Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, have you been ordering stuff online a lot lately. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, like everyone, I've been clicking on websites rather
Speaker 1: than visiting stores. Yeah, you don't need a mass when
Speaker 1: you click. I guess it is pretty amazing how inexpensive
Speaker 1: it is these days to get stuff sent to your
Speaker 1: house from around the world. Even if it comes from
Speaker 1: the other side of the planet. It can just be
Speaker 1: like a few cents per gram to ship it to
Speaker 1: your house. Yeah, you know, I wonder when we can
Speaker 1: start ordering stuff from even further away. I've been trying
Speaker 1: to order some moon rocks. I wonder how much is
Speaker 1: the shipping on those things. Well, I heard NASA spent
Speaker 1: about three hundred thousand dollars per gram to get some
Speaker 1: moon rocks. But you know, I think it's cheaper if
Speaker 1: you have prime. You know, Jeff Bezos is starting his
Speaker 1: own rocket company, so he's probably gonna link that up
Speaker 1: and make it super cheap. Yeah. Why visit other planets
Speaker 1: when you can just order a little bit of him online? Hi,
Speaker 1: am or Hey, I'm a cartoonist and the creator of
Speaker 1: PhD Comics. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and I
Speaker 1: would love to have a little bit of Jupiter delivered
Speaker 1: to my house. Really, isn't Jupiter mostly gas? So you
Speaker 1: just wanted like a canister or just to like release
Speaker 1: it in your home, to know that you breathe it
Speaker 1: in a little bit of Jupiter. Well, you know, Jupiter
Speaker 1: is mostly gas, but some of that gas is in
Speaker 1: a really weird state, like metallic hydrogen. And that makes
Speaker 1: me really curious. I really want to see what metallic
Speaker 1: hydrogen looks like. It doesn't need to be like super
Speaker 1: under pressure. Hey, these are all engineering details. I just
Speaker 1: want the metallic hydrogen or to my house. I'm just
Speaker 1: clicking and waiting. I want a little bit of that
Speaker 1: gas from the red eye of Jupiter, like it is
Speaker 1: the gas. Also read what's going on there? I think
Speaker 1: we did a whole podcast episode on that one, like
Speaker 1: I should listen to it. But welcome to said podcast.
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in which we let you stay at home
Speaker 1: and order in information about the whole universe delivered to
Speaker 1: your ears without any effort on your part. We talk
Speaker 1: about things in the universe that are super far away.
Speaker 1: We talked about the tiny particles that are swimming inside
Speaker 1: your body. We talk about everything and anything, and we
Speaker 1: try to explain all of it to you. That's right.
Speaker 1: We try to bring the universe and the cosmos and
Speaker 1: everything in between to your brain free of charge, because
Speaker 1: wondering belongs to everybody, and the questions that you have
Speaker 1: about space and physics and the universe are the questions
Speaker 1: that everybody has, and the same questions that scientists want
Speaker 1: answers to, because we're all still learning about the universe,
Speaker 1: and part of that learning is exploring, is going out
Speaker 1: into the cosmos, into other planets, into the stars, and
Speaker 1: figuring out what's going on and what is there for
Speaker 1: us to discover. And sometimes it's so depressing to think
Speaker 1: that we've explored such a tiny little fraction of our universe.
Speaker 1: You know, we've barely gotten off this planet to explore
Speaker 1: the Moon, to land a few rovers on Mars. It's incredible,
Speaker 1: what a tiny little dot of the universe we have
Speaker 1: been able to explore so far. But what a dot
Speaker 1: it is. It's a pretty cool dot, and we're lucky
Speaker 1: that there is something to explore. I mean, right in
Speaker 1: our neighborhood, right next door, there's an amazing planet, Mars,
Speaker 1: that really has a lot of tantalizing and fascinating scientific question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mars is awesome, and so we'd like to know a
Speaker 1: little bit more about what is there on Mars. I
Speaker 1: mean we can see it, but so far we haven't
Speaker 1: been able to really, I don't know, study it up close.
Speaker 1: It's pretty hard because it's so far away. And all
Speaker 1: we've been able to do so far is send our
Speaker 1: robots there and have them do science. But that's sort
Speaker 1: of like trying to do science with a ten foot
Speaker 1: poll or a ten million mile long pole, and that's
Speaker 1: not easy to do. That's kind of a philosophical question,
Speaker 1: isn't it, Daniel, Like if you send a robot out
Speaker 1: to explore something, have you explored it technically? Like if
Speaker 1: the robot touches Mars, did you touch Mars? That humans
Speaker 1: touch Mars? Yeah, I mean if you have a robotic hand,
Speaker 1: you consider it part of yourself. If you touch something
Speaker 1: with that hand, then it's part of you. And so
Speaker 1: this is just like a spatially disconnected prosthetic, right, think
Speaker 1: about the rovers as part of your body. Then. Yeah, philosophically,
Speaker 1: I've been on Mars. I wonder if the Mars were
Speaker 1: over would disagree. When he gets to the point that
Speaker 1: it can disagree, it's no longer part of your body.
Speaker 1: It has its own Twitter account. Do you know that
Speaker 1: the Mars rover has its own Twitter account? It has
Speaker 1: more followers than I do. Yeah, but did get off
Speaker 1: its couch, Daniel, And actually, you know went somewhere. It
Speaker 1: has accomplished more in its life than I ever will.
Speaker 1: That's true. But yeah, we'd love to know more about
Speaker 1: Mars and whether or not it had life on it,
Speaker 1: like bacteria or who knows what else we could discover
Speaker 1: that Mars had, but it's really hard to do it
Speaker 1: from here, and even to do it through robots. It
Speaker 1: is challenging, and it's amazing to me how open this
Speaker 1: question remains. You know, through history we thought, oh, maybe
Speaker 1: Mars has life on it. Then we took a closer look,
Speaker 1: where like, actually it looks pretty dry. They're like, wait, no,
Speaker 1: there is water on there. Maybe there are microbes, and
Speaker 1: so keep going up and down, and it's fascinating to
Speaker 1: me that this planet, this one that the closest to us.
Speaker 1: We still don't know the answer. If there is life
Speaker 1: on Mars, is it's similar to Earth? Did it come
Speaker 1: to Earth from Mars, or to Mars from Earth, or
Speaker 1: to both planets from somewhere else. It's an incredibly important question,
Speaker 1: and it's right there, it's so accessible. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: huge question, right, But they're not Life on Earth actually
Speaker 1: started on Mars. Because it's possible that there was life
Speaker 1: on Mars and then got knocked off on an asteroid
Speaker 1: and then flew here and landed on Earth, and that's
Speaker 1: how life started Earth. That's a theory, right, That is
Speaker 1: a theory, and it's not just the plot of a
Speaker 1: science fiction novel. It's potentially actually plausible, and it's a
Speaker 1: kind of question that we could answer if we had
Speaker 1: deeper access to rocks on Mars. Right, we could all
Speaker 1: be Martians. Martians could all be Earthlings. Who knows, we
Speaker 1: could all be Jovians. Yeah, but it'd be great to
Speaker 1: answer that question. And I think the only way we're
Speaker 1: going to answer that question is to actually go there
Speaker 1: and take a close look at the rocks and the
Speaker 1: soil and to like actually like take a super microscope
Speaker 1: to it and see if we see any little critters
Speaker 1: in there. That's right, But sending scientists to Mars is
Speaker 1: unfortunately still many many years away, decades probably if ever.
Speaker 1: It's really hard, but we've done it with some things
Speaker 1: in space, like for example, we've gone to the Moon
Speaker 1: and gone and rock from the Moon and brought them
Speaker 1: back to Earth. I think you can order them online, right,
Speaker 1: I don't think you can order them online. No, you can. Can.
