- Thank you, well, it's
a pleasure to be here to talk to you about
looking for life on Mars. It's a very exciting time for space exploration at the moment, and the search for life
elsewhere in the solar system, or even elsewhere in the universe is really on at the moment. And in fact, the first slide shows you a few possibilities in
our own solar system, where there could either have been or could even be life now. So on the top left is Mars, of course, about half the size of the earth. And that's important when we come to speak about the magnetic field in a minute. There's also slightly smaller
in the lower left, Europa. So that's one of the moons of Jupiter. That has a water ocean
underneath an icy crust. And missions like Europa Clipper that NASA has going fairly shortly and also the European Space
Agency's JUICE mission will be flying past Europa
on its way to Ganymede, so really something to look forward to. Enceladus at the top
right there, of course, that was visited by the
Cassini-Huygens mission. And Cassini made some amazing
discoveries at Enceladus. In particular, water
coming from those icy vents at the bottom there of the image. And so water, again,
from a subsurface ocean. And that subsurface
ocean is not only water, but it's salty water coming out. There's also some sand in it, silicates, and that's indicative
of hydrothermal activity at the bottom of subsurface ocean. There's also hydrogen, and that's one of the
things you need for life. So those two really, Enceladus and Europa, those possibilities for
life, perhaps even now. Titan there is an amazing place as well. That has a thick atmosphere. It's the only solar system
moon with a thick atmosphere. One of Saturn's moons. We discovered some very large prebiotic molecules on the top of Titans, nitrogen and methane atmosphere with some of our work with Cassini. And Huygens, of course landed on Titan. So really amazing target and something to go back to in the future. And again, it has a subsurface ocean and the possibility there
perhaps is for life as well, although it is colder. So it's a little bit smaller
than the other images. Also just last week, the possibility of life
in the clouds of Venus, which you can see there on
that image on the bottom right. That seems to be a possibility as well, because phosphine was discovered, and one of the possibilities for that may be the presence of life
in those sulfuric acid clouds. The sulfuric acid clouds
make it fairly unlikely, but nevertheless, it
joins those other targets as exciting places to look
for for life in the future. So next slide actually sorta takes us, it's sort of history going
back into Mars's history. So 3.8 billion years ago,
bear in mind the solar system, the rest of the planets,
and including Mars formed about 4.6 billion years ago. So 3.8 billion years ago, we know that there was water
on the surface of Mars. The evidence for that has
been building up with, including images on the top left there. So that's sort of close-up images of one of the outflow channels
on the surface of Mars. That's indirect evidence
for water on the surface. We're getting more direct evidence now, but that's some of the indirect evidence. And that started really with the Viking mission in the 1970s. But since then, there've
been a lot more missions. And we'll talk about some
of those in a moment. So Mars used to have water on the surface. Mars also used to have a magnetic field. This image here shows what happened when the first magnetometer
was actually taken near enough Mars to be
able to make measurements. And so in the background, the image, the color scale shows you
an altitude map of Mars going from low altitude
which are the blue, through yellow and red,
all the way up to white. And those are going up in altitude. But over the top of that, the white and black contours
show magnetic field. And those sort of linked magnetic fields, those are the signs of
crustal magnetic fields, which were there from the time when Mars was forming 3.8 billion years ago. You can see those white and black contours are concentrated in the
southern hemisphere of Mars. That's the old terrain, it's very crated. From that crater density, you can tell that that surface, it's about 3.8 billion years old. So that magnetic field
was trapped from a time when Mars actually had
a global magnetic field. But suddenly that stopped just
after 3.8 billion years ago, and that allowed the atmosphere to escape, which we'll get to in a minute. But the third difference of Mars then compared to now is
that Mars had vulcanism. And that is an image of Olympus Mons, which is the biggest
volcano in the solar system, 600 kilometers diameter. It's a shield volcano. And there's a sign of
huge volcanic activity going on on Mars at that time. So Mars was quite different. It had water, it had a magnetic
field, and it had vulcanism. So it's a little bit like
the Earth at the time, but 3.8 to 4 billion years ago. That's about the time that
life was starting on Earth. So we think it's possible that life perhaps could have started on Mars. So Mars now, though, the
volcanoes are extinct. There's no large-scale magnetic field, no dipole magnetic field
like we have at the Earth. There's only these remnant regions or crustal magnetic field regions. And there's a very thin atmosphere. That atmosphere is only seven millibars. So that's less than 1% of the
Earth's atmospheric pressure. It's a carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere. So not something we could breathe and certainly the pressure
is much too low as well. It's also very cold and dry. So that bottom image gives you an idea of the sort of desert-like features which Mars has on the surface. That actually is from Mars
Pathfinder several years ago. But the surface of Mars is
really harsh for life now. So as well as that thin atmosphere, which means that for example, cosmic rays and ultraviolet can penetrate through the atmosphere to the surface, making the surface very harsh for life. So that surface is very harsh. Also, it's extremely cold on Mars. So on a good day on Mars, it
might be 10 degrees centigrade, something like that on
the sunlit side of Mars, But on the night side, every night, it can get down to minus 110,
minus 120 degrees centigrade. And so that gives you the sort of engineering constraint for, if you're sending something
to the surface of Mars, you have to have it able to cope with that type of environment. So Mars is now cold and dry and really harsh for life on the surface. And that's why we want to drill underneath the surface with
the Rosalind Franklin rover, which I'll talk about. But how do we know that Mars actually had water on the surface? So I mentioned the indirect evidence. So lots of orbiters have been able to see the signs of water on the surface. But more recently, starting
with NASA Opportunity in 2004, which landed on the surface successfully, it's been possible to see
direct evidence for water. So we can see in that middle
image that's being shown here. It landed actually in a crater on Mars. It's a bit like an
