Voyage of Curiosity: A Martian Chronicle 4k

the goal was audacious to find out if life could ever have existed on mars [Music] odyssey is still strong and if the planet is safe enough now for human explorers eight kilometers loud range has separated we've acquired the ground with the radar standing by professional separation just getting to the surface was risky requiring technologies never before tried her journey was going to be complicated and dangerous all alone on mars the robotic rover would have to learn and adapt touchdowns and so would her human handlers [Music] [Music] we are down but where are we [Music] there's the peak of aeolus mons better known to the team as mount sharp [Music] our descent imaging camera is unexpectedly still working [Music] we'll have an extra eye on the ground throughout the mission and we are not alone mars odyssey mars express and the mars reconnaissance orbiter monitored the landing from orbit relaying our telemetry through the deep space network their timing was perfect the high-rise camera aboard the reconnaissance orbiter captured us descending on parachute the day here lasts 24 hours 39 minutes 35.24 seconds nearly 40 minutes longer than an earth day it's called a saul above highrise has found us the back shell descent stage our heat shield even craters left by the tungsten ballast weights we're about 10 kilometers from the base of mount sharp our ultimate goal it's the most accurate mars landing yet achieved we deploy our high gain antenna now we can talk directly to earth it's time to put up our mast a series of nav cam images are assembled into our first selfie engineers had worried that dust kicked up by breaking rockets would cover the rover but curiosity's decks appear mostly clear and ready for action [Applause] the team at jpl wipes more than 500 000 lines of entry descent and landing code replacing it with surface mission instructions curiosity's on-board computers are a pair of radiation-hardened power pc chips bust to two gigabytes of flash memory and 256 megabytes of dynamic ram it takes the next seven saws to upload and check the new software then we are a spacecraft no longer but a rover eager to explore curiosity is a direct descendant of tiny sojourner the 1997 mars pathfinder rover and a big brother to the rover's spirit now asleep on mars and opportunity still doing science about 7 000 kilometers away [Music] designed and built at nasa caltech's jet propulsion laboratory every component of this rolling lab was tested tweaked retested and refined [Music] they sent power to the drive motors performed a traditional shake and bake test severe vibration then heating and chilling in a vacuum [Music] chamber [Music] they tested its ground-finding radar from an f a-18 hornet jet and an as350 helicopter flying over terrain similar to mars they invented and perfected its supersonic parachute design at the speed curiosity would travel in the high martian atmosphere the chute would fill or fail in a fraction of a second test data would only have meaning if the team could see the failure modes so these became the best photographed parachute inflations in history they tried out their risky sky crane deployment with all of jpl watching two one fire [Music] after long debate the science team settled on a landing site gale crater at its center mount sharp is built in layers clays at the bottom sulfur and oxygen bearing minerals above and complex channels carved long ago by flowing liquid at every altitude the mountain offers a chance to voyage up through millions of years of geologic time on mars [Laughter] [Music] we've taken the frames of a complete panoramic picture now rocket blasts from our sky crane have scoured the surface in places which appear as light grey smudges the geologists are fascinated by what the thrusters have uncovered [Music] curiosity's chemcam finds its calibration marks mounted aft next to our onboard nuclear power source [Music] by zapping bits of mars with its infrared laser curiosity can tell what a rock is made of from up to seven meters away we target a fist-sized rock named coronation [Music] vaporizing a tiny area with a pulse hotter than the surface of the sun we record the spectrum of the plasma ball from ultraviolet through infrared the laser melts a spot less than one millimeter across so we send a series of pulses to cover the minerals variations on sol 20 chemcam sends down its first raster of five side-by-side laser blasts [Music] our wheels print the letters jpl on mars in morse code to check if we're slipping on terrain rover drivers are eager to test curiosity's navigation systems using visual odometry the rover can drive short stretches all on its own by saw 26 we've driven over 100 meters more than a football field length road test behind her she's licensed to drive on mars about 300 meters ahead the cameras see a place where three different terrain types flow together we call it glenelg that's a palindrome the same word read forward and backward because we'll visit it on the way in and again on the way out long before curiosity touched down the geology team created a map based on orbiter images they overlaid a grid each box one and a half kilometers on a side is named for an earth town of less than one hundred thousand inhabitants when the team spots a noteworthy object they name it after a geologic feature from its hometown on earth curiosity's arm-mounted mars hand lens imager or molly is much more than just a selfie stick like sherlock holmes the rover carries this molly magnifying glass to look closely at clues to past events [Music] curiosity can also examine herself all is in order molly snaps its calibration target including a 1909 lincoln copper penny the team now rotates the turret 90 degrees to calibrate the alpha particle x-ray spectrometer if molly is the rover's eye then apxs is her nose between mali and apxs is the sampling drill with a brush-like dust removal tool the drt [Music] rounding out the tool turret is the complex chimera [Music] it can scoop soil then sieve sift and send the sample into two labs located inside the rover to do this