Hi, it's me, Tim Dodd,
the Everyday Astronaut. Remember that time when NASA sent an
SUV sized Rover to the surface of Mars. Yeah. You might remember the curiosity
Rover and perhaps you recall its daring touchdown sequence, which utilized
a rocket powered sky crane, whether or not you remember the curiosity
Rover. I do have some great news. NASA's about to do it again, only as you would hope they've
made some awesome improvements, including a part of the mission that I'm
super excited for because they're going to be flying a drone around in the
atmosphere of Mars. So in today's video, let's do an overview of this new
Mars Rover named Perseverance, also known as the Mars 2020 mission.
The rocket that'll take it to Mars, the timeline, the landing sequence, and then we'll compare it alongside the
curiosity Rover to see what's actually changed and what stayed the same, including the instrumentation
and the missions. And we'll even hear from JPL engineer
Bobak Ferdowsi about what he's most excited for with this awesome new
Mars Rover. Okay. Let's get started. NASA is curiosity. Rover has been
a home run flagship NASA mission, and its produced an incredible amount
of data since it landed on Mars all the way back on August six, 2012, and those eight years since doing
science on the surface of Mars, it found evidence of
previous liquid water. It discovered Mars has had the right
chemistry to support living microbes, having discovered sulfur nitrogen,
oxygen, phosphorus, and carbon, all the key ingredients that make life
to further that note of potential life. It found organic carbon molecules,
active methane in the atmosphere, and even found out that Mars once
had a thicker atmosphere and more water. It's also helped lay the foundation
for future human missions to Mars by precisely measuring the radiation, finding that Mars is radiation environment
is too high for human presence, if not shielded. So with
all this awesome stuff, being tested and measured and
discovered it raises the question, what else is there to do? I mean, what's Perseverance going to
do that curiosity. Didn't do. They kind of look the
same don't they? Well, as you can probably guess there's
still a ton of science to be done and perseverance is really going
to be kicking it up a notch. So let's start off by doing an
overview of the mission timeline. Then we'll go into the details of the
hardware and compare those to curiosity. And since this is a pretty long video,
we've got timestamps here on the screen. The play bar on YouTube is
actually divided into the sections. And we have an article version
with sources in the description. Perseverance is scheduled to lift
off during the 2020 launch window, which is from the middle of
July to the middle of August. If you're watching this
about August 15th, 2020, and it hasn't taken off, it means the
next opportunity to launch isn't until August, 2022. Although as
of the making of this video, NASA is looking into potentially
launching a little bit after August 15th as a contingency option, but regardless of when they actually
end up launching they'll land on Mars at the exact same time and
date, February 18th, 2021 at 3:30 PM Eastern,
thanks to orbital mechanics. Now just like the curiosity Rover
Perseverance will be heading to Mars, riding the Atlas five rocket in almost
its most powerful configuration, which is the five, four, one, meaning
it's going to have a five meter fairing. You'll have four solid rocket motors
and a single RL-10 centaur upper stage engine. It's going to take all that power of
United launch Alliance's workhorse rocket to get the heavy Perseverance, the
105 million kilometers to Mars. Well actually to be pedantic, the distance the Rover will actually
travel to get to Mars is more like 497 million kilometers. Because as those of you who have played
Kerbal space program might know to get to Mars, you don't travel in a straight line
when the two planets are closest to each other, you actually raise
your orbit around the sun. So it intersects with Mars is orbit and
you need to intercept Mars when it gets to that exact point at that exact time
after its long seven month journey, perseverance will touch down on
the Martian surface in February, 2021 it'll land at the Jezero crater
location chosen for its possibility of harboring life. In the past, it's believed that the crater was
at one point flooded with water, which would have allowed for the
presence of life in ancient times, the EDLs or the entry descent and landing
system will contain a new technology called terrain relative navigation. This will allow a computer to scan the
train during descent and then compare it to an orbital map, and it will be able to divert to
a safer landing zone if necessary. Another feature known as the range
trigger will determine when the parachute should be open, allowing the Rover to land much closer
to points of scientific interest, which ends up saving valuable time
that otherwise be spent just slowly driving around on Mars. So here's how that sequence
of events will actually occur. This might all sound pretty familiar if
you've seen curiosity's landing sequence that also features the