interplanetary hole-in-one to actually get, to get the
spacecraft in that crater. Because those are sedimentary rocks towards the horizon there that you can see in the
middle of the image. And so that's the first
time that was seen on Mars. So if you move the rover and actually go up to
those sedimentary rocks, and with the instruments
that were on Opportunity, you're able to do some mineralogy to see what minerals are there. So for example, the alpha
approach on X-ray spectrometer on that bottom left-hand image, what happens here is
that a radioactive source is taken and you're
looking what comes off. And these peaks have to do with particular elements in this case. So the big peak there in the
middle is to do with iron. No surprise that there's
iron on the surface of Mars. Mars are the red planet
because of iron oxide. So things like iron and other
metals are seen there as well. But the things with the white boxes, things like sulfur, bromine, and chlorine, those are more refractory, and it's most likely that water would have taken those there. So that was the sort of first indication of direct evidence of
water having been involved. And even more from another
instrument on Opportunity. This is a rover, so it can
move along to the rock, so it did that and got very close to it. And again, you're taking
a radioactive source. Moving that in this case
backwards and forwards with respect to the target
and looking at what comes off. And so those colored peaks there are to do with particular
minerals on the surface. And so this, one of those
are to do with jarosite. So jarosite has a lot of water in it. So there's OH6 in the chemical
formula for that mineral. And so again, this is the
beginnings of direct evidence for water having been involved in the formation of rocks on Mars. And so that indirect evidence from looking at the topography of Mars is now backed up by in situ evidence of water having been involved. Going on to NASA's Phoenix mission, which was there in 2008. So this landed near
the North Pole of Mars. It had this scraper, which was able to scrape away at the surface, a few centimeters underneath the surface. And what you see on the right-hand side is what was revealed when it's basically sort of digging a small trench. And so immediately, that was made, the first image was taken. There's two images being
sort of superimposed on top of each other on that. They're taken a few days apart. So the first one shows
those on the bottom left in the shaded part of the trench. You can see these sort of globules, that actually has water ice. So that has to do with permafrost underneath the surface of Mars. And there's some more water
features on the right as well. So again, near the, or
near the poles of Mars, there's evidence for water underneath the surface in
the form of permafrost. Also another NASA mission, the Odyssey mission was able
to do a global map of hydrogen underneath the surface using
a neutron spectrometer. And so the hydrogen is
thought to be in H2O, of course, water. It's sensitive to the first meter underneath the surface of Mars. And so there were particular
areas including the polar caps, but also three locations near the equator where there was a significant
amount of this hydrogen indicating water underneath
the surface of Mars. So the evidence is really building with these missions for water on Mars. More recently, the Curiosity
mission, Mars Science Lab, which is still working
on the surface of Mars are still sending back amazing results. But I've picked out this one. This is evidence for ancient
lake and stream deposits on the surface of Mars in
this particular location. And so the top one shows the
image of where this was done. This looks a little bit like
mudstones to a geologist. And again, from water about
3.8 billion years ago, that's the signs there. And on the right-hand side, this is a sort of artist's impression of what a lake might've been
like associated with that. So basically, some drilling, some samples were taken by drilling a few centimeters underneath the surface to actually sort of analyze this. And that showed that yes, water must have been at that location. Not only that, that scale bar on the bottom right is 25 kilometers. So that particular water feature was about 75 kilometers wide. So quite a large area. And this is direct evidence now for this. Also, the acidity, the pH of that water was about right to be habitable. So it would have been
suitable for microbial life. So recently also, just
in the last week or so, there's been evidence
from Curiosity for water more recently than 3.8 billion
years ago, but more episodic. And so that's an
interesting paper as well. But these are all building up to the idea that Mars
used to be warm and wet and so it could have been
habitable at that time. So another paper actually
just a couple of years ago showed using Mars Express, the European Space Agency's Mars Express showed signs for liquid water underneath the South Pole of Mars. And so the image on the left there shows the South Pole of Mars in an image. So it's just a little bit below there, you can see this area with those blue patches in the middle image. That's to do with radar, which it's a subsurface sounding radar, which the indications
are that there's a lake one and a half kilometers
underneath the surface of Mars. So this is the first time really that liquid water has
been absolutely proved to be underneath the surface
of Mars with that type of work. And so on the right-hand side, you can see a cutaway drawing using that subsurface sounding radar to see where that water lake actually was. And so that was an
amazing discovery as well. So all of this leading to the idea that water certainly was on Mars. And not only that, some water
on Mars is still there today. And so some of the water has gone underneath the surface in
the form of permafrost. Under the form of this lake underneath the surface and
there may well be others which we haven't heard about yet. But there's certainly water
in the Martian environment. And so this is giving us a good indication that some of the water is still at Mars. But also, some of it has been
blown away by the solar wind. So this diagram shows what happens when the solar wind interacts
with different planets. So I should say the solar wind is a stream of material about
a million tons per second, plasma coming out of the sun. So this is the fourth state of matter beyond solid, liquid, and gas. So there's ions and electrons, both of those moving
outwards from the sun, so you don't get a charge buildup, but the whole thing is moving out and expanding through the solar system and interacting with anything
that gets in its way. So the left-hand side of the image there show those four panels, show the Earth, but also Mercury, Uranus, and
Neptune, Saturn, and Jupiter, all of these have magnetic fields. They have magnetic fields now. And so the Earth, of course, we know that has a magnetic
field at the moment. We used to use that for navigation, homing pigeons and things like that, still actually we do
