Speaker 1: Welcome to text Tuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Be there, and welcome to tex 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: the Perseverance rover from NASA touched down on Mars successfully.
Speaker 1: It was fantastic. If you didn't get to see the
Speaker 1: video of all the people at NASA reacting to the
Speaker 1: notification that in fact it had touched down safely, you
Speaker 1: should watch that. It is joyous and so much fun.
Speaker 1: And of course I immediately wanted to record an episode
Speaker 1: about it, and then I learned as I started working
Speaker 1: on that episode that I had actually already done an
Speaker 1: episode about the Perseverance. I did it be for the
Speaker 1: launch of the Perseverance back in July of twenty So
Speaker 1: I thought I would rerun that episode to kind of
Speaker 1: give you guys the rundown on the rover and the
Speaker 1: technology aboard the rover, as well as some of the
Speaker 1: parameters of the mission it will be pursuing. And then
Speaker 1: on Wednesday, I figure we will do a follow up
Speaker 1: and talk about some of the early stuff that we've
Speaker 1: had a chance to see and hear from Mars thanks
Speaker 1: to the Perseverance Rover, and an update on on what
Speaker 1: the mission status is and when we can expect some
Speaker 1: of those other activities to take place, the big one
Speaker 1: being the flight of Ingenuity that will be coming on Wednesday.
Speaker 1: But first let's listen to this episode recorded back in
Speaker 1: July of about Perseverance. Now, at the end of July
Speaker 1: twenty NASA plans to launch new rover on a journey
Speaker 1: to Mars to continue the work of sojournal, Spirit, Opportunity,
Speaker 1: and Curiosity, all of which have really extended our knowledge
Speaker 1: of the Red planet. This new rover is called Perseverance,
Speaker 1: and it really is something special. So today we're going
Speaker 1: to learn about the rover and its mission, and also
Speaker 1: a high risk, high reward experiment called Ingenuity that is
Speaker 1: not technically part of Perseverance, but is going along for
Speaker 1: the ride. However, before we do that, we've got a
Speaker 1: lot of other ground to cover, both here on Earth
Speaker 1: and on Mars, and I want to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about why I chose this as a topic in
Speaker 1: the first place. First is timing. Obviously, this episode should
Speaker 1: come out a couple of weeks before the scheduled launch,
Speaker 1: assuming everything goes well. And another reason is that these
Speaker 1: missions often reinforce things that I find really inspiring and
Speaker 1: even hopeful. Transporting a spacecraft to Mars, let alone landing
Speaker 1: something on that planet, and then using that something to
Speaker 1: explore and conduct scientific experiments. That's a monumental achievement. It
Speaker 1: requires so much work, and it builds on more than
Speaker 1: a century of discoveries and theories. It's a team effort
Speaker 1: in which hundreds of people pool their talent and expertise
Speaker 1: to pull off what when you really look at it,
Speaker 1: seems like it should be impossible. So while we have
Speaker 1: tons of problems we need to address here on Earth,
Speaker 1: from dealing with the pandemic to addressing real social inequalities
Speaker 1: and more, I look at how people have managed to
Speaker 1: build devices that explore another planet, and it strikes me
Speaker 1: that if we have the determination, we really can achieve
Speaker 1: incredible things, we just need to apply that determination. Anyway,
Speaker 1: here we go. As I record this, NASA has already
Speaker 1: pushed back the launch a couple of times. So at
Speaker 1: the moment when I'm sitting at this microphone, the scheduled
Speaker 1: launch date is for July. Now, if that date should
Speaker 1: slip for whatever reason, NASA will have a relatively narrow
Speaker 1: window to launch or else face the reality that they
Speaker 1: will have to shelve this project for more than two years.
Speaker 1: So why is that. Well, let's imagine the Solar system.
Speaker 1: Earth is the third planet out from the Sun, Mars
Speaker 1: is the fourth planet out Earthen Mars revolve around the
Speaker 1: Sun at different speeds, which means sometimes the two planets
Speaker 1: are moving closer together and sometimes they are moving further apart.
Speaker 1: In their respective orbits. Both planets have elliptical rather than
Speaker 1: circular orbits around the Sun, which also means there's a
Speaker 1: point in the orbit where each respective planet is closest
Speaker 1: to the Sun. This is called the parahelion. And there's
Speaker 1: also a point in the orbit where each respective planet
Speaker 1: is furthest from the Sun. This is the aphelian oh
Speaker 1: and also, both of these orbits are slightly tilted with
Speaker 1: respect to one another, complicating things even more because they
Speaker 1: don't lie in the same orbital plane. These three dimensional
Speaker 1: realities are a real pain in the neck. All of
Speaker 1: this means that when the planets do approach one another,
Speaker 1: they aren't in the same spots in their respective orbits
Speaker 1: as they were the last time they got close to
Speaker 1: one another. The closest they've been to each other in
Speaker 1: recorded history is about thirty three point nine million miles
Speaker 1: apart or fifty four point six million kilometers, and at
Speaker 1: that distance, it would take light about three minutes to
Speaker 1: travel from one planet to the other, and that's the
Speaker 1: fastest often the universe. Remember, nothing goes faster than light.
Speaker 1: To even have that situation, you would need the Earth
Speaker 1: to be at its aphelian where it's furthest from the Sun,
Speaker 1: and Mars would have to be at its parahelion, where
Speaker 1: it is closest to the Sun, and both planets are
Speaker 1: on the same side of the Sun. And this does
Speaker 1: not happen frequently, at least not on human terms. That
Speaker 1: thirty three point nine million mile distance happened back in
Speaker 1: two thousand three, and according to math, that was the
Speaker 1: closest the two planets have been for fifty thousand years. Now,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, you do get two spans of time when
Speaker 1: the two planets are relatively close to each other. But
Speaker 1: because we're not just looking at orbital position, but the
Speaker 1: shape of the orbits themselves, it's complicated, and those are
Speaker 1: a lot of parameters that you have to have line up.