curiosity executes an elaborate hip-hop dance of precision robotics watching chimera pop and lock reminds us of curiosity's actual size [Music] none of her cameras can capture more than 2 megapixels but by stitching images together the rover teams get all the resolution they need [Music] to precisely position curiosity on a science target rover drivers visualize various paths on a 3d terrain map which can be lit for any time in the martian day on sol 44 the apxs is tasked with making its first science sniff and the mali its first science close-up of a mars rock we named the rock jake matiovich to honor our friend and mentor who had passed away just after we landed every six-wheeled mars rover owes its basic design to jake the jpl mathematician turned engineer who was a driving force of the 1997 sojourner rover through some clever improvising the team gets apxs and mali data of a spot already shot by chemcam we quickly determined that jake's rock was born in an ancient volcano this is mars rover science at its best jake would have been proud we have gathered enough data to make a bold announcement this is a rock that was formed in the presence of water mars may not now be inhabited but it definitely could have been our mission has found abundant evidence that water flowed here on ancient mars and did so for a long time it turns out curiosity landed close to the end of an ancient river flowing out of gale crater's ring of hills [Music] rivers flowed down the slopes of mount sharp as well as they hit flatter ground these rivers splintered into many smaller streams spreading out into an alluvial fan we can now confirm something else scientists have long suspected mars atmosphere was much thicker in the past and it held much more water than it does now sniffing the air the sam experiment notices the thin atmosphere has an unusually high concentration of heavy isotopes of hydrogen argon and carbon this tells the tale there was once a dense blanket of air around mars which was stripped away from the top the maven orbiter will later confirm that this loss is still happening earth's atmosphere is more than 100 times thicker than mars why did the red planet lose its air it may simply be a matter of gravity mars is only about a third the mass of earth still mars does have wind and weather the rover's environmental monitoring station keeps track of air pressure humidity temperature and wind on many saws at around local noon time its barometer has recorded small dips in air pressure these may be similar to the dust devils photographed by both spirit and opportunity but there's no visible evidence of them here in the lowlands of gale where winds blow down from mount sharp in front of us or from the crater's rim behind us these winds are seasonal [Music] mars orbit is much more eccentric or elliptical than that of earth that means the lengths of seasons vary much more here autumn in the southern hemisphere of mars is the longest season spring is the shortest curiosity keeps track of seasons using an ancient instrument a sundial [Music] we take the largest photo yet three different cameras contribute almost 900 images to make this 1.3 billion pixel panorama of rock nest centered on mount sharp to the south we can now visualize the ancient lake lying between where we are and where we're going [Music] after 100 saws of pre-planned systems checks curiosity has gone from mechanical robot to field geochemist as we set off from rock nest curiosity's drivers hand the keys to the science team [Music] from now on operations will be discovery driven the quest for domains of life will rule the mission the rover is headed for yellowknife bay a shallow depression with remnants of an ancient lake and stream beds [Music] we're keeping our eye on a regional dust storm it's far to our southwest and we hope that it weakens before it arrives [Music] we've arrived at yellowknife bay three different layers of terrain lie exposed here it could have been the shoreline of a shallow lake the lower plate rock is full of spherical bumps technically called concretions the calling cards of water that once percolated through mud does water flow anywhere on mars today the mars odyssey and mars reconnaissance orbiters have documented seasonal streaks running downhill seen mostly at latitudes around mars equator the dark traces appear in late spring or early summer researchers call them active slope features based on the temperatures at those times the most likely cause is salty water melting out of subsurface ice [Music] the water or whatever it is doesn't flow constantly and by late summer the features [Music] fade curiosity will lose touch with earth for the entire month of april 2013 as the sun appears to slip between earth and mars what's known as solar conjunction jpl preloads the rover with 30 saws of autonomous science to do [Music] [Applause] one group of researchers thinks that a series of matted sheets in yellowknife bay look like structures produced on earth by microbes over three billion years ago could some of these rocks on mars have been made by microbes mars is now out from behind the sun we're eager to do more contact science we choose another flat veined rock less than three meters away from john klein the idea is to perfectly place the rover her arm and its turret then pick the exact drill location to maximize research and minimize risk cumberland is loaded with concretions that likely formed when water evaporated dumping minerals behind and so we drill our second 1.6 centimeter shaft into mars then shoot a line of laser zaps to see what's in the tailings always learning from our rover the team uploads new chemcam code to make sure it never looks directly at the sun which could kill the instrument [Music] we've come upon a mini cliff just 50 centimeters tall it's full of holes many of which have small islands of other material in them is it an igneous volcanic rock that bubbled a sedimentary mud rock through which gas fizzed or liquid percolated another mystery [Music] like watching starships passing in the night if you sat next to curiosity looking up through a small