Speaker 1: You get on eBay and like a bid on a
Speaker 1: piece of moon rock. I think anything you buy on
Speaker 1: eBay is not going to be actually moon rocks, so
Speaker 1: please don't waste your money. But we did actually bring
Speaker 1: rocks back from the Moon, and those rocks have been
Speaker 1: an incredible treasure trove of science. Were like still thinking
Speaker 1: of new things to do to those rocks, to learn things,
Speaker 1: to figure out answers to new questions about the science
Speaker 1: of the Moon. So it's incredibly valuable to have here
Speaker 1: in our Earth laboratories a sample from the Moon or
Speaker 1: from somewhere else. Yeah. I have actually held in moon rock.
Speaker 1: I was at JPO of visiting ones and they let
Speaker 1: me hold a little bit of moon dust, And did
Speaker 1: you feel transported? I accidentally breedd them in and sneeze
Speaker 1: had to go in there for a second. That sounds
Speaker 1: like the opening scene of a terrible science fiction novel.
Speaker 1: Or he gets infected by a Moon based pathoge and
Speaker 1: that's why I have superpowers. You gained the Moon's proportional
Speaker 1: strength again, the ambility to moon people. You cause tides. Right,
Speaker 1: you'd be a some sort of lunar superhuman. That's right.
Speaker 1: I'm like the villain in the next Appman movie. That's right,
Speaker 1: You're like the DC version of Magneto. Right, you insulted
Speaker 1: me twice over there. You just confuse the DC character
Speaker 1: with the Marvel character. No, I'm trying to bring one
Speaker 1: from the other, right, Like Magneto controls medals, and so
Speaker 1: lunar Jorge controls tides right in the DC universe. But anyways,
Speaker 1: so the question is, can we just go to Mars,
Speaker 1: pick up some rocks and bring them back and then
Speaker 1: study them, and then we would know if life potentially
Speaker 1: came from another planet. That would be incredible. And so
Speaker 1: to be on the program, we'll be asking the question,
Speaker 1: can we bring rocks back from Mars? Or more optimistically,
Speaker 1: how can we bring rocks back from Mars? Oh, so
Speaker 1: you're feeling good. You feel like it's not an if question,
Speaker 1: it's not a physics question, right, there's nothing in physics
Speaker 1: that prevents us from moving rocks from Mars to Earth.
Speaker 1: It's definitely an engineering question, and as you'll hear, it's
Speaker 1: a tricky one. So, as usually, we were wondering how
Speaker 1: many people out there had thought about this question or
Speaker 1: wonder whether or not it's possible to bring something back
Speaker 1: from Mars. So Daniel and out there into the wilds
Speaker 1: of the Internet to ask people how can we retrieve
Speaker 1: rocks from Mars to study them on Earth. So these
Speaker 1: are the answers I got from random folks on the
Speaker 1: Internet who were willing to speculate baselessly without any googling
Speaker 1: about the questions. I asked them, if you'd like to
Speaker 1: participate and hear your voice on the podcast at some
Speaker 1: point in the future, please write to us two questions
Speaker 1: at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Here's what people had
Speaker 1: to say. I think that we should send a rocket
Speaker 1: to Mars, and then maybe the Mars wherever the acrono
Speaker 1: Mars should take the rock samples and put them inside
Speaker 1: the rocket, and then we could somehow program the rocket
Speaker 1: to fly back on its own. Perseverance is on his
Speaker 1: way there right now, and hopefully the next generation of
Speaker 1: Perseverances will be able to bring them back to study.
Speaker 1: I thought that that was part of the upcoming Mars mission,
Speaker 1: or maybe for the next mission to have some sort
Speaker 1: of return capsule. It's really difficult to get things back
Speaker 1: from Mars, so I imagine that probably have to send
Speaker 1: some sort of probe there that would then have to
Speaker 1: do a lot of the analysis they're on Mars. I
Speaker 1: think the new Perseverance wherever you can actually collect unstored
Speaker 1: Mars rocks for a future mission to achieve and bring
Speaker 1: back to Earth. I'm envisioning maybe we send something to
Speaker 1: like enter into Mars's orbit that can maybe send down
Speaker 1: an explosive heads the surface, sends out a bunch of particulates.
Speaker 1: The probe gathers these particulates and then breaks out of
Speaker 1: the orbit goes back to Earth. We can gather samples
Speaker 1: from Mars for study on Earth, kind of how we
Speaker 1: went to the Moon, except all robotically right, and instead
Speaker 1: of a lamb, we have a mam. Well, I know
Speaker 1: we already have a mission going there, and I believe
Speaker 1: what they're going to do is h do little core
Speaker 1: samples and then somehow package them and leave them for
Speaker 1: a recovery mission. Al Right, a lot of excitement about
Speaker 1: this idea. I feel, yeah, a lot of excitement. People
Speaker 1: are like, I don't know, but it sounds cool. Somebody
Speaker 1: out there is like, let's just nuke Mars, and I
Speaker 1: have the feeling they were just waiting for the opportunity.
Speaker 1: Is that a fellow physicist? I feel like that sounds
Speaker 1: like an efficient solution to a physicist. You don't think
Speaker 1: an engineer would be like, let's just shoot a string
Speaker 1: of nuclear weapons at this thing to guide it back
Speaker 1: to Earth. I think you mean a freshman engineer would
Speaker 1: be like, maybe there's a better way, that's right, and
Speaker 1: also would probably destroy the samples and pollute them with radiation,
Speaker 1: so it might undermine the very science that we're trying
Speaker 1: to do. Right, that's probably a huge part of it, right,
Speaker 1: like not contaminating. Oh yeah, that's a big deal. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's dig into this topic. Let's get some samples of
Speaker 1: it and retreat it and bring it to Earth. So Daniel,
Speaker 1: first of all, I guess talk about why we would
Speaker 1: want to get rocks from Mars. I mean, I know
Speaker 1: that it would be great to study them, but you know,
Speaker 1: why can't we just study them there. Well, we can
Speaker 1: do a lot of studying on the surface of Mars,
Speaker 1: and we have rovers that do that, but it's tricky.
Speaker 1: You want to do some science on a rover, you
Speaker 1: have to pick an instrument which can survive like launch
Speaker 1: and transit and landing on Mars, and then can get
Speaker 1: set up automatically without any like a grad students tinkering
Speaker 1: with it. You know, every cutting edge lab that I'm
Speaker 1: aware of here on Earth, the most powerful instruments are
Speaker 1: delicate instruments, and they require like experts tweaking them and
Speaker 1: massaging them to make them work and to calibrate them.
Speaker 1: So for something to work on a rover has to
Speaker 1: be really robust, and that really limits the kinds of
Speaker 1: signs that you can do. Yeah, I guess you need
Speaker 1: a lab. And it's tricky to handle these samples and
Speaker 1: to do the the signs, right, that's right. If you
Speaker 1: had your hands on Martian samples like right now, there's
Speaker 1: like a hundred things you would want to do to
Speaker 1: it right away, but only a few of those ever
Speaker 1: make it onto a rover, so you're really limited. And
Speaker 1: then you get the answers back, you're like, oh, look
Speaker 1: it has this weird thing in it. Now I want
Speaker 1: to check with my other funky instrument. But you can't
Speaker 1: do that kind of thing all in advance. When you
Speaker 1: send your rover over, you have to plan very far
Speaker 1: in advance exactly what you're gonna do to every sample.