rocket powered sky-crane. [Inaudible]. At entry minus 10 minutes, the cruise stage separates and burns up
in the Martian atmosphere at entry plus zero minutes, that's of course, when the craft will begin to
enter the Martian atmosphere. Entry plus 80 seconds, the
heat shield experiences, the maximum amount of
heating roughly 2100 degrees Celsius. At entry plus 90
seconds, the craft experiences, the maximum deceleration
slowing down from 21,200 kilometers an hour to just
1600 kilometers an hour and only two and a half minutes at E
plus 240 seconds at an altitude of around nine to 13 kilometers,
the parachute deploys. At E plus 260 seconds shortly
after the heat shield separates and falls to the Marshall surface, the radar ground system will activate and
begin scanning the Martian surface for a suitable touchdown zone at
around E plus 350 seconds. The back shell separates and the Rover
begins a brief free fall before the landing motors ignite. This is definitely the maximum pucker
moment at an altitude of just 21 meters. The Rover separates from the landing
stage and is gently lowered to the ground on three nylon ropes. At this point,
the craft has slowed down too, just 2.7 kilometers an hour. Finally, the Rover touches down on the surface
and the landing stage that sky crane will fly away before it
crashes into the surface. And this will officially
begin perseverance his mission
on the surface of Mars. Now, if you're anything like me, maybe you've always wondered how
can that sky crane make he sends? It seems like there's a lot
of factors, extra parts, extra systems dangling from
this rope and all this stuff. It seems like a lot more
trouble than it's worth. Why don't they just put the Rover on top
of the sky-crane and just land it like normal and drive off the top. Wouldn't
that be a lot it's easier and lighter? Well, to answer that there's really
two main reasons. And the first one is, when you have something
as heavy as perseverance, which is about a metric ton landing
propulsively you can't have the rocket engines firing too close to the
ground. You'll basically make a crater, which is the same reason why we're seeing
the lunar Lander version of Starship have auxiliary landing
engines up really high. So if you did put the Rover on top of
it and you wanted to make sure those rockets weren't too close to the ground, you'd have to put it on like giant stilts
or giant landing legs and those weigh a lot. And then now your rover's on top of a
giant thing with landing legs and stilts, and to drive it off, you'd have to have this ramp or some kind
of system then to get it off of that. And now you just added even more weight
and complexity and made it pretty, pretty risky, honestly. And the
other reason is actually for control. It's a lot easier to let the crane just
kind of hover roughly above the surface and then use a tether
that has some Slack in it. So there's a lot of wiggle room there. You basically to start lowering the
Rover until it touches the ground. Once it touches the ground, they cut those tethers and
the sky crane just flies away. So it doesn't need to get down perfectly
and just land very, very, very gently. So again, this all sounds like deja VU with
Curiosity having done quite literally all of this stuff, proving out this entire system and
all the wacky landing sequences. So let's actually compare these two
rovers side-by-side and then we'll see what's new and note-worthy. Well, to begin, both rovers are virtually identical
designs with perseverance actually using some of curiosity's backup parts. Each Rover is 2.9 meters
wide, 2.7 meters long, and 2.2 meters tall. It's easy to forget just how
big these rovers are. I mean, they're almost the size of a small SUV, although they're nearly identical in size, perseverance will be heavier
weighing in at 1050 kilograms versus Curiosity's 899 kilograms. So let's take a look at the changes
that make perseverance heavier. Both rovers utilize the same body, which is called the WEB or
the warm electronics box. It's this strong outer layer that
protects the computers and the electronics and keeps them temperature controlled on
top of the web or the deck is the large mast that houses the main cameras, which are the super
cam and the Mast Cam Z. Then there's the Mars environmental
dynamic analyzer or known as MEDA, which is basically
a little weather station. And on the bottom of perseverance
is a sample collecting system. Now this is one of the biggest
upgrades for perseverance. Perseverance will collect
rock cores for future study. Now this is a little confusing to me
because the samples will just be stored, ready for someone or something
else to pick them up and return them for further analysis. But if something else comes
along to grab these samples, why can't that thing just
drill its own core samples?! Isn't that kind of trivial compared
to getting to Mars? I mean, isn't it actually kind of hard to have
to retrace Perseverance's steps and grab all of its cores instead of just
drilling its own samples itself? Well, first off storing samples before any
more human interference or future Mars missions land on the
planet ensures clean samples before any potential combination.
