Speaker 1: Welcome to Text, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio and I
Speaker 1: love all things tech Now. At the end of July
Speaker 1: twenty NASA plans to launch a new rover on a
Speaker 1: journey 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 pull 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
Speaker 1: apart in their respective orbits. Both planets have elliptical rather
Speaker 1: than circular orbits around the Sun, which also means there's
Speaker 1: a point in the orbit where each respective planet is
Speaker 1: closest to the Sun. This is called the parahelion. And
Speaker 1: there's also a point in the orbit where each respective
Speaker 1: planet is furthest from the Sun. This is the aphelian
Speaker 1: oh and also, both of these orbits are slightly tilted
Speaker 1: with respect to one another, complicating things even more because
Speaker 1: they don't lie in the same orbital plane. These three
Speaker 1: dimensional realities are a real pain in the neck. All
Speaker 1: of 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 apart,
Speaker 1: or fifty four point six million kilometers, and at that distance,
Speaker 1: it would take light about three minutes to travel from
Speaker 1: one planet to the other, and that's the fastest stuff
Speaker 1: in the universe. Remember, nothing goes faster than light. To
Speaker 1: even have that situation, you would need the Earth to
Speaker 1: 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 between 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 toy 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 to
Speaker 1: get out into space. So you can't just add more
Speaker 1: fuel to a launch vehicle all willy nilly, because just
Speaker 1: adding that fuel changes things. Moreover, you want to minimize
Speaker 1: all the things that can go wrong while traveling from
Speaker 1: point Earth to point Mars. One good way to do
Speaker 1: that is to reduce the amount of travel time, which
Speaker 1: means aiming for a time when the two planets are
Speaker 1: going to be closest. Moreover, you don't just launch when
Speaker 1: Earth and Mars are close, because it takes about a
Speaker 1: hundred fifty days or so for a space vehicle to
Speaker 1: get from Earth to Mars under ideal conditions, and these
Speaker 1: planets remain in motion that whole time. It's not like
Speaker 1: they just stop. So if you aim your rocket to
Speaker 1: where Mars is now, Mars won't be there by the
Speaker 1: time the rocket arrives at that location in space. The
Speaker 1: best you can hope for is maybe a note written
Speaker 1: 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 plants 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 date 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 min minutes between when you can send a command
Speaker 1: to a rover on Mars and when you'll get a
Speaker 1: return signal. That's if Earthen Mars are as close as
Speaker 1: they can possibly be, and usually that's not even the case.
Speaker 1: We don't typically have that right. Most of the time.
Speaker 1: Earth and Mars are pretty far away from each other.
Speaker 1: When the Curiosity rover arrived on Mars on August six,
Speaker 1: two twelve, the distance between the two plants meant it
Speaker 1: took nearly fourteen minutes to get signals from the rover.
Speaker 1: With that sort of delay, it's impossible to manually control things,
Speaker 1: so you have to create vehicles that can land and
Speaker 1: operate on their own. One way to do that is
Speaker 1: to design parachutes that deploy once the spacecraft or ejected
Speaker 1: rover reaches a certain altitude above Mars. But the Martian
Speaker 1: atmosphere is really thin. That's going to be important later
Speaker 1: in this episode two. In fact, the atmospheric pressure at
Speaker 1: the surface of Mars is similar to what you would
Speaker 1: find at thirty five kilometers of altitude here on Earth,
Speaker 1: so 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 in, 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
Speaker 1: landing 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 Rover 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 at a 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 vehicle into what they called a sky crane. The
Speaker 1: 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 happened 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 that it's going to use a
Speaker 1: similar strategy for e d L. That stands for Intrigue,
Speaker 1: Descent and Landing, so it's also going to use the
Speaker 1: skycrane maneuver in order to land. And this time the
Speaker 1: descent vehicle will have a couple of new tricks up
Speaker 1: its proverbial sleeve. For example, it will have a set
Speaker 1: of tools called Terrain relative Navigation or TRN, which will
Speaker 1: scan the Martian terrain and allow the vehicle to change
Speaker 1: its descent path in order to avoid any terrain that
Speaker 1: looks particularly hazardous and that improves the chances of a
Speaker 1: 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. UH has a
Speaker 1: mass of one thousands, so here on Earth it weighs
Speaker 1: two thousand, two hundred sixty pounds. If we don't include
Speaker 1: the rover's arm. The rover measures about ten ft long
Speaker 1: by nine ft wide, and it's seven ft tall. That's
Speaker 1: a three meters by two point seven meters by two
Speaker 1: point two meters, so it's a pretty big rover. Before
Speaker 1: we get into the super techy stuff and the goals
Speaker 1: of perseverance, let's look at some other related things. For example,
Speaker 1: the launch vehicle perseverance will depend upon the launch of
Speaker 1: an 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 weighs five hundred thirty
Speaker 1: one thousand kilogram ms or one point one seven million pounds.
