Bringing Mars Samples Back to Earth (Exploring Space Lecture)

here's to anyone who's ever looked up the AirHeads and the space cases live long and prosper the flight Fanatics the armchair astronauts and the casually curious here's to those who know the thrust in Newtons of a pratton Whitney j75 turbo jet engine and those who silently ask what's keeping this thing in the air here's to those who can list the name Mission history and favorite breakfast of every Mercury astronaut and those who've ever searched for how does a toilet work in space Here's to the people who knew a P38 Lightning from a P51 Mustang and the people who thought those were the names of cars those captivated by the miracle of flight and those who are just happy to make their flight so whatever captures your curiosity choose to go to the moon or propels me to new heights when it comes to the sky there's space for all of us [Music] [Music] good evening I'm Chris Brown and I have the true privilege of serving as the John and Adrien Mars director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum welcome to tonight's exploring space lecture tonight's program is the final in a series of four lectures exploring various missions that have returned samples from the Moon comets asteroids and one day other planets first we discussed what we have learned from the lunar samples collected by the Apollo Astronauts half a century ago then we told the story of the Stardust Miss Mission which brought back samples of the Comet wild 2 in the early 2000s last month we explored the ongoing science being conducted using the recently returned turn samples from the asteroid benu and now tonight we will look forward to another ambitious sample return mission that aims to bring back to Earth Martian samples collected by the Mars rover perseverance this endeavor will involve the collaboration of multiple space agencies robots and teams I know we're all anxious to learn more about this bold mission but before proceeding with tonight's program it's fitting that we extend our thanks to the sponsor of the exploring space lecture series tonight's lecture is made possible through the generous support of aerojet Rocket n and United launch Alliance joining us in the audience tonight are Joe Cassidy from Rock aoet rocket D and Addie basali from United launch Alliance thank you Joe and Addie for your ongoing support we'll give them a round of applause and today is actually special particularly for these companies because the Starliner launch a top a United launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket took place and is expected to dock with the ISS tomorrow around noon what a wonderful achievement and congratulations to those of you here in person I hope you had the chance to tour the destination Moon and Kenneth C Griffin exploring the plan's galleries before tonight's lecture these spectacular exhibitions are two of the eight galleries that have opened so far as part of our ongoing renovation of this remarkable Museum and we were pleased to share them with you as part of tonight's program now I'd like to turn it over to my colleague and friend Dr Matthew shindel a museum curator of planetary science and exploration to introduce tonight's speaker Matt thank you Chris and good evening everybody I'm Matthew shindell I'm the curator of planetary science and exploration here at Museum and tonight I have the honor of introducing our speaker our speaker this evening is Dr minaki wadwa director of the school of Earth and space exploration at Arizona State University her research group is best known for developing novel methodologies to investigate the time scales of processes in the early solar system Dr wadwa has been involved in several NASA planetary science missions including as co-investigator on the Genesis Mission and as a collaborator on the Mars science laboratory Mission she is hunted for meteorites in the Antarctic for which she's received the Antarctica service medal Dr wadwa currently chairs the science Committee of the NASA advisory Council and was chair of the NASA curation and Analysis planning team for extraterrestrial materials analysis group she also served as a member of the National Academy of Sciences space studies board and its executive committee she's very accomplished Dr wadwa became a fellow of the American GE a physical Union in 2019 the Explorers Club in 2012 the wings World quest in 2007 and the meteor meteoritical Society in 2006 in recognition of her contributions to planetary science asteroid 8356 was renamed 8356 wadwa by the international astronomical Union you know I think every speaker this year has had an asteroid named after that I think we're doing something right all right so tonight Dr wodwell will talk about the Mars that the perseverance Rover has collected so far the ones it's expected to collect in the future and the scientific motivations for bringing these samples back to Earth it is my pleasure to present Dr minaki wadwa thank you Matt um this is just a real honor to be here talking about one of my favorite topics in the world which is bringing back Mar samples here to Earth um so I'm going to start here with just a brief overview I'm going to talk a little bit about what is motivating us to bring these samples back from Mars This is an audacious and Incredibly bold Mission and it's difficult um why do we want to do it um we're going to talk about what the status is of the current Mars sample return program um we'll talk about what the status is of the samples that perseverance has been collecting so far on Mars it's happening right now and so we're going to talk about the samples that we've already collected and those that we're going to be collecting in the near future and then of course we'll talk about what's next and uh you know where we're going in terms of uh Mars exploration and what we hope to gain from that so NASA has invested incredibly for the last six decades in Mars exploration uh through a variety of increasingly sophisticated spacecraft by flybys orbiters Landers Rovers and the reason that we want to do this of course I mean Humanity has been incredibly fascinated by Mars for centuries of course but it's only now that we're able to actually go there and actually explore Mars as a planet and of course we know that you know it's our closest neighbor it may have been earthlike in the past and so the hope is that we'll learn something perhaps about our own Planet our own Origins from going to Mars and bringing back those samples and bringing them back here and so we're hoping that we'll be able to bring these samples back sometime within the next decade or so so Mar sample return this is going to be as I mentioned an ambitious Mission the first sample return from another planet it's been a priority though of the scientific Community for at least since well at least since the 1980s I'm not going to say when I was a graduate student but I've been dreaming about Mar sample return since I was a graduate student and it's always been it's always been just about a decade