The search for life beyond Earth has been a topic of fascination for scientists and the public for decades. Among the possible places where life could exist in our solar system, Mars has emerged as one of the most promising candidates. With its similarities to Earth in terms of geological history and potential for water, Mars has been the focus of several missions aimed at searching for evidence of past or present microbial life.
One of the most compelling pieces of evidence for the possibility of life on Mars comes from the discovery of liquid water on its surface. While the planet is much colder and drier than Earth, recent observations have shown that liquid water can exist under certain conditions, such as in underground aquifers or as brines that can form on the surface. These findings have led scientists to speculate that microbial life could exist in these water-rich environments, much like it does in some of the harshest environments on Earth.
Another line of evidence comes from the study of Martian meteorites that have landed on Earth. These rocks are believed to have originated from Mars and contain tiny structures that some researchers believe could be fossilized microbial cells. While this interpretation is still controversial and requires further study, it suggests that Mars may have had a habitable environment in the past.
One of the most compelling pieces of evidence for the possibility of life on Mars comes from the discovery of liquid water on its surface. While the planet is much colder and drier than Earth, recent observations have shown that liquid water can exist under certain conditions, such as in underground aquifers or as brines that can form on the surface. These findings have led scientists to speculate that microbial life could exist in these water-rich environments, much like it does in some of the harshest environments on Earth.
Another line of evidence comes from the study of Martian meteorites that have landed on Earth. These rocks are believed to have originated from Mars and contain tiny structures that some researchers believe could be fossilized microbial cells. While this interpretation is still controversial and requires further study, it suggests that Mars may have had a habitable environment in the past.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00of the most sophisticated planetary probes ever built is approaching Mars on an epic
00:23quest to hunt for life beyond Earth.
00:28130 million miles away, a team of researchers anxiously waits as Perseverance attempts
00:37to land where no rover has dared land before, inside a crater that might be filled with
00:46ancient Martian life, but is definitely filled with cliffs and sand traps where a rover can
00:55crash or get stuck for good.
00:58We're heading toward the ground at race car speeds, so there's no way we're going to joystick
01:02this down.
01:04For the first time in the history of Mars exploration, a rover is equipped with the
01:09intelligence to try to steer itself out of danger.
01:14There's a very specific timeline of events that have to happen at the correct time for
01:19the entire process to succeed.
01:22Perseverance signals its progress as the team monitors every step.
01:30If the rover manages to land in one piece, for about two years it will drill into Martian
01:36rock that could hold evidence of ancient life, then collect samples and store them.
01:44For the first time, we are going to collect rock samples and bring them back to Earth.
01:51In the future, another rover will retrieve the samples Perseverance collects.
01:57And through a series of daring missions that sound more science fiction than science fact,
02:04the samples will be brought to Earth, where researchers can examine them in far greater
02:10detail.
02:11We have this amazing technology that can really get those samples, bring them back to Earth,
02:16and do all the really cool analysis that we want to do here on Earth.
02:21This is a very, very large undertaking involving thousands and thousands of people from all
02:27over the world.
02:30Thousands of researchers with one shared goal.
02:34Looking for life on Mars, right now on NOVA.
02:46NOVA is a production of NASA
02:51NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
02:55NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
02:59NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
03:03Did life ever exist on Mars?
03:08And if it did, what would that mean for us?
03:13How special is life on Earth?
03:17Why do we not see it on Mars today?
03:21Did it ever evolve on Mars?
03:26What does it take to get life to evolve on a planet?
03:32That question about life is the one that really perplexes and I think really drives us.
03:41Think about our desire to not be alone keeps pushing us forward in the search for life.
03:54I like to call it CSI Mars, right?
03:56You know, it's literally this investigation where you're finding all these little clues
03:59to put together your story.
04:03The tale of our celestial neighbor, Mars.
04:08The red planet.
04:10It captures the imagination.
04:14Thousands of images paint a picture of a barren alien world.
04:21At the same time, there's something about Mars that's strangely familiar.
04:28I was born on the Navajo Nation.
04:30It's a high desert area that actually has rolling desert hills, canyons and rock formations
04:38and mountains and all of that looks like the Martian landscape.
04:45When I look at the pictures of Mars, I see the Mojave Desert, right?
04:49Without the cactus, I can't tell the difference if this image is from the Mojave Desert or
04:54this is from Mars.
04:56To me, it makes me want to know more.
04:58It makes me want to know, you know, what happened to Mars or was there life there?
05:06Can the Perseverance rover finally answer this question?
05:12We've been searching for the remnants of life on the red planet for decades.
05:17From the Mariner orbiters to the successful landings of Viking 1 and 2.
05:26Through the twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, that crisscrossed the planet.
05:32We've been building our knowledge of the Martian environment through so many decades
05:36and so many achievements from so many engineers before us.
05:40But it was the discoveries of the most cunning robotic detective to ever explore Mars.
05:46A rover named Curiosity that set the stage for the Perseverance mission.