Speaker 1: This scenario where Earth passes between Mars and the Sun
Speaker 1: is called opposition, and we call it opposition because from
Speaker 1: our perspective here on Earth, Mars appears to be exactly
Speaker 1: opposite where the Sun is. As the Sun is setting
Speaker 1: at night, Mars is rising in the east, and when
Speaker 1: Mars sets in the west during the morning hours, the
Speaker 1: sun is rising in the east. During opposition, Mars appears
Speaker 1: as if it is a red star in the sky,
Speaker 1: nearly as bright as Venus is. If it happens when
Speaker 1: Mars is closest to the Sun, we call it parahelick opposition. Moreover,
Speaker 1: the distance will begin to grow after that point as
Speaker 1: the planets begin to move apart from each other due
Speaker 1: to their different orbital velocities and elliptical orbits. So at
Speaker 1: the extreme end, when the two planets are the furthest
Speaker 1: they can possibly be from each other on either side
Speaker 1: of the Sun. So the Sun is in tween Earth
Speaker 1: and Mars, they are two hundred forty nine million miles apart,
Speaker 1: or four hundred one million kilometers. At that distance, it
Speaker 1: would take light a whopping twenty two minutes to travel
Speaker 1: between Mars and Earth. Not that this really matters because
Speaker 1: you also have a big old Sun in the way,
Speaker 1: so you would actually have complications. This scenario is called
Speaker 1: a solar conjunction. Now here's the thing. Because of all
Speaker 1: the factors that I've described here, it takes a little
Speaker 1: more than two years to go from one opposition or
Speaker 1: one conjunction to the next one. And actually it's about
Speaker 1: twenty six months. So Earthen Mars will get the closest
Speaker 1: they can possibly be in their respective orbits to one another,
Speaker 1: and then it takes another twenty six months for it
Speaker 1: to happen again. Halfway through those tway six months, you
Speaker 1: will get to the point where they are furthest from
Speaker 1: each other and you get the conjunction. Now, why did
Speaker 1: I spend so much time talking about that, Well, it's
Speaker 1: because NASA has to take all of this into account
Speaker 1: when planning out emission to Mars. You want to minimize
Speaker 1: the distance that your spacecraft has to travel in order
Speaker 1: to get to its destination. Space travel is tough, man.
Speaker 1: I mean, it requires a lot of fuel, and fuel
Speaker 1: has mass, and mass means that you need more mph
Speaker 1: to get out into space. So you can't just add
Speaker 1: more fuel to a launch vehicle all willy nilly, because
Speaker 1: just adding that fuel changes things. Moreover, you want to
Speaker 1: minimize all the things that can go wrong while traveling
Speaker 1: from point Earth to point Mars. One good way to
Speaker 1: do that is to reduce the amount of travel time,
Speaker 1: which means aiming for a time when the two planets
Speaker 1: are going to be closest. Moreover, you don't just launch
Speaker 1: when Earth and Mars are close, because it takes about
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty days or so for a space vehicle
Speaker 1: to get from Earth to Mars under ideal conditions, and
Speaker 1: these planets remain in motion that whole time. It's not
Speaker 1: like they just stop. So if you aim your rocket
Speaker 1: to where Mars is now, Mars won't be there by
Speaker 1: the time the rocket arrives at that location in space.
Speaker 1: The best you can hope for is maybe a note
Speaker 1: written by Mars that says something like sorry, I missed you,
Speaker 1: and Mars is notoriously bad at writing notes, so instead
Speaker 1: you have to aim at where Mars will be rather
Speaker 1: than where Mars is. It's like leading a target. If
Speaker 1: you were skeet shooting right a clay pigeon is shot
Speaker 1: up into the air, you have to lead it a
Speaker 1: little bit if you want to hit it well. This year,
Speaker 1: Mars and Earth will actually be closest, not in July
Speaker 1: during the scheduled launch, but in October, specifically on October.
Speaker 1: That's when the two planets will be thirty eight point
Speaker 1: six million miles apart or sixty two point one million kilometers. Again,
Speaker 1: not as close as they were back in two thousand three,
Speaker 1: because they are not gonna be at the ideal points
Speaker 1: in their respective orbits to be absolutely the closest they
Speaker 1: can be. The last day NASA can launch a space
Speaker 1: vehicle and take advantage of all this would be August.
Speaker 1: If conditions prevent NASA from launching by that date, will
Speaker 1: probably be waiting around two years before we get another opportunity.
Speaker 1: This is also why if you look at the history
Speaker 1: of missions to Mars, you'll see they hit pretty much
Speaker 1: every two years or so. This is also why when
Speaker 1: we talk about potential human missions to Mars, we typically
Speaker 1: talk about a long mission that would see astronauts stay
Speaker 1: on Mars for a couple of years, because it would
Speaker 1: be too challenging to land on Mars, you know, goof
Speaker 1: around for a week or so, and then try and
Speaker 1: launch back to Earth because the distance would be mounting
Speaker 1: between the two planets. We would need a mission where
Speaker 1: we could spend an appreciable amount of time on Mars,
Speaker 1: perhaps creating new rocket fuel on Mars itself. That way,
Speaker 1: we don't have to carry a return trips worth of
Speaker 1: fuel on our way there. That would be kind of
Speaker 1: a deal breaker, because not only are you talking about
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of weight, which again adds to your
Speaker 1: concerns when you're launching the vehicle, it also represents a
Speaker 1: massive hazard. You know, rocket fuel is dangerous stuff. But
Speaker 1: we'll get more into that when we talk about one
Speaker 1: of the experiments that Perseverance is going to do on
Speaker 1: its mission. Interestingly, whether the launch vehicle takes off on
Speaker 1: July or on August fifteenth, or any date in between,
Speaker 1: the estimated date when it will enter service, that is
Speaker 1: when it will land on Mars and establish communications from
Speaker 1: the surface of the red planet back here to Earth,
Speaker 1: that data is the same. It's February twenty one. So
Speaker 1: if the launch does go ahead as planned, and I
Speaker 1: really hope it does, it's still going to be a
Speaker 1: while before NASA can conclude whether or not the mission
Speaker 1: was a success or even just the initial part of
Speaker 1: the mission is a success. Moreover All, this distance between
Speaker 1: Earth and Mars means that any rover mission to Mars
Speaker 1: requires a lot of automation, a lot of autonomy. The
Speaker 1: distances here mean that at minimum, you're looking at around
Speaker 1: six minutes between when you can send a command to
Speaker 1: a rover on Mars and when you'll get a return signal.