away and at this point it actually seems like reality because we are actually collecting those samples that we're hoping to bring back um and we we we're hoping to bring back within the next decade but we're actually collecting those samples at this point so it seems more real than ever and so the reason why we want to go to Mars and study Mars of course is because we know that well we know that the oldest life on earth started sometime like three and a half billion years ago there is hardly any trace of that past that is currently preserved on our planet there's something like less than 1% of the Earth's planet Earth's surface that is three billion years or older and in fact if you think about four billion years there's only these tiny tiny grains these minerals called zircons which are maybe even less actually than the thickness of a human hair that's all that's left of anything that's older than 4 billion years here on Earth but on Mars more than half the surface of Mars is older than three billion years ago and we know from having studied it through the systematic exploration that we've been able to do on Mars that Mars was actually quite earthlike perhaps in its ancient past so three and a half four billion years ago it had these habitable environments and life may have been flourishing there at some point we don't know that for for a fact but we're hoping to find that evidence when we bring back these samples and so that is the reason I mean we want to be able to go back to places in our solar system and Mars is the prime example of that where life may have developed and that could give us some clues about how life may have developed here on Earth and so we're really looking to understand our own origins in this in this Quest and so the first billion years or so of planetary Evolution as well as the possibility of Life originating that's all preserved on Mars and that's the real motivation for going there and so the big questions then those questions relate to understanding how rocky planets form in our own solar system and beyond our solar system uh we want to understand the history of you know the magnetic field on Mars that of course has an impact in terms of the habitability of that planet and how that evolved we know for example that the Earth's magnetic field protects us from uh radiation from solar wind and Cosmic IR radiation and we think that Mars actually had an active magnetic field sometime in the past probably close to about three and a half four billion years ago and what happened to that magnetic field and why did it turn off uh we want to understand the timing of major impacts of you know big volcanic events all of those kind of planetary scale processes that shape how planets Rocky planets evolve and become habitable we want to understand the climate history on Mars we want to understand what happened to the water that was once uh flowing on the surface of Mars that once had you know standing bodies of water on the surface how did Mars's climate evolve over time how did the atmosphere evolve we think that it probably was very much thicker than it is today of course today Mars is extremely cold and and dry and with a very very thin atmosphere about a 100 times thinner than that of the earth and in the past though we think that it had a much thicker atmosphere so what happened how did it evolve to where it is today and we want to understand of course the history of water on that planet as I said in all of this of course we want to understand the potential for the development of Life on Mars was Mars ever inhabited that's the big question you know are the the question of are we alone in the universe I mean that is the fundamental question that we're trying to answer and that's the one that we hope to be able to address addess through exploring Mars uh we want to understand how Prebiotic environments on habitable planets what do they look like um when and where did life first develop on Earth itself of course I mentioned we are hoping to learn something about our own Origins if we understand how life develops in other places in our solar system um what kinds of conditions prevailed what were the raw materials that contributed to that all of that are these are all sort of the big picture questions that we're hoping to be able to answer when we explore and we study Mars now you know we can try to answer these questions by continuing to do the kinds of exploration that we are we have been engaged in with Landers and Rovers and orbiters but why do we want to bring samples back and this is the reason well the kinds of analyses that we really need to do to answer these big picture questions the spatial resolution the Precision and the accuracy of analyses that we hope to do that can only only really be achieved by the kinds of analytical Arsenal that we have here in Laboratories the state-of-the-art equipment that we have here in Laboratories we have access to of course unlimited analytical uh tools here on Earth which can be applied to these samples the size the mass the power requirements for these instruments are no limitation of course space flight I mean there are instruments you know the size of city blocks like synchrotrons that we want to be able to apply to these samples that will never fly and so we hope to be able to bring these samples back so that we can analyze them with the best possible techniques that we have available here on Earth and of course there are a lot of these techniques that rely on complex sample preparation that we cannot of course carry with us to other places in our solar system and so we want to be able to bring these samples back Carl Sean said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that's exactly what we're trying to do is to make fundamental discoveries like evidence of past life and that's something that we have to be able to confirm and we can only really do that if we bring those samples here and can replicate those analyses with measurements in multiple Laboratories and so that is really a key key factor in trying to bring these samples back and then of course careful curation of these samples will allow multiple generations of scientists to analyze these samples using tools that have even that have not yet been designed or even dreamed of and asking questions that we haven't even thought of at this time and so this is going to be an incredible resource for future Generations so what is the big picture value of Mars sample return you know this is an incredibly ambitious and bold Mission that's going to bring back samples of rocks soil and atmosphere to Earth for detailed study here it is of national and Global significance of course because we have these incredible collab orations NASA and Isa are going to be working together to bring these samples back um and a lot of the NASA centers are involved of course in in the various aspects of Mars sample return program and it's going to pave the way for humans to explore Mars as well so there's national pride there is global uh impact to this Mission uh