So that's a good thing, but second, it also saves the weight of the heavy
drill and containment system from being required on a future Rover perseverance, will collect at least 20 samples. It has 43 sample collecting
containers and five witness tubes. So what they're going to do is they'll
open up these witness tubes during drilling sessions that are preloaded
with materials that can capture molecular and particle contaminants. In other words, these witness tubes will capture gases
that may be released or out gas from the Rover itself, chemical remanence from the landing
system or any other earthly organic or inorganic material that may
have somehow made its way to Mars. This ensures that there's a
control to observe later on. So when they're looking at samples, they can cross reference the witness
tubes and that'll let them know whether or not the materials actually from
the sample or from the Rover, or potentially even from
Earth, the Rover stores, the tubes under its belly on a carousel. And there's a small robot arm that hands,
the sample tubes off to the main arm, it's kind of like a lab assistant to
the big arm, which is kind of cool. Then depending on what
NASA ends up wanting to do, it'll do a deposit of the samples all
at once or in a few strategic places for future sample collection and return. There's even already plans in the works
with ESA and NASA to send another Rover down that will have a mini rocket on
it, and basically be a small launch pad. And that's of course possible
because Mars has a lot lower gravity. As my shirt will tell me and a lower
atmosphere, which shirt will also tell me. So it takes a lot smaller rocket to
get something from Mars into Mars orbit, and then back to earth than it
would to get something from Earth to Mars. Okay. So they'll take this new
Rover, drive it over to a sample. They'll stick that sample on this little
rocket they'll launch that rocket into Mars orbit, and then it will likely rendezvous with
another probe that will end up pushing it all the way to earth. Now these plans change and they
won't happen until at least 2028. So we won't be getting any sense
sample returns until the 2030s at best. And this feels like a pretty hail
Mary stretch of events to have to work perfectly. It almost makes me wonder if humans will
just end up collecting those samples themselves or just bringing their own
drills and observing Mars right there on a Martian base or something, or
bringing them back to earth with them. But although it's definitely a cool
way and an important thing to preserve samples before any human presence. Okay. So back to perseverance and
that big arm on the front, it's been massively upgraded
compared to curiosity, it has a new hand or a turret
full of new science tools. It also has an updated coring drill
and two science instruments alongside a color camera for closeups surface
inspections and those awesome selfies like curiosity has taken.
Learning from the issues with curiosity, the teams at NASA have made some
significant changes that should extend the Rover's lifespan and allow it
to conduct even more science. The biggest change is probably the wheels
which have been redesigned to have a larger diameter and a smaller tread
width than Curiosity's wheels. These new wheels should
prevent Perseverance from
getting stuck in the Martian sand, as curiosity did in 2014, perseverance also has a new cutting
edge instrument suite using its x-ray spectrometer and UV laser it'll
scan the Martian surface at an even finer scale than ever before, to
search for evidence of Martian life. Perhaps one of the upgrades that
I'm most excited for is its huge upgrade to cameras. Perseverance will carry a remarkable
23 cameras to the surface, including some that will film the
final into the Martian atmosphere, capturing all inspiring footage. As the craft drifts down
towards the Martian surface. The new cameras will also be higher
resolution. Curiosity's best. Camera was only about two megapixels. The camera on board will
capture 20 megapixel full color images. Now I know that this might not seem like
the most scientifically valuable thing, but I think it's one of the most important
pieces of the mission that help raise the public's interest and help all of
us get a sense of actually being there. After all, Public interest is a big
part of these flagship NASA missions. And this has a few fun elements that
you may have actually been a part of. Perseverance will be carrying
10.9 million names on board, three thumbnail sized Silicon
chips, maybe your name's on it. There's also a tribute plate
to the medical community
and another with an image of earth Mars and the sun and the
Rover was named perseverance by Alex Mather who won a K through
12 public naming contest with 28,000 entries. I love seeing the public gets
so involved in these missions, but to expand on the public experience, perseverance will also
carry two microphones, which will capture the sound of
Mars during the landing as well as on the surface, I can't wait
for all the footage to roll in. Beautiful descent footage with
real sound awesome high resolution images. I mean, perseverance would be bringing
Mars to us better than ever before. Perseverance is power system will
basically be the same thing as Curiosity, which has proven to be
incredibly reliable. It's a 45 kilogram radioisotopic
thermal electric generator or an RTG that converts the
heat of radioactive decay of plutonium into electricity.
