From the mission that saw Pluto for the first time to the Mars rovers, a new breed of explorers are risking their careers, and even their lives, to lead humanity to worlds we have never seen and tackle the mysteries of life itself.
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LearningTranscript
00:00:00Humans have been explorers since the earliest days from our birth in the cradle of Africa
00:00:11spreading across the seven continents that exploration will never end it's
00:00:16something very deep within us as human beings it stretches back to the dawn of our species
00:00:21today a new breed of explorers are capturing the first glimpses of worlds beyond our own
00:00:35we are absolutely pushing the limits of everything we know about space exploration right now
00:00:41hang on to your seats because the roller coaster ride is on
00:00:44the world
00:00:47mysterious new images reveal incredible new discoveries
00:00:59that we are going to be able to see the future of the future of the future of the future
00:01:11january 2016 nasa releases a new image of a strange structure on the surface of pluto
00:01:20it appears to be an enormous ice volcano on what should be a geologically dead planet
00:01:29the flanks of this big summit depression is the caldera of the volcano nothing like this has
00:01:36been seen anywhere in the solar system has got us baffled now scientists believe that just beneath
00:01:43this volcano is an entire ocean of water the mysterious image that triggered this discovery
00:01:51is one of thousands that scientists are still downloading from a historic flyby of pluto in july
00:01:582015. stand by for two on the tree
00:02:09even today much of the data from the flyby between 35 and 40 percent is still up on the spacecraft and no
00:02:16human being has seen it we don't know what discoveries will be in them
00:02:19how did a team of explorers become the first people in history to capture images of pluto's surface
00:02:27and what can explain mysterious new photographs like pluto's volcano
00:02:40a team of young university students and scientists set its sights on the last unexplored
00:02:46planet in the solar system you know if somebody said well were you all obsessed with pluto i think
00:02:51we would all have to plead guilty at the time ralph mcnutt is a physics professor at mit
00:02:58i think i did always dream of being an explorer i've been a space cadet since i was a kid and at that
00:03:05time pluto was just this incredible big question mark all we knew was it was a spot of light in the sky
00:03:11but with the dwarf planet three billion miles away and smaller than our own moon even the best telescope
00:03:18images are too small to reveal any detail the best image from the hubble space telescope of pluto
00:03:26is this fuzzy ball that's about six square pixels by six square pixels so here are these upstart kids
00:03:36that were saying we ought to go to pluto we ought to finish out the exploration of the solar system
00:03:41so at some point the moniker pluto underground was born yeah the pluto underground i like to call
00:03:49them the pluto mafia these are the folks who you know spent almost their entire careers studying pluto
00:03:55you know pluto was the end game this was our opportunity to finish the task young graduate
00:04:03students united by their fascination with the outer solar system the pluto underground want nasa to make
00:04:11their dream a reality and one man would lead them there dr alan stern we weren't going to answer specific
00:04:20questions we were going to collect data sets with our eyes wide open to see what was there literally
00:04:27exploring literally flying into the unknown the pluto underground form a plan to fly a spacecraft within
00:04:358 000 miles of pluto's surface almost 30 times closer than the moon is to earth as it flies overhead
00:04:43the probe will turn and snap the first photographs of the planet's mysterious terrain but the pluto could be
00:04:50doing quicker missions closer to home and trying to mount an inexpensive mission all the way to the edge of
00:04:56the solar system is a fool's folly alan alan is a very unique person and uh you know i think this was
00:05:09almost superhuman act of absolutely dogged determination over the years that made this happen
00:05:19dr stern is hopeful that the images will solve an ancient mystery pluto orbits in a mysterious region
00:05:27of space densely packed with unusual moons dwarf planets and other misfit objects the final frontier in
00:05:35the solar system is the kuiper belt this region of leftover objects from the formation of the solar
00:05:41system and pluto is the largest of those objects it's a very important region for understanding the
00:05:49birth of the solar system this means that pluto is a four and a half billion year old fossil holding
00:05:56clues about how our own planet was formed the kuiper belt was discovered and pluto went from being
00:06:02this lone misfit in the outer solar system to the biggest the baddest and the brightest member of
00:06:08that entire population this was a very rich scientific target after all it's a long way away so you better
00:06:16have an awful good reason in 2003 the pluto underground convinces nasa and the new horizons mission is born
00:06:28we had a lot of difficulties associated with getting to pluto uh one of which is it's three billion miles
00:06:34away we're driving to you know 33 times as far from the sun as the earth is the longer a spacecraft travels
00:06:45the greater chance something could go wrong so the team wants to reach pluto within 10 years of launch
00:06:52the new horizon spacecraft was going to be the fastest ever to leave the earth more than 30 000
00:06:59miles per hour taking off that's more than 50 times faster than a jetliner to cross a three billion
00:07:07mile ocean of space required us to travel at this crazy speed when i was a boy apollo missions took three
00:07:15days to reach the moon new horizons is going to reach the moon in nine hours how's that for speed
00:07:23to achieve that record-breaking speed new horizons must be light the less weight a launch vehicle has
00:07:30to push against earth's gravity the faster it can go the size of a small piano new horizons will weigh just
00:07:39one thousand pounds and it can carry only enough fuel for minor course corrections once it reaches pluto
00:07:48it cannot slow down and enter orbit there is no second chance you're flying by there's no stopping
00:07:57and the spacecraft is on a path a beeline past pluto either you're going to get it or you weren't and
00:08:05it's terrifying to tell you the truth but if it works new horizons will capture
00:08:12thousands of images and incredible close-up detail
00:08:19three two
00:08:29it was a picture-perfect launch it couldn't have been any better
00:08:33but still it was yet another nine and a half years before we finally get to pluto
00:08:39but there's plenty to do while the team waits including a close pass of another planet we
00:08:46needed to pick up some extra energy in order to be able to actually get to pluto
00:08:50on schedule we had this opportunity to fly near jupiter steal a little you know gravity assist from
00:08:56jupiter and increase our speed by 20 percent and cut three years off the travel time to pluto
00:09:03in february 2007 jupiter's gravity propels new horizons like a slingshot toward its destination
00:09:11after nearly nine and a half years of traveling through space
00:09:22new horizons is a mere 10 days away from its historic flyby i got a frantic call from alan
00:09:30stern the principal investigator and i could tell that he was breathing hard he was running down the
00:09:34hallway and he said we've lost communication with the spacecraft this had never happened in nine
00:09:42and a half years of flight how could it be happening today at the last minute just on the verge
00:09:50of of summiting mount everest why now how what have we done
00:10:0410 days from a historic encounter with pluto the new horizon spacecraft goes silent
00:10:15we have no spacecraft no signal no knowledge of what's going on it started to sink in
00:10:22that we may be experiencing something that's abnormal on the spacecraft
00:10:27and i can't tell you how that feels alice bowman is the mom or mission operations manager for new
00:10:39horizons you allow yourself those 10 seconds of feeling you know oh my god what's going on
00:10:46and then you know your training kicks in alice was in charge of the recovery effort and there was
00:10:53no way she was going to let this fail after nine and a half years alice scrambles the team to assess
00:11:00the damage and they make a heart-stopping discovery it turns out that we had overworked the main computer