there's of course uh inspiration and impact that is going to be U fostered as a result of this particular Mission um it's our nearest term opportunities as I already mentioned of answering the question are we alone in the universe and it has a potential for really changing our own perspective on our existence and it'll Inspire the boldness of it the ambition of it it's going to inspire future generations to come and I'm sure there's kids over here that are going to be excited to see this Mission launch and bring back these samples and uh it's going to be it's going to be a gift that's going to keep on giving as we say about some many sample return missions you heard that from other speakers as well um and of course it's going to address worldclass science decadal science meaning that it's going to be responsive to what the nationaly which is the body the scientific body in the United States that sort of determines science policy and and and and questions that are important the planetary science decadal uh surveys basically is a scientific consensus uh as close to a scientific consensus as can be and the last two planetary science decades have deemed the Mars sample return program to be one of the highest priorities and so that's why we want to be able to bring these samples back to be able to answer those high priority questions that I've already mentioned before and so we want to be able to learn about how rocky worlds form and evolve and become habitable not just in our solar system but beyond our solar system as we try to understand exoplanets beyond our own solar system and in other parts of our unit universe and try to understand whether life existed there as well so what is the status of the mar sampler program at the current time well this is as I mentioned a difficult and an ambitious program challenging it's about as challenging as it can get in terms of uh complexity and difficulty um and so NASA had tasked uh an independent review board to um assess the cost the schedule and um uh the technical aspects of the mission and this was last year that the independent review board assessed it and provided a final report uh in Fall of 2023 and they determined that this was actually um one of the highest priorities that we we should definitely pursue it because it it's incredibly uh important but at the same time there are some cost and Technical challenges that have to be addressed and so NASA established uh an MSR uh independent review board response team or the mert that basically looked at all the recommendations of this independent review board and their report was uh made public just about a couple of months ago um and as a followup NASA is now seeking inputs from industry as well as NASA centers to try to explore options for uh ways in which we can implement this program uh in a p in a balanced planetary science portfolio meaning that we want to keep uh EXP exploring our solar system in a way that maintains the balance among all of the different targets that we have in our solar system to explore but at the same time we want to be able to get to Mars and bring these samples back as well and so the study reports are going to be due later this fall and a path forward for Mar sample return is going to be determined early by early next year so please stay tuned for that and look out for some of the some of the upcoming uh uh news relating to that so what I'm showing here now is uh basically just a notional architecture for mod sample return program and it looks complex because it is complex and I'm going to walk walk you through it to try to simplify it a little bit but essentially the main point I want you to get from this is that the first element of this Mars sample return campaign as it's called is already underway Mars 2020 the one that you see on the extreme left side Mars 2020 the perseverance Rover that has already launched and is on the surface of Mars collecting samples right now so it's already happening and then the next few launches the next couple of launches those are part of the Mars sample return program or the notional architecture for that program and that is what is being assessed right now through these um industry studies and NASA Center studies and we will have a a finalized plan hopefully by the end of the year and so the plan as it stands we start of course with the March 2020 perseverance Ro over which is of course busy collecting a diverse set of samples that represents distinct geologic environments within an area on Mars where it has landed called jro crater and I'll tell you a little bit more about that in just a second but that mission is already happening and we are collecting samples as we speak and we have the technology at this point to actually go and get those samples we are collecting the right samples now so now now is the right time for for us to actually plan to bring those samples back from Mars and so this is actually absolutely the right time to be thinking about how we're going to get those absolutely carefully collected samples back from Mars so perseverance would actually uh bring a set of these storage samples that it's been collecting to a sample retrieval Lander which is going to be a spacecraft that's going to land on the surface of Mars and it's going to carry with it a Mars Ascent vehicle and this Mars Ascent vehicle is going to have a little canister that is going to have about 30 slots in it and the perseverance Rover is going to transfer the tubes that it has been carrying in its belly and it's going to transfer them into the sample canister and then the samples are going to be launched from the surface of Mars into orbit and this is going to be the very first launch off of any planet and it's going to be audacious and it's going to bring back these samples into orbit around Mars where another spacecraft called the Earth return Orbiter uh which is going to be provided by the European Space Agency it's going to be waiting an orbit and it's going to collect those samples in a capture containment and return system and so you can see this uh animation here which shows that little basketball siiz shaped U uh canister into this capture containment return system and it's going to transfer this canister into an earth entry system which is that capsule that you see on top top of the structure and so the Earth return Orbiter will then use solar electric propulsion to depart Mars orbit and head towards Earth and when flying past earth the earth return Orbiter would then release this Earth entry system and the Earth entry system would be then targeted to a safe place to land on Earth and so Mar sample return is going to be groundbreaking in more ways than one it's going to be the first launch from another planet it's going to be the first inorbit Rendevous at Mars which is basically going to be the capture of this canister into this Earth return Orbiter and then the first roundtrip mission to another planet it's also going to be the first return of samples from another planet we have of course brought samples back from the moon