Along with the RTG, there's also pair of lithium ion
batteries to help handle peak demands or times when the Rover is using
more energy than the RTG produces. The RTG is designed to last 14 years, which is fine beyond the plan
mission duration of 1.5 Mars years or three earth years. This is a pretty typical JPL
thing to over-engineer and we're definitely thankful when it comes to
rovers like curiosity and perseverance, I guess, opportunity also who have
exceeded all expectations of life duration. I mean they just keep on going! Fun side note here about the RTG. This will be the first mission to launch
from the U S utilizing an RTG that won't require the president to
directly approve the launch. The permissions have changed allowing
NASA administrators to approve the launch. So our good friend, Jim Bridenstine will give his
thumbs up and it'll be launch time. Another thing that's just
like curiosity, perseverance, will use three forms of communications, an ultra high frequency antenna with data
transmission of up to two megabits per second, from the Rover to the relay link. Then there's the X-band high gain antenna, which has a steerable beam that can
transmit data directly to earth at 160 to 500 bits per second. And lastly, there's an X band, low gain antenna, which is primarily for receiving signals
and can only transfer 10 bits per second. So you really don't want to use this
for any images or anything like that. Another fun upgrade and experiment
that's going to be on perseverance. And something that's going to be really
useful for future crewed missions to Mars will be the first attempts
at producing oxygen on the surface of Mars using in-situ
resource utilization with an awesome experiment called MOXIE. Although Mars has an atmosphere
it's very thin as you can read on my shirt, only about 1% as dense
as birth and of that 1% density carbon dioxide makes
up around 96% of the gas in Mars' is atmosphere. Oxygen is only 0.174% compared to the 21% in Earth's much
thicker atmosphere getting really pedantic here. If you factor in
the partial pressures of earth and Mars, take the average temperature into
consideration and convert to moles, taking a breath on Mars,
you'd only inhale about 0.071% as much oxygen as you would at sea level
on earth. Or in other words, there's about 14,000 times more oxygen per liter on earth than on
the surface of Mars. So if humans are going to live on
Mars, we've got to make oxygen. And maybe just as importantly, if
these humans are to return home, they'll need oxygen for their rocket. So figuring out how to make oxygen out
of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mars is vital. And as if
all of this wasn't just enough, awesome upgrades, Perseverance has one more
incredible trick up its sleeve, or should I say under its belly, Perseverance will not be flying alone. It'll be joined by a small drone
helicopter named ingenuity. Ingenuity will demonstrate the possibility
of flight on Mars and will provide engineers on Earth with aerial images
to better plan routes for Perseverance because of its proximity to the surface, Ingenuity will capture images with
approximately 10 times the resolution of orbital images. Ingenuity is
pretty lightweight though. It only weighs 1.8 kilograms and has
two counter-rotating rotors that are 120 centimeters in diameter. It's pretty awesome that they can just
use to counter rotating blades to be able to do all the control
dynamics of this vehicle. The little helicopter drone is expected
to fly at least five times in its 30 day test campaign with each flight
lasting no more than just three minutes. While that's
not that long of times, of course the blades have to do quite
a bit of work in that really thin atmosphere. The idea
of there being a drone, that's just flying around
on another planet though,
millions of kilometers away, honestly, absolutely incredible
to me. Okay. Okay. Okay. I might just be a little
bit biased perhaps. I just think it's extra cool because
I've seen it with my own eyes from only a few meters away while it was going
through its final testing at JPL. Now this will just be the
first of hopefully many
drones to fly around on other worlds. Because of course, I'm also
looking forward to the dragon fly mission, but I'll be a quad copter that'll be
flying around on Saturn's largest moon Titan, but that won't
happen until the mid 2030s. So Perseverance is a pretty
massive overhaul of Curiosity
and has a ton of cool things to look forward