Speaker 1: You can't respond to what you've learned with new ideas,
Speaker 1: whereas if you bring the rocks back, then you can
Speaker 1: keep coming up with new ideas. And also you have
Speaker 1: access to future instruments. Right, cool techniques we're going to
Speaker 1: develop in ten years or in twenty years that we
Speaker 1: haven't even thought of. Now we have the rocks here,
Speaker 1: rather than sending the machines there, then we can use
Speaker 1: new machines on old rocks, right, Because I guess it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's really hard to take stuff to Mars, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, like every gram cost like a million dollars
Speaker 1: or something, and these lab equipment machines are really big.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they are really big, and a lot of the
Speaker 1: engineering challenges of building a rover or how to miniaturize, right,
Speaker 1: how to make these things really small. It's got to
Speaker 1: be like the size of a shoe box and fit
Speaker 1: on the edge of a stick and be totally robust,
Speaker 1: Like you have to just be able to send it
Speaker 1: one command and it boots up and starts up. It's
Speaker 1: gonna have a little bit of AI in there to
Speaker 1: get itself going. Right. You can't just like crawl out
Speaker 1: there with your screw driver and fix it right once
Speaker 1: you send it, it's gone. You can't just call I
Speaker 1: T to fix it, and they'll say, have you tried
Speaker 1: turning it off and turning it on again? Did you
Speaker 1: update your Windows installation like I can. It's on Mars.
Speaker 1: I can't even turn it on enough. No, And you
Speaker 1: can't even like drive something on Mars. Remember these rovers
Speaker 1: operate semi autonomously because Mars is so far away that
Speaker 1: it takes light minutes to get there. So you can't
Speaker 1: have the kind of feedback loop you need to real
Speaker 1: time drive something on Mars. It's like you drive forward,
Speaker 1: you stop, you take a picture, you send it back
Speaker 1: to the folks in NASA. They figure out what to
Speaker 1: do next. And so having it be so far away
Speaker 1: makes it really limited. It has to survive a trip
Speaker 1: to Like launching from the Earth into space is not easy, right,
Speaker 1: Like there's huge forces and you know you're basically strapped
Speaker 1: onto a giant explosion. It has to survive that. And
Speaker 1: also the landing on Mars, which can be pretty tough,
Speaker 1: like sometimes they just fall into the ground and bounce around,
Speaker 1: and it has to survive that. That's the landing strategy.
Speaker 1: That's the design strategy, right. I mean, remember all those
Speaker 1: movies about astronaut training, Like they put those folks through
Speaker 1: some tough stuff. They spin around, they shake them a lot. Basically,
Speaker 1: take your most sensitive science instruments and put them through
Speaker 1: astronaut training to see if they have the right stuff.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, it's just gonna fall apart. Like
Speaker 1: you go into a random geology or microbiology lab here
Speaker 1: on Earth. Most of those instruments are very delicate. They
Speaker 1: don't let people in there poking and products. So you're right,
Speaker 1: surviving all the shaking and the landing and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: It's not easy. So this whole categories of instruments, nobody
Speaker 1: has figured out how to miniaturize and make robust enough
Speaker 1: to send to Mars. Okay, so it would be a
Speaker 1: lot better for science if we could bring some Mars
Speaker 1: rocks back so we can study them, and you know,
Speaker 1: you can do a whole bunch more tescent. You could
Speaker 1: on a robot in Mars, but it's really hard and
Speaker 1: apparently it can't just study meteors from Mars. Like that's
Speaker 1: another possibility, but it's not, as I guess. Fresh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the amazing thing is that we actually already have Mars rocks, right,
Speaker 1: like what yeah, what you were talking about sort of
Speaker 1: as a joke, actually happens. Sometimes big rocks hit the
Speaker 1: surface of Mars right impact creators and stuff gets thrown
Speaker 1: out into space. You know, this can be really big
Speaker 1: impacts and some of those rocks get tossed out into
Speaker 1: space and eventually a small fraction of them hit the
Speaker 1: surface of the Earth and then are recovered. And how
Speaker 1: do we know they're from Mars? So they had like
Speaker 1: a maide in Mars tag or well they went through customs, right,
Speaker 1: and so we can tell they just look at the
Speaker 1: forms they I mean, can you tell, like does it
Speaker 1: have a special like queue of red or something? You
Speaker 1: can tell because of the geology, every object in the
Speaker 1: Solar System has a different history and a different composition
Speaker 1: and that tells you where it comes from. And so
Speaker 1: when you get a meteor from outer space, when you've
Speaker 1: got a chunk of space rock. First of all, you
Speaker 1: can tell it the space rock because of what it's
Speaker 1: made out of. It's made of stuff you don't find
Speaker 1: on Earth. And then you can tell roughly where it
Speaker 1: came from based on the details of what's in it.
Speaker 1: And so most of the rocks that land on Earth come,
Speaker 1: for example, from the asteroid Belt, and we can tell
Speaker 1: based on the blend of metals and also the organization
Speaker 1: of the metals in them that tells you something about
Speaker 1: its history, like when it was last melted and how
Speaker 1: long it's been frozen for. And some of these things
Speaker 1: have composition and geology that's only consistent with the surface
Speaker 1: of Mars. Interesting. So, yeah, we have like dozens of
Speaker 1: these objects that have landed on the Earth from Mars,
Speaker 1: which is fascinating and incredible and wonderful opportunities to do science.
Speaker 1: But it's not good enough, right, Yeah, you need like
Speaker 1: fresh rocks, Like those asteroids are kind of stale. They've
Speaker 1: been floating around face and who knows where they came from.
Speaker 1: It's not just that you need fresh rocks, it's that
Speaker 1: you need to know where they came from, Like it's
Speaker 1: just a random sample. You don't know where on Mars
Speaker 1: it came from, so you can't really like fit it
Speaker 1: into your science picture of what's going on on Mars.
Speaker 1: Which you'd like is to have a rover travel around
Speaker 1: and make judicious decisions and say, I'm gonna get a
Speaker 1: little bit of this kind of rock, and I see
Speaker 1: where it is. It's on the downflow of a slope.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get that piece of rock over there, and
Speaker 1: I know the scientific context. It's sort of just like
Speaker 1: getting a piece of pottery and having no idea where
Speaker 1: it was dug up from. It's much less valuable scientifically.
Speaker 1: It's also kind of like when you go to a
Speaker 1: Las Vegas bouffet. You know you want judiciously pick a
Speaker 1: little bit from everything and know where you got it from,
Speaker 1: so you can go back and get the stuff you liked.
Speaker 1: That's right, and so you know what made you throw
Speaker 1: up and what you yeah, yeah, alright. So it sounds
Speaker 1: like it would be a lot better if we can
Speaker 1: get go to Mars, get some rocks, bring them back,
Speaker 1: and then study the heck out of him to answer
Speaker 1: these big questions about life in the Solar System and
Speaker 1: about Mars and the history of Mars. But it's a
Speaker 1: tough problem, and so let's talk about how we would
Speaker 1: actually do that and what has been and is being
Speaker 1: done to do it. But first let's take a quick break,
Speaker 1: all right, Daniel, we are souvenir shopping in the Solar System.
Speaker 1: We're trying to get some original, authentic rocks from Mars.
