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00:00If you look right behind me, you'll see the center of the universe.
00:03And the reason it's called the center of the universe is because that's NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
00:08and all of the orbiters, probes, and spacecraft we've sent out into the solar system and beyond
00:13send all their signals right back here to be processed.
00:16And that will ever be more apparent than in a few days when the next Mars rover named Perseverance
00:20concludes its seven-month journey to our neighboring red planet Mars,
00:25autonomously navigating itself for a terrifying seven minutes,
00:28traveling from 15 times the speed of a bullet to a gentle 3 miles per hour touchdown,
00:34all while live streaming the key data the whole way down.
00:36And as many of you know, for me, this is like coming home,
00:39because long before I started making YouTube videos, I came here to work every day for nine years,
00:44seven of which were working on the last rover we sent to Mars named Curiosity.
00:48So today we're going to talk to some of my old friends and see the actual rover up close
00:52as I bring you up to speed on everything you need to know about this rover landing.
00:56Because once you have an overview of what's going to happen and what it even took to get us to
01:00this point,
01:01I feel certain you're going to feel just as pumped about this historic landing as I am.
01:06And to accomplish that, we're going to talk about the who, what, why, where, and how of this rover.
01:11And we'll start with the why and the where we're going.
01:133.5 billion years ago, Earth and Mars were pretty similar.
01:16Both had liquid water on the surface, and both were protected from the sun's radiation with magnetic fields.
01:21And so it begs the question, if life first developed on Earth at that time, could it have also developed
01:27on Mars?
01:28So this is a massive lake in Jezero Crater, billions of years ago.
01:31And this is it now.
01:32This is where Perseverance is landing.
01:34The bottom of an ancient lake the size of Lake Tahoe.
01:37Because using Earth as a guide, at the base of a river of fresh water is where scientists believe
01:42we have the best chance of finding evidence of past biological life on Mars.
01:45So thanks to Perseverance, we could be on the verge of the monumental first discovery of actual life outside our
01:51planet.
01:52And being able to pinpoint a landing spot this tight shows how NASA is constantly advancing its technologies.
01:58With Florida for scale, here's an oval showing the uncertainty of the landing spot for previous missions,
02:03Pathfinder in 1997, and then Phoenix in 2008, Curiosity in 2012, and now Perseverance.
02:11Being able to shrink down a landing target just gives you way more options of interesting places to land.
02:15Plus, once you do land and start driving towards the actual science location,
02:19it could shave off a year or more of drive time.
02:21And not only does studying Mars like this help us understand Earth's past and future,
02:25but the rovers we're sending are the advanced scouts,
02:27taking data and notes for us on the ground and sending all the info back to Earth.
02:31There are also statistics of new technologies, which I'll cover in a second,
02:34that humans will need to use when we're exploring the planet ourselves in the very near future.
02:38Because the first person to set foot on Mars is alive right now.
02:42And it could be you.
02:43And if none of that gets your heart pumping, and you're like,
02:45but Mark, why would we spend resources and time exploring the solar system,
02:50when we still have big issues here on this Earth we haven't solved?
02:53I tackled that exact question, giving five reasons we can't afford not to invest in space,
02:57in another video you can watch after this one.
03:00So that's the where and the why.
03:01Now let's talk about how we're going to do all that.
03:04Because this is where it gets really wild.
03:06Meet Perseverance.
03:08And I should mention, I have my monthly videos all planned out about a year in advance.
03:12Which is why exactly this time last year, I knew for this video I needed to fly down to check
03:17out the rover,
03:17right before it got shipped off to Florida to be launched.
03:20But before I checked out the rover, I first stopped in to see Ben, who was my old boss.
03:24When I was here, he was leading a small team that designed the jetpack that lowered the rover to the
03:28ground.
03:29But now I heard he's all fancy and charged with like 400 people, so I wanted to get a sense
03:33of how things had changed for him.