Speaker 1: The five for one designation tells us a lot about
Speaker 1: the launch vehicle, as it turns out, so that five
Speaker 1: and five four one refers to the diameter of the
Speaker 1: fairing 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 means? 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 center 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 burn is the fuel made of
Speaker 1: kerosene and liquid oxygen. The second stage centaur uses fuel
Speaker 1: made of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, which must be
Speaker 1: kept at very low temperatures to remain liquid, and for
Speaker 1: that reason they are called cryogenic propellants. So at launch,
Speaker 1: the boosters and rocket engine for the first stage will
Speaker 1: carry the vehicle up to a certain altitude and that's
Speaker 1: where the first stage will separate from the rest of
Speaker 1: the vehicle. The first stage will fall back to Earth.
Speaker 1: The second stage ignites and propels the spacecraft out to
Speaker 1: its 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 aboarded spacecraft will be on its way on its
Speaker 1: very long trip out to Mars. So, assuming everything goes
Speaker 1: as planned, Perseverance will touch down on Mars in February
Speaker 1: twenty 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 Biogus 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 is part
Speaker 1: of it is called the Mars Exploration Program or m
Speaker 1: e P, and one of the primary goals of m
Speaker 1: e P is to look for signs of life, most
Speaker 1: likely signs that life once existed on Mars thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands and millions of years ago. But boy, it really
Speaker 1: would be cool if we found evidence of microbial life
Speaker 1: on Mars today. NASA has laid out four science objectives
Speaker 1: that Perseverance will pursue in an effort to further this goal.
Speaker 1: The four objectives are looking for habitability, that is, seeking
Speaker 1: out areas that could have supported microbial life in the
Speaker 1: ancient past, seeking bio signatures, so looking for evidence that
Speaker 1: microbial life actually did exist in these habitable environments, such
Speaker 1: as in signs and the rocks themselves. Cashing samples. This
Speaker 1: is all about collecting and analyzing rock and soil samples,
Speaker 1: and preparing for humans, which will take on the super
Speaker 1: cool challenge of producing oxygen on Mars. Now we'll dive
Speaker 1: into these more in a moment, but in addition to
Speaker 1: the four primary objectives, Perseverance will also study the seasons
Speaker 1: on Mars and how weather patterns change, including stuff like
Speaker 1: dust storms. It will be building on our understanding of Mars,
Speaker 1: which will be critical if we ever do actually want
Speaker 1: to send astronauts there or colonists. So a lot of
Speaker 1: what Perseverance will be doing sets the stage 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 articles 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 the two. 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 particularly interesting. It'll store
Speaker 1: a collection of these in a cash that's intended for
Speaker 1: later retrieval, and the idea that these would someday be
Speaker 1: returned to Earth. I'll talk about that at the end
Speaker 1: of this episode. Now, this mission itself lacks the ability
Speaker 1: to come back. There's nothing about the Perseverance mission that
Speaker 1: allows them to return to Earth, so this will have
Speaker 1: to wait for a future mission. The plan is to
Speaker 1: collect at least twenty samples. However, the rover does have
Speaker 1: 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 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 mass cam Z,
Speaker 1: a camera mounted on a vertical gold pole, thus the
Speaker 1: term mast and this is near the center of the rover.
Speaker 1: The camera has a panoramic camera as well as a
Speaker 1: stereoscopic imaging camera, so it can take really wide shots
Speaker 1: of the horizon, or it can use its stereoscopic lenses
Speaker 1: to capture three dimensional images on Mars's surface. Now, not
Speaker 1: only will this camera be used to take lovely photos
Speaker 1: and to help the team on Earth determine where to
Speaker 1: send the rover, it also can help engineers 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 no, 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 we'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 ultra violet 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 press 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
Speaker 1: aboard the Perseverance that we need to talk about, as
Speaker 1: well as ingenuity, something I haven't really covered yet, but
Speaker 1: keep teasing, but we'll get back to that after we
Speaker 1: take another short break. The last of the major experiments
Speaker 1: aboard the Perseverance is the Mars Oxygen Institute Resource Utilization
Speaker 1: Experiment or MOXI. What a rate acronym. Now, this experiment
Speaker 1: will attempt to generate oxygen from the carbon dioxide that's
Speaker 1: in Mars's atmosphere. See Here on Earth, c O two
Speaker 1: makes up about point zero four percent of our atmosphere,
Speaker 1: and that's it, and honestly, that's enough. C O two
Speaker 1: is a greenhouse gas. In fact, out of all the
Speaker 1: greenhouse gases that humans release in our atmosphere, CEO two
Speaker 1: makes up eighty one point three per cent of them.