Speaker 1: But it's a tough problem because Mars is really far away,
Speaker 1: and you don't just have to get the rocks. You
Speaker 1: have to come back with them. You've got to come
Speaker 1: back with the rocks. Right, Like we've done the one
Speaker 1: way thing. We've sent something to Mars and it's dug
Speaker 1: up rocks and studied them, but they're still on the
Speaker 1: surface of Mars, and so now we need to do
Speaker 1: the second bit, the round trip, to come home and
Speaker 1: deliver them to scientists in a pristine condition, so that
Speaker 1: we can finally answer some of these incredible, longstanding science questions. Right,
Speaker 1: And I feel like the problem is it's not just double,
Speaker 1: it's like squared, because you know, it's hard enough to
Speaker 1: take off from a planet and land on another planet,
Speaker 1: but now you're gonna do it again, take off from
Speaker 1: there and land here. But it still has to be
Speaker 1: the same machine that you send out, like the same
Speaker 1: machine you send out has to do both of those things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's complicated, and it's not just squared as you're gonna hear.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of moving parts. It's more like to
Speaker 1: the ninth power or something. It's pretty ridiculous little dance
Speaker 1: of machines that we have to get working all together
Speaker 1: to get those rocks back from Mars. And you know
Speaker 1: what you just said, Nobody has ever done that before.
Speaker 1: We've never successfully launched a rocket from the surface of
Speaker 1: another planet. Right, Well, we've done it for the Moon,
Speaker 1: but the Moon is kind of easy to take off from.
Speaker 1: That's right. The Moon is pretty low gravity, and it's
Speaker 1: not a planet, and it's not remote, right, there's somebody
Speaker 1: in there driving that thing. So now we have to
Speaker 1: remotely launch from the service of another planet. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's hard enough to do from Earth. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a big challenge. Luckily you volunteered to go tomorrows right now.
Speaker 1: I volunteered to press the big red button. When the
Speaker 1: time comes, Oh yeah, first to take off, to take
Speaker 1: a button or the Abordan whatever. Man just put a
Speaker 1: big red button in front of me and I will
Speaker 1: hit it. That's my job. That's how these podcasts get started.
Speaker 1: You hit a big red button. Hey, you don't get
Speaker 1: to live your dream if you don't ask for it.
Speaker 1: So this is my official request to get invited to
Speaker 1: press the big red button NASA button pusher. All right,
Speaker 1: but you've actually tried before, Like, this is not a
Speaker 1: crazy idea that you and I just came up with
Speaker 1: here on the podcast. The US the Soviets have been
Speaker 1: trying to do this for really like fifty years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they've been trying and failing. But the failures have
Speaker 1: been political and financial. It's not like we've sent a
Speaker 1: mission that's attempted to do this and then not succeeded.
Speaker 1: The mission has been thought up and planned and organized
Speaker 1: and then canceled many times in the past. The Soviets
Speaker 1: thought about in the seventies, but they couldn't get their
Speaker 1: rockets to work. NASA had a plan in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine that was canceled because it was too complicated. And
Speaker 1: then recently NASA and the European Space Agency had a
Speaker 1: plan that was in twenty twelve that people thought was
Speaker 1: going to happen, but then it was aborted again because
Speaker 1: it was too complicated and too expensive. This cancel culture
Speaker 1: is out of hand. Daniel, Yeah, and I think that
Speaker 1: especially was really traumatic for the sort of Mars science community.
Speaker 1: People really believed that that one was going to be
Speaker 1: the one. It was finally going to come to fruition.
Speaker 1: So when that was canceled it was a bit like
Speaker 1: the super Conducting super Collider was for particle physics. It
Speaker 1: left a bit of like PTSD on the community. There
Speaker 1: a little bit more cynicism than there was before. So
Speaker 1: it sounds like people get excited about it, they start
Speaker 1: the program, but then they realize it's too hard, so
Speaker 1: they cancel. It is that, and it's happened over and over.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit of a political problem though, because
Speaker 1: it's one of these projects that takes years or decades
Speaker 1: to pull off. So even if you're committed to spending
Speaker 1: a lot of money over many years, you need all
Speaker 1: the people who are in charge after you to stay
Speaker 1: committed to not have their priorities changed, and so it
Speaker 1: takes consistent support over many, many years for this kind
Speaker 1: of thing to actually happen. All right, So there was
Speaker 1: a big program at NASA that got canceled in twelve
Speaker 1: but now now it's sort of been revived. Right now,
Speaker 1: there is some activity at NASA to actually do this.
Speaker 1: That's right, it has been revived. There's a new plan,
Speaker 1: and it's a pretty reasonable plan in comparison with the
Speaker 1: other crazy plans, although I think you'll still find it
Speaker 1: fairly absurd and amazing. This is the level headed conservative
Speaker 1: This is the least ridiculous plan that we have going.
Speaker 1: So how they pitched it to to Congress. We have
Speaker 1: a new, less ridiculous plan. You guys are gonna love
Speaker 1: it now, less crazy. And the most exciting part is
Speaker 1: that the first part of it has already launched. Like
Speaker 1: the first element of this multi stage plan to bring
Speaker 1: rocks back from the service of Mars is already on
Speaker 1: its way to the red plan. Wait, what is this
Speaker 1: is already happening. It's already happening. They have a new
Speaker 1: clever strategy, which is they break it up into pieces
Speaker 1: and so they're easier to sell. And the first piece
Speaker 1: works no matter what, Like, the first piece is something
Speaker 1: you want to do, even if you're not going to
Speaker 1: bring the rocks back. Oh, I see they're cleverer now
Speaker 1: about the mission planning. Yeah, they're a little bit more cynical,
Speaker 1: I guess you could say, or more experienced. And so
Speaker 1: this first piece is a rover that launched on July's
Speaker 1: the Perseverance Rover here, and it's a this year, yeah,
Speaker 1: just a few weeks ago, and it's on the way
Speaker 1: to Mars now. And it's an awesome piece of technology.
Speaker 1: You may have heard about it. It's going to be
Speaker 1: the heaviest rover ever landed on Mars. It's going to
Speaker 1: have a little helicopter on the top of it that
Speaker 1: can fly up the first helicopter operate on the surface
Speaker 1: of Mars. That is so sci fi. Yeah, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be really cool. It's have a little laser on it.
Speaker 1: But most importantly, it's going to have a device that
Speaker 1: can drill into the surface of Mars and extract cores,
Speaker 1: which it can then store in a little sample container.
Speaker 1: I feel like now we're getting to really transform or territory,
Speaker 1: you know, like we're sending a box and then when
Speaker 1: the box lands, it's gonna transform into a drilling machine
Speaker 1: with lasers and a helicopter. That's right, it's Optimist Prime.
Speaker 1: That's what they should have called it. That's right. Forget
Speaker 1: Perseverance or something inspiring. Just go with optimist prime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this thing is going to have a year's long
Speaker 1: mission and it's going to drive around and it's going
Speaker 1: to collect like rock course from maybe thirty nine in
Speaker 1: different locations. And each one is pretty small, you know,
Speaker 1: they're like a centimeter wide and a few centimeters long.
Speaker 1: But that's gold for scientists down here. To have a
Speaker 1: few cubic centimeters of rock from several dozen locations around Mars,
Speaker 1: it's incredibly valuable. So it is a rover like the
Speaker 1: ones we've sent before, and it's going to run around
Speaker 1: and collect samples and then keep them keep them in
Speaker 1: like a box. So it's got its own science mission.
Speaker 1: It's a good idea anyway, even if mar sample return
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. But then it's going to collect these rocks
Speaker 1: and it's going to put them in a little sample
Speaker 1: container and then it's going to leave them on the
Speaker 1: surface of Mars for the next stage to come and retrieve.