to. So all this said, I asked my friend and JPL engineer Bobak
Ferdowsi what he was most excited for. Hey Tim, it's Bobak, you know, as one of the people who got to work on
curiosity and help get it to Mars with perseverance kind of being
like a 2.0 version of that. It feels a little bit like
a proud grandparent now, and I'm really excited for the mission
and what it's going to accomplish and all the improvements that
were made from curiosity. I think two that stand out to me in
particular: Terrain relative navigation, that's basically where the Rover can
avoid major obstacles during the landing that really increases the
chance of landing safely. And I would say the MOXIE instrument
where it's creating oxygen on the atmosphere of Mars, not only does that mean incredible
things for generating fuel on Mars, but as somebody who kind of hopes one
day maybe to visit their baby on Mars, I would love to have lost
the oxygen. When I get there, I'm really excited for the team. I wish them all a super
safe and successful journey. I can't wait to see what
this mission shows us. Personally, I think I'm in between ingenuity the
drone and just seeing better images in general, but then again,
In-Situ resource utilization. That's going to be amazing.
I mean, think about it. SpaceX's Starship will require In-Situ
resource utilization in order to get back from Mars, it
has to make its own fuel. It has to make methane
and oxygen. So I mean, it's a vital thing that
needs to be tested out. There's just so many awesome things
to look forward to on Perseverance. I don't know if I can pick a
favorite, but what about you? What are you most looking forward to? What other questions do you
have about this mission? Maybe you're one of the people
has their name on Perseverance. Let me know your thoughts or
questions in the comments below. But if you have any more questions,
you can join me live for this launch, whenever that happens and the landing, both of which I will live stream with
you all and help point out all of the exciting things along the way
and answer your questions live. Thank you guys for hanging out with me
and my brand new studio space that I'm still working on. There's still
a lot more work to be done. You'll probably be seeing some different
changes in different backgrounds in the future. I'm still working
on quite a bit of things. And I owe of that to my Patreon supporters
for helping me make all of this stuff possible. Making hardware upgrades, hopefully better image quality we're
shooting in 6k now everybody! I love it. And I'm just so thankful to
be able to take this little, little hobby of mine and turn it
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Astronaut. Thank you guys. And while you're online, be sure and check out my web
store for new shirts like this. The awesome future Martian society shirt, which as mentioned has Mars is atmospheric
composition and gravity and reminder to wear a space suit if you're outside. But it also has the exact landing
coordinates of Starship at its prime A candidate landing site on
Arcadia Planatia, Elon Musk
even noticed when I was, I was wearing a shirt and last time
I interviewed him and he goes, "Oh, Arcadia Planatia, is that your
favorite place on Mars? I go, "I think it is, but really
it's your favorite place! Because this is the prime candidate
landing site for Starship" and he just laughed. He's like, "yeah, that's awesome." So you can get
your own awesome shirt or other cool merchandise, by going to
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Stanley from Stanley creative, for his help, with the 3D animations
and 3D renders in this video, check out his awesome Rocket Explorer app, or maybe show him some love by supporting
his awesome work on Patreon too. And perhaps you noticed my MOVA globe
here on the desk or in the background, I've had these MOVA Globes for years
they're some of my favorite things ever. They're just powered by light.
There's no batteries or anything. There's a link in the description
on where you can get your own. I promise if you get one and you have it, every guest that's over is going
to be like, how does that work? They're just going to be mesmerized.
They're absolutely incredible. So again, check the link in the description
below to see how you can get yours! Thanks everybody, that's going
to do it for me. I'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, bringing space
down to Earth for everyday people. [Inaudible].
This is a great video!! I love it