Speaker 1: That's if Earthen Mars are as close as they can
Speaker 1: possibly be, and usually that's not even the case. We
Speaker 1: don't typically have that right. Most of the time. Earth
Speaker 1: and Mars are pretty far away from each other. When
Speaker 1: the Curiosity rover arrived on Mars on August six, two twelve,
Speaker 1: the distance between the two plants meant it took nearly
Speaker 1: fourteen minutes to it signals from the rover. With that
Speaker 1: sort of delay, it's impossible to manually control things, So
Speaker 1: you have to create vehicles that can land and operate
Speaker 1: on their own. One way to do that is to
Speaker 1: design parachutes that deploy once the spacecraft or ejected rover
Speaker 1: reaches a certain altitude above Mars. But the Martian atmosphere
Speaker 1: is really thin. That's going to be important later in
Speaker 1: this episode two In fact, the atmospheric pressure at the
Speaker 1: surface of Mars is similar to what you would find
Speaker 1: at thirty five kilometers of altitude here on Earth, so
Speaker 1: that's a lot thirty five thousand meters above the Earth.
Speaker 1: That air pressure is similar to the standard surface level
Speaker 1: air pressure on Mars. To put it another way, we
Speaker 1: measure atmospheric pressure and units called milla bars. Here on Earth,
Speaker 1: the pressure at sea level is one thousand, thirteen millibars.
Speaker 1: Mars is atmospheric pressure varies during the Martian year, but
Speaker 1: it averages out to be between six to seven millibars.
Speaker 1: That's it, So one thirteen here on Earth, six to seven,
Speaker 1: not thousand, just six to seven on Mars. Now, since
Speaker 1: parachutes work by forcing air into a canopy and then
Speaker 1: effectively turning that canopy into a wing, you need atmosphere
Speaker 1: for it to work. A parachute would be useless on
Speaker 1: Earth's Moon, for example, because there's not enough atmosphere to
Speaker 1: turn the parachute into a wing. Mars has an atmosphere.
Speaker 1: It's then, but it's there. However, it is so thin
Speaker 1: that parachutes can typically only provide a little bit of
Speaker 1: the breaking and support during the landing. Process. So NASA
Speaker 1: has used a few different techniques to get rovers on
Speaker 1: the surface and not have them just break apart upon landing,
Speaker 1: including housing rovers in landing craft equipped with air bags.
Speaker 1: The air bags could help cushion the impact on the landing.
Speaker 1: On Mars, the Curiosity roll or had a super awesome approach.
Speaker 1: The rover was inside a descent vehicle, which in turn
Speaker 1: was inside a larger uh structure. It was called the
Speaker 1: Mars Science Laboratory or MSL, and the MSL had thrusters
Speaker 1: on it that could make fine tune adjustments during the
Speaker 1: descent phase in order to maintain the right orientation. That
Speaker 1: also had a heat shield to absorb heat during you know,
Speaker 1: entering the Martian atmosphere, and once it reached a certain altitude,
Speaker 1: it deployed a parachute which helped slow its descent, and
Speaker 1: then a little bit lower in altitude, the MSL ejected
Speaker 1: a descent stage, so this was kind of a platform
Speaker 1: with thrusters on it, and the rover was mounted inside
Speaker 1: the platform and this would fire its thrusters, slowing its
Speaker 1: descent further until it hovered above the Martian surface. Then
Speaker 1: it lowered the Curiosity rover on a tether, turning the
Speaker 1: descent v iCal into what they called a sky crane.
Speaker 1: The idea was that the rover would touch down on Mars,
Speaker 1: it would sever the tether to the descent stage, and
Speaker 1: then the rover would be ready to go to work.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing. This whole process from entering Mars's
Speaker 1: atmosphere all the way to the point where the rover
Speaker 1: touched down would take about seven minutes. But you remember
Speaker 1: the delay. It was fourteen minutes of a communication delay,
Speaker 1: So the whole process took about half the time it
Speaker 1: takes communications to go from Mars to Earth at this
Speaker 1: point in the two planets orbits. So the whole process
Speaker 1: had to happen without human intervention. And not only that,
Speaker 1: a success would mean that the rover would actually be
Speaker 1: down on Mars for seven minutes before we even knew
Speaker 1: if it had worked. And it turns out it did work,
Speaker 1: which truly is phenomenal. And I even did a special
Speaker 1: podcast with Tom Merritt of Daily Tech News show Fame
Speaker 1: back when this happen in two thousand twelve. I remember
Speaker 1: getting really emotional about this because when you consider the
Speaker 1: innovation and inventiveness required to make something like this actually work.
Speaker 1: It's really incredible. The Perseverance rover will follow in curiosities
Speaker 1: um tire tracks and and that it's going to use
Speaker 1: a similar strategy for e d L that stands for
Speaker 1: Intrigue Descent and Landing, So it's also going to use
Speaker 1: the skycrane maneuver in order to land. And this time
Speaker 1: the descent vehicle will have a couple of new tricks
Speaker 1: up its proverbial sleeve. For example, it will have a
Speaker 1: set of tools called Terrain Relative Navigation or TRN, which
Speaker 1: will scan the Martian terrain and allow the vehicle to
Speaker 1: change its descent path in order to avoid any terrain
Speaker 1: that looks particularly hazardous and that improves the chances of
Speaker 1: a successful touchdown. And it's also going to have a microphone,
Speaker 1: so we'll get to hear what it sounds like to
Speaker 1: land on Mars. Plus if the rover wants to bust
Speaker 1: out some David Bowie karaoke on the way down, that
Speaker 1: microphone will come in awful handy. When we come back,
Speaker 1: i'll talk more about the tools aboard the Perseverance, what
Speaker 1: they are meant to do, and a bit about how
Speaker 1: they work. But first let's take a quick break Perseverance
Speaker 1: is about the same size as its predecessor, Curiosity, which
Speaker 1: means it's the size of a small car. It weighs
Speaker 1: a bit more than Curiosity as well, has a mass
Speaker 1: of one thous so here on Earth it weighs two thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred sixty pounds if we don't include the rover's arm.