00:11:08on the spacecraft and caused it to reset six months of programming are lost now the engineering team has
00:11:18only a few days to redo everything we knew we could fix it the question was could we fix it in time
00:11:28for the flyby sequence that was supposed to start on july 7th over the course of three sleepless days
00:11:37the team uploads command codes to new horizons nearly three billion miles across the solar system
00:11:44we were able to get that sequence or set of instructions loaded to the main computer
00:11:52and we had four hours to spare if you've got high blood pressure to begin with this is probably
00:12:00a business you ought to stay out of seven days later the morning of the pluto flyby has come
00:12:09hang on to your seats because the roller coaster ride is on as media from across the world gathers
00:12:15at johns hopkins university outside baltimore maryland all eyes are on dr alan stern we passed inside the
00:12:23orbit of hydra the outermost moon and he's brought an early surprise for the new horizons team
00:12:30the night before closest approach we made a point of sending home a handful of images in spectra they
00:12:42were the highest resolution images that had ever been obtained pluto went from being just a small image
00:12:49in the distance sort of like a jeweled christmas ornament to all of a sudden this massive world with
00:12:57unparalleled complexity
00:13:07but this is not the image of pluto the team came to see
00:13:11it's new horizons closest approach that will truly reveal pluto's secrets
00:13:20in less than an hour new horizons will come within 8 000 miles of pluto but the timing had been off
00:13:27that we had somehow just messed up and instead of flying by pluto at the prescribed time it was
00:13:34you know a thousand seconds earlier or later we would have had everything pointed in the wrong place
00:13:41you don't want to wait two decades and see a bunch of stars okay we have 25 seconds
00:13:51at 7 49 a.m the team counts down to the actual second new horizons makes its closest approach to pluto
00:14:00nine eight eight seven six five four three two one
00:14:16decades of work they don't come down to one day they come down to one minute to one second
00:14:22but no one really knows if the probe survived the flyby until it sends a confirmation signal back to
00:14:32mission control
00:14:36radio signals traveling at light speed are expected to arrive at the apl mission operations center
00:14:41and we'll go live in the mission operation center so you can watch some of that activity
00:14:45at 9 00 pm the team gathers to learn new horizons fate we are searching for frequency stand by
00:14:55waiting for the spacecraft to report back you could probably have cut the tension with a knife
00:15:03everything's riding on this and it's it's an incredibly high stakes poker game
00:15:08okay we're in luck with carrier stand by for telemetry you really don't know
00:15:16if your spacecraft survived despite all the work that you've done
00:15:23stand by
00:15:32okay copy that we are in luck with telemetry with the spacecraft
00:15:38we have a healthy spacecraft we've recorded data of the pluto system and we're outbound for pluto
00:16:08the pluto system is just mind-blowing
00:16:35we're outbound within hours new horizons begins to deliver its first images our jaws were just
00:16:44dropping it was incredible we had transformed this little pixelated blob into this real world
00:16:50what the team sees in the images wow is completely unexpected even though logically i knew that it was
00:16:58a rocky icy planet i didn't expect it to look so similar to features that we have on earth
00:17:07i love this picture it's one that was made about 15 minutes after closest approach
00:17:11with the very rugged terrains many of these mountains are 10 000 feet tall
00:17:16the team has discovered mountains of water ice the size of the rockies on a planet smaller than our own
00:17:24moon you felt like you're there seeing the giant ice mountains and giant chasms you know much bigger
00:17:31than the grand canyon in the united states we can actually see glacier flows it's molecular nitrogen
00:17:36ice it's almost like water ice is on the earth and so it can flow the discovery of water ice mountains
00:17:43and nitrogen glaciers leads alan to one shocking conclusion pluto is geologically alive after four and a
00:17:51half billion years which upended many geophysical theories that did predict that small planets would
00:17:58cool off and die early in their history and just be a frozen relic of that time it tells us that our
00:18:03ideas of how planetary engines were were wrong and that we had to rethink them but one recently downloaded
00:18:13image further fuels pluto's mystery this is one of the most amazing finds we made at pluto it's a
00:18:20giant ice volcano that was apparently active late in the history of the solar system there are
00:18:25almost no craters on the flanks of this structure the big summit depression is the caldera of the
00:18:32volcano nothing like this has been seen anywhere in the solar system from mars all the way to pluto
00:18:39sometimes i pinch myself that this is a real place that we actually went and visited
00:18:43it looks like something out of science fiction and why pluto should have
00:18:47these features has got us baffled an active volcano would mean a source of heat somewhere
00:18:55on the planet and now the new horizons team believes that heat could be warming an ocean of water beneath
00:19:03the surface of pluto it is a stunning discovery you have you know all of these other exotic things going
00:19:10on what looks almost like tectonic activity and you know where is that coming from why is pluto still
00:19:17alive new images might solve the mystery the blue sky image this is something that was absolutely totally
00:19:24unexpected
00:19:36the discovery of active geology on pluto has defied expectations of a frozen dead world there were
00:19:45mountains of pure ice that were 10 000 feet high there were active glaciers of nitrogen and methane ice
00:19:52nobody was expecting the drama and the beauty that we found but pluto's biggest mystery may lie above
00:20:00the surface after we fly by pluto and look back towards the sun and we can actually see the atmosphere
00:20:06and see this blue pluto has blue skies who would have thought it's just amazing this blue atmosphere of
00:20:13nitrogen should have dissipated into space billions of years ago something is replenishing it but what
00:20:21could volcanic activity spew fresh nitrogen from deep beneath the surface new images might soon solve the
00:20:30mystery we've got over a year's worth of data to still get down there's a lot of people that are losing
00:20:36a lot of sleep these days trying to do this as fast as possible but by far the best images are still to come
00:20:44the search for answers takes us from the edges of the solar system to the edges of the universe itself
00:20:53march 4th 2016 nasa releases an historic image one that many believed was impossible
00:21:03this red dot is an entire galaxy whose light took 13.4 billion years to reach us
00:21:10it is a photograph of our universe in its infancy a mere three percent of its current age all of a
00:21:19sudden now you have a ringside seat to watch the entire universe evolve and change in front of you
00:21:25all of that is down to the hubble space telescope
00:21:29what could this mysterious red galaxy reveal about the origins of the cosmos
00:21:36that story begins when the hubble telescope is still on the drawing board
00:21:43hubble was meant to solve a problem because people were trying to use ground-based telescopes
00:21:48to measure how fast the expansion of the universe was and that means the factor of uncertainty in
00:21:53the age of the universe how and when did our universe begin solving that mystery would be an
00:22:00historic success at a time when the space program needs it most in 1986 the nation is in mourning
00:22:09after the loss of seven crew members aboard the space shuttle challenger this is truly a national
00:22:15loss the members of the challenger crew were pioneers we'll continue our quest in space the future
00:22:22doesn't belong to the faint-hearted it belongs to the brave
00:22:31they needed something to get back into the game and hubble was sort of that big shining star
00:22:36this was a big space telescope and we're going to put this thing into orbit and it's going to
00:22:40look at black holes it's going to figure out where the universe came from it's going to
00:22:44revolutionize astronomy in charge of this daunting mission is charlie pellerin the primary role of
00:22:53hubble was to fix things after challenger to show we could still do hard things i kept reminding myself
