Special Ep: A Flickr Group for Martian Photographers

00:00SPEAKER- So Brad, I haven't left this room in eight and a half days.

00:04SPEAKER- Eight and a half, wow, that's impressive.

00:07SPEAKERDo you, okay, I see some light coming in

00:09SPEAKERfrom the side of your frames.

00:10SPEAKERThere's a sliding door that gives you outside access.

00:13SPEAKER- Yeah, that goes out to the pool.

00:14SPEAKERAnd then I have a bathroom, so I got that going for me.

00:18SPEAKER- Well, that's a good thing to have

00:19SPEAKERwhen you stay in the same room for eight plus days

00:21SPEAKERhaving a bathroom.

00:22SPEAKERWell, you got a pool, you have the pool.

00:24SPEAKERSo, I mean, in a pinch.

00:26SPEAKER- Look, yeah, if you have a pool,

00:28SPEAKERdo you really need a bathroom?

00:29SPEAKER- You know, question for the ages.

00:31SPEAKERAnd then what, I guess just meals brought to your door?

00:33SPEAKER- No, you need a bathroom.

00:35SPEAKER- Well, you gotta be quiet 'cause I'm recording.

00:38SPEAKERYeah, no, I'm in here like a prisoner

00:42SPEAKERwhen I would like some food, then I texted or water.

00:45SPEAKERGina gets a text and then she's like,

00:47SPEAKER"Okay, I'll bring you something."

00:48SPEAKERAnd she sets it down outside the door

00:51SPEAKERand then I wait a minute or two

00:53SPEAKERand I open the door and go get the food.

00:55SPEAKERAnd then I close the door again

00:57SPEAKERand that's how my life works now, it seems.

01:00SPEAKER- Do you like hold your breath when you open the door

01:02SPEAKERout of like just a conscientious gesture?

01:05SPEAKERI mean, are you masking when you get the food?

01:07SPEAKER- I usually put a mask on

01:08SPEAKERif I'm gonna be out for any appreciable length of time

01:12SPEAKERor if the door's gonna be open

01:13SPEAKERfor like more than just a moment.

01:14SPEAKERBut yeah, I do hold my breath, which is probably useless.

01:18SPEAKERI don't know.

01:20SPEAKER- Hey, I mean, she's avoided it so far, right?

01:21SPEAKERAnd you're doing something correctly.

01:23SPEAKER- Yeah, so she's been masking outside,

01:25SPEAKERlike inside the house, except like her bedroom

01:28SPEAKERis basically a clean zone and the rest of it

01:30SPEAKERis her wearing a mask and like wiping down surfaces

01:36SPEAKERconstantly and all of the fun stuff.

01:39SPEAKERDon't get COVID, that's the lesson.

01:41SPEAKERThat's the big TLDR.

01:42SPEAKER- I will continue attempting not to get COVID.

01:44SPEAKERYou've got like a real good gravelly sick voice.

01:47SPEAKERThis is not like just a deep sick voice,

01:49SPEAKERthere's a gravel to it.

01:50SPEAKER- In a world gone mad, only two men can stand

01:54SPEAKERagainst the oncoming tide.

01:57SPEAKER- You should hang on to that.

01:57SPEAKERAnyway.

01:58SPEAKER- Brad and Will tackle this week's tech pod, kind of.

02:03SPEAKER- We're gonna run a classic episode.

02:06SPEAKER- Yeah, a classic patron episode.

02:07SPEAKERSo if you are not a patron of the show,

02:10SPEAKERthis is a little taste of what you've been missing.

02:14SPEAKERThis week, we talked to our friend, Doug Ellison from JPL.

02:21SPEAKERWhat, two years ago, I guess now almost,

02:22SPEAKERa year and a half ago?

02:23SPEAKERThe Jet Propulsion Laboratory?

02:25SPEAKER- Yes.

02:26SPEAKERHe takes photographs on Mars, that's his job.

02:30SPEAKERHe operates the Curiosity Rovers hazard cameras,

02:34SPEAKERas I recall.

02:35SPEAKER- Yes.

02:36SPEAKERActually, I mean, if you've been listening to the main show

02:37SPEAKERfor a long time, you have heard him.

02:39SPEAKERWe had him on about a year and a half ago.

02:41SPEAKER- Yes.

02:42SPEAKER- On the main feed, but that was his second appearance.

02:44SPEAKERWe actually had him on as a patron spotlight

02:47SPEAKERon the patron episode first.

02:49SPEAKER- Couple months before, yeah.

02:50SPEAKER- Yeah.

02:51SPEAKERBut yeah, so this is a classic patron app.

02:55SPEAKERDoug talks about what it's like to work at JPL

02:57SPEAKERand what it's like to take pictures on Mars.

02:59SPEAKERAnd we talk about data transfer rates

03:02SPEAKERbetween in the, what is it?

03:04SPEAKERInterplanetary network, I guess.

03:07SPEAKERHow communication satellites on Mars are cool

03:10SPEAKERand make things better.

03:12SPEAKERIt's a good chat.

03:13SPEAKERIt's a wide ranging and we think you'll enjoy it.

03:16SPEAKERSo if you like that, you should also check out episode 71,

03:19SPEAKERwhich is when we talked to Doug about Perseverance.

03:21SPEAKERThat was right before the 17 minutes of terror,

03:24SPEAKERI think is what they call that,

03:26SPEAKERwhere the lander landed and did all of its stuff

03:29SPEAKERwith the jets and the rockets

03:30SPEAKERand the landing and the Glavin.

03:35SPEAKERSo yeah, that's it.

03:36SPEAKERSorry there's no new episode this week, folks,

03:38SPEAKERbut we're hoping I'll be back at full strength

03:40SPEAKERin time for next week's show.

03:41SPEAKER- I think you have a valid excuse.

03:43SPEAKER- I feel like I have a valid excuse.

03:46SPEAKERI'm gonna go and tell you, this sucks.

03:47SPEAKERReally seriously, wear a mask, people.

03:49SPEAKERGet your shots, don't get this.

03:51SPEAKERIt is bad.

03:52SPEAKER- There is a bad wave building right now.

03:55SPEAKER- I mean, look, at this point, it's just never,

03:58SPEAKERit's like one of those surf parks in China

04:01SPEAKERwhere the wave just never stops

04:03SPEAKERand then you see the one person falls

04:05SPEAKERand it takes everybody with them

04:06SPEAKERand then they all get sucked under.

04:07SPEAKERAnd anyway, yeah, don't get COVID.

04:10SPEAKERThat's my advice.