use that for navigation. We use GPS, of course. But the earth has a magnetic
field and that protects it and its atmosphere from the solar wind. And you can see what's being shown there actually is the magnetic
field of the Earth. The Earth itself is tiny on that picture. And what we're seeing is what's called the edge of the magnetosphere, is called the magnetopause. And then upstream of
that is the bow shock. So that's the sort of solar wind and how it interacts with the Earth. And that's spectacular. I mean, it can produce the Aurora, the Northern and Southern
Lights, so amazing in itself. But the role of the magnetic field here is to protect the Earth from
both the solar wind itself, which can pull away atmosphere, but also from cosmic radiation and solar energetic particles. So we're protected to some extent on the Earth surface from those. Okay, and similar story at Mercury, and going down in size there, and then going up in size
through Uranus and Neptune, with really exciting
magnetospheres those have, because the magnetic
axis and the spin axis in case of Uranus is tipped and the magnetic axis
is at an angle to that. So you get a corkscrew effect
with the whole magnetosphere, but that's another story. But Saturn and Jupiter,
enormous magnetosphere. So you can see the size of those there. So if you look at, if you were able to see Jupiter's
magnetosphere in our sky, that would be many
times the subtended size of the sun or the full moon. So enormous magnetosphere. So the magnetized objects
on the left-hand side, there's some protection
from the solar wind and from those other energetic particles, whereas other magnetized objects like Mars on the right there and also
Venus, Mars, Pluto, and comets. So all of those are unprotected
by a magnetic field. Comets, we had of course a
number of missions to comets, including recently the Rosetta mission. And a while ago, of
course, the Giotto mission to Halley's Comet and Grigg-Skjellerup and we're showing the size of those interactions on that picture. But Mars, with that tiny interaction, the solar wind can come along. And the top of the atmosphere of Mars is ionized to this ionosphere, and some of that material
can be pulled away. So that has happened over time. And in fact, the next image shows an idea of how that happens. And so this is an artist's
impression of the sun at the middle of the solar system there interacting with Mars. So both Mars Express
and NASA's MAVEN mission have made amazing measurements there showing the escape of particles, and this is an idea of that happening. So you can see the solar
wind coming out from the sun in the middle of the solar
system and then interacting with Mars and pulling away its atmosphere. So that magnetic field of Mars was lost about 3.8 billion years ago. And then this atmosphere is
being pulled away ever since. So as I say, with Mars, we have this idea that there's some water
underneath the surface of Mars, and then some has escaped
to space over time. And so we have to take
all that into account, that this solar wind has pulled
the Mars atmosphere away. Okay, so this gives us the idea that Mars used to be a
very habitable planet. What we think is probably habitable 3.8 to 4 billion years ago. So that image on the
left gives you an idea of a model of what Mars might
have been like at that time with continents, oceans,
water on the surface, clouds in the atmosphere,
very Earth-like at a time, as I say, when life was starting on Earth. Whereas Mars now, much
drier and less habitable, and actually harsh to life on the surface. So this is why we're looking
for past life on Mars with the various missions. Okay, so was there life on Mars? So it's a possibility. So when Mars was warmer and
wetter 3.8 billion years ago, there was some evidence announced by Chris McKay and colleagues from meteorite Allan
Hills 84001 back in 1996, for those of you old
enough to remember that. But many people found that unconvincing, and find that now unconvincing based on the evidence that actually this is probably to do with
terrestrial contamination as the meteorite came
through the atmosphere and ended up landing in Antarctica. So we must go to Mars to find out. The bottom right image
was initially interpreted. That's a scanning
electron microscope image of a sample inside that meteorite. Some people interpreted that as to do with potentially life on Mars, but that's now thought not
to be the case by most, not all, but most of the
scientific community. So we have to go to Mars, and so the missions which are planned are to look for life on Mars
and look at habitability. So we should remind ourselves,
what do we need for life? So there's a few things, the sort of recipe for life, if you like. So liquid water is obviously very important for life on earth. And we have the essential
elements which are important, so carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. As I say that phosphine detection at Venus is very interesting with this in mind. You need a source of heat for life, and you need enough time
for life to develop. So you need all of those things. And the image on the
right there of early Mars show that it probably had the
right conditions at that time. And the image I showed
at the start of the talk with those other objects as well. some of those might actually have the conditions for life now. But Mars, we're mainly looking for life which is in 3.8 to 4 billion years ago. But if there were simple
life forms there now, we would still be able to detect them. So Mars Express, the European Space Agency's Mars Express, which went into orbit on
28th of January, 2004, that is able to look at the atmosphere. And of course look at the surface of Mars as well with a stereo camera. But we're looking at
water in the atmosphere, underneath the surface with that subsurface sounding
radar which I mentioned, and we're also looking
at the escape to space. So we were involved in
the ASPERA-3 instrument on Mars Express, which is measuring, still measuring the escape to space. That's still going very strong. And also, so on the bottom right there, that is a picture of the
Mars Express orbiter. That actually took
Beagle 2 as well to Mars, which, and previous Russian lecturer was the principal investigator for Beagle 2, Colin Pillinger. That landed, trying to land on Mars successfully on Christmas day, 2003. And recently, in the last few years, it was discovered that actually
Beagle very nearly worked, but not quite, very tantalizingly close. And we were lucky enough to have done the stereo camera system for that, which put us in a good
position for ExoMars. So actually, the technology we developed was actually used in the future mission. So that was great. And of course, so close,
and so tantalizing that Beagle didn't quite make it, or did make it to the surface, but didn't unfortunately
send the data back. But one of the things,
the interesting things which Mars Express did
find was methane on Mars. And so methane, it measured
trace concentrations of methane. And this really is trace, 11