Speaker 1: The rover measures about ten ft long by nine ft
Speaker 1: wide and it's seven ft tall. That's a three ms
Speaker 1: by two point seven ms by two point two meters,
Speaker 1: so it's a pretty big rover. Before we get into
Speaker 1: the super per techie stuff and the goals of perseverance,
Speaker 1: let's look at some other related things. For example, the
Speaker 1: launch vehicle perseverance will depend upon the launch of an
Speaker 1: Atlas five one launch vehicle from the United Launch Alliance.
Speaker 1: This is a two stage rocket essentially, and it stands
Speaker 1: fifty eight meters or one ft tall when the payload
Speaker 1: is attached to the top. Fully fueled. With the payload
Speaker 1: in place, the full launch vehicle ways five d one
Speaker 1: thousand kilograms or one point one seven million pounds. The
Speaker 1: five for one designation tells us a lot about the
Speaker 1: launch vehicle, as it turns out, so that five and
Speaker 1: five four one refers to the diameter of the fairing
Speaker 1: that holds the payload in place with the launch vehicle.
Speaker 1: So in this case, the spacecraft that will hold the
Speaker 1: perseverance and this fairing is five meters in diameter. That's
Speaker 1: what that five means. So what's the four and five
Speaker 1: or one mean? Well, that tells us how many solid
Speaker 1: fuel rocket boosters are part of this launch vehicle. So
Speaker 1: there are four solid fuel rocket boosters, and the one
Speaker 1: tells us how many rocket engines are in the second stage.
Speaker 1: This is called the centaur, and there are single engine
Speaker 1: centaurs and dual engine centaurs, so this one is a
Speaker 1: single engine centaur. The first stages rocket engine is called
Speaker 1: the r D one eight and this one was made
Speaker 1: in Russia. The engine burns a fuel made of kerosene
Speaker 1: and liquid oxygen. The second stage centaur uses fuel made
Speaker 1: of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, which must be kept
Speaker 1: at very low temperatures to remain liquid, and for that
Speaker 1: reason they are called cryogenic propellants. So at launch, the
Speaker 1: boosters and rocket engine for the first stage will carry
Speaker 1: the vehicle up to a certain altitude and that's where
Speaker 1: the first stage will separate from the rest of the
Speaker 1: val the first stage will fall back to Earth. The
Speaker 1: second stage ignites and propels the spacecraft out to its
Speaker 1: trajectory to bring it on an intercept course with Mars,
Speaker 1: and then it separates from the launch vehicle and then
Speaker 1: Perseverance aboard its spacecraft will be on its way on
Speaker 1: its very long trip out to Mars. So, assuming everything
Speaker 1: goes as planned, Perseverance will touch down on Mars in
Speaker 1: February twenty one thanks to the skycrane maneuver. If things
Speaker 1: don't go as planned, uh, I mean I don't know,
Speaker 1: I mean if it if it doesn't launch by August fifteen,
Speaker 1: there's a real question of whether or not the project
Speaker 1: can be put on hold for two years. And if
Speaker 1: something goes wrong, well, I guess you know, the mission
Speaker 1: scrapped and stuff can go wrong, because space, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, is super hard. I mean, like that thing
Speaker 1: is trying to kill you. But let's say it all
Speaker 1: goes to plan and the rover makes it to Mars.
Speaker 1: What is it going to do when it's there. Well,
Speaker 1: NASA says the mission will last at least one year
Speaker 1: on Mars. That is one Martian year. That's equal to
Speaker 1: six hundred eighty seven Earth days, so nearly two full
Speaker 1: Earth years. If the mission is a success, we may
Speaker 1: well see the experiments stretch on much longer than that.
Speaker 1: The Opportunity mission was only intended to last for ninety days,
Speaker 1: but it was able to continue for nearly fifteen years.
Speaker 1: But what is Perseverance going to do when it's up
Speaker 1: there all that time. The overall program Perseverance as part
Speaker 1: of is called the Mars Exploration Program or m e P,
Speaker 1: and one of the primary goals of m e P
Speaker 1: is to look for signs of life, most likely signs
Speaker 1: that life once existed on Mars thousands and thousands and
Speaker 1: millions of years ago. But boy, it really would be
Speaker 1: cool if we found evidence of microbial life on Mars today.
Speaker 1: NASA has laid out four science objectives that Perseverance will
Speaker 1: pursue in an effort to further of this goal. The
Speaker 1: four objectives are looking for habitability, that is, seeking out
Speaker 1: areas that could have supported microbial life in the ancient past,
Speaker 1: seeking bio signatures, so looking for evidence that microbial life
Speaker 1: actually did exist in these habitable environments, such as in
Speaker 1: signs and the rocks themselves cashing samples. This is all
Speaker 1: about collecting and analyzing rock and soil samples and preparing
Speaker 1: for humans which will take on the super cool challenge
Speaker 1: of producing oxygen on Mars. Now we'll dive into these
Speaker 1: more in a moment, but in addition to the four
Speaker 1: primary objectives, Perseverance will also study the seasons on Mars
Speaker 1: and how weather patterns change, including stuff like dust storms.
