of things, so we have to take that into account.
Speaker 1: And those aren't the only missions that NASA's done that
Speaker 1: are more expensive than Perseverance. Perseverance currently ranks as number
Speaker 1: seven in NASA's planetary exploration programs in terms of cause,
Speaker 1: And if you look at long term projects with human
Speaker 1: space flight, Perseverance doesn't even really mirrit attention the Apollo program,
Speaker 1: which sent multiple missions with astronauts to the Moon that
Speaker 1: cost around two hundred billion dollars when you adjust for inflation.
Speaker 1: Now that's not a big surprise, because keeping humans alive
Speaker 1: in space and bringing them back to Earth safely is
Speaker 1: really hard. In fact, it's it's hard enough that sadly
Speaker 1: we have not always been successful doing it. But still
Speaker 1: pursuing any expensive mission is a risk with changes in leadership,
Speaker 1: you never know when the new suits are going to
Speaker 1: tell you to stop working on a project and shift
Speaker 1: funds around elsewhere. Perseverance managed to persevere through the changes,
Speaker 1: even as we saw goals shift away from further missions
Speaker 1: to the Moon under Obama and then back again under Trump.
Speaker 1: Now the reason I lead with all this is because
Speaker 1: after all these changes, the pandemic threatened to mothball the
Speaker 1: Perseverance launched for a couple of years. If NASA had
Speaker 1: not come up with contingencies to deal with the dangers
Speaker 1: of COVID, the mission would have to wait, and that
Speaker 1: would have been a bummer. And then there's the danger
Speaker 1: that the NASA of the future wouldn't have the budget
Speaker 1: to follow through on the mission, and even with all
Speaker 1: the measures in place, the possibility of missing that window
Speaker 1: was very real. NASA had to push back the launch
Speaker 1: date a couple of times, and there was a real
Speaker 1: deadline that they had to hit. If Perseverance had not
Speaker 1: gotten off Earth by August, it would have had to
Speaker 1: sit around in the tool shed for a couple of years. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't actually think it would be in a tool shed.
Speaker 1: I'm just imagining. Perseverance is kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: a writing lawnmower. It also marked a major shift in priorities. Typically,
Speaker 1: when approaching a launch date, Priority one has to do
Speaker 1: with making sure everything is in place for a successful launch,
Speaker 1: but with the pandemic, Priority one shifted to the health
Speaker 1: and safety of all those working together to make this happen,
Speaker 1: and it required drastic changes, with some people working from
Speaker 1: home like a lot of us have had to do,
Speaker 1: and others adopting additional safety measures in order to work
Speaker 1: on location. Matt Wallace, the deputy project manager of NASA's
Speaker 1: Mars Exploration program, put it like this quote. We called
Speaker 1: the effort Mars twenty twenty safe at work. The objective
Speaker 1: was to keep the team as safe or safer than
Speaker 1: they would be if they were not working. Putting a
Speaker 1: spacecraft together that's going to Mars and not making a mistake.
Speaker 1: It's hard, no matter what. Trying to do it in
Speaker 1: the middle of the pandemic. It's a lot harder, end quote.
Speaker 1: But the team did do this, which made the rover's
Speaker 1: name of Perseverance all the more appropriate. And in fact,
Speaker 1: Perseverance has a small plate on the left side of
Speaker 1: its chassis that commemorates the efforts, as well as honoring
Speaker 1: healthcare workers around the world. The plate shows the Earth,
Speaker 1: complete with a launched spacecraft sitting atop a sort of scepter,
Speaker 1: and wrapped around the handle is a single serpent. It's
Speaker 1: a vocative of the rod of Asclepius, associated with a
Speaker 1: Greek god of healing and medicine whose name I most
Speaker 1: certainly mispronounced. Now, that's not the only plate that's mounted
Speaker 1: on the chassis of Perseverance. There's a plate made of
Speaker 1: titanium that has the name of the rover engraved upon it.
Speaker 1: There's a plate that shows the Sun, the Earth and
Speaker 1: Mars on it with the inscription ten million, nine hundred
Speaker 1: thirty two thousand, two hundred explorers on it. Attached to
Speaker 1: this plate are three silicon chips with ten point nine
Speaker 1: million names stenciled on them in incredibly tiny printing. Surrounding
Speaker 1: the sun are dashed rays of light on this plaque.