04:11SPEAKERIt really blows.

04:12SPEAKER- That's good advice.

04:13SPEAKERHere's some other good advice.

04:15SPEAKERListen to this episode and enjoy.

04:17SPEAKER- Yeah.

04:18SPEAKER(upbeat electronic music)

04:25SPEAKER- Will, I don't have a good pithy way to start this episode.

04:27SPEAKER- Can we talk about my velour ear cups

04:29SPEAKERor should we save that for the episode next week?

04:32SPEAKER- We have a member of the National Aeronautics

04:34SPEAKERand Space Administration.

04:36SPEAKERThat's the last day, right?

04:38SPEAKER- Yes, it is.

04:39SPEAKERGood morning.

04:39SPEAKER- Yeah.

04:40SPEAKERHey, Doug's here.

04:41SPEAKERDoug Ellison, hello.

04:42SPEAKERThank you so much for joining us.

04:44SPEAKER- It's an absolute pleasure.

04:47SPEAKER- I am very excited to get to sit down

04:49SPEAKERand nerd out for a while

04:50SPEAKERwith somebody who takes photos on Mars on the reg.

04:55SPEAKERI feel like there's a very small handful of people

04:57SPEAKERon the world that we could have this conversation with.

04:59SPEAKER- I wanted to kind of build a registry

05:00SPEAKERof Martian photographers.

05:01SPEAKERIt is not a big list.

05:03SPEAKER- That's a very exclusive club, for sure.

05:06SPEAKER- That flicker group, real small, it turns out.

05:10SPEAKERDoug, can you, for people who aren't as active

05:13SPEAKERin the Discord, can you introduce yourself

05:16SPEAKERand tell them who you are

05:17SPEAKERand kind of how you ended up doing

05:20SPEAKERwhat you're doing a little bit?

05:21SPEAKER- Through a series of highly mistaken adventures.

05:23SPEAKERSo, yeah, my name's Doug Ellison.

05:25SPEAKERI've been at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab for about 10 years.

05:29SPEAKERI started off doing, kind of as a producer

05:32SPEAKERfor visualization projects for education

05:34SPEAKERand public outreach, stuff like Eyes on the Solar System,

05:37SPEAKERDSN Now, some pretty cool stuff to help the public understand

05:40SPEAKERwhat NASA's getting up to.

05:40SPEAKER- Oh, you did DSN Now?

05:42SPEAKER- Yeah, that was my idea.

05:43SPEAKER- The thing, so this is the website

05:45SPEAKERwhere you can go and see what the radios are talking to.

05:47SPEAKERIt's fabulous, it's really cool.

05:48SPEAKER- Yeah, it's really cool, it's really cool.

05:49SPEAKERWe used to have this installed binary sat-in workstations

05:53SPEAKERat the lab projected into our mission control room.

05:56SPEAKERI was like, guys, if we made that JSON file public,

05:59SPEAKERwe can make a website that does the same thing.

06:01SPEAKERAnd everyone went, "Oh, can we do that?"

06:05SPEAKERAnd then from there, I moved to do some stuff

06:06SPEAKERwith the HoloLens early on.

06:08SPEAKERThere's a group at JPL called the Ops Lab

06:11SPEAKERthat kind of uses emerging tech to improve our efficiency

06:13SPEAKERfor doing mission operations.

06:14SPEAKERAnd they said, "Hey, put this on."

06:15SPEAKERI'm like, "I'm in."

06:18SPEAKERAnd so I worked on Destination Mars,

06:19SPEAKERwhich was a public spinoff version of our tool

06:21SPEAKERcalled Onsite that lets people walk around Mars

06:23SPEAKERusing a HoloLens.

06:25SPEAKERAnd then from there, I moved into mission operations

06:27SPEAKERabout four and a bit years ago for the Curiosity mission.

06:31SPEAKERI was asked, "Hey, we need some engineering camera

06:33SPEAKERuplink people, are you interested?"

06:35SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Hold my executive beer."

06:37SPEAKER(laughing)

06:39SPEAKERAnd so the training took about three months.

06:41SPEAKERAnd then so by the beginning of 2017,

06:43SPEAKERI was certified to operate cameras on the Curiosity rover.

06:45SPEAKERAnd then I reached out to Steve Squires,

06:48SPEAKERwho was the principal investigator

06:49SPEAKERfor Spirit and Opportunity, the two older rovers.

06:52SPEAKERAnd I went, "Hey, Steve, do you need an engineering camera

06:54SPEAKERuplink lead for Opportunity as well?"

06:56SPEAKERAnd he's like, "I went to grad school

06:58SPEAKERwith the guy who runs those cameras.

06:59SPEAKERI'm sure I can have a word."

07:00SPEAKERAnd so for the last year of Opportunity's mission,

07:03SPEAKERI was on Opportunity as well,

07:04SPEAKER'cause the cameras were very, very similar.

07:06SPEAKERSo using one was just like using the other.

07:08SPEAKERAnd so since then, I've been operating the cameras

07:11SPEAKERon Curiosity for almost four years.

07:14SPEAKERAnd about a year and a half ago, they said,

07:17SPEAKER"Would you like to lead the engineering camera team

07:19SPEAKERon Curiosity?"

07:20SPEAKERI was like, "Yes, I would."

07:22SPEAKERAnd it was a bit of a kind of an imposter syndrome moment.

07:25SPEAKERI was like, "Don't be stupid, I'm a temperamental artist

07:27SPEAKERwith a background in multimedia design."

07:29SPEAKERBut then I was like, "Eh, let's try it, see what happens."

07:31SPEAKERAnd so yeah, the idiots put me in charge of the cameras.

07:35SPEAKER- This is the thing, like when I meet people from JPL,

07:38SPEAKERit's such a weird mix of multi-discipline.

07:40SPEAKERLike there's definitely a ton of hardcore science people,

07:43SPEAKERbut there's also people

07:44SPEAKERwith hardcore science/other backgrounds

07:48SPEAKERand engineering backgrounds that end up,

07:50SPEAKERit's not your normal group

07:52SPEAKERof your prototypical pocket protector egg heads,

07:56SPEAKERis my experience.

07:57SPEAKER- No, it's far more like a college campus

07:59SPEAKERthan a government facility.

08:01SPEAKERIt's a really strange place, actually.

08:02SPEAKERLike one of my compatriots

08:04SPEAKERfor the engineering cameras on Opportunity

08:08SPEAKERwas also a record-breaking hot air balloonist

08:11SPEAKERand for a while Bette Midler's PA.

08:14SPEAKER- Yeah, see, if that makes sense.