Speaker 1: It will be building on our understanding of Mars, which
Speaker 1: will be critical if we ever do actually want to
Speaker 1: send astronauts there or columnists. So a lot of what
Speaker 1: Perseverance will be doing sets the st age for future
Speaker 1: missions with actual humans on Mars. NASA is going about
Speaker 1: this in a very methodical way. And I say that
Speaker 1: because I'm sure at least some of you remember the
Speaker 1: private organization called Mars One that had the stated goal
Speaker 1: of establishing a permanent colony on Mars. The Mars One
Speaker 1: plan was to create habitats on the planet, or technically
Speaker 1: under the surface of the planet, because Mars doesn't have
Speaker 1: the same protective measures as Earth does when it comes
Speaker 1: to deflecting harmful radiation and particles from stuff like you know,
Speaker 1: the Sun, and the Mars one plan didn't have anything
Speaker 1: in it about coming back to Earth. This was a
Speaker 1: one way trip. The organization was founded in two thousand eleven.
Speaker 1: It attempted to raise money from investors and through an
Speaker 1: application process in which people would vie to be considered
Speaker 1: as astronauts for this mission, but it ultimately didn't go anywhere,
Speaker 1: and that, by the way, is a big strike against
Speaker 1: space exploration. Typically in space exploration, you gotta go somewhere, right.
Speaker 1: So the owners ended up liquidating the organization in early
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen. Some people think the whole thing was
Speaker 1: nothing more than a scam. Now. I don't know if
Speaker 1: the founders intentionally set out to mislead people or not,
Speaker 1: but I was certainly skeptical of the efforts, as it
Speaker 1: seemed to be taking a lot of assumptions as concrete facts,
Speaker 1: and that's dangerous. Now, that's not the case with NASA's approach.
Speaker 1: It's always dangerous. Space is always dangerous, But they're not
Speaker 1: taking assumptions as fact. Their approach is to build a
Speaker 1: foundation of knowledge upon which future missions will continue to build,
Speaker 1: with the hopeful goal of one day having astronauts themselves
Speaker 1: set foot on Mars. But NASA is not quite as
Speaker 1: cavalier as the Mars one plan. So let's start with
Speaker 1: the analysis of Mars and the search for life. Then
Speaker 1: we'll move on to the components that have more to
Speaker 1: do with laying the groundwork for human exploration in the
Speaker 1: distant future. And then we have the issue of ingenuity
Speaker 1: to talk about, but that's for a kicker at the end.
Speaker 1: One of the things Perseverance has that Curiosity doesn't have
Speaker 1: is a drill. So Perseverance will be able to drill
Speaker 1: into soil and rocks on Mars to collect samples for analysis.
Speaker 1: The drill is on the rover's big arm, but a
Speaker 1: smaller arm actually plays a part in this too. It
Speaker 1: can supply sample tools to the drill, so as the
Speaker 1: drill is working, the soil and rock that it ends
Speaker 1: up removing can be collected in one of these tubes.
Speaker 1: Then the little arm can take that tube full of
Speaker 1: material and store it back on the rover. At the
Speaker 1: end of this the rover will store certain rocks and
Speaker 1: soil samples, very specific ones, ones that the team back
Speaker 1: on Earth have identified as being petit recularly interesting. It'll
Speaker 1: store a collection of these in a cash that's intended
Speaker 1: for later retrieval and the idea that these would someday
Speaker 1: be returned to Earth. I'll talk about that at the
Speaker 1: end of this episode. Now, this mission itself lacks the
Speaker 1: ability to come back. There's nothing about the Perseverance mission
Speaker 1: that allows them to return to Earth, so this will
Speaker 1: have to wait for a future mission. The plan is
Speaker 1: to collect at least twenty samples. However, the rover does
Speaker 1: have enough equipment to collect as many as forty three. Now,
Speaker 1: along with the forty three sample tubes, the rover will
Speaker 1: also carry five special tubes called witness tubes. The purpose
Speaker 1: for these is to make sure that the stuff Perseverance
Speaker 1: is finding is actually coming from Mars. See. One of
Speaker 1: the risks of this kind of exploration is that our
Speaker 1: equipment might unwittingly introduce stuff from Earth into Mars, and
Speaker 1: if that stuff happens to be organic in nature, like
Speaker 1: it happens to be the same as an organic marker,
Speaker 1: it could mean that any evidence we find that suggests
Speaker 1: life was once on Mars could actually be a total
Speaker 1: red herring, because it could turn out that the organic
Speaker 1: material actually came from Earth in the first place and
Speaker 1: was unwittingly released on Mars. It's kind of like one
Speaker 1: of those movies where you've got a crooked cop who
Speaker 1: drops a bag of incriminating material right in front of
Speaker 1: a suspect and says, well, why do we have here?
Speaker 1: Looks like we've got some evidence, except, of course, the
Speaker 1: rover wouldn't be doing this on purpose. It's not a scuzzy,
Speaker 1: you know, bad cop type. The witness tubes can capture
Speaker 1: contaminants and allow researchers on Earth to discern whether the
Speaker 1: stuff that was collected on Mars actually is totally Martian
Speaker 1: in origin, or if it has some contaminants that were
Speaker 1: accidentally brought by Perseverance. So they can do that if
Speaker 1: those tubes ever find their way back to Earth, so
Speaker 1: this is also part of that long term deal. The
Speaker 1: rover will hermetically seal all the sample tubes and store
Speaker 1: it temporarily in the rover itself, but eventually the team
Speaker 1: will determine a location where the rover will store all
Speaker 1: of these tubes called the Sample cash Depot, and this
Speaker 1: is where they will stay until a future mission can
Speaker 1: pick them up and bring them back home to Earth.