00:22:59of john kennedy when he said we choose to go to the moon not because it's easy because it's hard
00:23:06we choose to do hubble because it's hard and it was damn hard
00:23:09hubble will far surpass all ground-based telescopes for one simple reason earth's atmosphere
00:23:21if you look up at the night sky the stars are going to appear like they're twinkling but the star is not
00:23:27changing what's happening is that the same kind of irregularities in the atmosphere that you encounter
00:23:32when you get turbulence in an airplane it's all over the place now the solution to that is put a telescope
00:23:38above the atmosphere but unlike ground telescopes hubble would be orbiting the earth at an astonishing
00:23:46speed of almost five miles per second and that's a problem
00:23:55now of course the hubble is this thing in space moving thousands and thousands of miles
00:24:01an hour in orbit and which means its natural tendency is that it's going to be tumbling
00:24:06end over end it's doing everything but holding still if you want to take a snapshot that's clear
00:24:13you know you have to hold your camera very steadily if you shake your camera you get a fuzzy picture
00:24:18same thing's true with hubble the team must find a way to stabilize hubble perfectly
00:24:24the solution is a gyroscope like a top a gyroscope maintains stability by spinning quickly on one axis
00:24:35the team will equip hubble with six of the most finely balanced gyroscopes ever constructed
00:24:42each with a wheel spinning 320 times per second but even the tiniest imprecision in the gyroscopes
00:24:51will smear hubble's images so if you asked me before the launch i saw we're going to work and
00:24:56people did i would say of course it's going to work because there's no other answer what would you
00:25:00say would would you say after you spent almost two billion dollars in 15 years would you say
00:25:05hell i don't know or would you say let's hope so what would you say there's only one answer of
00:25:09course it's going to work
00:25:15and liftoff of the space shuttle discovery with the hubble space telescope our window on the universe
00:25:26okay we have a goal for release and we're going to be a minute late okay charlie
00:25:30telescope's released okay thank you so the telescope's up hubble's working it's deployed
00:25:43into space and the shuttle comes home feeling pretty pretty really pretty good right now the
00:25:48flight systems are all working extremely well almost everything we agonized and worried about
00:25:53has done a great job for us i think that today everything is going exactly as we would have hoped
00:25:58we had an event about two months later where we're going to look at what's called first light charlie
00:26:05is with chief engineer gene oliver when the first images arrive i said gene wait a minute wait a minute
00:26:13that's a fuzzy spot okay he said don't worry i said what do you mean don't worry so well if it's out
00:26:19of focus we drive the stepping motor in this direction until it's in perfect focus so no big deal
00:26:26charlie becomes convinced all that's needed is a technical adjustment he leaves for a trip overseas
00:26:35when he returns he calls his boss to check in so he comes on the phone and says charlie where are you
00:26:41i said i'm in the mid carpet lounge in st louis airport and he says to me uh what do you know about
00:26:46spherical aberration and i said well all i know is that when people amateurs typically make a
00:26:51telescope mirror by hand and they do it sloppily then the telescope's useless i said well i'm glad
00:26:56you know that because you launched double space telescope with a spherically aberrated mirror
00:27:03i said did not he said did so this is two phds right he says go find the front page of any national
00:27:11newspaper and bring it back read it to me so i come back and above the fold national disaster hubble
00:27:20launched with flawed mirror he says now what do you say i said you guys are good how did you get a fake
00:27:28newspaper into this very lounge that i'm landing in the headline is no fake charlie has launched hubble
00:27:36with a fatal flaw and not the one he had feared yesterday nasa admitted that its multi-billion
00:27:43dollar eye on the sky has developed blurry vision we had failed in the most visible possible thing
00:27:51we've done in many many years i'd have to say it was like a family member died it was like that i mean
00:27:58it really was
00:28:03may 1990 charlie pellerin had just launched hubble into space with a fatal flaw
00:28:17well we're looking here at a star field and these blurry stars and there's there's no doubt that we had a
00:28:26disaster on our hands yesterday nasa admitted that its multi-billion dollar eye on the sky
00:28:32has developed blurry vision the observatory will not be sending back to spectacular pictures
00:28:37that nasa had promised the reason is that the mirrors are not focusing light properly
00:28:43to achieve focus a telescope's mirror must be perfectly curved so that its reflected light
00:28:49converges at a single point after so much worrying about hubble's ability to stabilize itself
00:28:56charlie's team made an amateur mistake
00:28:59hubble uses a mirror it's two and a half meters across eight feet and it focuses the light to a
00:29:06very very specific focus and if it's off by even a little bit the light won't come to a focus the
00:29:13problem with hubble is that it wasn't the right shape i believe that the edge of the mirror the whole
00:29:19error was like a 50th of a human hair no human could ever look at that mirror and suspect there's a problem
00:29:25we had so many safeguards and i'll look at this and i just go my word boy we were in so much trouble
00:29:34and didn't know it what what a tragedy basically without some novel technical answer we're screwed
00:29:45nasa is embarrassed while across the country charlie and his team are mocked there was also so much in
00:29:52the media hubble was the butt of so many jokes people were saying how do we spend almost two
00:29:58billion dollars and come up with this i tried to avoid the news as much as i could but it was impossible
00:30:06it was even in new york times washington post i hear crying breaking out astronomers are crying everywhere
00:30:12one of my most senior people is drunk at his desk when i realized what had happened
00:30:20i didn't believe my personal reputation was in danger i believed it was ruined i mean it was gone i
00:30:26mean for this this level of failure arguably the biggest screw up in the history of science and i was
00:30:31leader of the team so yeah it was bad but charlie is determined to find a solution i'm not waiting
00:30:41a minute longer than i have to to get this telescope fixed i didn't know how to do it i had no idea if
00:30:46it even was possible yet after months of searching his team thinks they might have an answer if the
00:30:55mirror was simply poorly ground to a very sloppy way it'd be hopeless but the mirror was perfect just
00:31:03ground to the wrong prescription when we humans have vision problems we correct that problem by wearing
00:31:09eyeglasses which then are correcting the direction of the light and make sure that it is focusing
00:31:14properly that is basically what the hubble needed these glasses would come in the form of a machine
00:31:22called co-star co-star contains five pairs of small mirrors on motorized arms these mirrors correct the
00:31:33light beam entering the telescope finally you sort of go my word we can fix this thing but with hubble
00:31:40already in space this repair won't come easy katherine thornton and her fellow astronauts must risk their own safety
00:31:51to save hubble from disaster a lot of things can go wrong when you're on a spacewalk but most people
00:31:58when they leave the airlock are not so much afraid that something's going to happen to them they're afraid
00:32:03they're going to mess up that's that's the sort of your biggest concern is that is that our mission
00:32:08was so critical and it was critical that they be done right hubble's science instruments are contained
00:32:16in four bays katherine must replace one instrument called a high-speed photometer with co-star once
00:32:24installed the corrective mirrors can deploy
00:32:27i mean remember this is a huge instrument the size of a bus nothing like that has
00:32:36ever been done before and it represents a huge number of technological challenges
00:32:42but thornton is far from certain that everything will go according to plan
00:32:47i would have bet money that when we were putting these instruments in hubble we would have run into