05:53September 14th, 2012, 40 days after Curiosity landed on Mars, it stumbled upon the unexpected.
06:03I remember the moment those images came down.
06:06We were all at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the time and we all huddled around a giant
06:10computer screen and I was just gazing at this as an astonishment because it's not what we
06:14had expected.
06:17We came across a whole bunch of cobbles and when we saw that, everybody's jaw just dropped.
06:25Oh my gosh, look at this.
06:27This is perfect.
06:28It is the classic example of a river deposit.
06:33Each one of those rocks, they had to get bounced around in some type of environment that was
06:40going to turn them from something that was chunky and sharp and angular to something
06:45that was rounded.
06:47Rivers do that.
06:49Rivers on Earth do that very well.
06:52And so when we saw this, it was our first evidence of a river.
06:57Evidence that water once flowed on the surface of the Red Planet.
07:03On Earth, all life needs water to thrive.
07:09From the giant blue whale to tiny microbes.
07:15Scientists on the team have discovered all these telltale signatures in the rocks that
07:20there were rivers and ancient lakes that existed for hundreds of thousands, if not millions
07:26of years.
07:30You can think of Mars as, back in time, of course, as being Earth's slightly smaller,
07:37slightly colder sister.
07:41Between 3.9 and 3.5 billion years ago, we think that Mars was a warmer and wetter place.
07:49And what's interesting about that is that's the same sort of time interval that life got
07:56going on Earth.
07:59We have two planets with similar environments at similar times.
08:04One of them on Earth is inhabited.
08:07Why wouldn't we expect that the one on Mars would be inhabited?
08:13Curiosity found evidence of a once wet world.
08:17But here on Earth, for life to thrive, it needs more than water.
08:23It needs nutrients.
08:25We tend to simplify that search for what type of nutrients as what we call schnapps.
08:31When people say schnapps, what they're saying is carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus,
08:36sulfur.
08:37When we spell all those, the first letter of all those out, it's called schnapps.
08:45These six elements make up roughly 99% of the mass of the human body.
08:50In fact, they make up about 99% of the mass of all living things.
08:58If life, as we know it, ever existed on Mars, finding schnapps was key.
09:07Could Curiosity, a laboratory on wheels, find schnapps?
09:13The rover scooped up samples of Martian soil to decode its chemical composition.
09:20What we found was a diverse chemistry that included carbon, hydrogen, some nitrogen,
09:27oxygen, and sulfur, and eventually we found some phosphorus.
09:31There's plenty of chemical energy available for life if it had ever lived there.
09:38That's really been the big discovery of the Curiosity rover mission.
09:45Curiosity found the ingredients necessary for life to emerge, but not life itself.
09:53Curiosity has not, in fact, detected evidence for life because it does not have the instruments
09:57designed for that purpose.
10:04Perseverance is designed to take the next step in Mars exploration as it ventures into
10:09unexplored territory to search for samples of Martian rock in Jezero Crater.
10:16If you want to set yourself up for success for finding ancient life, that is the place
10:21to go.
10:23This orbital image reveals what makes Jezero Crater so intriguing.
10:30The key thing that led us to Jezero was this beautiful delta, beautifully visible from
10:35orbit.
10:37And we think that delta must be somewhere around three billion years old or older.
10:45This delta sits at the end of a beautifully expressed sinuous river channel that came
10:50in from the northwest, flowing into the crater rim and filling up Jezero Crater with a lake.
11:00On Earth, deltas form where a river and a larger body of water meet.
11:06Sediment, brought in from the river, drifts to the bottom.
11:12The sediments that the river carries are, they really just fall out and they settle
11:18down and creates a mud layer at the bottom.
11:24Year after year after year after year, it creates these.
11:29Take some of that earthly delta mud, put it under a microscope, and you'll find it's
11:35teeming with life.
11:38Tiny microbes, among the most ancient forms of life on Earth, arising billions of years
11:45before the dinosaurs, and far more resilient.
11:50If you think about Mars billions of years ago, we cannot hope for any large scale fossils.
11:59We can't really hope for fossil bones.
12:03We can't hope for petrified wood.
12:07We can't hope for fossilized leaves, because none of that life existed even on Earth before
12:13maybe half a billion years ago.
12:16The only life that we can hope for on this old, ancient Mars is microbial.
12:23Now this is where it gets tricky, because microbes are tiny, and that's what their name
12:27says.
12:28They're microscopic.
12:29And we can't really take microscopes to Mars, but what we can look for are rocks that can
12:34be shaped by microbial processes.
12:38And that's what the team hopes Perseverance will find.
12:43Perseverant microbes, buried in the ancient rocks of Jezero Crater.
12:49There were a lot of very interesting debates among the members of the science team, trying
12:54to figure out which rocks should we sample?
12:58What should we be looking for?
13:02And we have one example, only one example, and that's Earth.
13:08So the Perseverance science team set out to study the clues Earth has to offer in rocks
13:14about the same age as the ones they will search for in Jezero Crater.