Speaker 1: There are seven major scientific instruments aboard the Perseverance so
Speaker 1: let's go through those. First up is the Masked cam Z,
Speaker 1: a camera mounted on a vertical pole, thus the term mast,
Speaker 1: and this is near the center of the rover. The
Speaker 1: camera has a panoramic camera as well as a stereoscopic
Speaker 1: imaging camera, so it can take really wide shots of
Speaker 1: the horizon, or it can use its stereoscopic lenses to
Speaker 1: capture three dimensional images on Mars's surface. Now, not only
Speaker 1: will this camera be used to take lovely photos and
Speaker 1: to help the team on Earth determine where to send
Speaker 1: the rover, it also can help engine years back on
Speaker 1: Earth learn more about the mineralogy of Mars' surface. Next,
Speaker 1: we have the Supercam, which by day is a mild
Speaker 1: mannered photographer for the Daily Planet. Wait, sorry, no, I
Speaker 1: I meant that it's a camera intended to analyze the
Speaker 1: chemical composition of stuff on Mars at a distance. Then
Speaker 1: you've got pixel p I x L that actually stands
Speaker 1: for Planetary Instrument for X ray litho chemistry. And if
Speaker 1: you're wondering what litho chemistry is, you're not alone, because
Speaker 1: I don't think I have ever seen that word ever
Speaker 1: before I started researching this episode. In fact, as I
Speaker 1: was researching the term. The only time I was seeing
Speaker 1: any instance of litho chemistry as a word was in
Speaker 1: reference to pixel itself, and this annoys me. I mean, NASA,
Speaker 1: if you're going to use cute acronyms for your tools,
Speaker 1: you can't just get around the inconvenience of not having
Speaker 1: the correct letters by making up a word. But let's
Speaker 1: suss it out. So litho means stone. Now it all
Speaker 1: makes sense, right. Litho chemistry means the chemical makeup of
Speaker 1: stones on Mars in this case, And this device uses
Speaker 1: X rays in order to really study the stones around
Speaker 1: the rover. X rays have a shorter wavelength and carry
Speaker 1: way more energy than the visible light spectrum does. The
Speaker 1: pixel has a spectrometer, which is a device that measures
Speaker 1: the spectral components of something. And now this isn't about
Speaker 1: specters like ghosts or something. This is more about a spectrum,
Speaker 1: you know, like the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation or the
Speaker 1: spectrum of visible light. So they measure a continuous variable
Speaker 1: of some sort, and the pixel measures the electromagnetic radiation
Speaker 1: that's reflected off of various materials on Mars, which then
Speaker 1: tells us more about what those materials are made of.
Speaker 1: Then you've got these scanning habitable environments with Raymond luminescence
Speaker 1: for organics and chemicals. And this is a really cute acronym.
Speaker 1: The acronym is share Lock. This is another spectrometer, but
Speaker 1: rather than X rays, this one uses an ultraviolet laser. Now,
Speaker 1: like X rays, ultra violet waves are shorter in wavelength
Speaker 1: and higher in energy than the visible spectrum, but they
Speaker 1: don't penetrate as far as X rays do. The spectrometer
Speaker 1: will also measure the composition of materials on Mars and
Speaker 1: search for the presence of organic compounds. It also has
Speaker 1: a high resolution camera for microscopic imaging, so that's pretty neat.
Speaker 1: Then there's the radar imager for Mars's Subsurface Experiment or
Speaker 1: rim FACTS. This one uses a radar system that can
Speaker 1: penetrate the ground and give what NASA calls a quote
Speaker 1: centimeter scale resolution of the geologic structure of the subsurface
Speaker 1: end quote super nifty. Then there's one more scientific experiment aboard,
Speaker 1: the perseverance that we need to talk about, as well
Speaker 1: as ingenuity, something I haven't really covered yet, but keep teasing,
Speaker 1: but we'll get back to that after we take another
Speaker 1: short break. The last of the major experiments aboard the
Speaker 1: Perseverance is the Mars Oxygen Institute Resource Utilization Experiment or MOXIE.
Speaker 1: What a great acronym. Now, this experiment will attempt to
Speaker 1: generate oxygen from the carbon dioxide that's in Mars's atmosphere.
Speaker 1: See here, on Earth, CEO two makes up about point
Speaker 1: zero four of our atmosphere, and that's it, and honestly,
Speaker 1: that's enough. C O two is a greenhouse gas. In fact,
Speaker 1: out of all the greenhouse gases that humans release in
Speaker 1: our atmosphere, CEO two makes up any one point three
Speaker 1: p and of them. So a little c O two
Speaker 1: can go a long way when it comes to the
Speaker 1: greenhouse effect. But Mars's atmosphere is a totally different story. There,
Speaker 1: c O two is a major player. It makes up
Speaker 1: nine of Mars' atmosphere. Oxygen, by contrast, makes up a
Speaker 1: tiny point one three of Mars's atmosphere. Here on Earth,
Speaker 1: it's twenty one of our atmosphere. Now, it's incredibly obvious
Speaker 1: that we humans need oxygen, and it stands to reason
Speaker 1: that would be way better if we could produce the
Speaker 1: oxygen we need on Mars while you know we're actually
Speaker 1: on Mars. As opposed to bringing everything with us, everything
Speaker 1: we decide we need to bring, we have to launch
Speaker 1: off the Earth, and launching stuff is expensive and it's risky,
Speaker 1: so it would be better if we could create all
Speaker 1: the stuff we need while we're already on Mars. On
Speaker 1: top of that, besides breathing, we need oxygen as a
Speaker 1: component for rocket fuel, so using the resources of Mars
Speaker 1: to create few tool would be a huge deal. Again,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have to send our return trips worth of
Speaker 1: fuel out on the launch. That would be enormous. Now,
Speaker 1: Moxie isn't going to terraform Mars. It's a small scale experiment,
Speaker 1: more like a proof of concept. It will take c
Speaker 1: O two from Mars' atmosphere and convert it into oxygen
Speaker 1: and carbon monoxide through an electrochemical process. So Moxie pulls
Speaker 1: in air from the environment. It will pass that air
Speaker 1: through a filter and then pressurize the c O two
Speaker 1: so that it's approximately one atmosphere in pressure. That is
Speaker 1: one Earth atmosphere in pressure, which is much greater pressure
Speaker 1: than what you would find in Mars' own atmosphere. The
Speaker 1: CEO two then goes to a solid oxide electrolyzer or
Speaker 1: s o x E. The electrochemical process does the separating
Speaker 1: at a temperature of eight hundred degrees celsius, so things
Speaker 1: get pretty toasty. There are asked preheating components. There's also
Speaker 1: an exhaust cooling component. All of this is really important
Speaker 1: for moxy to operate, but also it's important to cool
Speaker 1: the exhaust in order to protect the other experiments that
Speaker 1: are aboard the Perseverance. The exhaust also has to pass
Speaker 1: through a filter before it can be vented back out
Speaker 1: to the Martian atmosphere. Now why is that, Well, it
Speaker 1: gets back to those contaminants I mentioned earlier. We have
Speaker 1: a responsibility to limit the sort of contaminants we could
Speaker 1: introduce to another planet, and there's actually an official policy
Speaker 1: about this. It's called the Planetary Protection Requirements. Now, assuming
Speaker 1: moxi's experiments are successful, we might see NASA and other
Speaker 1: organizations create larger implementations of this same technology to make
Speaker 1: a significant amount of oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, and
Speaker 1: that will be a big step in the direction to
Speaker 1: send people to Mars, as it will give those people
Speaker 1: an important component for making the rocket fuel needed to
Speaker 1: return back here to Earth. And now finally it's time
Speaker 1: to talk about Ingenuity, a high risk, high reward experiment.