but that's a small body and we're talking about a planetary body at this point we're going to be bringing back samples from this other planet so Mars sample return as I mentioned is already underway it's happening now the 2020 perseverance Rover is collecting and storing samples of rock soil and atmosphere in a region of Mars called jezzro crater and this Rover of course if you're familiar with uh the set of instruments that are on board it's a very sophisticated laboratory that's really on board this um this this Rover and you can see the uh graphic here which shows the various uh uh instruments that are on board the Rover the first one that I'll talk about this is the Mast cam Z panoramic cameras this is the eyes of the Rover and they're sending back these beautiful panoramic images of the surface of Mars and it gives us the geologic context of what we're going to be collecting we've got of course the super cam laser microimager and that's actually a a laser how cool is that it's actually shoots rocks with a laser and we can get a chemical composition for that rock by looking at the plume the that's released from The Rock when you shoot a laser at it so uh the other instrument that is being utilized of course is the Sherlock instrument which is you can see it's at the end of the arm of the Rover and this is an UltraViolet spectrometer that actually looks for organic compounds in the rocks that are being investigated um there's also an x-ray spectrometer called pixel that's also at the end of this robotic arm and that actually it gives us uh the chemical composition the mineraly of the samples the mineral composition of the samples in detail um we've also got rimax which is the subsurface radar which tells us something about the surface subsurface structure that we're on um The Meta is a weather station which tells us something about the temperature the ambient temperature as well as the ambient winds Etc and then Moxy is actually a technology demonstration uh package that produces oxygen from CO2 and so that's going to help of course when we are starting to think about human exploration in the future so these of course these tubes that are shown here those are critical for bringing the samples back so what are we doing in terms of you know the tubes that we're carrying on board this Rover well there are 43 tubes that are on board the Rover 38 of those tubes are meant for collecting rocks and regolith and five of them are what we call witness tubes those witness tubes are actually really important they're basically they serve as blank uh blanks if you're familiar with any kind of chemical laboratory you have to have those blanks to be able to tell whether what you're measuring is contamination or if it's an actual signal and so those are tubes that are closed or sealed at particular times in the mission and tell us something about the kind of environment that the samples are being collected in and whether there was any kind of contamination that might have been carried along with us uh from Earth and the sample tube of course you can see on the left hand side here uh what it looks like and in terms of its size it's about uh a centimeter in diameter and the length of the tube where the sample resides it's about six or 7even cm and so the largest rock core that's collected it's between six and 7even cenm and about a centimeter across so about the size of a piece of chalk so that's what we've been collecting on the surface of Mars so far are basically filling these tubes with these samples this is then our field site this is where we are on Mars uh this is a topographic map of Mars where you can see the lows are the blue colors and the highs are the red colors and you can see also labeled here the sites where all of the different you know Landers and Rovers have been on Mars in the past and there's some actually that are shown for the future like exomars which is going to be a future Landing site but but you can see in in circled in red the location of the Mars 2020 perseverance Rover here uh and here's a closeup of that region this is jezzro crater and you can see here on the left hand side there's a little river like structure it's a river Channel called Nar narvales and uh this is an inlet Valley where we think a a a river likee feature flowed into this Lake that was in jez qu and there's a little Delta that you can see there's inside of this sort of black kind of uh ellipse that's shown here which is the landing uh site for uh the perseverance Rover you can see on that on that frame there uh the Delta the River delta that was basically formed as a result of the stream that flowed into this crater and formed a lake and so this is an environment that basically records River Marine features it records a lake and so potentially has habitable environments where we can look for evidence of past life so this site is one of the best preserved ancient Lakes on Mars one of the best preserved River delta deposits on Mars and this is why it was chosen because it records those features and we have the best evidence of being able to find um evidence of ancient life there um it provides also a window into early planetary Evolution uh older than about 3 and A2 billion years so so the the deposits that are within the crater we think date back to somewhere around three and a half billion the area around jezzro itself has ancient crustal rocks that date back to perhaps older than four billion and so if we go and study these rocks we'll learn a lot about planetary Evolution early planetary Evolution that is not recorded or that we cannot access here on Earth um and then and then of course there's a diversity of habitable environments here that are recorded I mentioned River like deposits from Delta I mentioned the lake types of uh environments there's also near surface water uh that is that's altering some of these ancient crustal rocks uh that's another kind of habitable environment there are some hydrothermal features that we think are present here that is another yet another kind of hydrothermal or that another kind of habitable environment that could be recorded in this particular region so the things that are actually recording these different environments these are the rocks in this region and we have a variety and a diversity of rock types in this region which is really key to answering all of the kind of fundamental questions or the high priority questions that I mentioned early on so you've got um ous rocks that formed from solidification of magma these ous rocks actually form the floor of the crater of jezra crater and these rocks not only are going to be able to tell us something about what the composition of magmas was what or something about the interior evolution of Mars as a planet but they also record later alteration as a result of interaction with near surface water and so that's another kind of environment that is going to potentially tell us something about the possibility of ancient Life on Mars and then of course there are the sedimentary rocks which are the fine