13:21We went to this location in Western Australia, where the oldest evidence of life occurs,
13:26just so we could see what it actually looks like.
13:30The strange, rippled layers of these rocks, known as stromatolites, are actually the remnants
13:37of a form of ancient microbial life.
13:42In a stromatolite, you'll see there's lots of convolutions.
13:46They're bumpy and lumpy.
13:49Bumps and lumps of fossilized microbes.
13:53A fossilized community of organisms, all packaged together.
13:58There are just a few colonies of living stromatolites left on Earth.
14:03They look like rocks, but just beneath the surface are layers of bacteria.
14:09These often form in shallow water environments, where the microbes sort of have something
14:14to live on, and they pile up in these layers, one on top of the other, a layer of gooey
14:20microbes, bacterial cells that have this sort of mucusy, gooey substance.
14:25That gooey substance traps sediment, mud or sand, that flows on top of it, and then they
14:31grow on top of that again, and that process repeats.
14:35By studying these ancient stromatolites, the team hopes to gain a deeper understanding
14:41of what to hunt for on Mars.
14:44When we went out and looked at these rocks, I was very surprised how obvious it was that
14:49the structures that we were looking at were, first of all, very unusual and very likely
14:54to be biogenic, produced by life.
14:58This is a kind of a feature that we could see in Jezero Crater with the cameras that
15:03we are carrying with us on the Perseverance rover.
15:08This rover has a ton of cameras.
15:09We are carrying 23 cameras, color cameras, zoom cameras, black and white cameras, you
15:17name it, right?
15:18Cameras that can see up to like the size of a grain of salt.
15:22And so they're all over the place on the rover, right?
15:25On the front, on the back, on the top, on the arm.
15:29We have two in the robotic arm that are awesome.
15:32One of them is Pixel, and the other one, which I love the name, is Sherlock and Watson.
15:37You can guess from the name of Sherlock and Watson that the whole point of those instruments
15:41is to investigate, right?
15:43What is the chemical composition of that target?
15:47We don't have geologists who can bang their hammers on the rocks or take their lenses
15:52or maybe there's even, you can drop some vinegar to see what minerals are present.
15:56We can't do that.
15:57But we do have a lot of instruments that tell us what is in those rocks.
16:03Perseverance will also be on the lookout for another ancient rock in Jezero Crater.
16:10One that is as elusive as it is appealing.
16:14This is a piece of what we would call black chert.
16:17Chert is such a fine-grained rock.
16:20If you look really close, you can see some sort of blotchy black stuff in the interior
16:25of this gray rock.
16:27And that black stuff, that blotchy black stuff, is actual fossilized bacterial cells.
16:35This is a type of rock that we would absolutely love to encounter on Mars.
16:39The tough part is that chert is very, very, very hard to drill.
16:44So it'll be a tough decision.
16:46If we see a rock like this, we would probably be willing to give up an entire drill bit.
16:51The payoff is potentially so huge because we could, you know, maybe bring back fossil
16:56Martian cells.
17:00Even if Perseverance finds rocks that look promising, it's not equipped to verify ancient
17:06microbes.
17:08For that, the Martian rock would need to be studied back on Earth.
17:13Collecting samples on Mars and bringing them back to Earth is one of the most complex things
17:16we've tried to do with one of our robots.
17:18This is a sample tube, and on board Perseverance are over 40 of these.
17:23And the goal is to fill each one of them with a sample of Mars rock.
17:29A sample tube is loaded inside a drill at the end of the rover's arm.
17:34We had to come up with an entirely unique design to drill into a lot of different rocks
17:39and be able to extract core samples that aren't broken into too many pieces, it hasn't turned
17:44into powder.
17:45So it's actually a very sophisticated mechanism.
17:48After we're done drilling the depth that we want to, we do one final motion to extract
17:53the core from the inside of the rock.
17:58Now the sample tube, filled with Martian rock, is brought back on board the rover.
18:04We take the robotic arm with Martian sample inside of it, and we dock it inside the belly
18:09of the rover, where we have another small robotic arm that extracts the tube and takes
18:19it through a series of stations.
18:23We want to inspect it, we want to figure out how much volume we may have collected, take
18:28some pictures of it, and then we seal that tube and then go put it back into our storage
18:35rack.
18:36So all of that gets done internal to the belly of the rover with a little arm that is moving
18:41it around, which is insane.
18:44It took seven years to design, test, and build this one-of-a-kind sampling system.
18:52We've put a lot into this rover, and we are very invested in it working when it gets to
18:57Mars.
18:58And so we kind of wait with bated breath, and we do the best we can, and we do tons
19:03and tons of testing, and we hope that it is enough.
19:10Inside this massive clean room at JPL, the sampling system, along with seven science
19:16instruments, are carefully loaded inside the SUV-size rover.
19:22Throughout this process, the spacecraft must be kept impeccably clean, down to the micro.
19:30We don't want to send an expensive vehicle like Perseverance to Mars and then just detect
19:35ourselves because we didn't work to make sure that we kept the spacecraft and the instruments
19:41and everything that it touches as clean as possible.
