00:00I hope makes everyone excited about the future missions that we're going to have and the exploration we're going to
00:06do and the science we're going to develop to make sure we can send Americans, mankind, throughout the universe.
00:15And so, but we do want to lean into this exciting news that we have today.
00:20And to give us more, I'm going to turn it over to Nikki Fox, who is the associate administrator for
00:25our science mission.
00:26Nikki.
00:26Thank you so much.
00:28Yes, it really is an exciting, exciting day today.
00:32NASA, what we do is we study the seemingly impossible.
00:36That's what we do every day at NASA Science.
00:39And NASA Science is undisputably the global authority in the search for life beyond our home planet.
00:47And so today we are going to talk to you about this amazing, exciting discovery.
00:51And I also want to make sure that we put context around it and you see like how it fits
00:57into our search for life in the universe.
01:00Our galaxy is 100 billion light years across, and within 10 light years of Earth, there are at least 400
01:10known planets.
01:12And that means there is a possibility, some would even say a probability of life beyond Earth, including maybe even
01:20complex, intelligent life.
01:21And today we are really showing you how we are kind of one step closer to answering humanity's, one of
01:29their most profound questions, and that is, are we truly alone in the universe?
01:33So if I could have the first image, please, that would be great.
01:37So last July, as Secretary Duffy eloquently described, NASA's Perseverance rover found a leopard-spotted rock at Mars.
01:47And scientists immediately knew, it was interesting, we hadn't seen anything like that before on Mars.
01:53And we talked about it last summer.
01:55The moment we found it, we put out the images for everybody to see and everybody to share, share in
02:01the joy of NASA science.
02:03And, you know, today we're really here celebrating that incredible hard work of the science team as they literally tried
02:12to prove it wasn't interesting.
02:13Maybe it's just something else. Maybe it's not, you know, the key result that we've been waiting for.
02:19And so they've done the analysis on these leopard spots, and we, you know, we think they are potentially made
02:26by some sort of ancient life.
02:29This finding by our incredible Perseverance rover is the closest we've actually come to discovering ancient life on Mars.
02:37And if you can't tell, we're really excited about that.
02:41And, but, you know, I also, again, I want to put it into context.
02:44It's a signature. It's a sort of leftover sign. It's not life itself.
02:50And it certainly could have been from ancient life, and that would have been something that was there billions of
02:55years ago.
02:56Nothing that's current there.
02:58And, you know, it could certainly, as we say, be made by ancient life.
03:02And what that means is we look at everything we know about life on Earth.
03:08And this is the kind of signature that we would see that was made by something biological.
03:14In this case, it's kind of the equivalent of seeing, like, leftover fossils, you know, leftovers from a meal.
03:20And maybe that meal's been excreted by a microbe.
03:24And that's what we're seeing in this sample.
03:27And, you know, again, as Secretary Duffy said, we don't know for sure that's what it is.
03:32And we won't stop after this first analysis.
03:35This certainly is not the final answer.
03:38But we have this first result, and we're sharing it with you, the world, and we are asking you to
03:43look and give you our analyses also.
03:47And that's that, again, that's what we do in NASA science.
03:50This is, you know, how we find our information.
03:54It's part of that long journey.
03:56We ask a question.
03:58We design a mission that can actually go and address that question.
04:02We develop the technology.
04:03We build the hardware.
04:05We launch it into space.
04:06It takes the data.
04:08It brings back the information that we need here.
04:12We analyze it, and we come up with answers to those really, really tough questions.
04:16We've actually been studying Mars with, you know, even as early as 60 years ago when we sent our first
04:23missions there to take pictures of Mars and tell us really that's quite an interesting place.
04:28And we really do want to send humans there.
04:30And so we've been doing this so we can understand the planet so we are ready to send our humans
04:37there.
04:37We certainly, as we look forward, we plan to send more missions to Mars in support of the Artemis program,
04:43which we're really proud of.
04:44And it will open the door for humans to study and better understand the red planet and perhaps even one
04:50day bring back Mars and samples home for us to actually study here on Earth.
04:54And I want to underscore the point that NASA science discoveries do not just happen at random.
05:00They are the rewarding results from meticulous, long-term strategic planning.
05:06We send these missions to really address these incredible questions.
05:11And each new discovery helps us just, you know, kind of drive what research is coming next.
05:16What missions do we want to design next so we can kind of take that full bench of tools with
05:23us to solve the problems of how best to support to explore our solar system, first with robotic missions and
05:30then with humans.
05:31And before I pass it on to my colleagues who are going to tell you all about this incredible, the
05:36details of this incredible finding, I just want to talk a little bit more about how NASA searches for life.
05:43And there's so much happening that I am incredibly excited about.
05:46We have Europa Clipper that is on its way to explore an icy moon of Jupiter to investigate whether the
05:52subsurface ocean underneath that icy crust has the potential to support life.
05:57After that, we'll launch Dragonfly, which has been deemed the most exciting science mission, science space mission of your lifetime.
06:05And it's a drone.
06:07It's the size of an SUV.
06:08And it's going to be humanity's first airborne science mission to another world.
06:14Dragonfly will explore the amazing world of Saturn's moon, Titan, which is the only place in our solar system where
06:22lake, you know, they have lakes of liquid on the surface.
06:26And with Dragonfly, it's going to let us understand the prebiotic chemistry that predominated Earth here before the origin of
06:33life.
06:33And the other thing we're looking for all over the universe is potentially habitable worlds.
06:39Thirty years ago, we first discovered an exoplanet around another star system.
06:44And today we know of thousands of them.
06:46This has changed the very way that we look at our night sky.
06:50We know that there is, on average, a planet for every star in the sky.
06:56And as I've been saying, each new mission is specifically designed based on all of the knowledge that we've gained
07:01so far.
07:02And in this case, you know, the knowledge is allowing us to lean forward to study a concept mission that
07:09is supported in the president's budget called Habitable Worlds Observatory.
07:13And that will allow us to search for habitable worlds and for signs of life around 100 of our nearest
07:20stars.
07:21Super, super exciting.
07:22From its vantage point in deep space, it will observe a variety of critical targets for us to go and
07:29explore, for us to sort of put our fleet of telescopes staring at those, including our amazing James Webb Space
07:36Telescope.
07:36And, of course, our upcoming flagship mission that we launched in 2027, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
07:44Super excited.
07:45Yay, Roman.
07:46The Habitable Worlds Observatory insights could help keep astronauts and human infrastructure safe in space.
07:53And it will be the most powerful telescope NASA has ever launched, maintaining Americans' leadership in space, which is so
08:00important.
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