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00:00universe is because that's NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and all of the
00:03orbiters, probes, and spacecraft we've sent out into the solar system and
00:07beyond send all their signals right back here to be processed. And that will ever
00:11be more apparent than in a few days when the next Mars rover named Perseverance
00:15concludes its seven-month journey to our neighboring red planet Mars,
00:19autonomously navigating itself for a terrifying seven minutes traveling from
00:2415 times the speed of a bullet to a gentle three miles per hour touchdown
00:28all while live streaming the key data the whole way down. As many of you know for
00:32me this is like coming home because long before I started making YouTube videos I
00:36came here to work every day for nine years seven of which were working on the
00:41last rover we sent to Mars named Curiosity. So today we're gonna talk to some of my
00:44old friends and see the actual rover up close as I bring you up to speed on
00:49everything you need to know about this rover landing. Because once you have an
00:52overview of what's gonna happen and what it even took to get us to this point I
00:55feel certain you're gonna feel just as pumped about this historic landing as I
01:00am. And to accomplish that we're gonna talk about the who, what, why, where, and
01:04how of this rover. We'll start with the why and the where we're going. 3.5 billion
01:09years ago Earth and Mars were pretty similar. Both had liquid water the
01:12surface and both were protected from the Sun's radiation with magnetic fields. And
01:16so it begs the question if life first developed on Earth at that time could it
01:21have also developed on Mars? So this is a massive lake in Jezero crater. Billions
01:25of years ago. And this is it now. This is where Perseverance is landing. The bottom
01:30of an ancient lake the size of Lake Tahoe. Because using Earth as a guide at
01:34the base of a river of fresh water is where scientists believe we have the
01:37best chance of finding evidence of past biological life on Mars. So thanks to
01:41Perseverance we could be on the verge of the monumental first discovery of
01:45actual life outside our planet. And being able to pinpoint a landing spot this
01:49tight shows how NASA is constantly advancing its technologies. With Florida for scale,
01:54here's an oval showing the uncertainty of the landing spot for previous missions
01:58Pathfinder in 1997, and then Phoenix in 2008, Curiosity in 2012, and now Perseverance.
02:06Being able to shrink down a landing target just gives you way more options of
02:09interesting places to land. Plus once you do land and start driving towards the
02:12actual science location it can shave off a year or more of drive time. Not only does
02:17studying Mars like this help us understand Earth's past and future, but the
02:20rovers we're sending are the advanced scouts. Taking data and notes for us on
02:24the ground and sending all the info back to Earth. They're also testing some new
02:27technologies, which I'll cover in a second, that humans will need to use when
02:30we're exploring the planet ourselves in the very near future. Because the first
02:34person to set foot on Mars is alive right now. And it could be you. And if none of
02:39that gets your heart pumping and you're like, but Mark, why would we spend
02:42resources and time exploring the solar system when we still have big issues here on
02:46this Earth we haven't solved? I tackled that exact question giving five reasons
02:50we can't afford not to invest in space in another video you can watch after this
02:54one. So that's the where and the why. Now let's talk about how we're going to do
02:58all that because this is where it gets really wild. Meet Perseverance. I should
03:03mention I have my monthly videos all planned out about a year in advance, which
03:07is why exactly this time last year I knew for this video I needed to fly down to
03:12check out the rover right before it got shipped off to Florida to be launched. But
03:15before I checked out the rover I first stopped in to see Ben, who was my old
03:19boss. When I was here he was leading a small team that designed the jetpack that
03:23lowered the rover to the ground. But now I heard he's all fancy in charge of like
03:26400 people so I wanted to get a sense of how things had changed for him. So
03:30anyone we see walk by you can like boss them around? About this guy right here.
03:33You can boss him around? Yeah I can boss him around. Okay cool, go on. We first geeked out for a bit over a bunch of
03:40examples of parts from previous space missions and a hardware wall like this is just a
03:44great illustration of what makes JPL such a cool place to work. Actually I designed
03:48this. This is my hardware from Grail with Andy. This is cool because you got these
03:53like flexures for like temperature variation so this isn't just for show
03:57this is like literally when you're trying to figure out a way to do things these
04:00are examples of how it's been done before right? Right and a lot of these are made by
04:03examples of this is the way you shouldn't do it. So that's why my hardware. That's why
04:06your hardware is up there right? So after that we headed down to check out the rover and meet up with my
04:10friend Emily but before we could just go in and see it we had to get suited up
04:13because the rover is looking for signs of biological life and we don't want to
04:17contaminate our samples before we even arrive. So a bunny suit and air shower can
04:22go a long way. Emily by the way was the vehicle assembly lead for the descent and
04:26cruise stages which is a big responsibility. This is the rover. The flight
04:30rover it will be on Mars 12 months from now. It's so complex when you come up and get
04:36this close. In fact Perseverance is the most complex thing humans have ever
04:40built and sent to another planet. It's got laser x-ray and radar capabilities plus
04:4419 cameras and a nuclear power battery system for energy. And while it might
04:48look pretty similar to the past rover Curiosity all the science instruments are
04:52completely different because the science objectives have changed. The most
04:55notable difference is this time the drill isn't there just to create rock dust to
04:59study on the rover. Perseverance has a hollow drill bit to core out a chunk of rock the
05:03size of a piece of chalk and then package it up and leave behind 43 separate
05:08samples for a future mission to collect and send back to Earth. That way we
05:12could study the samples for those past signs of life using the most state-of-the-art
05:16instruments on Earth that we could never fit on a rover. So then to capture that
05:20chalk-sized rock sample not only is there an arm on the outside but this time
05:25there's one on the inside too. It is a miniature robot arm inside the body of the
05:30rover that manipulates the sample tube and there's one right here. Wow!