00:32:52some problem that we weren't expecting okay i'm going to slip over you got another set to keep coming
00:33:00up costar is a great big silver box the size of a phone booth and i would have bet that things wouldn't
00:33:07fit and we're going to slide this thing in and it's going to get halfway in and it's going to go
00:33:11kathunk and and hit something and as bad as it was we could always make it worse we could have killed it
00:33:17we could have killed it this is opening the door for costar i'm on the end of the mechanical arm and
00:33:27i can recognize that from this picture because i can see the broken red stripes around my thighs there
00:33:32i haven't seen some of this in a long time this is nice i like this we had a lot of eyes watching
00:33:38us we had everybody on the ground watching we had everybody in the crew module watching us you know
00:33:42don't don't hurt it don't hurt it don't hurt it but it's all up to you don't screw this up
00:33:47by kt please just hold it there costar is is a pretty big instrument it weighs several hundred
00:33:55pounds maybe 700 pounds on earth and i can move it with just my fingertips the top stitches towards
00:34:00me a little bit as costar slides into place thornton can only hope that everything will fit
00:34:08keep coming up coming up and it just slid right in i could feel it hit a stop but that was a bit of a
00:34:17relief the nightmare i'd had didn't happen but they couldn't calibrate it until after we were long gone
00:34:27and so we had no idea that our mission was successful even after we landed
00:34:31all anyone can do is wait for the pictures 11 days later the calibrations are complete
00:34:43you know this is what was happening in december of 1993 everybody gathering around the monitors
00:34:48and and looking at the first images taken by uh hubble space telescope
00:34:52and they were gorgeous
00:35:08i'm sitting there with tears running down my face looking at this stuff and everybody's spellbound
00:35:13i had no clue that the images would be as powerful as they are
00:35:24i never imagined something like this this is this is astounding this gotta be astounding to anybody
00:35:33but these are more than beautiful images each pixel helps unlock another scientific mystery
00:35:41because people were trying to use ground-based telescopes to measure the expansion of the
00:35:45universe and that means uncertainty in the age of the universe but by looking deeper and deeper
00:35:50it's looking farther and farther back in time and is measuring the expansion of the universe so we
00:35:55can tell precisely when the universe formed you know 13.7 billion years ago hubble has solved you know the
00:36:03one of the biggest mysteries in astronomy and in science with each image the discoveries keep coming
00:36:10they pointed hubble at a place in the sky where there was nothing and there are like 1500 galaxies in
00:36:14that photo 1500 galaxies you know our milky way is just one tiny little galaxy we now know that there
00:36:23are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches in the world but hubble is also a
00:36:31time machine you see there's this wonderful look back effect where the farther out in space you look it
00:36:36took light a long time to get to you and now you look at these images and you effectively look back
00:36:41almost to the beginning of time the beginning of the universe with hubble this new image from march 2016
00:36:50is the furthest look back in time yet the light from this young galaxy dates to just 400 million years
00:36:58after the big bang it is surprisingly bright which means that galaxies were growing much faster
00:37:06and much earlier than we ever knew 25 years after launch hubble continues to amaze
00:37:20the idea that someone could be interviewing me and putting these images up in front of me and have me
00:37:25comment on them and telling me that we're in our 25th year of successful science operations that's a mind blower
00:37:37in nasa i think hubble's only second to the moon landing i mean it's that big
00:37:46coming up a team of scientists searches for the origins of life
00:37:51on an asteroid that could also bring us death could cause a tremendous amount of damage in the local area
00:37:59where it hit
00:38:13as we look farther into the universe than ever before
00:38:17we may be looking deeper inside ourselves one of the most surprising facts about our relationship
00:38:26with the larger solar system we live in is that the organics in our body were most likely brought here
00:38:32to earth on comets and asteroids rich in molecules called nucleobases the same molecules that make up our dna
00:38:42asteroids could be the key to unlocking the mystery of life on earth
00:38:49and maybe the very origin of your body of the chemistry that you're using to watch tv right now
00:38:55came from the asteroids
00:38:58one asteroid is especially intriguing its name benu in the case of benu it's about a half a kilometer across
00:39:06rock benu itself is an exciting object it's a carbonaceous asteroid carbonaceous means that it
00:39:12contains the element carbon which as well as we all know are associated with life bashar riz is a
00:39:20scientist at the university of arizona but it's not just the possibilities of life that makes benu
00:39:28interesting to bashar it's also the possibility of death benu is in class of asteroids that share the
00:39:38same region of space as the earth as they move around the sun every six years it's in the same
00:39:43general region as the earth that increases the opportunity that it would actually hit the earth
00:39:48and cause damage to understand whether benu truly poses a risk to earth we need to see it
00:39:58in the mountains outside tucson arizona eric christensen searches the skies above earth
00:40:09for asteroids and comets this object that's circled in red here in the middle it looks like a faint
00:40:16star but it just happens to be the asteroid benu the catalina sky survey is our first line of defense
00:40:23against asteroid impacts asteroid impacts are really a fact of life they always happen they
00:40:30have always happened they will always continue to happen we will point our telescope at a particular
00:40:36area of the sky and we build up over time essentially a very low resolution movie we can compare the
00:40:42images and identify stars that are stationary and then anything that is not stationary is a potential
00:40:48moving object when astronomers discovered benu they quickly realized that of all the near-earth
00:40:56objects in their sights this asteroid has one of the highest chances of impacting earth
00:41:05benu had come near the earth near enough that we could get radar reflection off of it and therefore
00:41:10we know something about its shape to fully understand where benu is going peter and bashar need more than
00:41:18just fuzzy radar images so in september 2016 they will launch a spacecraft called osiris rex
00:41:28after two years of traveling through space it will intercept the asteroid once there its mission is
00:41:35twofold osiris rex will collect a sample of the asteroid to return to earth and it will photograph the
00:41:43entire surface in extreme resolution taking pictures down to the size of a pebble our cameras will go and
00:41:54try to characterize the asteroids environment we're going to image this object to a higher degree of
00:42:00resolution over a larger piece of its terrain than has ever been done before mapping benu with these
00:42:06cameras is essential because we'll understand the gravity of this object to a much more precise degree
00:42:13predicting where this object will be a hundred years into the future is very important because
00:42:19this is one of the potentially most hazardous objects in the solar system for the earth
00:42:28to precisely determine benu's future orbit scientists need to know the asteroid's exact size and shape
00:42:36that's because of a phenomenon known as the yarkovsky effect
00:42:42any object in the solar system experiences the yarkovsky effect now what is it well it's a it's a thermal
00:42:48asymmetry that happens because of the rotation of an object as the sun's energy strikes benu
00:42:56it gradually changes the asteroid's orbit things have had a chance to heat up now when something is hot
00:43:03it tends to emit photons thermal ones photons carry momentum so what this is doing is acting like a
00:43:10little bit of a thrust in this direction if i thrust that way i'm kind of increasing the energy of the
00:43:16orbit and moving it out from the sun a little bit the high resolution images from osiris rex will tell the
00:43:23team exactly how the arkovsky effect is influencing benu's path if an object the size of benus struck the earth