Speaker 1: Those dashed is actually spell out a message in Morse code,
Speaker 1: and that message is eat at Joe's No, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: wait wrong note, I'm sorry. It says explore as one
Speaker 1: that's that's far more inspirational, has pointed out to me
Speaker 1: on Twitter by Jim I will Spare, sharing his Twitter
Speaker 1: handle just in Casey doesn't want it publicized. The Perseverance
Speaker 1: also has a plate that shows the evolution of rovers
Speaker 1: sent to Mars, starting with the Sojourner from and leading
Speaker 1: up to Perseverance and Ingenuity as well. It looks a
Speaker 1: lot like one of those stick figure family stickers that
Speaker 1: you see on the backs of cars occasionally, where it's
Speaker 1: like the parents, the kids, the pets, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: It's very cute. Now when it comes to hidden messages,
Speaker 1: NASA can get a little playful. The Curiosity rover has
Speaker 1: wheels that lead a dot and dash pattern in the
Speaker 1: regular as it PAS says over Mars, and yes, that's
Speaker 1: also morse code. That message just reads out jp L
Speaker 1: that stands for Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Perseverance has another
Speaker 1: coded message included in the whole package. While landing, the
Speaker 1: rover took an image straight up at the open parachute
Speaker 1: that was slowing its descent, actually took video of it,
Speaker 1: and the parachute has bands of white and red on it,
Speaker 1: and before long some clever folks sussed out that these
Speaker 1: were patterns that represented a message written in binary. When translated,
Speaker 1: the message says dare mighty things, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: And in addition, the outermost ring of colors on the
Speaker 1: parachute appears to be Earth coordinates for the jp L,
Speaker 1: so if a Martian comes across this discarded parachute, they'll
Speaker 1: know where to send the return As planned, the Perseverance
Speaker 1: touched down on Mars on February one. NASA captured a
Speaker 1: lot of data during Intrigue Descent and Landing or e
Speaker 1: d L as they say. Sensors in the spacecraft's heat
Speaker 1: shield measured temperatures and pressure changes, which will help future
Speaker 1: engineers have a better understanding of the conditions they need
Speaker 1: to take into account for future missions to Mars, including
Speaker 1: those that might have human astronauts aboard. The atmospheric readings
Speaker 1: will also give insight into future flying vehicles, and of course,
Speaker 1: the Ingenuity helicopter will give us more information about this too.
Speaker 1: The moment the spacecraft deployed the parachute, the Perseverance camera
Speaker 1: system began to document the descent process, and you can
Speaker 1: watch the descent, which included a camera mounted below the
Speaker 1: spacecraft so that you can see the landscape of Mars
Speaker 1: grow closer. You can watch as the jettisoned heat shield
Speaker 1: falls a long long way down until it moves out
Speaker 1: of frame so it's still falling when the camera angle
Speaker 1: has shifted enough where you can no longer see it.
Speaker 1: NASA's video of the ascent really shows how incredible this
Speaker 1: whole process is, how technical it is, and you also
Speaker 1: get to hear NASA engineers react with joy at the
Speaker 1: announcement of each successful milestone during the landing process. It's
Speaker 1: a joyous experience and I do recommend checking it out.
Speaker 1: The video is on YouTube. It's about three and a
Speaker 1: half minutes long, and it's called Perseverance Rover's Descent and
Speaker 1: touchdown on Mars. The video also shows when the terrain
Speaker 1: relative navigation system comes online. That's the system that allows
Speaker 1: the entry craft to identify a suitable landing spot for
Speaker 1: the rover. The thrusters on the entry vehicle then helped
Speaker 1: maneuver the falling spacecraft toward that spot. Then the landing
Speaker 1: engines prime and the backshell on the entry vehicle jettison's
Speaker 1: and for a moment, the view of Mars and the
Speaker 1: video tilts in a way that might seem alarming, but
Speaker 1: in fact that tilt represents the vehicle's move to get
Speaker 1: out of the way of the falling backshell to avoid
Speaker 1: any possible collision. Once at the right altitude, which is
Speaker 1: about twenty meters off the surface of Mars, the landing
Speaker 1: thrusters provide enough thrust to hover over the landing spot,
Speaker 1: and the skycrane begins to lower perseverance to the surface,
Speaker 1: extending the cables slowly and setting the rover onto the
Speaker 1: regular This part of the video shows dust scattering beneath
Speaker 1: the rover because of the thrusters, until the camera on
Speaker 1: the rover is low enough that it's actually in the
Speaker 1: dust cloud. Then the view pretty much shifts to the
Speaker 1: skycrane above, which detaches and then flies off to avoid
Speaker 1: colliding with the rover, and you hear the jubilant tango
Speaker 1: Delta touched down, confirmed and there was much rejoicing. When
Speaker 1: we come back, i'll talk about some of the incredible
Speaker 1: stuff Perseverance has already sent us, keeping in mind that
Speaker 1: we haven't really gotten started yet. But first let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break. Perseverance landed in Jzero Crater. Now, during
Speaker 1: the planning phase of Perseverance, teams spent five years selecting
Speaker 1: the best spot for the rover to land in order
Speaker 1: to carry out its mission, which largely focuses on looking
Speaker 1: for evidence that Mars might have at one point hosted
Speaker 1: life in its distant past. To that end, NASA scientists
Speaker 1: wanted a spot that would be a strong candidate for
Speaker 1: having that kind of evidence. The Jesero Crater was once
Speaker 1: a lake billions of years ago. NASA identified that the
Speaker 1: rim of this crater has organic carbonates in the minerals.