05:33And so is this what you leave behind? Exactly. Is it fair to say this is like the
05:38poop of the rover? Exactly. Do you like that analogy because they didn't like it
05:43earlier? Yeah. We do like to say that the rover is going to poop out samples. Okay good see that's a good analogy. So
05:50Perseverance is really only the first leg of returning a piece of Mars to
05:54Earth. Future missions will complete what I like to call the poop scoop and
05:58shoot maneuver. This is my friend Liz by the way and she's in charge of all the
06:01testing for the sample retrieval system. We're doing things that nobody else does
06:05so we have to test it. So she tests all sorts of different configurations in a
06:09chamber that recreates the extreme temperatures and pressures to make sure
06:12it will function on Mars. Because once you send something to space it's gone and you
06:16can't exactly fix it so it just has to work which is why testing is such a big
06:21deal here at JPL. My buddy Matt here mentioned another way this is done. We build
06:25two spacecraft one that goes to Mars and one that we keep here on Earth to test and
06:28this is an exact replica of Curiosity who's driving around on Mars right now. Then we
06:32use this one to test driving around obstacles and driving over rocks. And he
06:36knows a thing or two about driving over rocks because he was a rover driver for
06:40both opportunity and curiosity. This guy is like one of maybe 40 people in the
06:45world who has driven a vehicle on another planet which is it's kind of a big
06:50deal. And so a few more cool things about Perseverance are that it has a mini
06:53helicopter drone stowed away on its underbelly named Ingenuity. This will be
06:56mankind's first powered flight on another planet which sort of makes this a Wright
07:01Brothers moment. The rover and the drone will get great footage of each other but
07:04we're mainly testing it out so that in the future we might use drones to scout out
07:08terrain for us or get samples from hard to reach locations or you can have swarms of
07:12drones carrying materials for humans from one site to another. Perseverance is
07:16also testing out a new instrument called MOXIE that basically amounts to a
07:20mechanical tree because its function is to convert CO2 into oxygen which future
07:25explorers will need to breathe and for rocket fuel. The rover has been in this
07:29clean room for about a year and a half starting is just a chassis just the
07:33skeleton. And then all the teams and engineers have been taking turns coming
07:36down and building up their part until it's done. In fact I was in that exact
07:40position on curiosity designing my hardware for about three and a half years
07:43and when it was all tested and complete integrating it on the rover right here in
07:47this room. And then for the other three and a half years like I mentioned
07:50before I was working with Ben on a small team of engineers on the jetpack
07:53descent stage. So now we've covered the where and the why we're going, also the
07:57how we're gonna do all that with the rover. Now let's talk about the what for
08:01what's gonna happen this Thursday when it lands and what you should expect to see.
08:04As I edit this video the spacecraft is gliding toward Mars at a cool 48,144
08:10miles per hour. How fast is that? It's this fast. It's 15 times faster than a
08:15bullet. It's traveling the length of a hundred soccer fields in exactly this long
08:19and it will keep on that trajectory until the big moment on Thursday when it
08:23starts its entry, descent, and landing or EDL. It's also known as the seven minutes
08:27of tear because we've literally got seven minutes to get from the top of the
08:31atmosphere to the surface of Mars going from 13,000 miles per hour to zero in
08:36perfect sequence and perfect timing and the spacecraft has to do it all on its own
08:40with no help from us on Earth. When it first hits the upper atmosphere the
08:43friction causes the heat shield to start glowing like the surface of the Sun all
08:47the while thrusters are firing to steer and adjust its course towards the target
08:51location and that arrow breaking gets rid of 99% of the energy so for the last 1%
08:56we deploy a supersonic parachute then we've got a pop off the heat shield we
09:00no longer need like removing the lens cap so the radar can start viewing the
09:03ground but even with the parachute it's still traveling 200 miles per hour which
09:07is way too fast to land and so that's where we cut loose of the back shell and
09:11fire the rockets. But we can't quite land in this configuration because the
09:14rockets will kick up too much debris and damage the rover so then we lower it from a
09:1821 foot rope and gently land the rover on the surface as my sky crane zooms off to
09:22face an honorable catastrophic ending as far away from the rover as its
09:27remaining fuel will carry it. And so in just seven minutes the spacecraft has
09:30completely metamorphosized shedding all its sacrificial elements until you're
09:34left with just a rover sitting alone safely on the surface of Mars. Now
09:39everything you just saw was a CGI animation but a few days after landing
09:42we'll all be blown away by actual HD landing footage from the 23 cameras and
09:47two microphones on board. We'll see the parachute inflate and hear the crunch of
09:51the aluminum wheels as they touch down and make contact with the Martian surface.