Speaker 1: So a little c O two can go a long
Speaker 1: way when it comes to the greenhouse effect. But Mars's
Speaker 1: atmosphere is a totally different story. There, c O two
Speaker 1: is a major player. It makes up of Mars's atmosphere. Oxygen,
Speaker 1: by contrast, makes up a tiny point one three of
Speaker 1: Mars's atmosphere. Here on Earth, it's twenty one of our atmosphere. Now,
Speaker 1: it's incredibly obvious that we humans need oxygen, and it
Speaker 1: stands to reason that would be way better if we
Speaker 1: could produce is the oxygen we need on Mars while
Speaker 1: you know, we're actually on Mars, as opposed to bringing
Speaker 1: everything with us, everything we decide we need to bring
Speaker 1: we have to launch off the Earth, and launching stuff
Speaker 1: is expensive and it's risky, so it would be better
Speaker 1: if we could create all the stuff we need while
Speaker 1: we're already on Mars. On top of that, besides breathing,
Speaker 1: we need oxygen as a component for rocket fuel, so
Speaker 1: using the resources of Mars to create fuel would be
Speaker 1: a huge deal. Again, we wouldn't have to send our
Speaker 1: return trips worth of fuel out on the launch. That
Speaker 1: would be enormous. Now, Moxie isn't going to terraform Mars.
Speaker 1: It's a small scale experiment, more like a proof of concept.
Speaker 1: It will take c O two from Mars's atmosphere and
Speaker 1: convert it into oxygen and carbon monoxide through an electrochemical process.
Speaker 1: So Moxie pulls in air from the environment. It will
Speaker 1: pass that air through a filter and then pressure rize
Speaker 1: the c O two so that it's approximately one atmosphere
Speaker 1: in pressure. That is one Earth atmosphere in pressure, which
Speaker 1: is much greater pressure than what you would find in Mars'
Speaker 1: own atmosphere. The CEO two then goes to a solid
Speaker 1: oxide electrolyzer or s o x E. The electrochemical process
Speaker 1: does the separating at a temperature of eight hundred degrees celsius,
Speaker 1: so things get pretty toasty. There are gas preheating components.
Speaker 1: There's also an exhaust cooling component. All of this is
Speaker 1: really important for moxy to operate, but also it's important
Speaker 1: to cool the exhaust in order to protect the other
Speaker 1: experiments that are aboard the Perseverance. The exhaust also has
Speaker 1: to pass through a filter before it can be vented
Speaker 1: back out to the Martian atmosphere. Now why is that, Well,
Speaker 1: it gets back to those contaminants I mentioned earlier. We
Speaker 1: have a responsibility to limit the sort of contaminants we
Speaker 1: could introduce to another planet, and there's actually an official
Speaker 1: policy about this is called the Planet Erry Protection Requirements. Now,
Speaker 1: assuming Moxi's experiments are successful, we might see NASA and
Speaker 1: other organizations create larger implementations of this same technology to
Speaker 1: make a significant amount of oxygen from the Martian atmosphere.
Speaker 1: And that will be a big step in the direction
Speaker 1: to send people to Mars, as it will give those
Speaker 1: people an important component for making the rocket fuel needed
Speaker 1: to return back here to Earth. And now finally it's
Speaker 1: time to talk about ingenuity, a high risk, high reward
Speaker 1: experiment it's high risk because no one really knows yet
Speaker 1: if it's actually gonna work. It's high reward because if
Speaker 1: it does well, we'll have an incredible experience that we
Speaker 1: can build upon. So what the heck is Ingenuity? It's
Speaker 1: a helicopter. Yeah, Perseverance is bringing along with it a
Speaker 1: helicopter to Mars, so you can get to the chopper
Speaker 1: and get to Mars at the same time, thus fulfilling
Speaker 1: two different Arnold schwarz Senegger film plots simultaneously. It's never
Speaker 1: been done before. Now let's get more specific. When I
Speaker 1: say helicopter, I don't mean the sort of flying vehicle
Speaker 1: that carries people around here on Earth. This is more
Speaker 1: like a drone. It's a very small aircraft. It's autonomous,
Speaker 1: which yeah, I would have to be. There's no way
Speaker 1: you can fly this thing via remote control back here
Speaker 1: on Earth. It would crash and then you'll be waiting
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes or whatever in order to find out about it.