00:43:31it would be a regional catastrophe perhaps taking out as much as a state or several states they could
00:43:37cause a lot of damage and the loss of a lot of life space is all about exploration and it's something
00:43:56that we humans seem to kind of be wired with history has shown that you've got two choices
00:44:02you can either keep marching ahead or you can fall behind and end up in the dustbin of history
00:44:08standing still is not an option revealing the deepest secrets from space can inspire wonder but they can
00:44:17also incite fear this grainy image shows an asteroid called benu and it may be on a collision course with
00:44:28earth odds of benu hitting the earth are less than one in 2000 that's still considered high for this
00:44:36class of object typical odds would hopefully be lower than one in a million benu is smaller than the
00:44:43asteroid that killed the dinosaurs but it could cause a tremendous amount of damage in the local area
00:44:49where it hits for instance it could really damage something the size of a large city or if it hit
00:44:56just offshore it could create a tidal wave
00:44:59in september 2016 bashar and peter will send a probe to photograph benu in detail and reveal its secrets
00:45:15but a mission like this is fraught with potential pitfalls in august 2014 a spacecraft called rosetta
00:45:25arrived at another small body a comet caught in jupiter's gravity three months later the rosetta
00:45:32team attempted to land a probe called philae on the comet's surface and it ended in disaster
00:45:40philae was equipped with a couple of harpoons so that when it made its landing they would shoot out and
00:45:45ideally try to moor it there except that apparently the harpoons did not fire when philae landed
00:45:51so because of that philae hit the surface and bounced and it bounced several times because of
00:45:57the comet's rotation and and the lander's own velocity and it wound up coming down in an area
00:46:02of the comet that we didn't have good maps for and so basically the lander was lost
00:46:10the team is determined to see their mission succeed that's because there is more to learn from benu
00:46:18than whether or not it will collide with earth it could unlock the origins of life on our planet
00:46:26the earth formed when objects slammed together but later on as it cooled and water became a large
00:46:33part of the surface composition then it was possible for future impacts with smaller objects
00:46:40to actually bring in organic materials that could survive on the surface
00:46:45that's how many people think uh organics came to the earth is through those impacts from asteroids
00:46:51when we get a sample of benu back into our laboratories we're going to be looking at material
00:46:56that formed in the initial phases of the formation of the solar system if we could someday prove that the
00:47:02building blocks of life on earth actually came from space and and not from our own planet it would
00:47:08turn everything we understood about the origin of life on its head osiris-rex will not attempt a
00:47:15landing like philae instead it will get a sample of the asteroid with a revolutionary new system called
00:47:22tag sam tag stands for touch and go and sam is sample acquisition maneuver so tag sam is the actual act
00:47:31of reaching out touching the surface of the asteroid and gathering the sample and then pulling away
00:47:38once samples from benu arrive back on earth we can test them for the kinds of organic materials
00:47:44that could have seeded earth four billion years ago but to successfully retrieve the sample the cameras
00:47:52must function perfectly the cameras are one of the critical experiments on this mission because as we
00:48:01get closer it can refocus and actually becomes more like a microscope and it can detect grains that are
00:48:09just a few millimeters across so when we get to our sample site we want to get the highest resolution
00:48:15possible with only months to go until liftoff the clock is ticking to get osiris-rex right we'll be
00:48:23launching in september of 2016 so we have a schedule pressure here that i think does take its toll on the team
00:48:31there are a number of things that we're trying out for the first time and that keeps people up at night
00:48:37at nasa should the mission fail nasa will need another way to reach benu
00:48:44scientist ben hockman created a backup plan and to test it he's hitting the beach i think most
00:48:51people assume asteroids are just big rocks in space when in fact they have very interesting surface
00:48:56geology we found through recent missions that there can be a wide variety of different surface features
00:49:03with its mix of sand and rocks this beach mimics terrain that nasa has observed on comets and asteroids
00:49:10it is the perfect place to test ben's rover nicknamed hedgehog hedgehog is a whole new class of rovers
00:49:18very different from the previous rovers that we've sent to the moon and mars we've seen that the
00:49:23topology of asteroids can be very uneven so there's potential that a rover could fall into a pit or a crater
00:49:31and be unable to escape all right hopefully this works it may not look like much but on an asteroid
00:49:45where gravity is a tiny fraction of the earth's this same hop would propel hedgehog far across the
00:49:53surface it uses three internal flywheels to build up momentum internally and by doing that it can hop
00:50:00and tumble across the surface these spinning flywheels build up momentum and when ben applies the brakes
00:50:08he transfers that momentum into motion think about it like you're driving your bike and you come to an
00:50:15obstacle and you hit your front brakes you have a lot of momentum about your front wheel so you have a
00:50:20tendency to want to flip over your front wheel the same is true for hedgehog but we do that to our
00:50:25advantage to hop in a controlled way but to see how hedgehog will work in a near zero g environment
00:50:38ben must head to the lab at stanford university so this contraption is called our microgravity test bed
00:50:45the microgravity test bed allows us to emulate what the rover might do in actual microgravity conditions
00:50:51the bed shows ben how hedgehog will behave on an asteroid like benu at those scales gravity is
00:50:58about a thousand or ten thousand times lower than that of earth so on an asteroid a human would weigh as
00:51:03much as a paper clip one of the key advantages of hedgehog is that there's no right way up in other
00:51:10words it can land on any side and be just as capable of moving as if it were to land on its feet so to say
00:51:17and hedgehog holds one other advantage because hedgehog is so compact and cheap you can store
00:51:24potentially many of them in a spacecraft that you send to a small body so you could imagine an army
00:51:28of hedgehogs hopping around the surface exploring the physical properties of an asteroid
00:51:36for now hedgehog is only a prototype
00:51:39so it will be up to osiris rex to unlock the secrets of benu the answers won't come until late
00:51:472018 when osiris rex and its cameras finally reach the asteroid i think the images of benu are going to
00:51:55be revelatory waiting for those images to come back in 2018 and 2019 will be the only thing i could
00:52:03compare it to would be the waiting for the births of my two children because it's something very
00:52:09important to you and you're not quite sure of the outcome until then scientists can only wonder if benu
00:52:16will change our understanding of life on earth how did all that get going did it start here or was
00:52:22it brought here by from outside we don't really know the answer to that we're going to go find out
00:52:33if the building blocks of life did come on an asteroid
00:52:37perhaps earth wasn't the only planet where they landed
00:52:42today a team of scientists is driving a rover millions of miles away
00:52:48to see if life could have thrived on another world you get a flat tire in your car no big deal you
00:52:55call triple a you get a flat tire on the rover that's the end of the mission
00:52:59for years a satellite called the mars reconnaissance orbiter has been photographing dark streaks on the
00:53:17slopes of a crater mysterious lines that appear to change with the seasons
00:53:24on september 28 2015 nasa scientists announced their groundbreaking conclusion what we're going to
00:53:34announce today is that mars is not the dry arid planet that we thought of in the past today we're going
00:53:42to announce that under certain circumstances liquid water has been found on mars
00:53:49scientists have never found liquid water on a surface anywhere beyond earth the discovery