19:45You want to have a nice, pristine sample without any Earth contamination.
19:49So that's why we work really hard to keep that spacecraft clean.
19:53Mujige Cooper is responsible for hunting down earthly microbes that could hitch a ride to
19:59Mars on the spacecraft, especially the hardy ones.
20:04The microbes that we're talking about are so resilient, they could possibly survive
20:09all of the radiation in space, UV, the temperature swings, journeying to Mars and possibly back.
20:18So we have to sample the hardware over time, and we use either swabs or wipes to collect
20:24samples, lift them off of the surface, and we bring it to our lab, and we put them in
20:29these petri dishes.
20:31We have to give them food so that the colonies grow large enough so that we can see them
20:35and know that they're present on our petri dish.
20:39If some hardy microbes flourish, the surface is cleaned with isopropyl alcohol.
20:44Over the course of the mission, we've taken 16,681 wipes, swabs, and air samples of the
20:52spacecraft and the surrounding environment.
20:55Pretty, pretty good job.
20:59But there's one part of the rover that needs to be as clean as humanly possible, the sample
21:06tubes that will store Martian rock.
21:11We had to have an environment in which to put them together and to handle them and to
21:16work with them and assemble them.
21:19We built an entirely new clean room, the cleanest environments we've ever had at JPL.
21:25We take a normal clean room and we start breaking everything down to understand additional sources
21:30of contamination and how do we make that room even cleaner.
21:35The gloves that they use, how many layers of gloves that they have, how often they need
21:39to change gloves, how often they have to change the gowns, when we can reuse things, even
21:45the computers that are used in there.
21:47We can't bring cell phones into that room.
21:49We can't bring everyday objects that you normally associate with how you do your job into an
21:54environment that is that sterile and that clean.
21:59The sample tube itself looks very similar to a test tube, but that really belies the
22:06complexity of the design and the features that are built into the sample tube to help
22:10prevent contamination.
22:13The gold coating is a mixture of titanium and nitrogen, specially engineered in order
22:17to prevent organic compounds from sticking to the surface.
22:21And that's on the outside of the sample tube and also inside the sample tube.
22:28These sample tubes are the cleanest things that we've ever sent to another planet by
22:31far.
22:33In fact, these sample tubes were probably the cleanest thing on Earth.
22:44March 2020.
22:47The COVID-19 pandemic triggers shutdowns across the country, including at NASA's Jet Propulsion
22:55Laboratory.
22:58Life as we know it comes to a grinding halt.
23:02It's hard enough to build spacecraft, but on top of that, as we were approaching launch,
23:07the COVID-19 pandemic was surging in parallel.
23:11Time is of the essence.
23:13It's just four months before launch.
23:17A limited number of essential workers are permitted on site.
23:21It's very difficult to control whether or not face masks are worn outside of the workplace
23:28environment.
23:29It's easy when you're in a clean room.
23:30That's what you do.
23:32You wear your face masks.
23:33You wear your bunny suits.
23:34We actually felt safer in the clean room than we did in the regular environment.
23:40Despite the team's best efforts, it's unclear whether they'll be ready to launch on time.
23:46We launch to Mars typically every two years.
23:51And if we miss that opportunity, that's a long time to wait.
23:57One thing to understand about sending something to Mars is that we have a very short launch
24:03window.
24:05Mars takes about two Earth years to orbit the sun.
24:08And every two years, Mars and the Earth are close enough to each other.
24:13And that's when we launch missions between the two planets.
24:17And if we miss this launch window for any reason, we would have to wait two years until
24:21we could try again.
24:24And that wait could cost half a billion dollars.
24:29The team recognized we are already on the rails, right?
24:32We're about to take off.
24:33Let's just get the job done.
24:35If we focus on this target, maybe we'll unite the whole team as well.
24:39And in a way, also give hope to everybody, not only on the U.S., but also around the
24:44world that we still can manage to focus on a mission and focus on a bigger objective
24:49and then pull it off.
24:53For me, the bright spot of COVID was actually seeing the team that we had pull together
25:00and actually get it done.
25:02It's kind of miraculous that we got to the launch pad.
25:08Before Perseverance is launched, members of the team install this plaque to honor health
25:14care workers.
25:16It's a constant reminder that there are people, you know, making sacrifices to make sure everybody
25:21is safe and healthy.
25:23From America's shore to Jezero crater on Mars, we'll begin with the launch of this Atlas
25:32V rocket.
25:34The day has finally arrived.
25:36Perseverance is on the launch pad.
25:40On a nearby beach, team member Eliel Murillo, along with friends and his mom, have come
25:46to watch the launch.
25:48This is my first mission, and I'm about to see it take off to Mars.
25:53I can't describe how excited and scared and nervous I am at the same time.
25:59I'm really proud to be part of this team, and despite the pandemic, we have persevered
26:05through this together.
26:07Meanwhile...
26:08Grabbed my security blanket, let's see if she'll let me.