08:15SPEAKER- I mean, why not?

08:16SPEAKER- Yeah, that reads.

08:17SPEAKER- She got bored of that, thought,

08:18SPEAKER"I'm gonna go and be a geologist,"

08:19SPEAKERand then went to JPL and started taking pictures on Mars.

08:21SPEAKERSo yeah, it's fine.

08:23SPEAKER- If you can manage Bette Midler,

08:25SPEAKERyou can manage a rover a few hundred light minutes away.

08:28SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, they both have mood swings, but it's fine.

08:30SPEAKERYou can even work around that.

08:32SPEAKER(laughing)

08:34SPEAKER- So Curiosity is the only rover still operating?

08:36SPEAKERI think you just mentioned

08:37SPEAKERthat Opportunity has been retired.

08:39SPEAKERIt's just the one now?

08:40SPEAKER- Just the one rover.

08:41SPEAKERWe've got one at work, one on the way,

08:44SPEAKERand then about 200 miles north of Curiosity,

08:46SPEAKERwe've got the InSight lander,

08:47SPEAKERwhich was the kind of geophysics lander

08:49SPEAKERthat arrived about a couple of years ago.

08:52SPEAKERAnd then there's a bunch of foreign missions arriving

08:54SPEAKERabout the same time that our new rover Perseverance does

08:57SPEAKERin February.

08:58SPEAKER- And there's also orbiters, too, right?

09:01SPEAKER- Yeah, there's a whole fleet.

09:02SPEAKERSo we've got, going back in time,

09:04SPEAKERwe've got the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter from about 2005.

09:07SPEAKERWe've got MAVEN that went up in about 2012, 2014-ish.

09:10SPEAKERAnd then there's the European Trace Gas Orbiter as well.

09:13SPEAKERAnd then Europe has a super old mission called Mars Express.

09:15SPEAKERAnd actually, we talk to those with the rover.

09:17SPEAKERThat's how we get all of our data home,

09:18SPEAKERis basically using the orbiters as relay satellites,

09:21SPEAKERbecause in terms of kind of watt hours per megabit,

09:25SPEAKERin terms of communication energy efficiency,

09:27SPEAKERyou can get data home a lot more quickly

09:29SPEAKERand a lot more efficiently by borrowing an orbiter

09:31SPEAKERto do it for you.

09:32SPEAKER- Oh, man, you're immediately touching

09:34SPEAKERon the super nerdy, complex questions I want to ask

09:37SPEAKERinstead of the first question we have here,

09:38SPEAKERwhich is just like, what's your day like?

09:40SPEAKERBut we should probably start at the start, though.

09:45SPEAKER- Yeah, start at the beginning.

09:47SPEAKER- What is your average day like?

09:48SPEAKERI mean, but actually, 'cause I think the pandemic

09:50SPEAKERmakes that question a lot more interesting,

09:51SPEAKERbecause you're sitting in what appears

09:53SPEAKERto be your home office right now.

09:54SPEAKER- It is, yeah, home office/closet/highly messy.

09:58SPEAKERThe camera is very carefully targeted

10:00SPEAKERto avoid the nonsense inside of me.

10:02SPEAKEROne area inside my office that's safe to shoot.

10:05SPEAKER- So I mean, you're interacting with a device

10:07SPEAKERthat is, I think you said, between four

10:09SPEAKERand 20 light minutes away at any given time

10:12SPEAKERfrom your house?

10:13SPEAKER- So we've joked about this, is that in many respects,

10:16SPEAKERthe fact we're working from home,

10:17SPEAKERour job isn't that much more remote.

10:19SPEAKERIt's like 11 extra miles.

10:21SPEAKER- Right.

10:22SPEAKER(laughing)

10:23SPEAKER- And it doesn't make that much difference.

10:24SPEAKER- That's a lot of surrounding here.

10:25SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I actually went and did the math

10:28SPEAKERto figure out if my home is, on average,

10:30SPEAKERmore or less distant from Mars than JPL is,

10:32SPEAKERwhich is 11 miles to my north,

10:33SPEAKERand it's about 50 meters in it.

10:35SPEAKER(laughing)

10:36SPEAKERSo it took a little while getting used to

10:40SPEAKERof doing the whole remote work thing,

10:41SPEAKERbut now we're doing remote, honestly,

10:43SPEAKERthe job is basically the same.

10:45SPEAKERAnd a lot of the people involved in mission operations

10:47SPEAKERwere already remote.

10:49SPEAKERYou've got a core engineering team at JPL

10:51SPEAKERwho look after the rover in terms of checking its data,

10:55SPEAKERplanning any kind of maintenance stuff,

10:57SPEAKERbolting all the commands together

10:59SPEAKERto get them sent to the rover and sending them.

11:01SPEAKERAnd the engineering camera team, which I am,

11:03SPEAKERwe're part of that side of the equation.

11:06SPEAKERBut then there are science instruments,

11:07SPEAKERand the people running those science instruments

11:09SPEAKERare scientists, and they are at their home institutions

11:11SPEAKERall around the globe,

11:12SPEAKERbut now they're at their homes all around the globe.

11:14SPEAKERAnd so we've got people from San Diego,

11:18SPEAKERpeople from Canada, France, Spain, Russia, even,

11:21SPEAKERall partaking in this mission from their homes.

11:25SPEAKERAnd the job itself hasn't changed very much.

11:29SPEAKERWe plan rover activities normally three

11:31SPEAKERand sometimes four days a week,

11:34SPEAKERand the shift itself hasn't really changed.

11:36SPEAKERIt's a series of meetings through the day

11:38SPEAKERthat basically increase the fidelity of our intentions.

11:43SPEAKERAnd alongside those meetings,

11:44SPEAKERwe are writing the commands

11:46SPEAKERto do what we want to try and do with the mission.

11:48SPEAKERAnd the last thing we do at the end of the day

11:49SPEAKERis basically put all the commands we've written

11:51SPEAKERfor the whole day into a big simulation.

11:53SPEAKERIf the rover finishes that simulation right side up,

11:55SPEAKERwe assume it's good, and then it gets sent to the rover.

11:58SPEAKERThe next time the rover wakes up,

12:00SPEAKERand then typically a day or two days later, we'll come back.

12:05SPEAKERWe will look at all the data that's come down

12:06SPEAKERfrom the rover in the meantime, see if it's healthy,

12:09SPEAKERand start the whole thing over again.

12:11SPEAKERAnd that job hasn't really changed at all.

12:14SPEAKEREarly on, we really struggled with attention spread.