grain mudstones that we find um at the for at the front of the Delta that we see here and and these are perhaps the the kinds of rocks that are going to be the best um uh places to preserve evidence of Bio signatures evidence of past life microfossils perhaps so these are the kinds of rocks that we want to bring back and and study with the highest spatial resolution electron microscopes and micro probes that we have here on Earth um and then of course we've got coar grained clastic sediments that are at the top of this Delta that record high energy River deposits and this is another kind of potentially habitable environment but they also have a a variety of clasts that are brought in from Beyond the crater and are basically recording the ancient crust of Mars which could tell us again about early planetary evolution of that planet uh there are carbonates uh and carbonate is a rock type found on Earth that's deposited in deep water uh and also preserves evidence of of of BIOS signatures here on Earth and so those kinds of rocks again are are of great interest from the perspective of being able to to look for Bio signatures and then of course I also mentioned ancient altered crust Beyond jeser crater that's going to tell us a lot about early planetary Evolution as well as possible habitable environments beyond the crater um so this is then the field site uh from an orbital high resolution orbital image you can see uh the the the region that's labeled as the Crater Rim that's a little bit raised and you can see one portion of the Crater Rim right there and you can see the riverine feature here the netv valis which is the river channel that flows into the crater and you can see the Delta formation there uh labeled as the Western fan here uh and then of course the crater floor which is made up of these ous rocks which are formed from solidified magma and the star there is the landing site for the perseverance Rover and that's where we landed and started the exploration of of this region so what have we been doing so far we've been on Mars at this point with perseverance Rover since 20121 early 2021 and we have been investigating the different regions of jezal crater in these science campaigns there's been the crater floor campaign where we've collected 10 samples and then we've investigated the Delta fan front where we've collected 11 samples and then we've moved on to the upper fan or the upper portion of the Delta and we've collected three samples there and now we are at the crater margin we're approaching the rim of the crater and we've collected three samples so far we might collect a fourth one relatively soon within the next month or so and then we're moving on to the next portion of the science Campaign which is going to be just at the Crater Rim and just beyond that and so that's what we're looking forward to in the near future so where is perseverance right now in terms of uh the field site and so this map here now shows again an orbital image that shows the landing sight is on the lower right hand side and the white Trace that you see from the lower right hand side extending up going up to the upper left hand side that's the trace that the path that perseverance Rover has taken since it landed and then exploring the different portions including the crater floor the fan front the upper fan the crater margin and now you can see the blue dot on the upper left which is where perseverance Rover is right now and then of course you can see the Green Dot there which is the Ingenuity helicopter which uh you may have heard of of course um it has a a a broken wing at this point so it's not flying anymore after 72 flights which is an incredible incredible success story because it was only meant to fly about five or so and now you know after so so many different exploration sorties it finally had to um it's it's finally now at its resting place it is still actually collecting images though and those images will at some point perhaps we transferred to us as well so it's still going um so perseverance is at that blue dot as I mentioned near the Crater Rim and at the current time we've collected a total of 27 sample tubes have been filled and of these 21 of them are filled with rock cores there are two that that are filled with what we call regolith regolith is basically just a mixture of fine grained uh dust and and and particles and rock classs that were collected from one of the sand dun like features on Mars uh we've got one sample tube that's filled almost entirely with Mars atmosphere we've got three witness tubes since those are the blank tubes that I mentioned before um one of the things that we did very deliberately as part of the campaign the crater floor and fan front campaign in particular while we were first exploring jezzro crater was to actually collect a duplicate sample for every rock that we studied and that was a deliberate strategy because we wanted to put down one of those duplicates in a sample cache that was a contingency cache in case there was some kind of emergency in case there was some kind of problem where we were you know unable to access the samples on board perseverance we would have a place where we could actually go and get those samples back and so we had a duplicate sampling strategy for the first part of the mission and so 10 of those sample tubes are now sitting in a cache called Three Forks in a location that's very close to where you see the label for fan front so the Three Forks Depot has 10 samples in it and on board perseverance there are now 14 Rock samples one of the regulus samples and two of the witness tubes and so we've got these samples now sitting on board perseverance and of course perseverance has a duplicate of all of the samples that were put down in the Three Forks Depot and it's been collecting samples since then and so the cash on board the Rover is getting better all the time and that's the sample set that we want to bring back eventually and so right now we have something like 14 unfilled tubes and there are still something like 12 sample tubes that we're going to be filling with more rocks in regolith and two that are witness tubes that we're still waiting to uh seal so just going to tell you a little bit about each of the different science campaigns and the rocks that were collected there and why I'm excited about some of these rocks um the crater floor campaign I mentioned that we collected 10 samples and here are the tubes sort of represented here uh one of them is a witness tube one of them is an atmosphere tube and then eight of them are basically ous samples four of which are what we call basalts meaning they're made up of these minerals called plagas and perine four of them are another kind of ous rock called Olivine cumulates and these rocks all of them actually have in them salts such as sodium chloride or sulfates things that were deposited by near surface water circulating through these rocks after they solidified from magma and so they actually do record evidence of liquid water flowing through them as well