and a half parts per billion. So this was measured by the
Planetary Fourier Spectrometer. And that confirmed measurements
from the ground as well, which seemed to indicate methane as well. So methane was very exciting, because it's expected to be short-lived in the Martian atmosphere. It should only last for hundreds of years. It would be broken up by sunlight. And so it's exciting that it's there. Because it means there
must be a source there now. So that source could
be geothermal activity, which we didn't really know that Mars was active
enough to produce that, or really exciting me,
perhaps is even life. Methanogens and things on Earth
produce methane in swamps, and so that's the type of thing, perhaps, which could be there. But we don't know which of those two is actually the right answer. So they're very tantalizing results. This methane was also seen by Mars Curiosity which is on the surface. So the first paper actually
did not find methane, but the second paper
did find methane on Mars using the SAM instrument on Curiosity which looks at atmospheric
samples and surface samples, but it analyzed the atmosphere
and showed there's methane. And in 2018, they showed
that actually the methane seems to be seasonal
as seen at Gale Crater, which is their landing site. And so it seems to be very exciting. But the odd thing is,
it's not always seen. So for example, there is a
European Space Agency mission. There's Trace Gas Orbiter, which was sent particularly to look for signs of methane. And so far, that hasn't seen it yet. So there's something odd going on. Maybe it's sensitivity to the instruments that are only sensitive
above a certain height, because that methane
is seen by Mars Express and is still seen by Mars Express. In fact, there were some times where you simultaneously see
methane from the surface, from Curiosity, but then you also see it from Mars Express as
well, from Mars Express. And so you do see those
simultaneous measurements, so it seems to be there. But the methane mystery
really for Mars continues. So we're not 100% sure,
well, we don't know. We haven't got the evidence to know exactly what is causing it. And this has some parallels with the phosphine discovery
at Venus last week. So it's very similar. Because that, again, that could
be caused by other things, but then the other thing that it could be caused by is life. So perhaps phosphine is to
Venus as methane is to Mars. But methane at Mars is certainly one of the very exciting measurements as well. Okay, so a number of missions to Mars either are going on or
a plan for the future. So we have the European Space Agency and Russia working together on that Trace Gas Orbiter,
which I mentioned. So that is looking at methane
and other tree species. It's also looking at
water and water isotopes, heavy water and those types of things, and making amazing maps of those, and is able also to look at the stereo on the surface with some very nice images. So the Trace Gas Orbiter
has arrived at Mars and is making its measurements, but it hasn't yet seen the methane. So that's something to look out for. ESA and Russia are also working on the Rosalind Franklin rover, which is the one on the right-hand side. So that's the one I'm mainly gonna be talking about in the talk here. So that is to be launched in 2022. And that will be drilling up to two meters underneath the surface. That hard surface of Mars, we're gonna be able to
drill up to two meters underneath the surface to
look for signs of life. So NASA also has the InSight mission, which was launched in 2018
is now on the surface, measuring things like Mars quakes. That is not looking for life. It's looking for the
interior structure of Mars, geophysics and doing that type of thing, and has amazingly found some Mars quakes. There's some UK involvement
in that mission as well in terms of producing
one of the seismometers. But this year is a very busy one at Mars. There's three missions actually
which are on their way. So first of all, on that
list is Perseverance. So that's what used to
be called Mars 2020. That's a NASA mission. That will catch samples in
their landing site area, which is called Jezero Crater on Mars. So it will catch samples,
about 30 different canisters, ready for a future sample return mission, which NASA and the European Space Agency are going to work together
on that sample return mission to bring samples back to earth, to be able to actually do
in Earthbound laboratories, the types of measurements
you could only dream of doing on the surface of Mars. So we can do some things on the surface, but we can't do everything we would like. So bringing samples back
is what Perseverance, it's the first step in that. So also on the way is the
UAE has launched its mission. So that's the Hope
orbiter launched in 2020. So that gets there next year as well. It takes about nine months
or something to get to Mars. And so that will be making some atmospheric
measurements from the orbiter in a particular area are
signs of the atmosphere trying to link really
what's the lower atmosphere to the higher atmosphere,
so very exciting. Also China has the Tianwen-1 orbiter and rover launched in 2020 as well. So that is going towards
the surface of Mars as well. But none of them, none of those missions apart from Rosalind Franklin is going to be drilling underneath that hard surface of Mars
to look for signs of life. And so that is a really exciting mission. That's why we're so excited
about being involved in it. And actually, that
rover, the payload of it, the instruments of it
are shown on this graph. And so on the left-hand side are the various context instruments. So they're trying to plan
where to drill basically, to see where to go, where to drill in the Oxia Planum landing area, which has been selected for ExoMars. So we had PanCam, which is
our panoramic camera system. So I'm the lead of this, and we have a big team
in the UK and in Europe, so particularly Germany,
Switzerland, and Austria involved in this very strongly. And so there's also the
infrared spectrometer that will look at one of our pixels from out from our high resolution camera and extend the measurements
into the infrared. So with that, we'll be able
to do very good mineralogy. There's WISDOM, which is a
subsurface sounding radar looking for water ice again, but also looking at rocky
outcrops under the surface, good places to drill. There's ADRON, which is looking for that
hydrogen underneath the surface. So that is using the
same neutron technique that Mars Odyssey used to be able to see the water and hydrogen
underneath the surface of Mars and they mapped it out, if you remember. So this is doing that locally. There is also a closeup image at the bottom there in
the context instruments, and so that is a bit like
a sort of geologist Hamlin to be able to peer at rocks very closely, to be able to see features on them. In the middle, there's another instrument. So this is a tiny imager
and infrared spectrometer which is actually integrated
into the drill itself. So the drill will drill