Speaker 1: It's high risk because no one really knows yet if
Speaker 1: it's actually gonna work. It's high reward because if it
Speaker 1: does well, we'll have an incredible experience that we can
Speaker 1: build upon. So what the heck is Ingenuity? It's a helicopter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Perseverance is bringing along with it a helicopter to Mars,
Speaker 1: so you can get to the chopper and get to
Speaker 1: Mars at the same time, thus fulfilling two different Arnold
Speaker 1: Schwarzenegger film plots simultaneously. It's never been done before. Now
Speaker 1: let's get more specific. When I say helicopter, I don't
Speaker 1: mean the sort of flying vehicle that carries people around
Speaker 1: here on Earth. This is more like a drone. It's
Speaker 1: a very small aircraft. It's autonomous, which yeah, I would
Speaker 1: have to be. There's no way you can fly this
Speaker 1: thing via remote control back here on Earth. It would
Speaker 1: crash and then you'll be waiting fifteen minutes or whatever
Speaker 1: in order to find out about it. The Ingenuity has
Speaker 1: a mass of one point eight kilograms, so here on
Speaker 1: Earth it weighs four pounds, and it makes sense that
Speaker 1: it needs to be lightweight because the Martian atmosphere is
Speaker 1: so thin. Now, remember, heavier than air. Aircraft need to
Speaker 1: generate lift, and you can think of lift as a
Speaker 1: force that presses up on the underside of a wing or,
Speaker 1: in the case of a helicopter, the underside of its rotors,
Speaker 1: which really a rotor is just a wing that moves
Speaker 1: in a circle. This force has to be strong enough
Speaker 1: to counteract the weight of the object in order to
Speaker 1: get off the ground. If the gravity of Mars were
Speaker 1: the same as that of Earth, this would be super
Speaker 1: hard to do because the atmosphere is so thin. You
Speaker 1: would struggle to generate enough lift to counteract the weight
Speaker 1: of the flight vehicle. But gravity on Mars is also
Speaker 1: not as strong as it is here on Earth. It's
Speaker 1: actually a about one third of Earth's gravity a little
Speaker 1: more than that. So yeah, you've got a thin atmosphere,
Speaker 1: but you also have less gravity and therefore less weight
Speaker 1: to worry about. So your mass stays the same because
Speaker 1: gravity does not affect how much mass something has, but
Speaker 1: your weight is different. So while the helicopter gadget weighs
Speaker 1: around four pounds here on Earth. On Mars, it's going
Speaker 1: to be closer to a pound and a half. Now,
Speaker 1: I would still have one point eight kilograms of mass
Speaker 1: because mass doesn't change, but that mass would weigh the
Speaker 1: same as an object that has just point six eight
Speaker 1: kilograms of mass here on Earth. So if somehow you
Speaker 1: were able to take an earth point six eight kilograms
Speaker 1: and put it against this thing while it's on Mars,
Speaker 1: the scales would balance out. Now, considering the rotors on
Speaker 1: this thing, I'm actually really impressed they were able to
Speaker 1: get the weight that low because each rotor, and there
Speaker 1: are two of them, measures four feet or one point
Speaker 1: two met years and lengths. Now, just remember that these
Speaker 1: rotors are mounted in the center. So the helicopter also
Speaker 1: has solar panels. Those are going to be used to
Speaker 1: charge the onboard battery. It has a wireless communication system
Speaker 1: that allows engineers on Earth to relay commands to the
Speaker 1: helicopter via the rover. So in this case, the engineers
Speaker 1: could give pretty general commands, such as how long the
Speaker 1: helicopter would operate or how high it was to fly.
Speaker 1: But then the helicopter has to do all the actual
Speaker 1: flying on its own. There will be no steering this
Speaker 1: thing due to that communication lag. The helicopter has inertial sensors,
Speaker 1: so it can tell what it's orientation is, whether it's
Speaker 1: upright or not. It's also got a laser altimeter, so
Speaker 1: this is essentially a laser range finder, so it shoots
Speaker 1: a laser at the ground. It essentially measures the amount
Speaker 1: of time it takes for the laser to go out
Speaker 1: from the laser range finder, hit the ground and come
Speaker 1: back up and hit a sensor, and on that it
Speaker 1: can determine how high up it is. It's also got
Speaker 1: two cameras on board. One of them can take color
Speaker 1: images and the other one can only take black and
Speaker 1: white images. And it's got some heating components inside of it,
Speaker 1: which is important because it needs to stay in operational
Speaker 1: temperature even during the Martian night. Uh. The average temperature
Speaker 1: on Mars is about minus sixty degrees celsius, though in
Speaker 1: the daytime during the Martian summer, if you happen to
Speaker 1: be near the equator, you might reach a high of
Speaker 1: up to twenty degrees celsius. That's twenty degrees positive. So
Speaker 1: there is a really wide variation in temperatures on the planet.