03:35So anyone we see walk by, you can like boss them around?
03:38What about this guy right here?
03:38You can boss him around?
03:39Yeah, I can boss him around.
03:40Okay, cool.
03:42Let's go on.
03:43We first geeked out for a bit over a bunch of examples of parts from previous space missions.
03:47And a hardware wall like this is just a great illustration of what makes JPL such a cool place to
03:52work.
03:52Actually, I designed this.
03:54This is my hardware from Grail with Andy.
03:57This is cool because you got these like flexures for like temperature variation.
04:00So this isn't just for show.
04:02This is like literally when you're trying to figure out a way to do things.
04:04These are examples of how it's been done before, right?
04:07And a lot of these are made by examples of this is the way you shouldn't do it.
04:09So that's why my hardware.
04:11That's why your hardware is up there, right?
04:12So after that, we headed down to check out the rover and meet up with my friend Emily.
04:16But before we could just go in and see it, we had to get suited up because the rover is
04:19looking for signs of biological life.
04:21And we don't want to contaminate our samples before we even arrive.
04:25So a bunny suit and air shower can go a long way.
04:28Emily, by the way, was the vehicle assembly lead for the descent and cruise stages, which is a big responsibility.
04:33This is the rover.
04:34The flight rover.
04:35It will be on Mars 12 months from now.
04:38It's so complex when you come up and get this close.
04:42In fact, Perseverance is the most complex thing humans have ever built and sent to another planet.
04:47It's got laser, x-ray, and radar capabilities, plus 19 cameras, and a nuclear-powered battery system for energy.
04:53And while it might look pretty similar to the past rover Curiosity, all the science instruments are completely different because
04:58the science objectives have changed.
05:00The most notable difference is this time the drill isn't there just to create rock dust to study on the
05:04rover.
05:05Perseverance has a hollow drill bit to core out a chunk of rock the size of a piece of chalk
05:09and then package it up and leave behind 43 separate samples for a future mission to collect and send back
05:16to Earth.
05:17That way we could study the samples for those past signs of life using the most state-of-the-art
05:21instruments on Earth that we could never fit on a rover.
05:24So then to capture that chalk-sized rock sample, not only is there an arm on the outside, but this
05:30time there's one on the inside too.
05:31It is a miniature robot arm inside the body of the rover that manipulates the sample tube.
05:37And there's one right here.
05:38Wow.
05:39And so is this what you leave behind?
05:41Exactly.
05:42Is it fair to say this is like the poop of the rover?
05:44Exactly.
05:44That's okay.
05:46Do you like that analogy?
05:47Because they didn't like it earlier.
05:48Yeah.
05:48You like it?
05:49Okay, cool.
05:50We do like to say that the rover is going to poop out samples all over the Earth.
05:53Okay, good.
05:53See, that's a good analogy.
05:55So perseverance is really only the first leg of returning a piece of Mars to Earth.
06:00Future missions will complete what I like to call the poop, scoop, and shoot maneuver.
06:03This is my friend Liz, by the way, and she's in charge of all the testing for the sample retrieval
06:07system.
06:08We're doing things that nobody else does, so we have to test it.
06:11So she tests all sorts of different configurations in a chamber that recreates the extreme temperatures and pressures to make
06:17sure it will function on Mars.
06:19Because once you send something to space, it's gone, and you can't exactly fix it.
06:23So it just has to work, which is why testing is such a big deal here at JPL.
06:27My buddy Matt here mentioned another way this is done.
06:29We build two spacecraft, one that goes to Mars and one that we keep here on Earth to test.
06:33And this is an exact replica of Curiosity who's driving around on Mars right now.
06:37And then we use this one to test driving around obstacles and driving over rocks.
06:41And he knows a thing or two about driving over rocks because he was a rover driver for both opportunity
06:46and curiosity.
06:47This guy is like one of maybe 40 people in the world who has driven a vehicle on another planet,
06:53which is kind of a big deal.