Speaker 1: Wait what it's going to be littering. It's going to
Speaker 1: be preparing a gift for us. Man, it's not trash,
Speaker 1: but why not collect them? But it's gonna really leave
Speaker 1: them out where it would find them. Yeah, it's going
Speaker 1: to steal up in tubes and then it's going to
Speaker 1: leave it out where the next mission can come and
Speaker 1: collect it. But why not bring them all together so
Speaker 1: that it's easier to pick up. No, it's going to
Speaker 1: collect them all into one container. Oh, I see, and
Speaker 1: then leaves the container there, sees it all nice, and
Speaker 1: then the next stage is going to come and pick
Speaker 1: it up. And so if you're keeping track, there's three
Speaker 1: major stages to this mission. Stage one is perseverance. Go
Speaker 1: and create the samples, pack them up in the container,
Speaker 1: leave it on the surface. It's also going to study them,
Speaker 1: but also going to leave them there. Okay. The next
Speaker 1: stage is to get it off the surface of Mars,
Speaker 1: all right, And each of these is like a different mission.
Speaker 1: It's kind of I think that's when you're saying, like,
Speaker 1: don't put it all in one mission that could fail,
Speaker 1: but do one mission and if that one succeeds, then
Speaker 1: do the next mission, and that one succeeds to the
Speaker 1: next mission. Yes, So there's three separate launches from Earth,
Speaker 1: Like we're sending three different devices from Earth. They're all
Speaker 1: going to work together to make this happen. Three different transformers.
Speaker 1: The first one lands on the service and makes these samples.
Speaker 1: The next one is I think maybe the craziest, and
Speaker 1: it's the one that's going to land on the surface
Speaker 1: of Mars and then it's going to deploy a mini rover,
Speaker 1: like a little rover that just runs out, picks up
Speaker 1: the sample container, comes back, loads that into a rocket
Speaker 1: that it has landed on the surface of Mars, wraps
Speaker 1: out all up, and then launches from the surface of Mars,
Speaker 1: sends the sample container up into space. So on a
Speaker 1: rocket will be sending another rocket and a launching pad,
Speaker 1: and a launching pad and a little tiny retriever robot
Speaker 1: and a mini rover. Yeah, exactly. So the job of
Speaker 1: this thing is to land there, pick up the sample
Speaker 1: container and it has a robotic arm that will take
Speaker 1: it from the rover and put it into the rocket
Speaker 1: and then yeah, remote launch from the surface of another planet.
Speaker 1: Maybe the most valuable sample ever to be collected. This
Speaker 1: feels kind of comical to me, like, you know, like
Speaker 1: this giant machine lands, opens up up, there's another rocket
Speaker 1: in there. This little robot comes out, picks up something,
Speaker 1: runs back, sticks it in the rocket, and then just
Speaker 1: launches back somehow that it feels comedic, something like something
Speaker 1: out of a cartoon. It does seem a little Looney Tunes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, and if this thing works, it definitely needs
Speaker 1: that sort of like comedic music in the background to inspire.
Speaker 1: You know, it'll be pretty funny. But this is not
Speaker 1: set to go for another five years or so, So
Speaker 1: we're talking about launching this next bit in six So wait,
Speaker 1: so there must be working on it now, like it's
Speaker 1: being built right now. It's being built right now, So
Speaker 1: Perseverance will have years on the surface of Mars to
Speaker 1: collect these samples. And also we'll have an idea like
Speaker 1: how did that go right, how well are things going?
Speaker 1: We could change our plan based on where Perseverance is
Speaker 1: or how things go for Perseverance, or what it learns,
Speaker 1: or how the sample container looks um and so that's
Speaker 1: another part of it. You build in these delays so
Speaker 1: you can change your plans as things develop. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're working on that now and they will launch it
Speaker 1: in and the ideas they would arrive on the surface
Speaker 1: of Mars in twenty twenty eight. Remember it's a two
Speaker 1: year trip, and then grab it and launch it out
Speaker 1: into space. But it only has the power to get
Speaker 1: it into orbit around Mars. It can't bring all the
Speaker 1: way back to Earth. Oh, that's still just phase two.
Speaker 1: That's just phase two, right, The actual looney Tunes crazy
Speaker 1: comedic value comes in the next day. All right, let's say,
Speaker 1: let's phase three. So phase three as we launch a
Speaker 1: third rocket from Earth and this one at the same
Speaker 1: time as we're launching the second one, but this one
Speaker 1: just stays in orbit around Mars. This is called the
Speaker 1: Earth return orbiter. So this one is a concurrent, like
Speaker 1: we're not gonna wait for the second one to finish.
Speaker 1: We're gonna send two and three. It's like filming the
Speaker 1: sequels at the same time. Yeah, exactly. So the third
Speaker 1: one hangs at in orbit and it helps communicate and
Speaker 1: do a bunch of stuff. And then it's most important
Speaker 1: job is to catch the sample container. Because the surface
Speaker 1: rocket is going to launch from the surface of Mars
Speaker 1: and get out near orbit. Right, it can't go all
Speaker 1: the way out actually out into space, and the one
Speaker 1: that's in orbit has to lower itself down to lower orbit.
Speaker 1: And then they're going to pass the sample container from
Speaker 1: one rocket to the orbiter. Robots are going to do this.
Speaker 1: Robots are going to do this in space, you know,
Speaker 1: Sending Daniel is starting to seem a lot easier, I know.
Speaker 1: And the sample container it has no like radio beacon,
Speaker 1: has no tracker on it has no transmitter, has no thrusters,
Speaker 1: is just an inert white ball and the orbiter just
Speaker 1: has to catch it. Doesn't have like a GPS on
Speaker 1: it even or it's just white. They're like, let's make
Speaker 1: it white then you can see it in space. Right. Wow,
Speaker 1: that is audacious to say the least. But I guess
Speaker 1: my question is why can't the rocket just go straight
Speaker 1: into orbit? You can't put in a fuel on it
Speaker 1: or something or what. That definitely takes a lot more
Speaker 1: power to get all the way into orbit. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you have to launch this thing from Earth
Speaker 1: and then send it to Mars. And so there's a
Speaker 1: lot of risks and costs here that they're trying to balance.
Speaker 1: And this was what they decided was the least crazy plan.
Speaker 1: I guess it would be a lot to like land
Speaker 1: a rocket that can make it all the way back
Speaker 1: to Earth. I guess this is smartyr to like, you know,
Speaker 1: make this rocket smaller and then save the spaceship part
Speaker 1: of it for another phase. Yeah, and now the part
Speaker 1: the orbiter only ever has to live in space. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have to go down to the surface. So you
Speaker 1: have one thing that's dedicated to going down to the surface,
Speaker 1: it's good at that, and another thing that's dedicated at
Speaker 1: orbiting Mars, catching this soccer ball with the most valuable
Speaker 1: cargo humans have ever created, and then flying on its
Speaker 1: own all the way back to Earth. It sounds like,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like a whole bunch of robots
Speaker 1: that together make one big robot. Yeah, it's a bit
Speaker 1: of a Rube Goldberg machine. Right. They should have called
Speaker 1: this the Rube Goldberg Mars Mission. It's pretty hilarious. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: let's get into what happens next phase three, but first
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. All right, Daniel, we are
Speaker 1: talking about transformers in Mars and robots that we're gonna
Speaker 1: send there and work together on their own to land
Speaker 1: on Mars, get some rocks, shoot them back up into space,
Speaker 1: hand it off, and then bring it back. So that's
Speaker 1: phase three, is bringing the samples from Mars. Fact, that's right,
Speaker 1: that's phase three. So it has to catch this soccer
Speaker 1: ball in orbit around Mars. Right, it like opens a
Speaker 1: door on the side of the ship and the ball
Speaker 1: just like drifts in because remember the ball is not powered,
Speaker 1: so it just has to like match it in orbital
Speaker 1: speed and get in front of it and then slow
Speaker 1: down a little bit and just sort of like mate
Speaker 1: with this thing. Yeah, it's gonna catch it. It's gonna
Speaker 1: catch it, and it has to then keep it somehow sterile.