Speaker 1: Now Here on Earth, carbonates served part of what makes
Speaker 1: up stuff like seashells, and those can last as fossils
Speaker 1: for billions of years. So while carbonates alone don't indicate
Speaker 1: that life was definitively present on Mars. They could represent
Speaker 1: one of the best chances we have of finding evidence
Speaker 1: of past life. Perseverance will examine these areas closely, and
Speaker 1: it will also take samples of material, storing them in
Speaker 1: metal tubes that can be left behind so that a
Speaker 1: later mission can retrieve those tubes and bring them back
Speaker 1: to Earth. And let me tell you, the idea of
Speaker 1: bringing back Martian soil here to Earth is something I
Speaker 1: find really exciting. The carbonates will give us more insight
Speaker 1: into the long term history of Mars as well. Carbonates
Speaker 1: form through interactions between water and carbon dioxide. By examining
Speaker 1: the carbonates that the crater, scientists will learn more about
Speaker 1: how Mars change from being a planet with water on
Speaker 1: it to kind of the desert landscape that it is today.
Speaker 1: The RIM is where scientists have found evidence of the
Speaker 1: greatest concentration of carbonates in this particular crater, though it's
Speaker 1: unknown if the RIM is the so called bathtub ring
Speaker 1: left behind by the ancient lake or if it actually
Speaker 1: predates the lake itself, and it will take some time
Speaker 1: for us to learn more. When NASA was planning up
Speaker 1: this mission, the expectation was that it might be toward
Speaker 1: the end of the two year mission before Perseverance is
Speaker 1: actually at the rim itself. Right now, Perseverance is kind
Speaker 1: of bulking up. It's charging its onboard batteries through the
Speaker 1: use of its solar panels, and not just its own batteries.
Speaker 1: Perseverance is also supplying juice to the helicopter ingenuities six
Speaker 1: off the shelf lithium ion batteries. The helicopter, which is
Speaker 1: attached to the underside of Perseverance has already phoned home.
Speaker 1: It will stay on Perseverance between thirty and sixty days,
Speaker 1: charging up gradually. Also attached to Perseverance is the base
Speaker 1: station for the helicopter, which will serve as a communications
Speaker 1: node between the rover and the helicopter later on. Everything
Speaker 1: so far is performing as expected. Now the charging process
Speaker 1: is a slow one. The first big power up gets
Speaker 1: Ingenuities batteries up to thirty capacity. Then after a few days,
Speaker 1: the Perseverance can do a second charging session, thus getting
Speaker 1: the batteries up to thirty and each week will be
Speaker 1: much the same, which is why it's going to be
Speaker 1: a little while before we know if helicopters can fly
Speaker 1: on Mars but assuming all goes well, sometime this spring
Speaker 1: or maybe early summer, we should reach the point where
Speaker 1: the helicopter will detach from perseverance and stand on its own,
Speaker 1: and then it will have a window of about thirty
Speaker 1: martian days to conduct test flights. Assuming it gets off
Speaker 1: the ground and returns safely, it will be considered a
Speaker 1: monumental success. This is one of those high risk, high
Speaker 1: reward type experiments. We literally do not know if it's
Speaker 1: going to work. NASA plans to have up to five
Speaker 1: total test flights if it all works out, but that
Speaker 1: is a big if. For one thing, the helicopter has
Speaker 1: to survive long enough to try and fly in the
Speaker 1: first place, and that's no small shakes. Temperatures at the
Speaker 1: Jesro Creator can dip down to about negative nineties celsius
Speaker 1: or minus one thirty fahrenheit. Some of that battery power
Speaker 1: won't be going to flying. Instead, it's going to be
Speaker 1: going to heating elements to keep everything warm enough so
Speaker 1: it doesn't freeze tight. Then there's the dust, which can
Speaker 1: cause damage or at the very least coat solar panels
Speaker 1: and make them far less efficient at gathering energy. The
Speaker 1: atmosphere on Mars is very thin, so to generate enough
Speaker 1: lift to get off the ground is a challenge. The
Speaker 1: helicopter device weighs just four pounds. Here on Earth, it's
Speaker 1: about two kilograms. I mean it's always two kilograms because
Speaker 1: again that's mass, but you get the idea. The carbon
Speaker 1: fiber rotors, besides being very light, will rotate at an
Speaker 1: incredible rate around two thousand, four hundred revolutions per minute. Now,
Speaker 1: a typical helicopter on Earth, like the vehicle that you
Speaker 1: would ride in, it rotates its rotors somewhere around four
Speaker 1: hundred fifty to five hundred rpm on average, So twenty
Speaker 1: four hundred is very fast. While we wait for Perseverance
Speaker 1: and Ingenuity to fill up their batteries. There are a
Speaker 1: few other things we can talk about so far. One
Speaker 1: is that Perseverance has taken some amazing panoramic shots of
Speaker 1: the Creator already. If you've ever played with a panoramic
Speaker 1: photography app on your phone, you know that you typically
Speaker 1: line up the shot and then you slowly pan your
Speaker 1: phone so that the edges line up, and usually you have,
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of guide like little dots or
Speaker 1: something else to make you go through the process. Smoothly,
Speaker 1: and what's really happening is your phone is taking a
Speaker 1: series of photographs one after the other, and then digitally
Speaker 1: stitches all of those together to create the panoramic view.