12:20SPEAKERYou used to be able to just turn your head around

12:21SPEAKERand speak to a different person on the mission.

12:23SPEAKERNow you are either on one of multiple Webexes or Slack.

12:27SPEAKERWe've got our own chat client as well that we use internally,

12:30SPEAKERwhich is the correct line of communication

12:31SPEAKERfor a particular kind of thing you want to ask somebody.

12:35SPEAKERAnd then you've got the challenge

12:36SPEAKERof trying to train somebody at the same time.

12:37SPEAKERNow normally you'd be sat side by side.

12:39SPEAKERNow basically we would do it as sharing a desktop

12:42SPEAKERon a workstation that's up at JPL,

12:44SPEAKERbut then also having a phone call at the same time.

12:45SPEAKERSo you've now got four or five concurrent lines

12:49SPEAKERof communication going, and the spread can get pretty tricky

12:53SPEAKERand stuff can fall through the gaps.

12:57SPEAKERBut we've now, on our little team,

13:00SPEAKERwe've actually fully trained someone

13:01SPEAKERfrom beginning to being certified remotely.

13:04SPEAKERWe finished training somebody remotely,

13:06SPEAKERand we just started training a third person remotely.

13:09SPEAKERAnd I was speaking to someone yesterday, he was like,

13:13SPEAKERwhen do you think you might want to go back to JPL?

13:15SPEAKERI was like, honestly, we can do this from home forever.

13:18SPEAKERIt's fine, it's absolutely fine.

13:20SPEAKERI miss my colleagues 'cause we're a small, close-knit team

13:22SPEAKERand we like each other and we do cool stuff together.

13:26SPEAKERBut I'll happily do this from home forever.

13:28SPEAKERIt's absolutely fine.

13:29SPEAKER- I mean, it's not like there's a hands-on component

13:33SPEAKERto this mission, right?

13:34SPEAKERLike the data kind of goes anywhere, so.

13:37SPEAKER- The one bit that is hands-on is the fact

13:39SPEAKERwe have basically a clone of the rover sat at JPL.

13:41SPEAKERIt's a testbed rover called MAGI.

13:44SPEAKERIt stands for something, God knows what.

13:47SPEAKERBut, and so one or two people have been going

13:50SPEAKERto the lab to do stuff with MAGI.

13:53SPEAKEREven if it's just housekeeping for our testbed rover,

13:55SPEAKERyou know, it has housekeeping activities too,

13:57SPEAKERkeeping its battery healthy, et cetera, et cetera.

14:00SPEAKERGetting moved from venue to venue.

14:03SPEAKERAnd then we've got a big flight software update

14:05SPEAKERwe want to do probably middle of next year.

14:08SPEAKERAnd that big flight software update

14:09SPEAKERhas to go through a lot of testing with our testbed rover.

14:12SPEAKERAnd so they are going in and doing shifts

14:13SPEAKERone or two engineers at a time to do regression testing

14:16SPEAKERand stuff like that.

14:17SPEAKERSo that's kind of the only hands-on thing

14:19SPEAKERis our testbed rover that's still back at JPL.

14:21SPEAKERFortunately, you can't drive that home.

14:24SPEAKERI have so many questions I want to ask that I immediately

14:27SPEAKERam checking myself.

14:27SPEAKERLike, is that a state secret?

14:29SPEAKERIs that some aspect of tradecraft I should not bring up?

14:32SPEAKERDo you have any insight into the programming

14:34SPEAKERthat goes on with this thing?

14:35SPEAKERI know you're more into imaging, but I immediately

14:37SPEAKERwant to know, like, what language are they writing

14:39SPEAKERthe rover software and stuff like that?

14:41SPEAKERSo the rover runs--

14:42SPEAKERit's basically a first-generation iMac inside.

14:45SPEAKERIt's called a RAD 750.

14:47SPEAKERIt's a commodity product.

14:49SPEAKERAny aerospace company can buy off the shelf.

14:51SPEAKERIt's like 133 megahertz, 128 meg of RAM,

14:56SPEAKERand about 4 gigs of flash.

14:59SPEAKERAnd it runs an operating system by a company

15:01SPEAKERcalled Wind River Systems that's called VxWorks.

15:03SPEAKERIt's basically a real-time Nix space OS.

15:07SPEAKERAnd there's a huge bunch--

15:09SPEAKERthe flight software is largely C. But on top of that,

15:13SPEAKERthe way the flight software is exposed to us in terms

15:15SPEAKERof commanding the vehicle is actually surprisingly simple.

15:18SPEAKERYou could look at a command to take a picture with the rover

15:21SPEAKERand go, oh, OK.

15:22SPEAKERYeah, you're asking it to take a picture

15:24SPEAKERwith that camera and that camera pointed in that direction

15:26SPEAKERwith these settings.

15:27SPEAKERThat makes sense.

15:28SPEAKERIt's not a million miles from writing like Lua scripts

15:32SPEAKERand stuff like that.

15:33SPEAKERIt's not all JSON-type stuff.

15:35SPEAKERYou could understand it.

15:38SPEAKERAnd that's how we interface with the rover

15:40SPEAKERis through commands like that.

15:42SPEAKERAnd in fact, one of the steps we have in our planning cycle

15:45SPEAKERis called master-submaster walkthrough, where literally,

15:47SPEAKERa line at a time, we read out the commands

15:50SPEAKERwe're going to send to the rover.

15:51SPEAKERWe literally read them out.

15:53SPEAKERAnd--

15:53SPEAKERHold on.

15:54SPEAKERLike in a room full of people?

15:55SPEAKERLike a table read.

15:56SPEAKERYeah, think of it as like a code review, almost.

15:59SPEAKERAnd literally, we'll go through it a line at a time.

16:01SPEAKERAnd I'll pseudocode it, but it's like, OK, we'll go to sleep,

16:05SPEAKERand we'll wake up at this time.

16:07SPEAKERAnd then we'll kick off this--

16:08SPEAKERit's called a submaster, which is a bunch of sequences.

16:11SPEAKERAnd inside that submaster, we will run this thing,

16:13SPEAKERwe'll run this thing, we'll run this thing,

16:15SPEAKERwe'll run this thing.

16:16SPEAKERThen we'll stow the mast.

16:17SPEAKERThen we will do this thing.

16:18SPEAKERThen we'll talk to this orbiter for this many minutes.

16:20SPEAKERThen we'll go to sleep, wake up at this time.

16:22SPEAKERWe'll then turn on this instrument, et cetera,

16:23SPEAKERet cetera.