so these are going to be an incredible set of samples that we're going to learn a lot about what Mars was like in its interior the chemical composition that melted to produce these lavas we're going to be able to date these rocks potentially and be able to learn something about the time frame of when this volcanism was happening we're going to be able to study the salts in these rocks and be able to learn something about the composition the chemistry of the water that was flowing in the surface there might even be some record of some kind of bio signatures in them there might be Organics recorded in those salts but we have to bring those samples back to be able to detect those really with the Precision that's going to be needed here are the close-ups of two of those types of rocks just in as as an example so as I mentioned we collected duplicate samples for all of the rocks in the first phase of the mission and so there you can actually see in the image that you see on the in the middle bottom uh image there are two holes that you can see and then there's a little circular abrasion patch and so for every rock where we're sampling we actually create a little we we grind down a patch that's about 5 cm across called the abrasion patch and then we do contact science at that abrasion patch and learn something about the rock chemistry The Rock minerology and then we collect the samples of the cores and so the two holes that you see in that rock that's where we collected the cores and you can see on the right hand side there the tops of the sample tubes before we sealed them and so you can see the tops of those Rock cores that were collected and you can see some of the salts the white things are the the sulfates and the some of the the sodium chlorides and things like that that are actually preserved uh evidence of water that flowed through these rocks after they solidified from magma and so this is actually just a a a um an x-ray map showing part of the abrasion patch which actually shows some of the interlocking texture of of the two key minerals that that tell us that this is a Basalt plag and pine the green and the purple minerals so this interlocking texture that we see this is a very characteristic thing that we see in basaltic rocks and so we can tell with a fair um amount of certainty that this is exactly the kind of basaltic rock that's going to tell us a lot about the interior composition of Mars Etc um these are the next two campaigns the fan front and the upper fan and the samples that were collected the 11 samples that were collected at the fan front and the three samples that were collected on the upper fan and these are the sedimentary rocks that were actually deposited in either a lake type environment or in a river type environment and so on the extreme left hand side you've got these two medium grained Sandstone samples and then in the middle you've got the five mudstones of very fine grain samples and those mudstones are really really the I think they're going to be really exciting samples to look at because those are the ones that are going to preserve possibly evidence of potential bio signatures the Sherlock instrument actually um there might be detection of Organics in these rocks as well and so it's going to be exciting to bring these back and really be able to study them in Laboratories here on Earth to confirm whether we do see evidence of those Organics and other potential bio signatures in these rocks um the crosswind Lake and apmo Mountain those are the two aolian regolith samples and those are really going to be very interesting because they're going to tell us something about the composition um not just the composition but actually even the physical characteristics of of Airborne dust as well as fine grain particles on Mars and it it will have implications for understanding hazards to human exploration as well and so we're interested of course to understand the chemistry of these samples and learn something about the the the source materials of these of these uh classs that are going to be found in this regali but it will be hugely important also for enabling uh you know us to plan for for human exploration in the future um and then of course on the right hand side the upper fan samples those are actually coarse conglomerate samples and that's kind of a a mixture of of rock classs that came possibly from other places beyond the crater Beyond jezer crater was carried in by this river that broaden these materials and deposited them in that Delta and so it's we're going to be learning something about places on Mars that are Way Beyond the crater that we're in right now as a result of studying and looking at these uh little rocklets that we find inside of these samples um here are then some close-up examples of the of the of the rocks that we're going to be investigating um this is actually one of the mudstones very fine grain sample you can see in the abrasion patch that's right in the middle that it's extremely fine grained and you can see those white things that Traverse across the sample those are the sulfates the salts that are deposited in this rock again deposited by liquid water at some point in the past after this mudstone was deposited and so this is going to have multiple generations of salts preserved in this rock that are again going to tell us something about the chemistry of the fluids that were flowing through this rock it's possibly going to tell us something about bio signatures that might be preserved in these samples and we're going to learn a whole lot that's going to be super exciting for uh for us to really um try to understand something about ancient U possibilities of ancient life being preserved in in some of these samples um here's just basically a a a little animation that shows actually it's not it's not an animation it's the real video showing the um regolith being collected from one of these sand dunes and the bit that's collecting the regulat is different from the bit that collects the rocks and uh you can see on the top right this top of the tube that's showing the fine grained dust and U other fine grained sand uh that forms this regalii along with some of the rocklets that are present in this regulus sample and so again this is going to be really really important for us to understand the chemical physical characteristics of the fine grain dust in this which is going to again have implications for um the kinds of things that we have to worry about when humans are going to be exploring Mars in the future um and then of course the conglomerate sample here's this is an example again from this the two campaigns that that I mentioned before uh this is the the top right you can see the top of the sample again and it's literally it's like a little Jewel box of Little Gems individual classs that are coming from different places on Mars car carried through that River that's coming into jezra crater and deposited on that fanf front and cementing that together are some salts and other things that again are recording the kinds of