telescope this is what you'd see curiosity catches mars inner moon phobos sailing past its smaller outer brother deimos in real time how big the martian moons would look compared to earth's they're much smaller but orbit much closer [Music] on another saw we stopped to observe mars tiny moons moving across the face of the sun [Music] but neither is large enough to totally eclipse the sun on the long road to mount sharp we pause at a location called darwin in one of the outcroppings the rock cracked long ago fluid carrying minerals filled the crack then evaporated while the rock eroded away the hardened minerals remained the mars hand lens imager sends a high-resolution presidential portrait from mars at closest focus each of molly's pixels captures about five ten thousandths of an inch it's not the sharpest camera on mars but it's on the most mobile platform allowing the rover to photograph a wide range of remarkable rocks the layered terrain of mount sharp beckons we're closer but we need to get on the road again we've driven almost five kilometers curiosity's six metal wheels are taking a beating the hard jagged surfaces lining the foothills of mount sharp have left punctures and dents in our metal tread bands we adopt the strategy drive less and drill more to optimize the scientific harvest we'll aim for a low sand dune we're calling dingo gap to give us a smoother road to the upper mountain overhead mars reconnaissance orbiter watches us make tracks chemcam's telescope snaps an image of harrison rock then zaps it with a laser revealing again distinctive signs of volcanism this was a land of fire and water [Music] we're rolling over the low dune at dingo gap now it's just a meter tall but if the sand turns out to be super soft we could be in trouble [Music] we go through it backwards the first time we've done this looking back at our tracks the dark color resembles mud but don't be fooled mars is bone dry ultraviolet light unfiltered by the thin atmosphere bleaches the landscape we've exposed the true color of the sand [Music] grains [Music] so we've reached a spot called the kimberley up ahead the full grandeur of the mountain looking down at the terrain the team is starting to understand how this land was put together driving further only confirms the story this was a river delta [Music] [Music] we're working a sandstone fragment called winjana named for a gorge in northwest australia we brush away its rusty rind we punch it with our hammer drill it's the first rock we've bored into that isn't mudstone chemcam shoots the shaft its dark manganese dioxide would have needed strong oxidizing and lots of water to form windjana is telling us that winds of abundant oxygen blew through here in the ancient past on sol 640 the mast cam spies an iron meteorite lying partially exposed among the pebbles the team names the meteorite lebanon it's probably a rare type known as a palacite thought to form deep inside large asteroids on a planet where life may have failed [Music] we've discovered a shard of a world that shattered apart mars thin atmosphere lets many such impactors through comparing before and after images from orbiters more than 400 fresh craters have been discovered [Music] knowing the frequency and size of such impacts is important for understanding the dangers faced by future explorers [Music] it's also critical for understanding the evolution of our solar system [Music] curiosity has now spent more than one martian year 687 earth days exploring mars [Music] she makes her own celebratory fireworks the hand lens camera catches a ball of plasma generated as chemcam's laser hits a baseball-sized rock named nova [Music] we roll onto the sandy floor of hidden valley there's a clutch of bright flat stones rising amid the sand and a promising target bonanza king we brush and drill but it's too wobbly and the sand too slippery we choose a better route with better rocks and rove on back on earth some tiny microbes are threatening to change the way science is done on mars a study has revealed that certain microorganisms can survive the clean room sterilization techniques used on spacecraft some may have hitched a ride to mars with us curiosity isn't capable of seeing microbes directly either native martians or transplants from earth we'll have to be extra careful in evaluating any organic material we pick up at a stop on the lower slope the onboard labs find a sharp signature of hematite working mostly in the stable temperatures of martian night the sam finds these rocks have undergone much more oxidation than others [Music] just what happens when wet rocks are repeatedly exposed to dry atmosphere next stop whale rock here ripples of water slowed down as they slipped into an ancient lake [Music] flowing across the bottom and dropping their mud and stones to make the layers of the whale and other nearby rocks [Music] this is exactly what happens on earth where rivers fan out into bodies of open water [Music] the science team has reached consensus a series of large lakes once covered much of the floor of gale crater layers of silt built up over tens of millions of years the stacked strata tell a tale of recurring lakes winds river deposits and dry spells of a climate in cyclical turmoil [Music] the five kilometer tall mountain grew very slowly the evidence here shows mars lakes and perhaps its oceans grew and shrank and grew again for millions of years did a moist mars long ago nurture life we've climbed up a bank leaving us parked at an 18 degree tilt this is the steepest angle we've tried to work some drivers are concerned that it's not safe but everything about this mission has been bold the team goes for the science curiosity brushes the rock named santa anna our science nomad machine stays rock solid stable [Music] nasa and microsoft announce a unique joint venture to put scientists on mars human geologists would like to walk sites like gale crater to see rocks up close survey the terrain confer with one another and ponder mars history so a new system called onsite is designed to let scientists interact on the martian landscape in virtual