00:53:59is historic life as we know it on earth needs liquid water to survive so that's kind of the key
00:54:05first thing that we need but we also need organic materials and so those are some basic elements like
00:54:11carbon and hydrogen oxygen in 2012 a rover called curiosity landed in an ancient martian lake bed known as
00:54:25gale crater a roving chemistry lab curiosity drilled into the soil in search of organic molecules one of the
00:54:33last pieces in the puzzle with mars is that we'd never been able to detect the presence of organic
00:54:38molecules and curiosity put that puzzle piece in we know that there are organics in the soil we also
00:54:44discovered when this is really important we found an environment that wasn't very acidic and that was
00:54:49really our first discovery of a habitable environment on mars where we think life could have existed we have
00:54:54found evidence of water and organics but were they both plentiful on mars for billions of years perhaps
00:55:03even long enough for life to take root mount sharp the three mile high peak at the heart of gale crater
00:55:14may hold the answer it is a time machine the higher up the slope you go the further back you travel
00:55:22in mars's geological history we really were looking to mount sharp to tell us the record of environmental
00:55:28change through mars history we think that there's a possibility that as you go up through the layers
00:55:33of mount sharp we may be exploring different habitable environments and so what we're interested
00:55:38in finding out is how does the habitability as a whole change through time today curiosity is entering a
00:55:45new phase of exploration by climbing mount sharp along the way it will analyze the soil piecing together
00:55:53three billion years of martian history but for rover driver matthew heverly the path ahead is fraught with
00:56:03danger we're always pushing the limits of this vehicle i mean the rover's amazing it can handle so much
00:56:10but as we go to mount sharp we've got some some pretty gnarly terrain to head over there we go to find
00:56:17out just what kind of terrain curiosity can handle matthew and katie take a rover out for a spin
00:56:29so we built three rovers we sent one off to mars we built an exact copy that we keep here on earth
00:56:34for testing software and cameras and then we built another one scarecrow because we have to adjust for
00:56:40gravity mars's gravity is three-eighths that of earth's so curiosity's two thousand pounds become
00:56:47about 750 on mars scarecrow rover stripped down but it weighs on earth what curiosity weighs on mars
00:56:54so it's got the right ground pressure uh it's got the right you know as we're going up a hill it's
00:56:58carrying the right amount of weight up that hill so we can test in the mars yard how steep a slope can
00:57:03we climb up satellite photos reveal that the most direct path up mount sharp would take curiosity through
00:57:13sand dunes so matthew and katie decide to see just how much sand the rover can take sand is scary for
00:57:20us because we think we understand what's going on but we get constantly surprised what angle do you
00:57:25have there we're at like 16 and a half we would not do this much slip in operations unless we were
00:57:31very sure we could get out yeah and then it just gets harder to extract yourself what we're learning is
00:57:37that the sand dunes are really just too great of a challenge for the rover to to handle the rover
00:57:42actually does a better job with the steep rocky slopes the team chooses a path around the dunes
00:57:50and curiosity continues on its journey up the slope of mount sharp
00:57:59will mars prove to be a planet where life once thrived only time will tell
00:58:06coming up these mysterious images take the search for life to a totally unexpected place a tiny moon
00:58:17called enceladus this is the single most important and interesting place for astrobiology in our solar
00:58:24solar system
00:58:35october 28th 2015 the cassini probe captures one of its final images of a mysterious moon orbiting saturn
00:58:44its name enceladus its diameter is just 310 miles less than 15 percent of our own moon
00:58:56but these photos reveal what appear to be volcanic geysers spewing from its surface
00:59:04scientists are trained not to jump to conclusions so we weren't going to say
00:59:09definitely we found you know we found something we thought you know you know toto we're not in kansas
00:59:15anymore this is this is something really really outstanding and something very significant
00:59:23why do these plumes exist what is inside them to me it eclipses everything else we know about the other
00:59:30worlds of the solar system this is the single most important and interesting place for our solar system
00:59:35beyond the earth could this tiny ball of ice actually contain the ingredients necessary for life
00:59:52in 1977 nasa launches two spacecraft on a 12-year journey to the outer edge of the solar system
01:00:00the voyager probes send back the first detailed images and data of the gas giants beyond the asteroid belt
01:00:10but one planet captures the heart of carolyn porco
01:00:17i was a graduate student when voyager flew by saturn i did my thesis on saturn's rings and it's
01:00:27you know like your first love of course the the jolt that we scientists get is you know finding
01:00:32something new that nobody else knows about um and all that happened for me at saturn but one moon
01:00:38seems to hold more mysteries than the others covered in a thick orange atmosphere its name is titan
01:00:47it was titan completely enshrouded in haze and we didn't know when we got there with voyager whether or
01:00:55not we'd be able to see down to the surface and it with our cameras and it turned out we couldn't
01:01:00unable to see past the atmosphere voyager cannot solve the mystery of what lies beneath
01:01:07titan was an object of immense interest this was the place that we need to go back to
01:01:13so when nasa put out this announcement of opportunities saying you know come apply to be
01:01:20involved in our next adventures at saturn i applied and i'm so grateful that i had the chutzpah to
01:01:26think i'm not just going to be a member of the imaging team i'm going to lead it in 1990 carolyn's
01:01:33dream comes true nasa places her in charge of the imaging team for cassini and this mission will be
01:01:41different voyager mind you was a reconnaissance mission it was just a flyby and the whole purpose
01:01:48is just to see what's there in the brief period of time that you're allowed but cassini will enter
01:01:54saturn's system and stay there for years imaging the planet and its moons with high-powered cameras
01:02:02and scientific instruments three two one and liftoff of the cassini spacecraft on a billion mile trek to saturn
01:02:15in july 2004 cassini arrives at saturn and right away it delivers on its promise
01:02:24taking the most detailed images ever of the ringed planet and its moons i had been thinking about
01:02:32voyager imagery and then i walk into my lab and i see this picture and it's incredibly detailed
01:02:42and i that's when i thought oh my god this is going to be just spectacular this is going to be
01:02:49a wondrous thing what we're going to be doing at saturn the cassini mission brought us a wealth of
01:03:01scientific discoveries about saturn for example it helped discover four new moons cassini revealed
01:03:09entirely new detail about saturn's amazing rings and the way that they are moving around the planet
01:03:19of the planet but for astrobiologist chris mckay the real star of the show is titan the reason
01:03:29titan was so interesting for astrobiology was that it is so rich in organics there's an organic haze
01:03:35in the atmosphere we thought that there would be organic liquids on the surface organics are the
01:03:41carbon-based molecules needed for life could organic liquids indicate some form of life on the surface of
01:03:48titan carolyn and the team have equipped cassini to do what voyager could not see beneath the haze
01:03:58and it will happen by sending a probe called huygens right down to the surface so huygens was designed
01:04:06to drop from the cassini probe and descend through the atmosphere and make a soft landing on titan
01:04:13sending back information the whole way about what titan was actually like and finally giving us a
01:04:18chance to peer through these murky clouds on the surface on january 14 2005 huygens makes its descent
01:04:28when the huygens probe descended through titan's atmosphere on a parachute it was taking images
01:04:33of the surface we didn't know what to expect but it showed what looked like shorelines
01:04:39when we got pictures of the surface it was very clear that there had been liquid of some kind on