26:14Other team members, like Ian Clark, along with his dog, Pixel, nervously watch the launch
26:20from home.
26:21Launch director, LD is go, and you have permission to launch.
26:22The bouncing of my legs, the acceleration as we're getting closer.
26:23That's good to hear, Joshua, right there.
26:2428 seconds, 28 seconds to launch.
26:2528 seconds.
26:2628 seconds.
26:278, 7, 6, 5, 4, engine ignition, 2, 1.
26:28Launch.
26:29Launch.
26:30Launch.
26:31Launch.
26:32Launch.
26:33Launch.
26:34Launch.
26:36Launch.
26:37Launch.
26:38Launch.
26:39Launch.
26:40Launch.
26:41Launch.
26:42Launch.
26:43Launch.
26:44Launch.
26:45Launch.
26:46Launch.
26:47Launch.
26:48Launch.
26:49Launch.
26:50Launch.
26:51Launch.
26:52Launch.
26:53Launch.
26:54Launch.
26:55Launch.
26:56Launch.
26:57Launch.
26:58Launch.
26:59Launch.
27:00Launch.
27:01Launch.
27:02Launch.
27:03Launch.
27:04That's it.
27:25I'm a little bit speechless with what just happened.
27:28It's surreal.
27:29I don't know what else to say, other than I still can't believe that I just saw that.
27:33I saw that.
27:34It's pretty magical.
27:35You know, it's what we get to do.
27:38Ah!
27:39I'm terrified.
27:40And really excited.
27:41But it's scary.
27:45Perseverance is on its seven-month journey to Mars.
27:50But for Elio Morillo, the hardest work has just begun.
27:57We're working around the clock.
27:59Tonight, for example, I have to go in at 7, and I won't leave probably until 5.
28:034 in the morning.
28:05And that's kind of the nature of the work, to make sure we prepare for our landing on
28:09the Red Planet.
28:12We are working with the Earth version of Perseverance, which we've called Optimism.
28:19The rover and the computer that it has on board is exactly the same as the one that's
28:24on Perseverance.
28:26My job is literally the one they portray in The Martian.
28:30Is this the replica?
28:31This is her.
28:32Okay.
28:34Where there's a lab that has the Earth versions of all the vehicles.
28:39I work in the real lab that has the Earth version of all the vehicles that have gone
28:44to Mars.
28:47It's called the Mars Yard.
28:51Here, Optimism, Perseverance's twin, faces some of the same challenges Perseverance will
28:58face on Mars.
29:01The real way to do that is through simulation.
29:04So the Mars Yard is where we actually perform driving.
29:08We have soil that kind of looks like Martian sand, if you will.
29:14There are rocks that we replicate.
29:16And we have slopes as well, so that we can climb the vehicle on the slopes.
29:21In doing that, we typically will find bugs.
29:25Glitches in the software.
29:27The rover's brain.
29:29And as we come up with fixes, we will uplink those fixes to the real vehicle.
29:35And that is the purpose of my team.
29:38So that hopefully we find these issues before they happen on the real vehicle.
29:44In case things go wrong, we better figure out how to fix it through software.
29:48Because at this point in time, we can't send mechanics to Mars.
29:53I'm an avid user of social media.
29:56Some of the images I've posted are of myself working on the vehicle.
30:00I think personally, being a Hispanic man, it's very important for people like me to
30:05understand that there are people that look and sound like me that are working on such
30:09technologies.
30:11That is why I share what I do.
30:13And I like to show people what we're doing because it's pretty unique.
30:18A few months after Perseverance lands on the Red Planet, it will drop a special little
30:23package on the surface that could revolutionize the future of space exploration.
30:30A tiny copter named Ingenuity could be the first aircraft to fly on another planet.
30:40When we first proposed it, there were a number of naysayers, even at JPL, who said, oh, this
30:44thing can never fly.
30:46I felt it was going to be challenging every step of the way.
30:50In fact, at the beginning, it was a question of even feasibility.
30:54Can it be done?
30:57What makes flying on Mars so challenging is its extremely thin atmosphere, 100 times thinner
31:05than Earth's.
31:07The thinner the atmosphere, the harder it is for a helicopter to generate lift.
31:13Fundamentally, a helicopter flies by first generating lift.
31:20The lift is generated by the blades pushing the air, and that provides the lift.
31:27On helicopters, the blades are curved on top and are also angled to redirect the airflow
31:34downward.
31:36Because of this design, as they rotate, the air pressure on top of the blades decreases
31:42and the air pressure underneath the blades increases.
31:47That difference in pressure pushes the helicopter up.
31:53Earth's dense, thick atmosphere helps make lift possible.
31:59In order to fly on Mars, the team had to find a way to compensate for its thin atmosphere,
32:06to rethink the physics of flight.
32:10You have to build a vehicle that has a large blade, you know, significantly large, proportional
32:16to the size of the vehicle, and the blades have to spin very fast, and the vehicle has
32:22to be very light.
32:24In 2018, the team took their copter on a test run.