down up to two meters underneath the surface, as I say. Inside it is this little spectrometer which will do the local geology for where the sample
it's actually got from. So we get a sample, bring
it out from underground, put it in what's called
the analytical drawer and they're analyzed. So the analytical drawer
instruments on the right-hand side, so we have MicrOmega, which is a visible infrared spectrometer. There's a Raman spectrometer. So that looks at
fluorescence and mineralogy. That has some UK involvement as well from the University of Leicester and from Rutherford Appleton Lab. There's also MOMA, that's the
Mars organic math analyzer. So this is the one with all
of the other instruments which are really looking for
biomarkers, signs of life. And so that's actually what
we're looking for, biomarkers. So MOMA will be able to look
at things like carbonates, looks at things like amino acids, phospholipids, things like that. And so it will be able to do that. It will also be able to do chirality, so that's looking for left-handed and right-handed molecules. One of those is used by
life on Earth, one isn't. So it's very well-instrumented
to be able to do that. And as I say, the key
thing, being able to drill underneath the surface for the first time. So this is a little video about
the Rosalind Franklin rover. So basically, our plan is to launch this on the 21st of September, 2022. It will land on the 10th of June '23, drills up to two meters
underneath the surface. So that's the new thing. And it has these instruments. So just while we have this image here, at the top of the mast
that you can see there, that is PanCam, that's our
panoramic camera instrument. On the front in black,
you can see the drill. Of course, the wheels at the bottom. The solar panels, it's
a solar-powered rover. So it is going to be
using sunlight for power, which means you have to land
near the equator on Mars. But all of those instruments
will work together. I have to say, actually, this was, the rover was built not
far from here in Stevenage, Airbus Defence and Space in the UK were the lead for the rover. Thales Alenia in Italy, the prime contractor
for the whole mission, but the Rover itself
was built in Stevenage. And so lots of UK, both industrial and academic
involvement in this mission, which has been particularly good. Okay, so the video
actually gives you an idea of what the rover looks
like from all angles. So you can see PanCam on the top there, the black drill at the front and the back. Those orange things
are the WISDOM antennas to look underneath the surface. We also have, there's the drill moving to bring possibly a sample
into the analytical drawer. So that analytical drawer is
at the front of the rover, and the analytical drawer
instrument are inside the rover. So we do the analysis inside
there, send that back, and scientists analyze them to
look for signs of biomarkers. So that's the rover and
a very exciting mission. And of course, that is planned, as I say, for launch in 2022. So here's some of our team in
pre-socially distanced times back in December, 2019, when
we're able to meet together in the European Space
Technology Center in Holland. And here's some of the team. The reason for showing this is to show you basically
the size of the rover. And so you can see that our camera system, PanCam sits about two
meters above the surface, and you can see that's a
one-to-one scale model, the rover there. And it's great to be
able to see that in situ. Okay, so this was a test
of the parachute system. The parachute system is something which initially the
worst in problems with, but in 2019, this is December, 2019, these seem to be solved. And so the hope is that
the parachute system will work very well. This is the largest ever parachute to be sent to Mars on this mission, so it's important it works right. It's got to deploy correctly
coming out of its system. And this shows some of the testing which was done on that in Oregon. We've got some more tests coming up, all that in November this year to make sure things are all fine. So that's one of the
things, because originally, we were hoping to launch
ExoMars this year, but that's one of the
things which delayed it, some other technical issues, and of course the virus
didn't help either. Okay, so why do we call
it Rosalind Franklin? So this is an amazing name for our rover. She, of course, a wonderful, brilliant X-ray crystallographer
whose famous photograph, "Photograph 51" of a fiber of DNA were important in the
discovery of the double helix. And so this is an amazing thing. So "Photo 51," you can see
that on the bottom left there, very famous, and some of
her notes there about DNA. And so I wonder what our
"Photo 51" we'll see. We'll have to wait and see. But she also did lots
of other important work on the structure of
carbon and indeed viruses. So very relevant work. And so it's very appropriate that the rover is named
after Rosalind Franklin. So we refer to it with her name now. Okay, so this sort of
drives home the reason why we want to drill
underneath the surface, and this is the main
point of this mission. So that we have the penetration of organic destructive
agents being shown here. So we have to drill basically
up to about a millimeter to get underneath that surface, which is bathed with
ultraviolet radiation. We have to get below about a meter to get below oxidants,
things like perchlorates, which could be a problem
for looking for biomarkers. And then we have to get below
about one and a half meters to be able to get below where
radiation is penetrating too. So the best preservation would have been below
one and a half meters. We actually did some calculations with an ex-PhD student
a while ago about this, and one and a half meters is at least, you have to drill at least that to be able to get good
samples from underneath Mars. And so this is why that
one and a half meters and two meters is very
important for our mission. Okay, so where are we landing? So Oxia Planum, so this was put together by one of the colleagues on the team. It gives you an idea of where on Mars we're going to be landing. So it's between that low terrain in the northern hemisphere,
the younger terrain, which possibly there was an ocean there. And then in the southern hemisphere, those are the southern highlands. So it's in between those two. There's lots of history of water. From orbit, clay bearing
rocks have been seen, 3.9 billion years old. There's remnants in this
region of a fan or a delta in this outlet of this
Cogoon Vallis region. And so it's an exciting place to land. Those are the landing
ellipses, which is shown there. Those are the accuracy with
which we can land in that area. And so the choice of that landing site is not only scientific constraints, an interesting place
with history of water, but also those engineering
constraints as well of being able to operate the solar panels and to have to give the
parachutes long enough to work in the very thin atmosphere of Mars. So that means you have to