water that was flowing at the time lastly the last campaign that we are have been investigating of course is a is at the crater margin and here we've collected as I mentioned three samples so far and these three samples we don't exact there's some disagreement at this point in the science Community about whether these are sedimentary rocks whether maybe the these might be pyroclastics perhaps um but we don't know for sure but what we do know is that there are cements in these rocks that were deposited Again by water uh that are made up of carbonate mineral and are made up of silica these are both phases carbonate and silica that on earth when we find them this is where we find the best evidence for microfossils and other types of Bio signatures and so this is going to be again these are going to be super exciting rocks to investigate and here's a closeup of one of these samples and you can see here on the left hand side that's the abrasion patch you can see some of the uh clasps that you can see on the right hand side is the top of the core that was collected again that's about a centimeter across and it's made up primarily of silica and carbon as I mentioned and it's going to be really really important and exciting to actually investigate that with the highest spatial resolution that we can get to really study what's in these materials that we can learn again something about uh the potential for ancient Life on Mars so this is then the final kind of Rogues gallery of all of the samples that have been collected so far um and you can see just by looking at the image the incredible diversity of rock types that we've collected so far the tube on thep top for uh left by the way that's an empty tube meaning well it's not actually empty it's got Mars atmosphere in it and so that's going to be of course important to analyze as well we want to be able to analyze the chemical the isotope composition of the atmosphere um you want to know whether there was any methane in that atmosphere all of that kind of that's going to be super important to analyze as well and then the ones on the bottom right those are the witness tubes and so those are the ones that are the blank samples and then in between there you've got all of these diversity of ous and sedimentary rocks and clastic rocks and basically the regolith as well that that that I just pointed out to as well and so we've got an incredible fantastic collection and so the samples we've collected so far we've actually it's a better collection than we had ever reason to expect before we got there we actually had expected when we before we landed we thought we would find only sedimentary rocks inside jez crater but as it turned out the crater floor was made out of ous rocks and that was a big surprise so we've got actually better diversity that we had even reason to expect and so these ous rocks are going to tell us something about the absolute ages of units and Jes crater uh there's going to be the potential to Anchor the ages of Martian epics as a result of these samples uh we learn from the sedimentary rocks about um bio signatures potential bio signatures and preserved in these rocks about habitable environments uh the secondary products the salts that I mentioned in these rocks those are going to tell us something about the near surface water in these re in these rocks um and then the potential presence of Organics we're going to learn a lot about that as well from studying some of these rocks especially those fine grain sedimentary rocks that I mentioned um and then of course the samples will be able to address some gaps in terms of uh concern for human human exploration um what's next I'm wrapping up here pretty close uh to finishing um this is actually the picture in the middle the long vertical picture is showing the rim portion of the crater that we're going to be exploring very soon the blue dot is where perseverance is right now and the white Trace are the notional traverses that we might follow and what I want to just uh mention here is that there is a diversity of rock types and ages of rocks that are going to be different in the Rim than what we've already seen inside jez crater and so we're now going to be coming up and exploring rocks that are going to be very different than what we've seen before and they record different environments than what we've seen before some of these environments such as the hydrothermal rocks that we expect to find here they record different habitable environments than what we've seen before and so this is going to be super exciting to be able to look at completely different rock types completely different habitable environments just beyond the Crater Rim and so I'm going to this is going to be my last slide I'm going to finish up with this quote from Dr Seuss which is an exhortation for perseverance to go and explore beyond the Crater Rim and to fill up the rest of the tubes with some more exciting samples for us to eventually bring back and an exhortation for us to really get busy with bringing these samples back and um at the very end I think I'm just going to go to the last uh video which is just two minutes which is going to be showing you how we might bring those samples back [Music] [Music] [Music] wow well thank you for an amazing talk and we do have some time for some questions so if you're in the audience here tonight and you'd like to ask a question please make your way to the microphone so that we can uh get your questions answered but uh while we wait for folks to work up the courage to go to the microphone um we do have some questions coming in from online and um I want to combine a couple of them what we just saw in the video um you know it was very impressive uh in terms of you know the technology of bringing these samples back from Mars and there are a lot of moving Parts yeah um which means probably a lot of technological challenges what do you think are the biggest challenges that you face well um yes I mean I you know it is going to be something that's going to require a lot of coordination and efforts from multiple space agencies as we mentioned NASA and Isa are both working together there's going to be a number of different centers at you know NASA centers that are going to be involved I would say the biggest technical challenge is I mean I think all of the technologies that are required we are actually at a point where they're all achievable and they're all doable so I mean we've actually shown that the Technologies are all capable of bringing the samples back as we plan them um not to say that it's going to be simple but uh you know some of the Technologies for example as I mentioned the you know La launching a rocket for the first time from the surface of a planet um into orbit Rend deing in orbit around Mars I mean th that's those are all going to be challenges right but I think that we're at a point where we we feel like we have a handle on them and we can we can do it um part of it of course is going to be the challenge of also bringing once we have the samples