Speaker 1: It can't like let the sample contain or anything that
Speaker 1: was on it infect the rest of the ship. Oh
Speaker 1: I see. It had to catch it and isolated, catch
Speaker 1: it and isolated fly it all the way back to Earth. Right,
Speaker 1: that's not that big a deal. You just had sort
Speaker 1: of point in the right direction and have enough power left.
Speaker 1: And then it has to drop it off on Earth. Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna drop it off or it's gonna land.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna land here on Earth. It's just going
Speaker 1: to drop it off, and the sample container is essentially
Speaker 1: just gonna fall to the surface. They were like, should
Speaker 1: we add parachutes or something to slow it down? But
Speaker 1: that seemed too complicated. They're like, no, can't you just
Speaker 1: call like uber to pick it up or build a
Speaker 1: huge catcher's mit or something. Well, why not build another
Speaker 1: robot to go up there and catch it? Why not? Well,
Speaker 1: they thought this was simplest, and you know, they already
Speaker 1: used up their quota of crazy robots on this mission.
Speaker 1: So they're just gonna toss it into what the ocean. No,
Speaker 1: it's gonna land on the surface and land around ninety
Speaker 1: miles per hour on the surface, and it's not going
Speaker 1: to explode or vaporize. It's not going to vaporize that.
Speaker 1: It should be able to survive that. And you know,
Speaker 1: the samples themselves shouldn't be that delicate, right, It's not
Speaker 1: like they're glass containers or you know, anything that's gonna break.
Speaker 1: It's just rocks were bringing back. I thought they were
Speaker 1: going to be on like, you know, test tubes, but
Speaker 1: I guess you want something would have been more sturdy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But the question is like can we keep it safe
Speaker 1: and contained? We're basically shipping a chunk of mars onto
Speaker 1: the surface of the Earth, and we want to isolate
Speaker 1: it so that we can study it for well a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons. One is like who knows what's in
Speaker 1: that thing? And if there really is like weird life
Speaker 1: on Mars. The last thing we want to do is
Speaker 1: like eradicate all life on Earth because we imported some pathogen.
Speaker 1: Didn't wrap it into plastic bag. First, I've seen that movie.
Speaker 1: It's pretty good unless you're living it. But the other
Speaker 1: thing is we want to keep it sterile so that
Speaker 1: if we do, like find weird bugs in it that
Speaker 1: are similar to bugs on Earth, we want to know
Speaker 1: they came from Mars and not from like the Utah
Speaker 1: Desert where it landed. Wow. Well, this seems like a
Speaker 1: super audacious and amazing and incredible plan. And Daniel, you
Speaker 1: actually got to talk to somebody who works on this
Speaker 1: so ready from NASA. Yeah, there's incredible excitement in the
Speaker 1: community for this project. People are hoping beyond hope that
Speaker 1: they'll get that get their hands on some of these rocks.
Speaker 1: So I reached out to Dr Nina Lanza. She's a
Speaker 1: Mars rover instrument scientist. She built some of the things
Speaker 1: that are going on Perseverance right now, and I asked
Speaker 1: her a bunch of fun questions about this project. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great interview, so we'll play that for you
Speaker 1: right now. So here's Daniel talking to Dr Nina Lanzon
Speaker 1: Mars Rover instrument scientist. So it's my pleasure to be
Speaker 1: talking to Dr Nina Lanza Um. Would you introduce yourself
Speaker 1: for our listeners. Sure, I'm Nina lanza I work at
Speaker 1: Los Alamos National Laboratory and I'm a planetary scientist. Awesome,
Speaker 1: And so our question today are mostly about getting your
Speaker 1: hands on samples from Mars or the signs you can
Speaker 1: do with stuff on Mars. So my first question has
Speaker 1: to do with the rovers that we have over there
Speaker 1: and that we're sending over there. What do you think
Speaker 1: of the most important scientific stens that those instruments on
Speaker 1: the rovers are asking? Well, it's important to remember that
Speaker 1: each of these missions had a different goal and they
Speaker 1: would they build on each other. Right, So, when we
Speaker 1: first started sending rovers to Mars um and and even Landers,
Speaker 1: you know, we didn't know a lot. We know a
Speaker 1: lot more after all the missions we've done. So initial
Speaker 1: missions were just to figure out, you know, what's on Mars,
Speaker 1: what's it like? And subsequent missions have been trying to
Speaker 1: find out the details of that. What has the history
Speaker 1: of Mars been like, you know, in terms of climate,
Speaker 1: in terms of geology. Now we're asking questions about habitability,
Speaker 1: is or was the Martian environment habitable in a way
Speaker 1: that we understand. So habitability is not looking for life,
Speaker 1: but rather places where life as we understand it, could exist.
Speaker 1: And so now after our most recent missions, you know,
Speaker 1: we feel really confident that Mars was absolutely a habitable
Speaker 1: place in the past, and it's kind of habitable now
Speaker 1: for certain arestrial microbes um and so our next goal
Speaker 1: is to find out whether or not life ever existed
Speaker 1: in the past on Mars, and so that's really exciting.
Speaker 1: So I think it's not that one of those questions
Speaker 1: is more or less important. It's really that they are
Speaker 1: building upon each other, and so are the questions that
Speaker 1: are being asked by these rovers or instruments designed for
Speaker 1: these rovers that are inspired specifically by things you learned
Speaker 1: on previous generations, like we saw this and now we
Speaker 1: have a follow up question. Oh certainly, gosh, And there's
Speaker 1: so many examples of that. I mean, there are some
Speaker 1: big questions. For example, we've seen from remote sensing these
Speaker 1: huge mineral provinces, specifically clay minerals and carbonates, maybe less
Speaker 1: huge on the carbonates, right, We've seen these from orbit,
Speaker 1: and so the question is can we ground through this
Speaker 1: and find this on Mars in a geologic context that
Speaker 1: we can interpret. We've certainly found quite a bit of
Speaker 1: clay on the surface with the curiosity rovers, so yeah, success,
Speaker 1: But now we're looking for those pesky carbonates. Carbon rates
Speaker 1: are predicted to have formed on Mars, but we've never
Speaker 1: really encountered them in any kind of abundance, and so
Speaker 1: it's one of these ongoing mysteries. And so as we
Speaker 1: have moved forward looking at Mars and detail with curiosity,
Speaker 1: we still haven't seen all that mighty carbon rates. So
Speaker 1: it's still this question why not, And we're hoping to
Speaker 1: answer that with the perseverance were over and its new
Speaker 1: landing site, Geserro Crater. Cool. So, I know, when you
Speaker 1: start a project, you have sort of like optimistic hopes
Speaker 1: for what you know might happen, or fantasy is about
Speaker 1: data you might collect or whatever. So if you let
Speaker 1: your imagination run wild and you hit all the home runs,
Speaker 1: it's like the best case scenario for what you could
Speaker 1: discover using these rovers. Well, I think it would be
Speaker 1: just incredible and paradigm shifting if we could find signs
Speaker 1: that life existed somewhere not Earth. Right, we know there's
Speaker 1: life on Earth, you know about how did it start?