land below a certain distance. But at the end of the day, it's science, so actually fantastic
landing site has been chosen. That was narrowed down
a few years ago now. And so that's the landing
site which is planned. Okay, so I can't get away without talking about our own instrument. So this is PanCam, the panoramic cameras, the scientific eyes of the rover. So inside of it, we have
two wide angle cameras, which are separated by 50 centimeters. So imagine that sitting two meters above the surface of Mars. You can get better stereo reconstruction that we can do with our
human eyes with that. Each of those has a little
filter wheel in front of it, which has nine filters in, with which we do geology
and atmospheric science. We also have a high resolution camera in the middle there, that's effectively, we can look very closely at rocks. That's like a telescope
or a telephoto lens looking at particular features of rocks to be able to get that geology. There's the electronics to run that, and that all sits inside what's called the optical bench on the
top of the mast there. But also, there's the
small but important items which are important as well. So the calibration target. So we have a colored calibration target to get the colors right on Mars. We have fiducial markers
to get the shapes right. And we have a rover inspection mirror with which we're able to actually see underneath the rover
for engineering reasons, to be able to get, so with
all, with this as a whole, we're getting stereo,
colors, shapes, and scales. And so it's an amazing instrument. So this is just who's built
the different bits of it. So our lab has built quite a lot of it, but also our colleagues in Switzerland and Germany have built the actual cameras. Aberystwyth University has been
involved in the small items, and we have a nine-nation science team. So a very international work. On the right-hand side, I can't not show images of the team who
actually built this. So the top right, that's
the core engineering team which were involved in the delivery of PanCam last year to Airbus. And so that is now, that's been integrated with the rover, which is now in Turin. On the bottom right,
that's our science team which we had a meeting earlier this year, but also we actually got one
tomorrow and the day after. Okay, so the filters,
and I love showing this, these are the actual filters which are going to be looking at Mars. So these are the ones on the flight models
on the actual cameras. And so the particular wavelengths in the visible is shown there. So we have 11 of these filters
on each wide angle camera. So these are effectively
selecting out colors to look at. So with geology, we'll be able to look at water-rich minerals, very accurate representation
of water-rich minerals with minimal error of determination. And so one of our ex-PhD students, she helped us to work
on that a few years ago. And that, so we've implemented that. And then we have
atmosphere filters as well. We're going to be able
to look at water vapor. So we look at a particular
absorption feature of water. And if you can imagine a sunset on Mars and looking at sunset
as the sun goes down, looking at the sun with looking at the depth of that feature, we'll be able to see how much water is between the sun and us. So that tells us how much
water is in the atmosphere. We'll be able to compare
that with atmospheric models and compare with escape to space. So we have a couple of new students who will be working on that topic. We also have the high resolution camera that not only is looking closely, it's also in color itself. We have a bio-filter on that. And so that provides the rock texture. So a couple of impressions of that. And so these are the actual sort of from the engineering drawings, you can put the computer-aided
design model together. And so this was put
together by a colleague. And so you can see again, the filter wheel at the front there, and that's the 11 position filter wheel. Each of the two wide angle
cameras, 50 centimeters apart, and the high resolution
camera in the middle there. And this is what it might
look on the surface of Mars. And so our colleague,
Helen from Aberystwyth has done some renderings
to be able to show what it will look like. And that's PanCam white painted so that doesn't get
too hot during the day. And also it has heaters to make sure it doesn't get too cold at night. But we've had to really put this through the test to make
sure it will survive, this incredible
environment on the surface. So not only the launch itself
is a difficult environment. The landing, of course, is a difficult environment as
well with vibration and shock, but also the temperature on Mars going down to that very
low temperature at night means that we have to be very careful everything works for that. So lots of testing has been done by our amazing engineering team. And we have a big science team behind this as well, as I say. So the reason we want to do it is science. We've stuffed as much science as we can into what is basically a camera instrument for going to Mars. And these are just some examples of how we've used that in the field. So examples of use of PanCam. So it's been to, the emulator has been to a
number of different places. So Iceland, the Utah desert, other places to be able to test it
and also to test the team to make sure the team is working together in the right way for doing analysis the way we're going to do it. Because for a Mars mission, you basically have a downlink
at the beginning of the day, that's the information
sent back from the rover from what it had the day before. You then have a bit of
time to work on it to get, to work out what to do next, then to send the commands
for the next day, and then you go off and do that. And so it's all driven by the orbiters, which are in orbit around Mars and when you can get the data back. So basically, you have
that daily structure for what is going to happen. But the science we'll be able
to do is exemplified here. So on the bottom left,
you have a 3D model. As I say, this is better
than the human eyes can do. And on top of that,
some of our colleagues, geological colleagues have put on what's called dip and strikes. So with that, you could
look at sedimentary rocks and see how they connect to other sedimentary rocks and so on, that's on the bottom left. On the bottom right is something called
principal component analysis. So that uses those detailed
filters with the particular, the narrow filters which
we're able to look at geology, and look at the ratios between those to be able to work out again the mineralogy and the
composition of the rocks. So you're sort of using
colors to be able to get the information about the
minerals which you're looking at. We can also, with PanCam,
we can image the sample before it goes into the
sample collection hole. We can also look at the drill tailings once the rover has moved back from where the drilling was done. So it's a very important scientific part of the rover system. Okay, so this gives
you an idea of the type of quality which we'll be able to get, hopefully from the surface of Mars. So this particular panorama of a number of different