09:55And because Mars is so far away to get a signal from the vehicle to our planet it
10:00takes about 12 minutes at the speed of light. So that means after the spacecraft
10:04sends a signal that has reached the top of the atmosphere by the time that signal
10:07reaches Earth to kick off the seven minutes of tear, for at least five minutes
10:11the vehicle has actually already been on the surface either alive or dead. Which
10:17is why it has to be autonomous. That means it makes all its own choices on the
10:20exact timing of things and where to steer without anyone from Earth
10:24controlling it. Which means all we can do is watch and monitor and hope. And this is a
10:28good time to remember that as easy as these dedicated teams of engineers make it
10:32look, landing on Mars is really hard. Historically only about half the
10:36attempts have been successful. But the willingness to take big risks to reap big
10:40rewards is the foundation on which NASA is built. The live stream to watch the
10:43landing starts on Thursday February 18th at 11 15 a.m. Pacific. It will hit the
10:48top of the atmosphere an hour and a half later at 12 48 p.m. which starts the
10:52seven minutes of tear and we touch down at 12 55. I will leave a link to the
10:56live stream in the video description as well as some other really cool sites such as
11:00this video game like demo where you can interactively experience the seven
11:04minutes of tear in preparation for the landing. We covered the where and the
11:07why we're going. We covered the how with the rover and the what with the landing
11:11details. Now it's time for the who. The human side to sending robot explorers to
11:17other planets. What makes NASA and JPL really great aren't its robots it's the
11:22people who build them. And while it's not really possible for me to capture what
11:25it's gonna feel like for them to see it land this Thursday, the best I can do is to
11:28show you what it felt like for me eight years ago when I was in a very similar
11:32situation. I made a video when curiosity landed but at the time my channel had
11:36less than 100,000 subscribers so I know that most of you haven't seen this
11:39footage but even if you have with the landing less than a week away it's a
11:42great time for a second watch to get you pumped up. And for context here you
11:46should know that during my time I was working on the rover I had a son and lost
11:50my mom to ALS. And while my contribution was small relative to the overall picture I
11:55tried to capture the human element here of what it feels like to basically have
11:59seven years of your life and career vindicated with that beautiful phrase
12:03touchdown confirmed we are safe on Mars. So with that consider this my tribute to
12:09everyone out there working to push the limits of human understanding with a
12:12little bit of help from adorable little young Mark Grober.
12:19So we're still two days from landing but you see the news media has already started to
12:23descend on JPL here. Since we're all kind of nerves around here our pools look a
12:30little different than most. This is the landing ellipse for the rover and we all
12:35kind of place guesses on where we think it's going to come down. So we're headed down
12:39to NASA JPL to hang out with everyone and watch the landing. So it's pretty exciting
12:45kind of sick to my stomach at the same time. Basically seven years of my life and career
12:49come down to about seven minutes. Kind of freaking out.
12:58I owe half my curl results to that guy right there. Excellent chances. Excellent chances.
13:03Not nervous. Okay.
13:05No, it's gonna work.
13:13Cruise stage separation.
13:14When Mark gets nervous he starts shivering like he's freezing. Right now it's probably about 85
13:23degrees out here. So Mark is really nervous.
13:42We have seen, uh, we have seen heating, uh, through the bendy.
13:46The dynamic phase come back again with, uh,
13:54A parachute and flight.
14:06We are in powered flight. Standing by for sky green.
14:09Scott Green is ready.
14:29Touchdown confirmed.
14:30We're safe on Mars.
14:32That's touchdown!
14:34Come on!
15:04It was honestly a moving experience to see that picture come up that showed just the shadow of the rover dominating the Martian landscape.
15:16It's just a crazy thought with it.
15:18It's something I've designed, I've touched, I've built, I've integrated, I've tested, is now safely resting on another frickin' planet.
15:29It's a crazy feeling.
15:32It's crazy feeling.
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