Speaker 1: The same thing is true with the cameras on the
Speaker 1: mast of Perseverance. Perseverance gave itself a couple of days
Speaker 1: to settle in on Mars, taking that first panoramic shot
Speaker 1: on February twenty with its navigation cameras and then following
Speaker 1: that up with a better photo on the twenty one.
Speaker 1: It rotated the mast sort of like a periscope and
Speaker 1: did so three hundred sixty degrees and captured high definition
Speaker 1: photos with the masked cam Z, which is a dual
Speaker 1: camera system that takes zoomable photographs. This second panoramic shot
Speaker 1: consists of one hundred forty two images that were all
Speaker 1: digitally stitched together, and among the various rocks and stones
Speaker 1: you can see is one the researchers have already nicknamed
Speaker 1: the harbor seal because well, it kind of looks like
Speaker 1: a harbor seal. It's a darker color than the ground
Speaker 1: around it, and scientists hypothesized that the shape is due
Speaker 1: to erosion. Some of which might have been relatively fast acting.
Speaker 1: You know, something you can measure in the hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of years rather than the billions of years. In addition,
Speaker 1: the images picked up some pitted rocks that have peaked interest.
Speaker 1: The rocks could be volcanic, because as I said, Mars
Speaker 1: is home to the largest volcanoes in our Solar System,
Speaker 1: though they have been active for millions of years. Or
Speaker 1: it's possible that these rocks are made of carbonate minerals.
Speaker 1: It will take time before Perseverance has the juice to
Speaker 1: wander over and get a closer look, or maybe even
Speaker 1: to gather samples. Future photographs will be sharper, according to
Speaker 1: the team, which is beyond cool. Much of the heavy
Speaker 1: work will take place later this year. One other thing
Speaker 1: Perseverance has already done is it got a sound recording
Speaker 1: from Mars, and sadly, while you cannot hear any David
Speaker 1: Bowie or anything, you can hear the rover's own systems
Speaker 1: and the sound of wind blowing on another planet, which
Speaker 1: is phenomenal when you think about it, and it sounds
Speaker 1: just like this. The work NASA does with Perseverance will
Speaker 1: give us a deeper understanding of Martian history, and what
Speaker 1: we learn will likely come in handy as we consider
Speaker 1: the possibility of sending astronauts to Mars in the future.
Speaker 1: There are so many engineering challenges for us to work
Speaker 1: out for all of that to come together, from protecting
Speaker 1: the crew from harmful radiation to surviving the harsh temperatures
Speaker 1: of Mars, to figure out how to produce oxygen, water,
Speaker 1: and food millions of miles from home, and then there's
Speaker 1: the whole you know, getting folks back to Earth part.
Speaker 1: The challenges are not necessarily insurmountable, but they are daunting,
Speaker 1: and learning more about the planet will help scientists make
Speaker 1: the best preparations for a successful mission in the future,
Speaker 1: and I'm really excited to learn more about what Perseverance
Speaker 1: finds out. I always find space missions to be super
Speaker 1: cool and interesting, both because we're pushing back our ignorance
Speaker 1: bit by bit learning more about the universe we live in,
Speaker 1: and also in the long run, we often end up
Speaker 1: with tech achnologies that evolve from things that we used
Speaker 1: in space applications, and so we all get to use
Speaker 1: space tech in some form or another. Um It may
Speaker 1: not look like space tech, but that's where it came
Speaker 1: from and I think that's pretty cool. If you guys
Speaker 1: have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes,
Speaker 1: let me know. The best way to do so is
Speaker 1: to reach out on Twitter to handle is tech stuff
Speaker 1: H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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