wide angle camera images was taken in a trial in
the Utah desert in 2016. And written up in that
paper which is shown there. And actually, I should say there's a lot more
references in the transcript to people who are interested
in looking at those. But on the surface there, that gives you an idea of what the quality of the image is on Mars are gonna be like. We don't expect to cause
as blue a sky as that. That's something to do with, of course, scattering in the Earth's atmosphere, but we have the calibration target be able to get the colors right on Mars. Okay, another trial in the
Atacama Desert in February, 2019. So that's an image there on the left. And then using the detailed
image on the right, it was possible to use some WAC, a wide angle camera to get some spectra to be able to, again,
work out the mineralogy. And so one of our collaborators
has been busy with that, Elise at St. Andrews. And so again, the 3D image there. So this is gonna be a little video of the landing sequence and
what happens just after. So I'll sort of talk you through this. So this is through, this is the air shell which stops the spacecraft burning up as it hits the top of the
thin Martian atmosphere. So then the first parachute deploys, and then the second parachute deploys, and the structure floats down on that, the back shell is released,
and then the rover is released. And so this is the rover
on its landed platform, which is called Kazachok, that's one of the Russian
part of the mission, which also has some science
instruments on board, but the rover is on top of it. So you can see it's using retrorockets to actually land safely
on the surface of Mars. And so we'll be doing that in 2023. So after landing, the solar
panels are deployed like this, and then there's the landing platform. These are the ramps in the front, solar panels deploying again. And so with that, we
eventually deploy the mast with PanCam and ISEM on the top of it. So at the top we see a PanCam, the infrared spectrometry is just below, and then the navigation cameras, which are obviously for
navigation are on the, just on the front there. So we scan the Martian surface, and then hopefully move
off down the ramps. Now, all this is really speeded up. The actual speed of the
rover on Mars is a maximum, absolute maximum about
three meters per second. So this is very much speeded up, but it gives you an idea of what we're going to be able to do. So we have wheel walking, so you can avoid rocks
and things like that, that's been implemented. And there's some autonomy on board to be able to avoid rocks. We also have the camera to look at that. So when it finds a good spot
from all the instruments, the context instruments, we drill down into the Martian
surface and look at the, get the sample and put that
into the analytical drawer. And that is put into
the rover for analysis. So to say that will all
take quite a long time. The complete mission is 218 days on Mars. The sol or day on Mars
is just over 24 hours. And it takes, there's 218
sols for the entire mission. Okay, just a few images to finish off. So this is the integration
of PanCam at our laboratory. And so this is the electronics actually going into the
optical bench there. You can see the filter wheels on the side just before integration there
going into the instrument. You can also see how it's
important to be careful. We have to make sure that we're not taking
life from Earth to Mars. So clean rooms are extremely clean and we do swab tests and so on, which we're getting all
too familiar with now, to make sure that we're
not taking life to Mars. So everything has to be kept very clean. These are some of the images associated with the delivery
on the right-hand side. But on the left, so we delivered
to Airbus in May, 2019. It was installed in the
rover in August last year. Bottom left-hand side,
you can see those are, this is an image of the filters before they were actually
put into the filter wheel. So this is a little bit
like contact lens cases. And so the European Space Agency did a special picture of the
week about that last year. Okay, so PanCam on the rover, I'm so proud to be able to show this because this is on the rover itself. The rover has been built in Stevenage. This test actually was done in Toulouse. The rover is currently in Turin, and that shows the optical bench and the small instruments
onboard the rover. And just last couple of images. So this is the installation
of PanCam onto the mast. And I think this is amazing,
the first light image. So this is my colleague,
Matt Gunn from Aberystwyth holding up a thing to the camera system all the way through the camera system, and it says, hello, Mars. And so this is our first
light image on the rover. Everything going through the rover systems very well in August, 2019. I'm happy to report it's
still working this week. We just had a report this morning of the latest test which had
been done on the rover in Turin before it goes to Cannes
for some more tests. And then eventually
off to the launch site. So just to finish, the Rosalind
Franklin ExoMars 2020 Rover will provide an important
new dimension on Mars. It will drill underneath
the surface of Mars up to two meters for the first time. And with the other context instruments, this will provide geological and atmospheric context for the mission. So we're really looking forward to it, and hope you'll follow
with us in 2022 and 2023. Thank you very much. - Thank you very much, professor Coates, for that fascinating lecture. We've got a lot of questions. So I'm gonna go as fast as
I can to get through them. The first one I've got here is, using the Drake equation or variation for the likelihood of an
extraterrestrial life, what is the probability of two planets in the same stellar system
developing life independently? - Yeah, good question. And I don't know the answer, but the Drake equation
is notoriously difficult, because there are a few terms which you can actually determine, but you can't determine all of them. And so you can determine things
like star formation rate, planet formation rate. There has been a lot of progress made in terms of seeing the number
of planets around other stars. And in fact, all the
stars which we can see in the sky at night, when
it's nice, probably have, each of those has a planet
associated with them. But yes, putting the numbers in and getting the exact answer
to that, I'm not sure. But we're looking for independent life happening elsewhere in the solar system. So yes, Mars, the Earth, basically wherever conditions are right. So in our own solar system, we could look at where conditions
either are or were right, and then we can take those
lessons on to extrasolar planets and all the planets that are elsewhere. But our own solar system
is a good place to start. - Great, we've got two
questions about phosphine and whether there's evidence
of phosphine on Mars. And one about why water? Why is it indicative if there is water, there is life or possibly