Speaker 1: The Ingenuity has a mass of one point eight kgrams,
Speaker 1: so here on Earth it weighs four pounds, and it
Speaker 1: makes sense that it needs to be lightweight because the
Speaker 1: Martian atmosphere is so thin. Now, Remember, heavier than air,
Speaker 1: aircraft need to generate lift, and you can think of
Speaker 1: lift as a force that presses up on the underside
Speaker 1: of a wing or, in the case of a helicopter,
Speaker 1: the underside of its rotors, which really a rotor is
Speaker 1: just a wing that moves in a circle. This force
Speaker 1: has to be strong enough to counteract the weight of
Speaker 1: the object in order to get off the ground. If
Speaker 1: the gravity of Mars were the same as that of Earth,
Speaker 1: this would be super hard to do because the atmosphere
Speaker 1: is so thin you would struggle to generate enough lift
Speaker 1: to counteract the weight of the flight vehicle. But gravity
Speaker 1: on Mars is also not as strong as it is
Speaker 1: here on Earth. It's actually about one third of Earth's
Speaker 1: gravity a little more than that. So yeah, you've got
Speaker 1: a thin atmosphere, but you also have less gravity and
Speaker 1: therefore less weight to worry about. So your mass stays
Speaker 1: the same because gravity does not affect how much mass
Speaker 1: something has, but your weight is different. So while the
Speaker 1: helicopter gadget weighs around four pounds here on Earth, on Mars,
Speaker 1: it's going to be closer to a pound and a half.
Speaker 1: Now I would still have one pot eight krams of
Speaker 1: mass because mass doesn't change, but that mass would weigh
Speaker 1: the same as an object that has just point six
Speaker 1: eight kilograms of mass here on Earth. So if somehow
Speaker 1: you were able to take an earth point six eight
Speaker 1: kilograms 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 meters in lengths Now, just remember that these rotors
Speaker 1: are mounted in the center. So the helicopter also has
Speaker 1: solar panels. Those are going to be used to charge
Speaker 1: the onboard battery. It has a wireless communication system that
Speaker 1: allows engineers on Earth to relay commands to the helicopter
Speaker 1: via the rover. So in this case, the engineers could
Speaker 1: give pretty general commands, such as how long the helicopter
Speaker 1: would operate or how high it was to fly. But
Speaker 1: then the helicopter has to do all the actual flying
Speaker 1: on its own. There will be no steering this thing
Speaker 1: due to that community cation 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 from 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 an
Speaker 1: operational temperature even during the Martian night. Uh the average
Speaker 1: temperature on Mars is about minus sixty degrees celsius, though
Speaker 1: in the daytime during the Martian summer, if you happen
Speaker 1: to be near the equator, you might reach a high
Speaker 1: of up to twenty degrees celsius. That's twenty degrees positive.
Speaker 1: So there is a really wide variation in temperatures on
Speaker 1: the planet. That's something else that we would have to
Speaker 1: prepare for if we were to ever actually, you know,
Speaker 1: go there. Now, NASA has made it clear that this
Speaker 1: aircraft is considered a quote completely independent of the Mars
Speaker 1: twenty twenty science mission end quote, which is why the
Speaker 1: ingenuity doesn't really show up when you look at the
Speaker 1: breakdown of experiments that are aboard the Perseverance. It's also
Speaker 1: described as a quote demonstration of technology end quote. That
Speaker 1: means ingenuity isn't going to be relied upon to deliver
Speaker 1: any you know, scientific data about Mars. It's really meant
Speaker 1: to give us an idea if the powered flying device
Speaker 1: is a viable approach on Mars. It's also meant to
Speaker 1: prove that the manchaization of technology is necessary to allow
Speaker 1: for this will actually work. And if it does work,
Speaker 1: then that means we could see all sorts of flying
Speaker 1: drones deployed to Mars in the future to do stuff
Speaker 1: like map out areas or survey regions that are to
Speaker 1: treacherous for rovers to manage, or perform other scientific experiments. Now,
Speaker 1: my hope is that all of these experiments teach us
Speaker 1: a lot more about our neighbor planet, and that with
Speaker 1: this information we can plot out further missions. And I
Speaker 1: think it would be truly remarkable if I were to
Speaker 1: see people land on Mars within my lifetime, and as always,
Speaker 1: there are opportunities for the things we learned in the
Speaker 1: technology we developed to make all this possible to benefit
Speaker 1: us in other ways. One of the coolest things about
Speaker 1: space exploration that's not really about the exploration itself, is
Speaker 1: that all the technology that was once created as a
Speaker 1: necessity in order to achieve mission goals has kind of
Speaker 1: found its way into our daily lives and other implementations.