06:55And so a few more cool things about Perseverance are that it has a mini helicopter drone stowed away on
06:59its underbelly named Ingenuity.
07:01This will be mankind's first powered flight on another planet, which sort of makes this a Wright Brothers moment.
07:06And the rover and the drone will get great footage of each other, but we're mainly testing it out so
07:10that in the future we might use drones to scout out terrain for us or get samples from hard to
07:15reach locations.
07:16Or you could have swarms of drones carrying materials for humans from one site to another.
07:20Perseverance is also testing out a new instrument called MOXIE that basically amounts to a mechanical tree because its function
07:26is to convert CO2 into oxygen, which future explorers will need to breathe and for rocket fuel.
07:32The rover has been in this clean room for about a year and a half, starting as just a chassis,
07:38just the skeleton.
07:39And then all the teams and engineers have been taking turns coming down and building up their part until it's
07:43done.
07:43In fact, I was in that exact position on Curiosity, designing my hardware for about three and a half years.
07:48And when it was all tested and complete, integrating it on the rover right here in this room.
07:53And then for the other three and a half years, like I mentioned before, I was working with Ben on
07:57a small team of engineers on the jetpack descent stage.
07:59So now we've covered the where and the why we're going, also the how we're going to do all that
08:03with the rover.
08:04Now let's talk about the what, for what's going to happen this Thursday when it lands and what you should
08:09expect to see.
08:09As I edit this video, the spacecraft is gliding toward Mars at a cool 48,144 miles per hour.
08:16How fast is that? It's this fast. It's 15 times faster than a bullet.
08:21It's traveling the length of a hundred soccer fields in exactly this long.
08:24And it will keep on that trajectory until the big moment on Thursday when it starts its entry, descent and
08:29landing, or EDL.
08:30It's also known as the seven minutes of terror because we've literally got seven minutes to get from the top
08:35of the atmosphere to the surface of Mars,
08:38going from 13,000 miles per hour to zero in perfect sequence and perfect timing.
08:43And the spacecraft has to do it all on its own with no help from us on Earth.
08:47When it first hits the upper atmosphere, the friction causes the heat shield to start glowing like the surface of
08:51the sun,
08:52all the while thrusters are firing to steer and adjust its course towards the target location.
08:57And that aerobraking gets rid of 99% of the energy, so for the last 1%, we deploy a supersonic
09:02parachute.
09:03Then we've got to pop off the heat shield we no longer need, like removing a lens cap, so the
09:07radar can start viewing the ground.
09:09But even with the parachute, it's still traveling 200 miles per hour, which is way too fast to land.
09:13And so that's where we cut loose of the back shell and fire the rockets.
09:17But we can't quite land in this configuration because the rockets will kick up too much debris and damage the
09:21rover.
09:22So then we lower it from a 21-foot rope and gently land the rover on the surface
09:26as my sky crane zooms off to face an honorable, catastrophic ending as far away from the rover as its
09:32remaining fuel will carry it.
09:33And so in just seven minutes, the spacecraft has completely metamorphosized, shedding all its sacrificial elements
09:39until you're left with just a rover sitting alone, safely on the surface of Mars.
09:44Now, everything you just saw was a CGI animation.
09:46But a few days after landing, we'll all be blown away by actual HD landing footage from the 23 cameras
09:52and two microphones on board.
09:53We'll see the parachute inflate and hear the crunch of the aluminum wheels as they touch down and make contact
09:59with the Martian surface.
10:00And because Mars is so far away, to get a signal from the vehicle to our planet, it takes about
10:0512 minutes at the speed of light.
10:07So that means after the spacecraft sends a signal that has reached the top of the atmosphere,
10:11by the time that signal reaches Earth to kick off the seven minutes of tear,
10:15for at least five minutes, the vehicle has actually already been on the surface, either alive or dead.
10:22Which is why it has to be autonomous.