16:24SPEAKERIt's actually like--

16:25SPEAKERI can read through in our master sequences

16:27SPEAKERor our submaster sequences and figure out

16:29SPEAKERwhat the rover's up to.

16:29SPEAKERIt's pretty human readable.

16:31SPEAKERWhen you run these sequences on the simulator on Maggie,

16:34SPEAKERdo you have cameras on--

16:38SPEAKERare you watching what happens?

16:40SPEAKERSo we can take the commands we run on the real rover

16:44SPEAKERand use them on Maggie.

16:45SPEAKERBut the way the rover works--

16:47SPEAKERYou don't do that for everything, though, right?

16:49SPEAKERNo.

16:50SPEAKERIt's only-- anything basically that's new or unusual

16:53SPEAKERwill typically get run on the test bed first.

16:55SPEAKERBut when you're eight years in, there's

16:57SPEAKERvery little that's new or unusual.

17:00SPEAKERSo we will regularly send stuff.

17:05SPEAKERThe smallest tweaks, like, I'm going

17:06SPEAKERto take that picture again.

17:07SPEAKERWe're going to point it somewhere else.

17:08SPEAKERIt's fine.

17:09SPEAKERJust send it to the rover.

17:12SPEAKERBut as with the real rover with Maggie,

17:15SPEAKERthere's no real way to watch what it's doing apart

17:17SPEAKERfrom its telemetry.

17:19SPEAKERIf you're doing a shift on the test bed,

17:20SPEAKERyou're sat at a desk that's six feet from it.

17:23SPEAKERAnd it's big, and it's scary, and it can move,

17:24SPEAKERand it can point its mast and stuff.

17:26SPEAKERBut the only insight we get into what the rover is doing

17:30SPEAKERis basically these gigantic emails

17:32SPEAKERwe get from the rover about typically four to five

17:35SPEAKERand sometimes six times a day that are a couple of hundred

17:39SPEAKERmegabits worth of data that starts with basically

17:42SPEAKERa dear diary of what the rover thinks it's been doing.

17:44SPEAKERAnd then all the data products that it generated.

17:47SPEAKERAnd the pipelines that look at the dear diary stuff

17:54SPEAKERactually then email us with anything that's not completely

17:57SPEAKERbenign and ordinary.

17:59SPEAKERThey have different levels of importance from, like,

18:02SPEAKERthis is just an activity.

18:03SPEAKERThis is something that's a low warning.

18:05SPEAKERThis is a high warning.

18:06SPEAKERThis is critical.

18:07SPEAKERThis is a fatal.

18:09SPEAKERWhat's a low warning is the wheels are turning,

18:11SPEAKERbut it's not moving or something?

18:13SPEAKERLow warning might be, I tried to stop doing this thing,

18:17SPEAKERbut it wasn't doing it anymore.

18:18SPEAKERAnd that's basically because the thing finished quickly.

18:20SPEAKERSo it doesn't matter.

18:21SPEAKERThey're kind of very, very benign.

18:24SPEAKERA warning high might be, I tried to do a thing with this camera,

18:29SPEAKERbut it didn't quite work.

18:30SPEAKERSo I'm going to mark that camera as sick

18:32SPEAKERand then carry on doing the rest of my stuff.

18:35SPEAKERAnd then we actually did a little flight software update

18:37SPEAKERto our spare flight computer a couple of weeks ago

18:39SPEAKERand warm rebooted it as part of that process.

18:42SPEAKERAnd that would be a fatal warning.

18:43SPEAKERIt's like, hey, this computer just restarted.

18:45SPEAKERThat's bad, right?

18:47SPEAKERIt throws a warning even if you did it intentionally.

18:49SPEAKERExactly, yeah.

18:50SPEAKERAnd in fact, when you're doing anything particularly new

18:52SPEAKERor unusual, you write it up as a kind of report in advance

18:56SPEAKERand say, OK, I'm going to do this.

18:58SPEAKERThis is why.

18:59SPEAKERThis is how it works.

19:00SPEAKERAnd this is what I expect the rover to tell me afterwards

19:03SPEAKERso that you know that you're not going to get

19:05SPEAKERtriggered by a fatal.

19:06SPEAKERLike, what the hell was that?

19:08SPEAKERNo, no, I said it was going to do that.

19:09SPEAKEROh, OK, you knew what you were doing.

19:09SPEAKERThat's fine.

19:10SPEAKERNo surprises.

19:11SPEAKERDid you-- just to reiterate, did you say hundreds of megabytes

19:14SPEAKERper day back from that thing?

19:16SPEAKERSo I said megabits.

19:18SPEAKEROh, megabits.

19:18SPEAKERI'm sorry, OK.

19:19SPEAKERYeah.

19:19SPEAKERI heard that.

19:20SPEAKERI was like, oh my god, is that--

19:21SPEAKEROK, that was like an order of magnitude more than--

19:23SPEAKERSo it's got better since we landed.

19:26SPEAKERWhen we landed, we basically had the Mars Reconnaissance

19:28SPEAKEROrbiter and Mars Odyssey, which is even an older orbiter

19:32SPEAKERfrom, would you believe it, 2001.

19:35SPEAKERAnd from those, early on, we'd get something between 100

19:40SPEAKERto 500 megabits per pass, and we'd

19:42SPEAKERdo a couple of passes per day.

19:44SPEAKERSo early on in the mission, in total,

19:46SPEAKERwe get something like 500 to 1,000 megabits per day in total.

19:50SPEAKERSo divide it by 8, call it 100 megabytes roughly in a day.

19:55SPEAKEROn a good day, wow.

19:57SPEAKERBut these days, we're actually super lucky

19:58SPEAKERbecause we've got MAVEN, which is a new NASA orbiter,

20:02SPEAKERand the European Trace Gas Orbiter.

20:04SPEAKERAnd they both act as relays, too.

20:05SPEAKERAnd they have newer, shinier radios.

20:07SPEAKERAnd so the link between the rover and those orbiters

20:11SPEAKERis better, so we can squirt more data through it.

20:13SPEAKERSo we're typically getting one to two gigabits a day

20:16SPEAKERthese days.

20:17SPEAKERSo 150, 200 megabytes would be a good day.

20:21SPEAKERAre the satellites' orbits synchronized in such a way

20:24SPEAKERto kind of maximize exposure and transmission sort

20:27SPEAKERof line of sight, or is it kind of hard to coordinate?

20:29SPEAKERUnfortunately, not.

20:30SPEAKERStuff like that.

20:31SPEAKERSadly not.

20:32SPEAKERThey're there to do science, and we're in the way, basically.