01:04:48the surface for a long time but titan's surface is nearly minus 200 degrees celsius so that liquid cannot
01:04:57be water so titan has clouds it has rain it has rivers it has seas but it's methane and ethane and the real
01:05:05question for astrobiology is is there some sort of chemistry that could make life that could live in
01:05:12this kind of liquid for life to exist on titan it would have to be so alien that it survived on methane
01:05:20instead of water although chris mckay is hopeful it's a long shot
01:05:25but titan is not the only moon orbiting saturn
01:05:37enceladus was a moon that we knew from voyager was unique it was the whitest object in the solar
01:05:45system it was the brightest object in the solar system it was associated with a very big ring of
01:05:52very very fine smoke-sized particles that had been discovered around saturn in the 1960s
01:05:59enceladus was the place that we were just puzzled about and other than titan enceladus was the moon
01:06:06that on cassini we had planned to have the greatest number of flybys carolyn porco turns her attention
01:06:16towards enceladus and once cassini arrives a single photograph transforms the entire mission
01:06:30i was focused on titan but then my world changed for me it was really a oh my god moment
01:06:46in february 2005 the cassini space probe makes a shocking discovery on saturn's icy moon enceladus
01:07:00our first observation turned out to have something coming off the south pole and it was clear
01:07:08everybody just went all abuzz with this like wow there's something coming off the south pole
01:07:13everybody was getting excited scientists knew that the moons of saturn were cold and then they
01:07:20suddenly see these images of enceladus and they noticed a kind of activity that you don't expect
01:07:26from some sort of cold dead moon the image shows a plume of material streaming miles above enceladus
01:07:34the cassini team suspects that it's water somehow ejected by a powerful amount of heat and energy
01:07:41carolyn porco immediately contacts chris mckay with the news carolyn calls me up i'm in a meeting
01:07:49but i know if it's carolyn it's an important message so i ducked out of the meeting and i
01:07:53listened to the phone call and i was stunned and that's when i learned about all the interesting
01:07:58stuff coming back from enceladus evidence of energy coming from a subsurface ice environment my world
01:08:04changed the reason why this discovery mattered so much is that it meant that there might be an enormous
01:08:14amount of really interesting chemistry going on there the kind of chemistry that might be similar
01:08:19to what we saw in the early days of the earth maybe replicating the kinds of conditions that might give
01:08:26rise to life our first thought was we gotta get a closer look okay and we gotta figure this thing out
01:08:36a few months later the probe makes another flyby of enceladus and this time there's no mistaking the
01:08:45power hiding underneath the icy surface of this moon and that's when we really had our you know our
01:08:53socks blown off because that's the picture where you see about a dozen narrow jets coming off the south
01:09:01pole we found out that heat was coming from these four fractures
01:09:08but what is producing something so extreme
01:09:13scientists believe the gravitational forces of saturn are tugging on enceladus creating friction inside the
01:09:21moon the evidence indicates enceladus has massive amounts of water and a powerful source of energy
01:09:30two key ingredients in the search for life and the next step is can we say something from the molecules
01:09:36we see about the conditions of what's going on in the subsurface can we say anything about the presence
01:09:42of biology can we see anything that could be consistent with biology
01:09:47the team looks to find signs of organic material in the plumes
01:09:52and what cassini finds provides even more evidence that the building blocks of life
01:09:59may be brewing underneath the icy surface
01:10:04we have found that the particles in the plume close to the surface were salty
01:10:09and they had a salinity comparable to the earth's oceans and that said that this body of water
01:10:18had to be under the ice shell and in contact with a core in contact with a rocky core
01:10:27it could be an environment similar to hydrothermal vents at the bottom of earth's oceans a place where life
01:10:35exists so all of this put together said that we had a zone that could possibly sustain life
01:10:45okay had the basic ingredients it doesn't mean it has the secondary and tertiary ingredients but could
01:10:51it possibly be a place where you know if biological activity is not taking place now it might be well on
01:10:58its way to taking place over the next several years cassini continues to gather data and photos from enceladus
01:11:07and its plumes but in december 2015 after 10 years of flybys cassini approaches enceladus for the last time
01:11:17carolyn and chris are among the first people to see the final images this is the last flyby of enceladus
01:11:28by cassini these are the last close-ups that's right are you strapped in here we go look oh my god
01:11:38what now those are just craters but look at them it's incredible isn't it really nice
01:11:45wow i wasn't expecting that we're going to be working with this now defined set for a long time
01:11:52oh a very long time i bet i mean cassini's been so incredibly rich i you know it'll be
01:11:57i but i bet we'll be working with cassini data for 50 years
01:12:04but this final pass by cassini doesn't study the plumes on enceladus
01:12:09if scientists are going to continue looking for signs of life a new probe will have to go back
01:12:18because in september 2017 cassini will end its mission and plunge into the atmosphere of saturn
01:12:31for scientists who are looking for possibilities of life in the outer solar system
01:12:38seeing these jets on enceladus this is winning the world series and the super bowl all rolled into
01:12:44one this is the the best possible discovery they could make that's why dr porco and her team
01:12:50are determined to return with a new spacecraft
01:12:56we're not sure that there's life there we just have strong indications that there is at least an
01:13:02environment there that could support life and maybe even an environment where life might have
01:13:08originated so the thing that many of us want to do is we want to go back and if at all possible
01:13:15eventually bring back a sample to earth to me it eclipses everything else we know about the other
01:13:22worlds in the solar system this is the single most important and interesting place for astrobiology
01:13:27in our solar system beyond the earth can you tell i'm enthusiastic about it coming up
01:13:35there are many unexpected dangers to exploring the universe but it turns out one of the most likely
01:13:42threats we've created ourselves radar detected that something was moving very very fast in the
01:13:49direction of the space station and that our collision was a very real possibility
01:14:06our exploration of the universe has opened the door to a world of new discoveries
01:14:12hubble has revealed that the universe is expanding faster than anyone realized
01:14:23cassini has opened new possibilities for life beyond earth
01:14:30but the most important discoveries could be in our own backyard the thing about the international space
01:14:37station is that it's in about a 200 mile above the earth orbit and so there's this wonderful detail
01:14:46pictures from the iss to me often seem like abstract paintings there are details of river deltas
01:14:54or sand dunes or forests and their works of art they are so beautiful that i i have to
01:15:03stop and look at these and just just soak them in for six months astronaut ron garan lived and worked
01:15:13on the international space station and he saw our world in a way few people can imagine the caribbean
01:15:20is like a glowing jewel the himalayas the middle east there's many many really interesting beautiful
01:15:30places uh from space the space station gives us the ability to explore our home planet in a way we never
01:15:38could but that god's eye view is getting dangerous we have a somewhat risky environment that we've created
01:15:46because we are surrounded our planet is surrounded by this cloud of space debris
01:15:52three P3 for almost 60 years we've launched rockets and spacecraft into earth's orbit
01:16:04but now thousands of objects from tiny screws and bolts to dead satellites ensircle the earth
01:16:12transforming the space above us into a junkyard