back here um you know we will obviously have to make sure that we are doing a safety assessment of those samples making sure that um you know we can make we can ascertain we we think there's a very very very very low probability that there's any evidence of extent life what we're looking for in these samples is evidence of ancient Life on Mars the kind of environment that these rocks are being collected in we don't think there's you know any any possibility really of extent life but at the same time you know in the abundance of caution we are of course going to be we're going to be very careful about making sure that the samples are safe to then release to you know Laboratories across the world to do them so there's going to be a lot of firsts here um it's going to be challenging but you know NASA has shown through many um other prior uh experiences that you know can rise to the challenge and certainly Issa is very committed to it as well and so yes we feel confident we can we can do it so challenging but also incredibly exciting very exciting and I understand we have a few Folks at the microphone uh so we'll take a question from the audience sure hello hello uh first I just want to say thank you Dr WWA for your amazing uh thought-provoking uh presentation uh and I'm very excited to see in the coming years what comes back from ours um and my question would be uh about the perseverance Rover itself so after I guess it's done its Duty I guess what's the lifespan left on that after the uh samples are sent back to Earth so you know what we've learned from from Rovers that we've sent to Mars before is that they actually last for a lot longer than we think they're going to that they certainly last Way Beyond their design what they're designed to do um the Curiosity Rover for example has been exploring Mars for over a decade now and it's still going strong um the Prime mission of course was only you know very short compared to what it's doing so I mean the expectation is for perseverance to be exploring um you know for at least least another you know more than a decade um and then beyond that you know the hope is that you know it's going to be able to continue continue uh working for for a while but we'll see how how that goes but I think you know the hope of course is to be able to bring these samples back perhaps within some the the the Horizon for that is um you know again we'll have to determine exactly when that's that'll happen it'll be hopefully in the 2030s and so um we certainly expect perseverance to last um beyond that time frame perfect thank you so much it's really very remarkable right with Spirit opportunity curiosity perseverance we've had 20 years of continuous roving and exploring on the surface yes exactly it's it's incredible you know these machines are incredible let's take another question from the audience well I just wanted to thank you for a wonderful talk thank you for explaining how rocks rock thank you for that of course course um I was just curious if I understood you correctly you talked a lot about how the atmosphere on Mars is a lot weaker than the atmosphere on Earth and that like the atmosphere would protect the planets from radiation and debris um if if the atmosphere is that weak how are you able to determine if these samples are affected by the radiation and debris from like broader space and what's the plan to distinguish that so yes I mean the current atmosphere on Mars is certainly very much thinner um than it was in the past um and yes I mean the current surface of Mars is highly radiated as a result of that much more so of course than the Earth Earth is Earth surfaces because Earth has you know 100 times thicker atmosphere um and also of course I mean I mentioned the magnetic field that has a lot to do with preventing kind of the radiation of the surface from you know solar wind and and and Cosmic irradiation and the current surface of Mars certainly has been irradiated by that too because the magnetic field on Mars at the present time is very very weak um in the past it was not so so I think the interesting thing there is to say that the current conditions on Mars especially within this area that we're exploring now in jezra Crater those are not hospitable for life or anything of that sort but in the past it was very different and so the rocks are really the Rocks rock as you said right I mean they are recording the history the past history that these rocks have seen the kinds of habitable environments where the atmosphere might have been thicker the magnetic field might have been active there might have been liquid water on the surface all of those kinds of conditions the chemical conditions are recorded in these rocks and we can still read that record using the amazing technologies that we have here on Earth we can actually still read that record and so that's what's going to tell us about whether there's going to be evidence of ancient life there some of the bio signatures such as you know microfossils perhaps that might be preserved or even Organics those could still be preserved in those rocks um and things like the silica or the carbonate phases that I mentioned um so yeah I mean I think that's why we want to bring them back is because I think remotely it's very difficult to actually measure those things but when you bring them back in in Laboratories you can actually do it really well definitely I think the significance is really exciting but I'm not sure if like the radiation would react with some of the chemicals in the rocks and like change their composition yeah so I mean I think uh if that does happen some of those effects might be at the very sort of um top layers of the rocks and we're actually collecting 7 cmers down for most of these materials and so I you know we really don't think that you know understanding some of the the effects of radiation we actually do understand some of those effects and and we don't think that that would have actually fundamentally changed the the chemical makeup of the rocks and uh what's preserved in them um to a great extent thank you well unfortunately that's our time um but if you still have questions please stick around after the talk and um Minnie will be happy to answer some of your questions then um but in the meantime thank you all for coming here uh for this lecture and for those of you who came for the whole series thank you very much I think we put together pretty good program this year uh unfortunately we won't have any stargazing tonight because of the weather um so uh you'll have to wait for a better night for that but I want to thank our sponsors again thank you to the United launch Alliance and to aerojet Rocket dine for their support and congratulations again on today's successful launch and again thank you to our speaker minaki wadwa [Music]

Channel: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

Views: 1,194

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Id: NuYayQEjVcA

Length: 63min 3sec (3783 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 06 2024