32:30This special chamber has had most of the air sucked out of it, so it can accurately mimic
32:36the thin atmosphere of Mars.
32:39This is a moment of truth.
32:41We send the command, the helicopter is sitting on the ground, and it starts spinning, and
32:47the danger was, is it going to start, you know, skittering across the chamber floor?
32:56That vehicle was perfect.
32:58It was balanced so perfectly.
33:02Our minds go back to what the Wright brothers must have gone through.
33:06The first moment they took flight, they must have felt the emotion, the feeling, the reward
33:13they were looking for.
33:19It's been a long journey.
33:20We've done all the testing here on Earth, and now it's time to go to Mars and prove
33:26that this thing can really fly in the actual environment of Mars.
33:32If all works as planned, Ingenuity will take a series of flights over about 30 days, venturing
33:41farther with each flight.
33:45When astronauts get to Mars, you know, in the future, being able to scout and survey
33:51and just having the aerial dimension will be crucial.
33:55To make the whole planet accessible through a new form of mobility is going to be transforming
34:01in terms of what it does for exploration.
34:09Another passenger on Perseverance could help turn our sci-fi dreams of human exploration
34:16into a reality.
34:18In fact, in the feature film The Martian, Mark Watney couldn't have survived without it.
34:26In the movie The Martian, there was a mention of a device called an oxygenator.
34:32Everything here that's keeping me alive, the oxygenator, the water reclaimer.
34:36Which we like to think of as the, maybe the great, great grandchild of Moxie.
34:43This little gold box named Moxie will test whether it's possible to take deadly Martian
34:49air and create breathable air.
34:54The air on Mars is not only thin, it's rich with carbon dioxide, CO2.
35:02So what we're trying to do with Moxie is to take a carbon dioxide molecule, CO2, one carbon,
35:08two oxygen atoms, and split off one of those oxygen atoms.
35:14An oxygen atom doesn't like to be alone.
35:18After it breaks away from the carbon dioxide, it joins with another oxygen atom, creating
35:24O2, which is in the air that we breathe.
35:29Here on Earth, the atmosphere has plenty of O2, thanks to photosynthesis.
35:36We take all that oxygen for granted.
35:39When we're on Mars, we have to make the best of what we've got and get our oxygen out of
35:45that carbon dioxide.
35:48Breathable oxygen will be crucial for humans to survive on Mars.
35:54There's no question, if I were going to Mars, I would want oxygen to breathe.
35:59But that's not anywhere near the major requirement for oxygen.
36:05Assuming that I want to leave the surface of Mars and get back to orbit and catch my
36:10ride home to Earth, I'm going to need a lot of propellant in a rocket to get me off the
36:16surface of Mars, tens of tons, in fact.
36:21Whether you have a campfire, whether you have an internal combustion engine in a car or
36:26a truck, any time you want to burn something, you need two things.
36:30You need a fuel and you need oxygen.
36:34To take off from the surface of Mars with a crew of four in a rocket about the size
36:39of this pickup truck, how much fuel and oxygen do you need?
36:44Oh, we need about seven tons of fuel.
36:46That's a lot of fuel.
36:48And we need about 25 tons of liquid oxygen to burn all that fuel.
36:57To picture how much that weighs, we can start with a five-gallon jug of water, the kind
37:03that we put on top of the water coolers.
37:06If we wanted to put that much liquid oxygen in those water jugs, we would have over 1,300
37:12of those jugs.
37:14So imagine putting 1,320 water bottles in the back of this truck.
37:22That would be tens of feet high stack of water bottles.
37:27Too much even for the water bottle delivery van, never mind this little pickup.
37:35That oxygen turns out to be the single heaviest thing we would need to take on a mission to
37:41Mars with astronauts.
37:46It dominates the cost and the complexity of the mission.
37:51So what if we can start living off the land by saying, we're not going to bring any oxygen
37:58with us.
37:59We're going to make it on Mars and use the oxygen that we make to fuel the rocket that
38:05will take our astronauts home, that will take Mark Watney home.
38:10If MOXIE can efficiently create burnable oxygen, then the sci-fi dream of human exploration
38:18of Mars may become a reality.
38:22It's clear that the United States is putting in a big effort to send astronauts to Mars,
38:28and the technologies that we are demonstrating are going to make that easier.
38:35Perseverance will test technology that will take exploration into the future as it collects
38:40samples of Martian rock.
38:45Once it's done, how will these samples make their way back home?
38:51Mars Sample Return really is an international program between NASA and ESA.
38:58We all come from different backgrounds, and we have, of course, different roles to play
39:01in the bigger picture, but everybody is working towards the same goal.
39:05If you think about it, it's amazing how a collaboration across the globe can come together
39:10to do such an amazing thing.
39:13Current plans call for another lander to travel to Mars within a decade.
39:18And a multi-part mission to bring the sample tubes back to Earth will begin.
39:25It would be a big risk, a big gamble to bet the whole of Mars Sample Return on the fact
39:30that Perseverance would still be alive and fully functional after almost a decade on
39:35the surface of Mars.