reality it could set the stage for how humans and robots will interact in the future [Music] we get on the road out of pa rump there are weird rocks with bright veins up ahead along a pass called artists drive one wonderfully complex feature calls out to the science team it looks almost like a fossilized skeleton we name it garden city [Music] the surrounding rock has eroded faster than the veins leaving lighter walls standing about as high as a kitchen carving knife is wide such streaks are laid down in lakes streams shallow seas and hot springs where the water has evaporated leaving deposits to concentrate and crystallize here curiosity measures many different minerals intersecting and cutting across each other including calcium sulfate and magnesium sulfate each one spiced with traces of elements like iron and fluorine this strongly points to many episodes of waters washing through from far-off lands each time leaving their distinct chemical calling card hinting at where it came from [Music] on earth eroded hillsides marked by similar veins are common in places where water comes and goes over the centuries that's just what curiosity is seeing along artists drive on mars a fossil record of many wet and dry times long ago the mars reconnaissance orbiter sees us rolling through the pass more than just tracking the rover mro has kept watch as the winds of mars try to bury all evidence of our landing the blast scars from our descent stage are healing [Music] heat shield marks sinking under sand our back shell getting buried the remains of our parachute flapping in a thin martian wind curiosity alone escaped the shifting sands by rolling away red and yellow dust lets mostly blue sunlight through so the martian sun always appears bluish we see this effect clearly at sunset when light travels a longer path through a larger slice of atmosphere before the blue sunset tomorrow we will have rolled 10 kilometers [Music] the valley here [Music] is lined with sand [Music] we're seeing thicker and more frequent wind ripples and the terrain between them is steeper than we've encountered before we'll have to choose between risks getting stuck in sand or slipping off barren hillsides our lincoln penny may be getting dusty but it's none the worst for exposure to the thin cold air ultraviolet light and cosmic radiation [Music] we decide that climbing the hills is safer than risking the sands curiosity has proven herself a sure-footed mountain goat so up we go and the effort pays another dividend we are at the transition between two major layers of bedrock darker stacks of stimson stone overly pale mudstone of the pahrump formation we park the rover up here in the rough country and put the instruments in resting mode solar conjunction is coming and we'll soon have the sun between us it's as if a piece of the american desert southwest has been transported here the stimson rocks are sand dunes frozen in time the inclined layers display what geologists call cross bedding but it was wind and not water that sculpted them a human field geologist would identify a rock crack it open extract a sample and bag it for later chemical analysis all in about an hour curiosity often takes five or six saws to do the same work but all the while the rover is multitasking she's doing geochemistry surveying distant terrain and grabbing yet another self-portrait like this one at a location called big sky though mars is now over 20 minutes away at the speed of light our calm system of radios orbiters and big dishes allows engineers to closely monitor the rover our wheels aren't worrying us anymore [Music] long before landing mro images showed large fields of dark sand dunes between our landing ellipse and the higher elevations of mount sharp from down on the ground the dune wall looks imposing the team names the first one ralph bagnold after the british army engineer who first studied the formation of desert dunes on earth [Music] [Music] a dune is different from a wind-blown ripple of sand while the side facing the wind is gently angled the downward side of a dune is steep and prone to collapse that allows the dunes to roll across the land like waves on the sea but dunes on mars are very different from those on earth in the lower gravity and lower air pressure they grow huge swirling ripple features they creep across the landscape at about 1 meter each year the dark dune here named namib rises 5 meters at a 28 degree slope a potentially formidable obstacle let's go a portrait of the rover as a two-year-old she's reached two full years on mars that's nearly four earth years of rolling science on a very alien planet [Music] the going is rough but it brings us to a remarkable place that resembles coastline on a windswept ancient sea [Music] [Music] fitting as we're in the bar harbor main quad on our map [Music] [Applause] and here's egg rock a nod to the residents of egg rock island off the main coast and perhaps the strangest rock we've seen on mars it's a nickel iron meteorite no bigger than a golf ball it may have landed here millions of years ago but it appears incredibly smooth and fresh we're being cautious with our drill but overall curiosity is in remarkably great shape [Music] our rover drivers have long since learned how to minimize wear to the wheels our science instruments are tuned up and singing the rtg power source is strong [Music] new curiosities are turning up among the rocks [Music] but the road ahead is uncharted one mistake could bring this grand voyage to an end [Music] curiosity's legacy is already set it's the finding that if mars ever hosted life it could have flourished here amidst the lakes rivers and streams whose traces we see etched in the ancient landscape so we'll keep climbing keep piecing together the story of water [Music] as we listen for the narrative of life echoing in the rocks of mount sharp we'll continue on [Music] ever curious no no no no no no no no no no [Music] do [Music] [Music] you

Channel: SpaceRip

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Length: 54min 39sec (3279 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 18 2020