01:16:16it seems kind of comical the idea that someday the earth might actually be
01:16:19surrounded by some ring of space garbage kind of like a a less nice version of saturn but it's a
01:16:27real possibility now the international space station is in the crosshairs the international
01:16:34space station has already been hit by little bits of debris on the number of occasions and
01:16:40there are no guarantees that other substantial things might not hit it again in the future
01:16:45it's the job of the military to monitor the thousands of pieces of debris orbiting the earth
01:16:54the men and women at vandenberg air force base in california are keeping their eyes on the skies
01:17:0124 hours a day so currently we monitor and track approximately 23 000 objects in space
01:17:09among those is about 1300 active payloads or satellites and the rest being space debris from
01:17:15prior launches or prior collisions everyone are should care about what's going on with space
01:17:22objects and space debris because we're so reliant nowadays upon technology that if something were
01:17:28to happen to a satellite it's going to severely degrade our ability to do certain things whether
01:17:33it be atm withdrawals gps or anything it's critical that we track space debris because it poses a risk
01:17:41to all the active payloads including the international space station some of this debris we track up to 10
01:17:48centimeters even a piece of debris the size of a small screw could destroy the space station you can
01:17:56think of a two centimeter ball bearing up in space it's traveling at 17 000 miles per hour that force is
01:18:02equivalent to a jeep wrangler traveling at 70 miles per hour so as the object size increases the impact
01:18:09and force behind that collision could be astronomically larger in june 2011 ron garan found himself facing
01:18:22that danger firsthand i was uh maybe four months or so into the mission and we got a call from mission
01:18:29control that a piece of space debris was going to pass a lot closer than people wanted if we know
01:18:37about it soon enough we will change the orbit of the space station we can boost it up higher lower and
01:18:41and change it so that we avoid that object but for whatever reason this one caught us by surprise and we
01:18:50did not have enough time for us to be able to move the orbit of the space station with the astronauts
01:18:56staring down the threat of a collision they're faced with only one choice abandon ship the international
01:19:05space station has several different ways of trying to deal with potential collisions but the last ditch
01:19:11defense are the two soyuz space capsules because those are basically lifeboats ron and the crew race to
01:19:18the soyuz capsules now the only thing they can do is brace for impact and then it was just a waiting
01:19:27game after that but we didn't know if it was gonna hit it or not
01:19:31in june 2011 the crew of the international space station learns their lives are in imminent danger
01:19:50space debris is heading towards them nbc jeff rawson watching all of this jeff good morning to you
01:19:56space junk was on a collision course with the international space station spotted so late
01:20:03there was no time to move out of the way instead the six astronauts got the order for mission control
01:20:10the probabilities are still in the red threshold and we are planning to have you shelter in place
01:20:16if all else fails the astronauts on board the space station can climb
01:20:20into those soyuz space capsules and wait to see whether a collision actually takes place
01:20:27if it does they can in a few seconds detach from whatever's left of the space station
01:20:32and then immediately try to return to earth
01:20:38mission control orders the astronauts to the soyuz lifeboats
01:20:43it's only the second time a crew has been told to potentially abandon ship
01:20:48once we got all the hatches closed and when we were all buttoned up in our in our soyuz spacecraft
01:20:54there really was nothing to do but wait
01:20:58we discussed okay if things get really bad this is what we're gonna do we're gonna undock we're gonna
01:21:02you know we started to talk about that and then it was just a waiting game after that
01:21:07but we didn't know if it was gonna hit it or not
01:21:09finally after 15 minutes word arrives from mission control when the object passed the space station we
01:21:22got a call from mission control that you know was all clear and it turned out that this object passed
01:21:28within a football field of the space station and relative velocity was eight miles per second
01:21:32so it's fairly large object traveling that fast it probably would have destroyed the space station had it hit
01:21:44but with thousands of objects orbiting the planet the next time they might not be so lucky
01:21:52there is evidence of hits on the space station and you know a little piece the size of you know a grain
01:21:58of sand that you know really make a bad day it's something that should be a major concern if we're
01:22:04going to continue to use the environment of space for the things that we want to use it for
01:22:11exploring earth in the 21st century means capturing it from above but space debris is not the only threat
01:22:20to this unique perspective the sun seems to be always there and unchanging it's just this bright
01:22:27ball of light in the sky but in fact it's changing all the time and that affects us here on earth
01:22:35because we are bombarded by radiation from the sun both in the form of light and subatomic particles
01:22:41the earth's atmosphere is a protective shield for anyone on the ground but in space there's no escape
01:22:48from the power of the sun
01:22:50solar flares and other kinds of violent eruptions from the center very very dangerous for anybody
01:22:58who's in space the amount of radiation that suddenly is pouring off of the sun at that point jumps way
01:23:05up and we can try to create certain kinds of very shielded areas that the astronauts can hide in but even
01:23:11those can only offer a very inadequate protection against the level of radiation that the sun can suddenly
01:23:19release at those times an extremely powerful solar storm could send the crew looking for cover
01:23:29what we would do is we'd find a place on a space station that offers the most protection water turns
01:23:35out to be a fairly good insulator of radiation you know we do have bags of water on the space station and
01:23:41we'd probably huddle some bags of water into a into a location and get behind that uh as best we could
01:23:50but in spite of that danger the same powerful burst of energy also gives the astronauts on the space
01:23:57station front row seats to the greatest light show imaginable the auroras are just incredible
01:24:05and there were times on my mission where we flew so close to the auroras that you could you could reach
01:24:13out and touch them i mean they were going right by the windows it was absolutely incredible
01:24:21the pictures really don't do them justice they really do dance
01:24:24but what you're seeing really is the after effect of a tremendously energetic and dangerous solar storm
01:24:35these subatomic particles screaming across the solar system and just under the speed of light
01:24:40are getting swept up by the earth's magnetic field and funneled down into our atmosphere it's humbling and
01:24:47amazing
01:24:57from discoveries at the edge of the solar system and beyond
01:25:05to mysterious asteroids hurtling through the cosmos
01:25:10and the search for life in our own backyard
01:25:13images have transformed our understanding of the universe everyone knows the cliche a picture is
01:25:22worth a thousand words but to me being a scientist you have to find a way to turn
01:25:29cold numbers just data into something that emotionally resonates with people
01:25:34we are trained to be very very logical but all of us really are just like everybody else and we're
01:25:43emotional and you know we get excited about a beautiful scene and can you know just spend hours
01:25:49looking at something and imagining what it would be like if we were there
01:25:52and these images are the result of cutting edge missions driven by the explorers willing to put
01:26:02everything on the line to capture space's deepest secrets these days i think we've seen that there's a whole
01:26:10new team of heroes these teams of scientists and engineers they're the ones inventing these craft
01:26:17they're the ones devising these missions they're the ones making sure they come off without a hitch
01:26:23they're the real heroes now
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01:26:53questions
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