39:37So researchers across the globe must prepare for different scenarios.
39:43Perseverance rover has the possibility to either hang on to sample tubes or drop them
39:49onto the surface.
39:51Just north of London, engineers at Airbus are preparing for one of these scenarios.
40:00It's FETCH.
40:03Think of this little rover as a celestial messenger service.
40:07Perseverance will drop the sample tubes on the surface of Mars, drive a little bit away
40:12and take a lot of good photos to document exactly where the sample has landed, and we
40:17will be able to direct the sample FETCH rover to the general area within a meter or so of
40:26the actual samples on the surface.
40:29Once FETCH gets close, it will need to find the sample tubes on its own.
40:35We need to have autonomous systems on board that can take a picture of the scene in front
40:40of it, identify what's a rock, identify what's a crack, identify what is the tubes.
40:48FETCH starts by taking a picture of the general area where the tubes should be.
40:53So this is the raw image that we've taken right as we've approached the sample tubes.
41:00And you can see on the raw image that there's clearly a number of tubes dotted around the
41:03terrain as well as a couple of rocks.
41:06Through a series of steps, it decodes the scene, homing in on the tubes based on their
41:13shape and color.
41:16In the times that the tubes are on the surface, there will certainly be some form of dust
41:20deposition on them.
41:22Sand might build up a drift on one side of the tubes, but it's not going to be a thick
41:27coating that completely obscures it.
41:31FETCH comes up with a plan to grab the tubes.
41:35But it can't do it without DELEON, a savvy robotic arm being developed in Italy.
41:43This lightweight arm is equipped with a brain of its own.
41:48This operation must be performed autonomously with the vision system.
41:55In other words, the brain of the rover and the brain of the arm work together to locate
42:02and pick up the samples.
42:06Being able to do that is something that's completely new, completely novel.
42:10It's not been done on any Mars missions before, so it's something that's a key development
42:14challenge that we're working on.
42:19Once it collects the tubes, FETCH will bring them to a pint-sized rocket.
42:25The most challenging element of that whole architecture is going to be launching a rocket
42:31off of Mars.
42:34That is super ambitious.
42:37That will be a first.
42:39The rocket, designed by NASA, will release the samples, which will be grabbed by another
42:45orbiter, designed by ESA.
42:48The Earth Return Orbiter is hurtling around the Martian planet by 7,600 miles per hour.
42:54The job for the orbiter is to slightly adjust its velocity to make sure that we can capture
42:59this basketball inside a hoop.
43:02We'll have some sort of trap door that opens, and then we'll basically swallow this basketball
43:07up and put it into our spacecraft.
43:11Through various stages of mechanisms and airlocks, if you will, put it inside a Earth entry vehicle
43:19that itself will be clean.
43:22And we will have these various layers that will protect the Earth when we bring that
43:26sample back from Mars.
43:30To protect Earth from whatever the samples contain.
43:36Incredible safeguards are being developed to make sure that any object brought from
43:43Mars remains in an environment that is completely cut off from Earth's environment in every
43:51possible instance and manner.
43:54The nice thing about sample return is we've done it in the past with the moon, the Apollo
43:59samples.
44:01Samples were treated as hazardous until they could prove that it did not affect humans
44:06negatively.
44:07And the same thing will be done for any sample return mission.
44:10The items are treated as potentially hazardous until we know that it's safe.
44:15You want to be overly cautious.
44:17You want to make sure that you prove without a shadow of a doubt that it is not hazardous
44:22to humans.
44:24But long before we would confront any potential danger from Martian samples, Perseverance
44:30must land where no rover has dared land before.
44:36Back in May 2019, in the heart of Death Valley, a team of engineers test a new autonomous
44:43landing system.
44:45They hope will give their rover the ability to steer out of trouble, to be its own pilot.
44:52We get one chance.
44:54We have no opportunity to fix it.
44:55And it has to work the very first time.
44:59Inside this trailer is a makeshift mission headquarters where they will monitor if the
45:05new landing system actually works.
45:08Our previous missions really only had one computer, one brain that was doing the entire
45:14entry, descent, and landing sequence.
45:16Now we have two.
45:18Two brains that must work hand in hand to guide the rover to land safely near the delta
45:24of Jezero crater.
45:27That delta has created this cliff that's like 60 to 80 meters tall, kind of along the lines
45:31of how tall we're seeing the terrain behind us.
45:35The rover must land close to it, not crash into it.
45:41To test the rover's new brains, the team secures one on the nose of a helicopter and
45:47the other behind the cockpit.
45:53The helicopter and brains take off, heading to a section of Death Valley that looks remarkably
46:02like the surface of Mars.
46:07Usually when we do these tests, you start out very nervous, and often things break and
46:12you have to fix them.
46:15We're really trying to find the unknown unknowns.
46:17What if we didn't think of something that really will affect the mission?
46:22Hammer, do you read me?
46:25The helicopter goes above 10,000 feet.