Speaker 1: We don't really understand a lot about our own origins,
Speaker 1: and we don't know how common it is. Right now,
Speaker 1: we only have one example of life on a planet,
Speaker 1: and that's our planet. If we could find evidence of
Speaker 1: life on a different planet, to be remarkable and incredible,
Speaker 1: what would that look like in terms of the rovers
Speaker 1: that we have now or the rovers that are in route,
Speaker 1: what would that discovery look like? I mean, we're not
Speaker 1: talking about little critters waving to the cameras, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty clear that there is a macroscopic
Speaker 1: life on Mars right there, trees, There's no dinosaurs. We
Speaker 1: would have seen those things. So now the question is
Speaker 1: microscopic life. Was it there? It isn't there? So those
Speaker 1: are actually two different questions and we have to have
Speaker 1: different approaches to answer those questions. Right. The Perseverance Rover
Speaker 1: is looking for signs of past life and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of ways to do that, and we use the
Speaker 1: same techniques that we do on Earth. How do we
Speaker 1: know when life began on Earth and what were the
Speaker 1: signs that it left? So that's our best way of
Speaker 1: analyzing Mars rocks to find out if there was life
Speaker 1: in the past. I think our best bet, you know,
Speaker 1: he's going to be bringing these samples back to Earth.
Speaker 1: We have some incredible rovers and they're having great hayloads
Speaker 1: of these instruments that just do great things, and they're
Speaker 1: doing them remotely. It's just amazing what we can do.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't compare to our gold standard instruments that
Speaker 1: we have on the Earth, and so there are questions
Speaker 1: that we can never answer with our current hayloads. So
Speaker 1: we're going to need to just get that sample back
Speaker 1: into the laboratory, take a look at it, and then
Speaker 1: we'll probably want to do different analyzes. Right, we don't
Speaker 1: know what we're going to see, and so we don't
Speaker 1: know what the next steps will be. And that's the
Speaker 1: excitement and the fun part about doing science like this
Speaker 1: is that you can only predict the first few steps,
Speaker 1: but it's the next steps are all dependent on what
Speaker 1: you find. And why can't we just do those studies
Speaker 1: on Martian meteors, you know, bits of Mars that have
Speaker 1: been blasted off and landed here already. We're very lucky
Speaker 1: that Mars has sent us about hundred and fifty pieces
Speaker 1: of itself. So we didn't actually have to go to
Speaker 1: Mars to get those pieces of Mars. So thank you Mars.
Speaker 1: The problem with those meteorites, though, is that they don't
Speaker 1: have any context. Right, they fell out of the sky.
Speaker 1: We don't know where they came from on Mars. It's
Speaker 1: very hard to make statements about geology and a broad
Speaker 1: sense if you only have a hand sample. Right. As
Speaker 1: a geologist, people come to me all the time with
Speaker 1: some random rocks. They're like, what's this. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I could tell you some things, but you know, you
Speaker 1: just picked that up off of the ground. Where did
Speaker 1: it come from? What was the broader context? We need
Speaker 1: that context to really be able to answer these questions
Speaker 1: about Mars. That's why sample return is so exciting because
Speaker 1: we know exactly where it came from. We have documented
Speaker 1: that location very well, and so then when we get
Speaker 1: results from that sample, we can then integrate that into
Speaker 1: a larger context. That makes a lot of sense. And
Speaker 1: so if there are creators alive on Mars and little
Speaker 1: microubs and we sample them by chance and those samples
Speaker 1: come back to Earth, they are we imagining that those
Speaker 1: things could still be you know, alive and wiggling. We
Speaker 1: measure like you know, metabolic activity in the sample that
Speaker 1: returns to Earth from Mars. If there are things living
Speaker 1: near the surface of Mars, they have got to be
Speaker 1: amazing because the radiation environment on Mars is terrible. You know,
Speaker 1: it's um Mars doesn't have a magnetic field because it
Speaker 1: doesn't have a dynamo in its core, and so the
Speaker 1: surface environment is just it's pretty icky for life. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of life on Earth that could probably handle it,
Speaker 1: but it's it's not that common. So so I would
Speaker 1: say the chances of us finding extant Martians in the
Speaker 1: near subsurface where we can access it with the rover,
Speaker 1: it's very, very low. But we have to prepare for
Speaker 1: that possibility. So one of the things that's really critical
Speaker 1: that we do before our samples come back is to
Speaker 1: prepare their housing facility. There are a few facilities on
Speaker 1: Earth that already are ready for this. A notable one
Speaker 1: is at Johnson Space Center, which is the main pository
Speaker 1: for all the Apollo samples from the Moon. Because we
Speaker 1: had the same questions about the Moon, you know, who
Speaker 1: knows what's up there? And it turns out that the
Speaker 1: Moon is a pretty sterile place which was out and
Speaker 1: maybe that was easy to predict in in retrospect, but
Speaker 1: you know, we had no idea, so we had to
Speaker 1: take really a lot of precautions to protect both the
Speaker 1: samples and earth from each other. And so we'll have
Speaker 1: to do the same for a MAR sample return mission.
Speaker 1: And so we know from our experience with Apollo and
Speaker 1: also just bioscience in general, you know the best methods
Speaker 1: for doing that. And so I think that facilities are
Speaker 1: going to either be constructed or old ones retrofitted to
Speaker 1: be able to handle these new samples. Awesome. Well, I
Speaker 1: hope that happens. I've been reading a little bit about
Speaker 1: the history of these missions, and I note that you know,
Speaker 1: MAR sample return has been discussed for decades and even
Speaker 1: planned and then canceled and replanned and recanceled. Do you
Speaker 1: think this latest plan by NASA and s A is
Speaker 1: likely to actually happen or do you think the political
Speaker 1: climate where we change administrations and government every few years
Speaker 1: makes it difficult to pull off a long term product. Well,
Speaker 1: it's certainly above my pay grade to make political predictions,
Speaker 1: so I can't really speak to that, but um, it's true.
Speaker 1: That these missions are really big, they require incredible amounts
Speaker 1: of collaboration over long periods of time, and they require
Speaker 1: quite a bit of funding. So that is what we
Speaker 1: need the most. I don't think that anything is impossible
Speaker 1: for us if we work together. I think that we've
Speaker 1: really come up with a great plan that has a
Speaker 1: high likelihood of success. The question is whether or not
Speaker 1: we want to fund that, and that's not up to
Speaker 1: to me as an individual. If it were would be
Speaker 1: funded right now, but you know, we have to make
Speaker 1: sure that this is aligned with our taxpayers desires. Um
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that go into that and
Speaker 1: is this where we want to put our priorities. I
Speaker 1: would note that NASA it's not funded at the levels
Speaker 1: that most people think right when I like to play
Speaker 1: this game like what percentage of the total US budget
Speaker 1: is NASA getting and people are like twent and I'm
Speaker 1: like that's great. I know, of like that would be amazing,
Speaker 1: you know, but unfortunately, at its maximum, NASA has never
Speaker 1: gotten more than one percent of the totally US budget.
Speaker 1: It's much lower than that now, you know. So we
Speaker 1: are doing all of this work with really very little funding,
Speaker 1: which is amazing. We don't really need that much more
Speaker 1: funding to make a sample return mission from Mars reality.
Speaker 1: So that's that's what I would say. I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe it feels like it's a little bit
Speaker 1: of extra money now, but the I think the rewards
Speaker 1: would be incredible and it would absolutely be worth the
Speaker 1: price tag. I agree with you. I think it's incredible
Speaker 1: when we have the capability to do something and the
Speaker 1: only thing that limits us is the money. It's like,
Speaker 1: you're at the universe is like knowledge shop, and you
Speaker 1: could just buy this information about the universe and the
Speaker 1: money is there, but they're spending it on aircraft carriers.