20:36SPEAKERSo I say that they--

20:38SPEAKERNot the primary concern.

20:39SPEAKERYeah, there's different orbits for different spacecraft.

20:42SPEAKERSo Mars Odyssey, MRO, they are synced to certain times of day

20:47SPEAKERlocally.

20:47SPEAKERThey are a lot like some of the weather satellites

20:49SPEAKERhere on Earth, actually, in that they cross the equator

20:52SPEAKERat about the same time, morning and evening,

20:54SPEAKERand Mars rotates beneath it, basically.

20:57SPEAKERAnd so an MRO pass with Curiosity

20:59SPEAKERwill always be about 3 or 4 o'clock local time.

21:02SPEAKEROdyssey will be a bit later.

21:04SPEAKERTGO, the European Orbiter, and MAVEN, our orbiter,

21:07SPEAKERthey're kind of more atmospheric study kind of stuff,

21:10SPEAKERand so their orbits are a bit more elliptical.

21:12SPEAKERAnd so they don't sync up in the same way.

21:14SPEAKERAnd so those times of passes kind of

21:16SPEAKERdrift through the day over time, and so they're not

21:20SPEAKERquite as predictable.

21:21SPEAKERBut we know when they're going to happen in advance,

21:24SPEAKERand so we schedule--

21:25SPEAKERthere's a whole process of kind of negotiating

21:27SPEAKERwhich overflights you're going to use

21:29SPEAKERor which overflights get used by which spacecraft,

21:31SPEAKERbecause if it's flying overhead, the trace gas orbiter could

21:34SPEAKERsee, for example, our rover and InSight

21:36SPEAKERto the north at the same time.

21:38SPEAKERAnd so you go, OK, which ones are they going to speak to?

21:40SPEAKERAnd you have to negotiate all of that in advance.

21:43SPEAKERIt's fascinating to me that you talk about different teams

21:46SPEAKERcompeting for time and resources on these things,

21:48SPEAKERbecause as a layman, I tend to think purely

21:51SPEAKERin technical terms about the limitations of what you're

21:53SPEAKERdoing, but now you're talking about bureaucratic restrictions

21:56SPEAKERalso getting in the way.

21:57SPEAKERThat must be a minefield to navigate.

21:59SPEAKERIt is.

22:00SPEAKERAnd especially when you think, OK, we've negotiated,

22:04SPEAKERand we've actually come up with a really cunning system

22:06SPEAKERfor negotiating our passes with our lander friends

22:08SPEAKERin the north.

22:09SPEAKERBut then you've got, say, the Perseverance Rover coming,

22:12SPEAKERand they've got ideas of things they want to do,

22:15SPEAKERand sometimes they'll use us as a test bed in advance.

22:18SPEAKERSo we've been doing some test communication passes

22:20SPEAKERwith the orbiters on the Perseverance Rover's behalf

22:24SPEAKERto test stuff before it gets there.

22:25SPEAKERWe've basically been pretending to be Perseverance

22:28SPEAKERand doing different communication strategies

22:30SPEAKERso that when it lands, it knows that's going to work.

22:32SPEAKERAnd so we had a couple of those this past weekend.

22:35SPEAKERThey were passes that we'd have loved

22:36SPEAKERto have got a couple hundred megabits of data home,

22:38SPEAKERbut instead we were pretending to be another rover,

22:40SPEAKERand so we weren't sending any data home.

22:43SPEAKEROn a mission like this, I know that

22:45SPEAKERon big infrastructure projects like telescopes or space

22:49SPEAKERtelescopes or whatever, instrument time

22:52SPEAKERis scheduled sometimes months or years in advance,

22:54SPEAKERand it's like the whole goal of the project

22:57SPEAKERfor a big new telescope is, hey, let's use every moment

23:03SPEAKERof dark sky that we have to get the most

23:06SPEAKERreturn out of this investment.

23:08SPEAKERIs Curiosity scheduled the same way,

23:10SPEAKERor is it possible to do that on the ground?

23:13SPEAKERSo because we have wheels and we move, our environs change.

23:19SPEAKERThat said, we've just finished up a scientific campaign

23:22SPEAKERthat has basically been eight years in the making.

23:25SPEAKERFrom orbit, we had mapped some minerals on the ground,

23:27SPEAKERand the science team were like, that's where we

23:29SPEAKERwant to go and do everything.

23:30SPEAKERWe want to touch that with the robotic arm.

23:33SPEAKERWe want to take pictures of it.

23:33SPEAKERWe want to drill it.

23:34SPEAKERWe want to put it in the lab inside the rover twice.

23:37SPEAKERAnd we've been leading up to that.

23:39SPEAKERAnd so the planning happens at different cadences.

23:43SPEAKERThe tactical timeline is, OK, we're

23:46SPEAKERtalking to the rover in nine hours.

23:47SPEAKERWhat are we going to tell it to do?

23:49SPEAKERThen there's this super tactical process that is basically--

23:53SPEAKERwe'll be talking to it on Friday,

23:55SPEAKERand we'll be talking to it on Monday,

23:56SPEAKERand we're going to be talking to it next Wednesday.

23:59SPEAKERRoughly speaking, what are we going to tell it to do?

24:01SPEAKERLet's kind of scaffold that out roughly.

24:04SPEAKERAnd then there is, at the kind of broader thematic level,

24:08SPEAKERyou'll have a campaign team around a certain scientific

24:11SPEAKERarea of interest planning, OK, these

24:13SPEAKERare all the things we want to do in this area.

24:15SPEAKERWe think we want to go here, and that will probably

24:17SPEAKERtake a couple of days.

24:18SPEAKERWe want to go here.

24:19SPEAKERThat'll take a couple of days.

24:20SPEAKERSo they'll even work with our rover driving team

24:21SPEAKERto figure out how long is it going to take

24:23SPEAKERto get from there to there.

24:24SPEAKERSo how long will this entire campaign take?

24:27SPEAKERAnd sometimes the whole mission kind of pose changes.

24:31SPEAKERIt's like, OK, we've done the stuff over here.

24:34SPEAKERWe now want to go and do stuff over here.

24:35SPEAKERSo now it's like head down and sprint.

24:37SPEAKERLet's maximize driving time.

24:39SPEAKERAnd science will kind of back off a little bit

24:41SPEAKERand not make as many requests.

24:43SPEAKERThey won't ask to turn over every single frickin'

24:46SPEAKERpebble between A and B. They will just

24:48SPEAKERsay, we want to go look at the new shiny thing that's

24:50SPEAKERhalf a mile away.