46:29Which is pretty high for a helicopter to fly.
46:31High enough for the crew to need oxygen.
46:35And around the same height where Perseverance will start to use its pilot's brain to land
46:40on Mars.
46:42Just like you and I can take a map and look at it and then look around and see different
46:46landmarks and see what's, you know, what's where on the map, the rover figures out where
46:50it is based on knowing where all the landmarks are in the map and then identifying them.
46:56A lot like the job Pete Conrad and Alan Bean faced when they landed on the moon on the
47:01Apollo 12 mission.
47:03Okay, we're out at 19,000 feet.
47:04I got some kind of a horizon out there.
47:05I got some craters too, but I don't know where I am yet.
47:10They were looking out the window at different craters and different features on the moon.
47:14I think I see my crater.
47:15That they knew of from maps of the moon.
47:17Hey, there it is.
47:18There it is.
47:19Oh my god, right down the middle of the room.
47:22Outstanding.
47:23They figured out where they were.
47:24You know, we're doing the same thing that those astronauts did on Apollo 12, just on
47:29Mars.
47:31The vision computer is telling the rover computer, here's where I am.
47:35Here's where I am.
47:36Here's where I am.
47:37The rover computer takes where we are, figures out where we can go, and picks the safest
47:42spot in the place where we can actually reach, and it does all of that in a snap of a finger.
47:48In the trailer, the team tracks the brain's progress.
47:53So on this side, we have a map that we've made of our landing site that we're matching
47:57to, and this is the image that's taken on board.
48:02The squares on the monitors represent landmarks.
48:06The colors tell them if the brain on the helicopter is correctly identifying those landmarks and
48:12matching them to its map.
48:15So green ones are ones that are good, that we matched correctly, that the system believes
48:19are correct.
48:21After six runs over the desert, there's plenty of green on the map.
48:27The rover's brain appears to be up to the task, but will it work on Mars?
48:36February 18th, 2021, almost two years after their test run in Death Valley, the team attempts
48:47to land their rover in Jezero Crater, under circumstances no one could have prepared for.
48:56Because the pandemic still rages across the country, many team members watch from the
49:00safety of home.
49:03I'm feeling really nervous and excited.
49:06The past five years of my life has been spent working on this project.
49:10I wish someone could hold my hand.
49:14Like everything in life, you get up and there's no guarantee that your day will go well.
49:203.48 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Perseverance begins its descent.
49:27We have confirmation of entry interface.
49:30As soon as the spacecraft hits the top of the atmosphere, it's minutes between that
49:36moment and landing on the surface of Mars.
49:41Although there are cameras on board, the team can't see any imagery during landing.
49:48The navigation has confirmed that the parachute has deployed and we're seeing significant
49:53deceleration.
49:54Parachute has deployed.
49:57When the parachute's open, that's big, because you slow down a lot with that one.
50:03Even though we're under a huge parachute, we're still descending at about 200 miles
50:06an hour.
50:07That's actually a little faster than I'd be going if I jumped out of a plane and dove
50:10headfirst without a parachute.
50:12Perseverance has now slowed to subsonic speeds and the heat shield has been separated.
50:18Once the heat shield falls away, our lander vision system is taking pictures of the surface,
50:22trying to figure out where it wants to land.
50:24We have 10 seconds to do that.
50:27Things happen real fast after that.
50:28The vehicle drops itself into free fall, turns on the red to rockets.
50:34Sky team maneuver has started.
50:37The rover slowly was tethered down to the surface.
50:40It was an incredible, you know, few moments of anticipation.
50:45You want to hear it, you're waiting for it, and then they call it.
50:50That's confirmed.
50:51Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars.
50:56Wow.
50:57Woo!
51:00I'm still in disbelief.
51:02Excited.
51:03It is incredible.
51:04It is incredible.
51:06Oh my gosh.
51:11Cheers.
51:13As I was celebrating, the image comes in.
51:16There's a picture.
51:18I just could not believe it that Mars was saying hello to Perseverance so quickly.
51:23You want to see the dirt.
51:25You want to see the dust on the wheels.
51:28It's real.
51:29It actually happened.
51:31I just want to hug somebody.
51:33Later, actual video of the landing finally comes in.
51:40This is just insanely awesome footage.
51:43James Cameron, eat your heart out.
51:48Just to see how utterly amazing all of this engineering is
51:53and all of the stuff that went into making this happen.
51:58The ones and zeros and the forces and accelerations and rates,
52:02that doesn't really do justice.
52:04That sort of numerical purity doesn't do justice to all of the emotion
52:08and humanity that went into making something like this happen.
52:13We're not landing as a city or as a country.
52:16We're landing as a blue planet, right?
52:19And the blue planet is going to the red planet
52:21and we're going to be exploring it together.
52:38NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
52:40California Institute of Technology
52:42NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
53:08Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
53:12Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
53:16Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
53:20Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
53:24Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
53:28Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
53:32Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
53:36Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
53:40Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
53:44Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
53:48Be more. PBS.