Speaker 1: So we need those two, We need them all, We
Speaker 1: need all the things, but we could just you know,
Speaker 1: I think people think of it as more expensive than
Speaker 1: it really is. It really is a bargain. What we
Speaker 1: can do really is. So let's say this mission happens.
Speaker 1: There are several parts to it which seemed a little
Speaker 1: you know, of wracking. Bit's being transferred from one to
Speaker 1: the other. Say this happens. Which part is the most
Speaker 1: nail biting for you? Which is the moment where you're like,
Speaker 1: you know, holding your breath hoping that it works. I
Speaker 1: think for me, the most anxiety ridden part of any
Speaker 1: mission is launching and landing. Those are the hardest parts
Speaker 1: that we do. It's really hard to launch something off
Speaker 1: of another planet and get it onto another planet safely.
Speaker 1: And so you know, we've we've done this now for
Speaker 1: many missions successfully, right, but we can never guarantee that
Speaker 1: it's going to always work out well. I think we
Speaker 1: have a good track record, but we're gonna be trying
Speaker 1: to do some very different things with sample return that
Speaker 1: we've never tried before, and that is we've got to
Speaker 1: first get our rover perseverance to Mars. So we're already launching,
Speaker 1: We've already launched off of Earth and now we're en
Speaker 1: route to Mars. We're gonna land on Mars. Then that
Speaker 1: rover has to gather samples, and then we're gonna launch
Speaker 1: another spacecraft that's gonna get into orbit around Mars, and
Speaker 1: then that spacecraft is going to launch a lander with
Speaker 1: a little fete strover, and that rover is gonna pick
Speaker 1: up our samples and then get back to this lander
Speaker 1: and then launch off of Mars. This is all by itself,
Speaker 1: by the way, no help from us. Then it's gonna
Speaker 1: rendezvous with that orbiting spacecraft, and then that spacecraft is
Speaker 1: going to come back to Earth. That's very complicated. I
Speaker 1: think we can absolutely do it. It's absolutely feasible, but
Speaker 1: there's quite a bit of risk there, and especially because
Speaker 1: we can't operate this in real time, these systems have
Speaker 1: to be somewhat autonomous. So then imagine that it's here.
Speaker 1: We have Mars samples there, sterile or pristine. They're in
Speaker 1: the laboratory, and you're the first person to get cracked
Speaker 1: at them. Right, what's the first thing you do to
Speaker 1: those samples? What's the first question you want to answer? Oh,
Speaker 1: my goodness, that is such a I mean, if I'm
Speaker 1: the first person to see them, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I could keep it from my friends. I have to
Speaker 1: invite everybody over so we can all look at this together,
Speaker 1: I think. I mean, the first step for bringing back
Speaker 1: samples like this is you must triage them. So we
Speaker 1: need to get a general sense what kind of rock
Speaker 1: is this, what kind of minerals? You know, just basic characteristics,
Speaker 1: because is that will then tell you what the next
Speaker 1: question should be. You know, if you have a rock
Speaker 1: that appears to be igneous, so from a volcano. The
Speaker 1: next questions are going to be, you know, more about
Speaker 1: how did vulcanism evolve in this place, you know, what
Speaker 1: kind of volcano reduced this material, and then what happened
Speaker 1: to it next. If you get a sedimentary sample, totally
Speaker 1: different questions. You're like, Okay, so now this is sedimentary.
Speaker 1: Was it emplaced in water? What kind of water? You know,
Speaker 1: what's the nature of the properties of that fluid, and
Speaker 1: then what kind of other minerals were precipitating there, and
Speaker 1: what does that tell us about the habitability of that
Speaker 1: environment and what kind of things could actually utilize you know,
Speaker 1: what are the energy sources that might have been there.
Speaker 1: So so I think like, depending on the first canister
Speaker 1: that I open, you know, you go in a different direction.
Speaker 1: So I'm hoping that we get some sedimentary materials that
Speaker 1: are high in manganese, and we'll know that before they
Speaker 1: come back from ours because we will select these very carefully,
Speaker 1: So that would probably be something that will already know.
Speaker 1: So I would pick, you know, my favorite canister to
Speaker 1: open first so that I could follow my favorite questions.
Speaker 1: And for me, I'm really interested in understanding, you know,
Speaker 1: are there bio signatures that are preserved in sedimentary materials
Speaker 1: on Mars. So these are chemical or mineralogical or even
Speaker 1: morphological features that are left by life that can tell
Speaker 1: us something about what it was doing. Um, and then
Speaker 1: it can also, depending on the age of the rock,
Speaker 1: tell us when it was doing that. So those are
Speaker 1: the questions that I don't want to answer first. All right, wonderful.
Speaker 1: Well I can hear your enthusiasm and it makes me
Speaker 1: excited to get these samples back here. So thanks again
Speaker 1: for coming out of program and for telling us about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. It's been great chatting. All right,
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. She's amazing. It sounds like it's totally possible,
Speaker 1: Like this might work, Daniel. It's basically a question of
Speaker 1: politics and money and then you know a little bit
Speaker 1: of luck, like if we actually commit to doing thing
Speaker 1: and to sending this thing over there, we have a
Speaker 1: reasonable chance of it working. Really, you know, something of
Speaker 1: missions to Mars fail. But that's a reasonable chance. Is
Speaker 1: that our hit rate, Yeah, that's our hit rate, and
Speaker 1: I think we have the best hit rate of any
Speaker 1: country on Earth. But it's still it's tricky, it's far away.
Speaker 1: These things are complicated. But remember what NASA has pulled
Speaker 1: off like they have done amazing things like the sky
Speaker 1: crane landing on Mars and all sorts of stuff. So
Speaker 1: this some pretty awesome engineers over there. I trust them.
Speaker 1: I think they deserve a couple of billion. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're saying that. The biggest challenges just keeping this project funded,
Speaker 1: because you know it takes years and years. It's like
Speaker 1: a twenty year project, fifteen year project. Yeah. If the
Speaker 1: samples do return, they'll be back here in twenty one
Speaker 1: and so it just needs constant funding. And you know
Speaker 1: how it is these days with politics. New administration comes in,
Speaker 1: first thing they love to do is cancel the projects
Speaker 1: from the previous administration, and so it has to be
Speaker 1: consistently supported by multiple branches of government in order to survive. Well, sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's give him all the billions. I mean not all
Speaker 1: of the billions, but a few of the billions. I
Speaker 1: think of the things we could learn. I'm always frustrated
Speaker 1: when there are opportunities to learn something important and deep
Speaker 1: about the universe and the only barrier is money, money
Speaker 1: that we have. I would totally go into the Universe
Speaker 1: knowledge Shop and spend lots of billions of dollars to
Speaker 1: learn things about the universe. You would totally press that
Speaker 1: red by now, but Mars rock by now. Sample of
Speaker 1: gas from Jupiter by now. Secrets of the universe. Click
Speaker 1: click click deliver tomorrow please next day delivery please. All right? Well,
Speaker 1: Dr Lanson was definitely excited. We're excited, and good luck
Speaker 1: to the Mars scientists who are working on this and
Speaker 1: tune in one. Well we'll break down for you the
Speaker 1: incredible discoveries made by Mars. Sample return. That's right today
Speaker 1: on episode three thousand, Daniel and Horror Explained Auniverse. Remember
Speaker 1: that time we interviewed one of the scientists. No, it
Speaker 1: will be two robots. Two robots will have taken over
Speaker 1: the podcast by then, and together they'll transform into an
Speaker 1: awesome podcast actually making good jokes that end up on
Speaker 1: a trump All right, well, thanks for joining us. Hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed that. See you next time. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: and remember that. Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Or more podcast from
Speaker 1: my heart Radio visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.