life on a planet? - Well, water is very
important as universal solvent and very important thing
for the generation of life. And so water is seen by everybody to be very important in that. The phosphine thing, certainly, people have looked for that type of thing. As to whether phosphine
has been discovered, I would have to look
through the literature to be sure about that. It's a very good question. And of course, very
topical based on the fact that there's phosphine at Venus. But as I say, methane is the
thing which we have found, which seems to be doing a
similar type of thing at Mars. But it's an interesting question about phosphine though, yeah. - I've got a question
here about temperature. What changed the temperature on Mars from warm to cold now? Is it the formation of the planet that was creating the warmth? - Well, yeah, so yes, there's a number of different
sort of timescales there, but yes, way back in the
beginning of the solar system, Mars was smaller than the Earth of, well, still is of course,
smaller than the Earth. And so it lost its heat of formation more quickly than the Earth did, which means that there
was less heat around to effectively keep the
magnetic field going. I mean, the motions in the core, the iron in the core
producing the magnetic field. That's still of course going at the Earth. We have magnetic reversals
and things like that, but it's still going. But on Mars, that's stopped. So that's the big timescale. I think the daily timescale, of course, going from day to night, it's the fact there's a thin atmosphere. So the atmosphere produces
some heating at Earth. And of course, the reason why we have usually temperate conditions
on the Earth surface is because of our atmosphere. And so if you have a thin atmosphere, you have these extremes of temperature. So going from 10 degrees,
maybe on the day side of nice to minus 100, 120 at
night, that's expected. It also varies with the
season as well on Mars, as Mars goes through the seasons. So yeah, number of different timescales. - Great, and thank you. And I've got another question here about the lack of magnetic field on Mars, asking what safety measures
would need to be done to allow a manned mission to Mars. Could this be done with
current technology? - Yeah, manned missions to Mars. Yes, I mean there's a number of things, of course, which you need. I mean, not only the
technology to launch people, the life support systems, et cetera, which you need to be able to take them, but yeah, the protection
once you get there. So yes, Mars doesn't have
a global magnetic field, which means that radiation
environment is worse on the surface than on the
International Space Station, for example, or indeed on
the surface of the Earth. And so the fact that you have that lack of magnetic field
means that it's challenging. So you might choose to
land on one of the anomaly or crustal magnetic field sites, but that is difficult to do because that's in the
southern highlands region, which is, you don't have
enough time to actually do the parachute work to
get it down there safely. So there's lots of different challenges with sending people to
Mars, and apart from money, which is huge, and personally, I think actually we should wait with a manned space exploration until we know the answer to this question of was there ever life on Mars. After that, maybe, if the
political and industrial world can be made, then eventually, maybe. And there are plans
potentially to do that, but I would on the scientific
point of view, prefer to wait. And I certainly don't
want colonization of Mars, which is another thing which
some people would like to see. - And I've got another question here about the geothermical
activity source of methane. Would it be compatible with the fact that Mars's magnetic
field has extinguished, on both related to a flow of
liquid metal around the core, like in the Earth? - Well, there is a, yeah,
there's certainly a liquid, the flow of liquid around the Earth is, of the liquid core around the Earth is important in driving the
magnetic field, absolutely. And I'm so sorry, what's the first part
of the question, again? - Would the geothermical activity source of methane be compatible with the fact that the Mars's magnetic
field has extinguished? - Okay, well, the idea is probably that this geothermal activity would be relatively small-scale rather than a huge, large
planet-scale activity, which would be necessary for
producing a magnetic field. So it could be small-scale features of activity still do exist. And in fact, there are
other indications on Mars that there is small-scale activity. So there could be that. There's also signs of
fairly recent vulcanism, much less than 3.8 billion years ago. And so there are signs of kind
of local activity going on, but not planet-scale things, which you would need to
actually drive a magnetic field. - Okay, great. And I've got a question
here about the parachute. What aspects of Mars make the parachute so difficult to engineer? - Yes, well, the fact is
the thin atmosphere on Mars means that it's one of
the most difficult places to land of any object in the solar system. 'Cause if you have an
airless body like the moon, which only has a really,
really thin atmosphere, it's not an atmosphere,
it's more of an exosphere. But on Mars, the
atmosphere is thick enough that you have to slow the
spacecraft down using, and you can use parachutes to do it. But because it's the thin atmosphere, they don't work as well
as they do on Earth. So you've got to make sure with the parachute testing which is done that the parachute will
work in the environment which it's designed for. So as well as the tests which are done on Earth
in Oregon, for example, we also have some high altitude drop tests planned in Kiruna, in
Northern Sweden next year. So in that, you're going effectively to stratospheric altitudes, and that's about the right pressure for where it will be
doing its stuff at Mars. And so it's the pressure
of the atmosphere, which is causing the difficult, the fact it's intermediate between a thick atmosphere and a thin one. So at Titan, for example, the Huygens probe had parachutes as well. but that atmosphere was
about one and a half times the Earth's atmospheric pressure. So while the engineering was challenging, 'cause of course that's an
alien atmosphere as well with nitrogen and methane, the pressure though was
about a little bit higher than the Earth atmospheric pressure. But for Mars, yes, it's a big challenge. - I'm afraid we are now out of time. So there is one more question, which I will send you
from online for later, but thank you so much, Dr. Coates, professor Coates. Thank you very much to our audience for your attention and questions. We'll be sending you a link to video and transcript very soon. Our next astronomy
lecture is cosmic vision, watching the radio with
professor Katherine Blundell on Wednesday, the 7th of
October, 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. And you can sign up for that online now. Thank you so much, professor.
- Thank you.