Speaker 1: We often see unanticipated benefits as byproducts, and so I
Speaker 1: think it's always a good thing for us to push
Speaker 1: back our boundaries of ignorance. You never know what sort
Speaker 1: of things you're gonna uncover along the way. As for
Speaker 1: future missions, there are a couple more that I can
Speaker 1: mention briefly. One is a part of a mission that
Speaker 1: is called the Exo Mars Program. This one is actually
Speaker 1: led by the European Space Agency and the ros Cosmos
Speaker 1: State Corporation. The plan is to launch a rover which
Speaker 1: would not be that much different from Curiosity and Perseverance
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, again two years apart. This one
Speaker 1: will be called the Rosalind Franklin, named after the British chemist.
Speaker 1: NASA is contributing some of the UH components that are
Speaker 1: going to be used in some of the scientific instruments
Speaker 1: as part of this rover. The rover's mission is very
Speaker 1: similar to that of Perseverance, primarily looking for evidence that
Speaker 1: life could have existed on Mars in the ancient past.
Speaker 1: Another mission is the aforementioned plan to retrieve the samples
Speaker 1: that 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 two 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 six, which would actually touch down on Martian
Speaker 1: soil in August twenty eight. Now that's an unusually long
Speaker 1: travel time and honestly I don't know all the reasons
Speaker 1: for that. But the lander will have its own mini
Speaker 1: rover provided by the European Space Agency, and this rover
Speaker 1: will go and fetch the stored samples that Perseverance had gathered.
Speaker 1: In one it will bring those samples to a rocket
Speaker 1: that is carried aboard the Sample Return Lander, and the
Speaker 1: rocket will blast off, the first time in history that
Speaker 1: we will have launched a rocket from another planet, and
Speaker 1: it will then send the payload to rendezvous with another
Speaker 1: spacecraft in orbit around Mars. That spacecraft is called the
Speaker 1: Earth Return Orbiter, and it will actually launch from Earth
Speaker 1: separately from the lander. It would launch in September, a
Speaker 1: couple of months after the lander has launched, but it
Speaker 1: will arrive in orbit around Mars by October, several months
Speaker 1: before the lander touches down. The Sample Return container from
Speaker 1: the rocket will separate, it will dock with the Earth
Speaker 1: Return Orbiter, and then the orbiter would prepare for the
Speaker 1: trip back home once Earth and Mars were lined up again,
Speaker 1: and the estimated return date would be sometime in twenty
Speaker 1: thirty one. So if everything goes well, it's going to
Speaker 1: take more than a decade to get those Martian rocks
Speaker 1: and soil back here on Earth for analysis. Man, this
Speaker 1: stuff is hard, but super interesting, and that wraps up
Speaker 1: this episode about perseverance. It remains to be seen if
Speaker 1: the launch is going to be a success. I certainly
Speaker 1: hope it is. I plan on watching it on July,
Speaker 1: assuming that the launch goes ahead as planned, and I'm
Speaker 1: wishing everyone all the best. This is a very exciting
Speaker 1: kind of mission, and as I said before, I find
Speaker 1: it personally very inspiring that we can achieve something that
Speaker 1: is so difficult to do, and if we can do that,
Speaker 1: then we can tackle some of these problems that are
Speaker 1: enormous here on Earth that seem impossible. But it may
Speaker 1: just be that we're not dedicating the effort and the
Speaker 1: resources necessary to really change things. And I think that
Speaker 1: that is something we could entirely do if we set
Speaker 1: our minds to it. If you guys have future suggestions
Speaker 1: for tech Stuff episodes, or rather suggestions for future tech
Speaker 1: Stuff episodes, either way, the only way I know about
Speaker 1: it is if you send them to me, So send
Speaker 1: them to me on Twitter. To handle for the show
Speaker 1: is text Stuff H s W and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon Y. Text Stuff is an I
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