24:51SPEAKERAnd that's kind of where we are now.

24:53SPEAKERThat's just-- it's incredible that you can be like, hey,

24:55SPEAKERwe think there's something interesting a half mile away.

24:58SPEAKERAnd you have the power and the capability

25:00SPEAKERto do that with this rover.

25:04SPEAKERAnd on the day-to-day, with a big telescope like Keck,

25:09SPEAKERor even Hubble or James Webb when it launches,

25:12SPEAKERthe main constraint is we have so many observing hours

25:15SPEAKERper year, and we all compete for them.

25:19SPEAKERWith us, our constraints are on the day-to-day.

25:21SPEAKERAnd they are power, which basically

25:25SPEAKERturns into a total amount of awake time.

25:28SPEAKERData volume, like how much data can we get home?

25:30SPEAKERAnd then planning complexity, i.e.,

25:33SPEAKERare we trying to do so much in this given plan

25:35SPEAKERthat actually the meat on the ground

25:37SPEAKERwon't be able to figure it out in time?

25:39SPEAKERAnd so we have limits on how much power we can use,

25:41SPEAKERhow much data we're going to send home,

25:43SPEAKERand how complex that plan is going to be.

25:45SPEAKERAnd the only impact remote work has had

25:48SPEAKERis that we've taken the maximum complexity for any given plan

25:51SPEAKERand turned it down just a tiny, tiny bit.

25:54SPEAKERAnd honestly, if you didn't know,

25:55SPEAKERyou wouldn't have noticed.

25:57SPEAKERIt's been very subtle.

25:58SPEAKERAre you all-- do you work on a 25-hour clock?

26:03SPEAKEROr is this stuff--

26:05SPEAKERbecause I remember when the first wind sojourner

26:08SPEAKERand Pathfinder landed, there were a lot of news stories

26:12SPEAKERabout time.

26:13SPEAKERYeah, here's your special 25-hour a day wristwatch

26:17SPEAKERand all that stuff.

26:18SPEAKERDo you guys-- do you all still do that, or not really?

26:20SPEAKERCan you-- before he answers, can you

26:22SPEAKERcontextualize what the 24-hour--

26:24SPEAKERor 25-hour, sorry, figure is?

26:26SPEAKERIs that the sort of broadcast window of exposure, or?

26:30SPEAKERSo a day on Mars is basically 24 hours and 40 minutes.

26:35SPEAKERSo let's say the rover--

26:38SPEAKERwe send our commands to the rover at basically 9.30

26:41SPEAKERin the morning rover time.

26:42SPEAKERThat's when we talk to the rover.

26:44SPEAKERIt moves around a little bit based

26:45SPEAKERon scheduling conflicts with other missions.

26:47SPEAKERBut generally, the rover wakes up at 9 o'clock.

26:49SPEAKERWe talked to it at 9.30.

26:50SPEAKERAnd then it does its thing for the day.

26:53SPEAKERBut if your day is 24 hours and 40 minutes,

26:56SPEAKERthat means-- let's say that we had to have commands ready

26:58SPEAKERfor 6 o'clock tonight.

27:00SPEAKERTomorrow, that's 6.40.

27:02SPEAKERThen it's 7.20.

27:03SPEAKERThen it's 8 o'clock.

27:04SPEAKERThen it's 8.40.

27:05SPEAKERThen it's 9.20.

27:06SPEAKERThen it's 10 o'clock.

27:06SPEAKERAnd two weeks from now, that readiness

27:08SPEAKERis actually 5 o'clock in the morning.

27:10SPEAKERAnd two weeks from then, it's 5 o'clock in the afternoon again.

27:13SPEAKERBut you've lost an entire day.

27:15SPEAKERAnd so early on in the mission, you

27:17SPEAKERwant to make the most of every single fricking day you have.

27:20SPEAKERAnd so you work the Martian night shift,

27:23SPEAKERas far as the rover is concerned.

27:24SPEAKERYou get up when the rover sends data home.

27:26SPEAKERAnd you've got until the time it wakes up the next day

27:28SPEAKERto tell it what to do next.

27:30SPEAKERAnd that might take--

27:32SPEAKERThis is just to make sure that you get as much as you can

27:34SPEAKERin case the rover fails early.

27:36SPEAKERYeah, you want to be responsive to every single day, right?

27:40SPEAKERWhat you do after about three months--

27:42SPEAKERbecause it turns out people have things like families that

27:46SPEAKERdon't like you saying, OK, I'm off to work

27:48SPEAKERat 4 in the morning.

27:49SPEAKERAnd you don't get back till 11 at night or something.

27:53SPEAKERAnd it really, really does screw with your head.

27:55SPEAKERIt really does.

27:56SPEAKERUnfortunately, I've not done it.

27:57SPEAKERBut I know a lot of people who have.

27:59SPEAKERIt sounds like the worst jet lag imaginable.

28:02SPEAKERYou're in a permanent state of jet lag.

28:03SPEAKERIt cuts your mind back to when Spirit and Opportunity

28:06SPEAKERlanded in 2004.

28:07SPEAKERYou now have two rovers on the surface of Mars.

28:09SPEAKERThey are 12 Martian time zones apart.

28:12SPEAKERSo whichever one you're working on, you've got Martian.

28:14SPEAKERYou've got jet lag.

28:15SPEAKERIf you switch from the Spirit rover to the Opportunity rover,

28:18SPEAKERcongratulations, Earth doesn't give a shit.

28:19SPEAKERYou've now got 12 hours of Martian jet lag.

28:23SPEAKERSo you can only do it for so long.

28:25SPEAKERAnd so what happens then is you go into a phase that's kind of--

28:29SPEAKERit's a concession to Mars time, but also

28:31SPEAKERa concession to the fact that we're human

28:32SPEAKERand we live on this planet.

28:34SPEAKERSo when Earth time and Mars time line up

28:36SPEAKERin a way whereby basically Pacific office

28:39SPEAKERhours are rovers' nap time, we will use the rover--

28:42SPEAKERit will command it on a daily basis.

28:45SPEAKERWhen they don't line up that well,

28:47SPEAKERwe will enter a thing called restricted planning where

28:49SPEAKERwe will send commands.

28:50SPEAKERAnd for example, this week is a restricted planning week.

28:53SPEAKERSo we had a planning shift on Monday.

28:55SPEAKERAnd at the end of Monday, we had two days' worth of commands

28:58SPEAKERto send to the rover.

28:59SPEAKERAnd they all got sent late Monday night, maybe even

29:01SPEAKERearly Tuesday morning.

29:03SPEAKERWe then will come back in on Wednesday.