10:23That means it makes all its own choices on the exact timing of things and where to steer without anyone
10:28from Earth controlling it.
10:29Which means all we can do is watch and monitor and hope.
10:33And this is a good time to remember that as easy as these dedicated teams of engineers make it look,
10:37landing on Mars is really hard.
10:39Historically, only about half the attempts have been successful.
10:42But the willingness to take big risks, to reap big rewards, is the foundation on which NASA is built.
10:47The livestream to watch the landing starts on Thursday, February 18th at 11.15am Pacific.
10:52It will hit the top of the atmosphere an hour and a half later at 12.48pm,
10:57which starts the seven minutes of tear and we touch down at 12.55.
11:01I will leave a link to the livestream in the video description as well as some other really cool sites,
11:05such as this video game-like demo where you can interactively experience the seven minutes of tear in preparation for
11:10the landing.
11:11We covered the where and the why we're going.
11:13We covered the how with the rover and the what with the landing details.
11:17Now, it's time for the who. The human side to sending robot explorers to other planets.
11:23What makes NASA and JPL really great aren't its robots, it's the people who build them.
11:28And while it's not really possible for me to capture what it's going to feel like for them to see
11:31it land this Thursday,
11:32the best I can do is to show you what it felt like for me eight years ago when I
11:36was in a very similar situation.
11:37I made a video when Curiosity landed, but at the time my channel had less than 100,000 subscribers,
11:42so I know that most of you haven't seen this footage.
11:45But even if you have, with the landing less than a week away, it's a great time for a second
11:48watch to get you pumped up.
11:50And for context here, you should know that during my time I was working on the rover, I had a
11:54son and lost my mom to ALS.
11:57And while my contribution was small relative to the overall picture, I tried to capture the human element here
12:02of what it feels like to basically have seven years of your life and career vindicated with that beautiful phrase,
12:08touchdown confirmed, we are safe on Mars.
12:11So with that, consider this my tribute to everyone out there working to push the limits of human understanding
12:17with a little bit of help from adorable little young Mark Grober.
12:24So we're still two days from landing, but you can see the news media has already started to descend on
12:30JPL here.
12:32Since we're all kind of nerves around here, our pools look a little different than most.
12:36This is the landing ellipse for the rover, and we all kind of place guesses on where we think it's
12:42going to come down.
12:43So we're headed down to NASA JPL to hang out with everyone and watch the landing.
12:48So it's pretty exciting. I'm kind of sick to my stomach at the same time.
12:52Basically seven years of my life and career come down to about seven minutes.
12:57I'm kind of freaking out.
13:03I owe half my curl results to that guy right there.
13:06Excellent chances.
13:07Excellent chances?
13:09I'm not nervous.
13:10Okay.
13:11No, it's going to work.
13:12We should be heading for the target.
13:18Crew stage separation.
13:21When Mark gets nervous, he starts shivering like he's freezing.
13:26Right now it's probably about 85 degrees out here, so Mark is really nervous.
13:43What is this?
13:46I'm Jamie.
13:47I haven't seen ..
13:48We have seen heating up each note through the methane.
13:51I'm sorry.
13:52I'm sorry.
13:52It's okay.
13:52I don't know.
13:53That's what I'm doing.
13:55We're making a mess.
13:57I'm not sure.
13:57I'm not sure.
13:58It's okay.
14:11We are in powered flight.
14:12Standing by for Skycreen.
14:17Skycreen is starting.
14:33Touchdown confirmed.
14:35We are safe on Mars.
14:37That's touchdown!
15:01Touchdown!
15:11It was honestly a moving experience to see that picture come up, that showed just the shadow
15:17of Grover just dominating the Martian landscape.
15:21It's just a crazy thought to think that something I've designed, I've touched, I've built, I've
15:27integrated, I've tested, is now safely resting on another frickin' planet, which is, it's
15:36a crazy feeling.
15:57So the problem is, it's a crazy feeling.
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