Speaker 1: That's something else that we would have to prepare for
Speaker 1: if we were to ever actually, you know, go there. Now,
Speaker 1: NASA has made it clear that this aircraft is considered
Speaker 1: a quote completely independent of the Mars twenty twenty Science
Speaker 1: Mission end quote, which is why the ingenuity doesn't really
Speaker 1: show up when you look at the breakdown of experiments
Speaker 1: that are aboard the Perseverance. It's also described as a
Speaker 1: quote demonstration of technology end quote. That means ingenuity isn't
Speaker 1: going to be relied upon to deliver any you know,
Speaker 1: scientific data about Mars. It's really meant to give us
Speaker 1: an idea if the powered flying device is a viable
Speaker 1: approach on Mars. It's also meant to prove that the
Speaker 1: manta ization of technologies necessary to allow for this will
Speaker 1: actually work. And if it does work, then that means
Speaker 1: we could see all sorts of flying drones deployed to
Speaker 1: Mars in the future to do stuff like map out
Speaker 1: areas or survey regions that are too treacherous for rovers
Speaker 1: to manage, or perform other scientific experiments. Now, my hope
Speaker 1: is that all of these experiments teach us a lot
Speaker 1: more about our neighbor planet, and that with this information
Speaker 1: we can plot out further missions, and I think it
Speaker 1: would be truly remarkable if I were to see people
Speaker 1: land on Mars within my lifetime. And as always, there
Speaker 1: are opportunities for the things we learned in the technology
Speaker 1: we developed to make all this possible to benefit us
Speaker 1: in other ways. One of the coolest things about space
Speaker 1: exploration that's not really about the exploration itself, is that
Speaker 1: all the technology that was once created as a necessity
Speaker 1: in order to achieve mission goals has kind of found
Speaker 1: its way into our daily lives and other implementations. We
Speaker 1: often see unanticipated benefits as byproducts, and so I think
Speaker 1: it's always a good thing for us to push back
Speaker 1: our boundaries of ignorance. You never know what sort of
Speaker 1: things you're gonna uncover along the way. As for future missions,
Speaker 1: there are a couple more that I can mention briefly.
Speaker 1: One is a part of a mission that is called
Speaker 1: the Exo Mars program. This one has actually led by
Speaker 1: the European Space Agency and the ras Cosmost State Corporation.
Speaker 1: The plan is to launch a rover which would not
Speaker 1: be that much different from Curiosity and Perseverance in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, again two years apart. This one will be
Speaker 1: called the Rosalind Franklin, named after the British chemist. NASA
Speaker 1: is contributing some of the UH components that are going
Speaker 1: to be used in some of the scientific instruments as
Speaker 1: part of this rover. The rover's mission is very similar
Speaker 1: to that of Perseverance, primarily looking for evidence that life
Speaker 1: could have existed on Mars in the ancient past. Another
Speaker 1: mission is the aforementioned plan to retrieve the samples that
Speaker 1: Perseverance is going to collect assuming its mission is successful.
Speaker 1: This one is a more long term plan because of
Speaker 1: the complexities of getting too and back from Mars. So
Speaker 1: going from Earth to Mars and back again. Really we've
Speaker 1: only managed one way trip so far, this would be
Speaker 1: a lot harder. The current proposed timeline would have a
Speaker 1: launch of the initial vehicle, the Sample Return Lander, in
Speaker 1: July twenty twenty six, which would actually touch down on
Speaker 1: Martian soil in August twenty twenty eight. Now that's an
Speaker 1: unusually long tra AVL time, and honestly I don't know
Speaker 1: all the reasons for that. But the lander will have
Speaker 1: its own mini rover provided by the European Space Agency,
Speaker 1: and this rover will go and fetch the stored samples
Speaker 1: that Perseverance had gathered in one It will bring those
Speaker 1: samples to a rocket that is carried aboard the Sample
Speaker 1: Return Lander, and the rocket will blast off, the first
Speaker 1: time in history that we will have launched a rocket
Speaker 1: from another planet, and it will then send the payload
Speaker 1: to rendezvous with another spacecraft in orbit around Mars. That
Speaker 1: spacecraft is called the Earth Return Orbiter, and it will
Speaker 1: actually launch from Earth separately from the lander. It would
Speaker 1: launch in September, a couple of months after the lander
Speaker 1: has launched, but it will arrive in orbit around Mars
Speaker 1: by October, several months before the lander touches down. The
Speaker 1: Sample Return container from the rocket will separate. It will
Speaker 1: dock with the Return Orbiter, and then the orbiter would
Speaker 1: prepare for the trip back home once Earth and Mars
Speaker 1: were lined up again, and the estimated return date would
Speaker 1: be sometime in twenty thirty one. So if everything goes well,
Speaker 1: it's going to take more than a decade to get
Speaker 1: those Martian rocks and soil back here on Earth for analysis. Man,
Speaker 1: this stuff is hard, but super interesting. Guys. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed that episode about Perseverance. I really hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed it, because we're gonna be doing another one on Wednesday.
Speaker 1: I am really going to be looking at sort of
Speaker 1: the history of leading up to the Perseverance mission and
Speaker 1: talking about the the complexity of that lead in because
Speaker 1: it involves not just technology, it involves a lot of
Speaker 1: other human factors to like politics and budget and these
Speaker 1: are things that NASA has to deal with regularly and
Speaker 1: it can drastically change the ability of the agency to
Speaker 1: pursue specific missions. And so we will cover that as well,
Speaker 1: because it's important again to get the full context of
Speaker 1: what's going on, and we'll also talk about some of
Speaker 1: the interesting stuff we've had a chance to experience thanks
Speaker 1: to Perseverance already. So tune in then. If you have
Speaker 1: any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, drop me
Speaker 1: a line let me know. The best way to do
Speaker 1: that is over on Twitter. The handle for the show
Speaker 1: is text Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again release soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.