29:06SPEAKERAnd the first of those two days will have happened.

29:08SPEAKERThe second won't yet.

29:09SPEAKERBut what you do is you say, OK, here's the next two days.

29:13SPEAKERAnd when you come in on Friday, you've

29:15SPEAKERnow got the two days of Monday and the first day

29:18SPEAKERof Wednesday on the ground.

29:19SPEAKERNow we're going to do three days to get us through the weekend.

29:22SPEAKERAnd then you come in on Monday, and you've

29:24SPEAKERgot the first two days of the weekend, but not the third.

29:26SPEAKERAnd so what ends up happening is,

29:28SPEAKERlet's say you want to drive as fast as you can

29:30SPEAKERfor this whole week.

29:32SPEAKEROn Monday, you say, OK, well, we need

29:34SPEAKERto know where we are on Wednesday,

29:35SPEAKERso we'll drive on the first day.

29:37SPEAKERThe second day is now in the blind.

29:39SPEAKERWe don't know where the rover's going to be,

29:41SPEAKERbut we've got to give it something to do.

29:44SPEAKERDid Will just drop out?

29:45SPEAKEROh, gosh, he did, yes.

29:46SPEAKERHe's back.

29:47SPEAKERAnd Will is back.

29:49SPEAKERHe's on Earth, you know?

29:50SPEAKERCommunication is less reliable.

29:53SPEAKERYou good, Will?

29:54SPEAKERYou dropped out for a minute there.

29:56SPEAKERI don't know if he can hear us.

29:57SPEAKERHey, Will?

29:58SPEAKERYeah, I don't think he can.

29:59SPEAKERWill is in safe mode.

30:01SPEAKERNothing.

30:01SPEAKEROK.

30:02SPEAKEROK.

30:02SPEAKERYeah, by far the weakest link in the chain right now for us

30:05SPEAKERis Webex anyway, so.

30:06SPEAKERYeah.

30:07SPEAKERAnd VPN.

30:07SPEAKERActually, yesterday, we almost pulled yesterday's planning

30:10SPEAKERbecause of VPN issues.

30:13SPEAKERThat is exactly the kind of mundane detail

30:15SPEAKERthat I wanted to ask you about, but I don't know if you want

30:17SPEAKERto dig into it or not.

30:18SPEAKERBut just because VPN is such an aspect of almost everyone's

30:22SPEAKERdrudgery right now, the idea that it's even

30:25SPEAKERinvolved in interplanetary communications

30:28SPEAKERis kind of surreal to me, in a way.

30:31SPEAKERWe had someone whose internet access was being flaky,

30:33SPEAKERand so the project bought them a 4G hotspot as a backup.

30:35SPEAKERWow.

30:36SPEAKERBecause if they're on shift, you don't want to--

30:38SPEAKERI have to say, we can't do any of x because their internet went

30:41SPEAKERout, right?

30:43SPEAKERThat's quite a bit different from your standard corporate

30:45SPEAKERparent just saying, like, I just figured out, deal with it.

30:48SPEAKERIf you lose mission time, this whole endeavor

30:50SPEAKERis for nothing, right?

30:52SPEAKERI mean, I've been with it, what, four years?

30:54SPEAKERAnd to my knowledge, I had one shift

30:57SPEAKERwhereby the digital infrastructure was flaky

31:00SPEAKERenough that we had to say, no, Rover gets nothing today.

31:03SPEAKERWow.

31:03SPEAKERRover can be on its own for two days.

31:05SPEAKERThat's got to be hard.

31:06SPEAKERNow we're breaking.

31:07SPEAKERIt's really frustrating, especially you've been working

31:08SPEAKERall day on a set of commands.

31:09SPEAKERAnd it's like, yep, that works for nothing.

31:11SPEAKERYeah.

31:11SPEAKERAnd I assume if you miss your window,

31:13SPEAKERit's not like you can just try again the next day, right?

31:14SPEAKERLike, things have to keep moving forward.

31:16SPEAKERSo what we do with the Rover is we actually say to it, OK,

31:20SPEAKERthese are the two days of things we want you to do.

31:22SPEAKERAnd then we'll give it what's called run out,

31:24SPEAKERwhich is basically another week of wake up, talk to an orbiter,

31:28SPEAKERgo to sleep.

31:29SPEAKERWake up, talk to the spacecraft, go to sleep.

31:31SPEAKERIt's like basic, empty housekeeping stuff for the rest.

31:35SPEAKERSo let's say on Monday, we had a shift, everything went great,

31:39SPEAKERsent two days of commands to the Rover,

31:41SPEAKERand another seven, in fact, 10 days now of run out.

31:44SPEAKERIf for some reason yesterday we hadn't been able to finish

31:46SPEAKERthat planning shift, Rover doesn't care.

31:49SPEAKERRover would have waken up on the third day after Monday

31:51SPEAKERand gone, well, I don't have those new commands,

31:55SPEAKERbut I'm going to do my basic engineering housekeeping,

31:57SPEAKERand then I'm going to stay awake for a couple of hours.

31:59SPEAKERThen I'm going to go to bed, and then I'll

32:00SPEAKERwake up for my communication passes.

32:02SPEAKERAnd it will do it automatically for 10 days.

32:05SPEAKERAnd so we got 10 days to basically--

32:07SPEAKERyou know, I swear, I swear, baby, I can change.

32:10SPEAKERI can send you some commands tomorrow.

32:13SPEAKERAnd the worst version of that is that if for some reason

32:18SPEAKERLA stopped existing, at the end of those 10 days,

32:22SPEAKERit then goes into a thing called an uploss timer.

32:24SPEAKERAnd the uploss timer, and all spacecraft in deep space

32:26SPEAKERhave this, which is the, look, if you don't hear anything

32:30SPEAKERfor a month, it's probably not you, it's probably them.

32:34SPEAKERBut just in case it is, at the end of that time,

32:37SPEAKERmaybe start trying to swap stuff out automatically,

32:39SPEAKERjust in case it is something with you,

32:40SPEAKERand you need to start swapping computers and radios and stuff,

32:42SPEAKERit will do it autonomously and cycle

32:44SPEAKERthrough different combinations of computers and radios

32:46SPEAKERto try and get back in touch with home.

32:48SPEAKERIs that just activating various redundancies that are built in,

32:51SPEAKERlike swapping to fall back in time and stuff like that?

32:53SPEAKERYeah, we have two flight computers,

32:55SPEAKERand then we have two completely different communication

32:58SPEAKERsubsystems.

32:59SPEAKERSo we can talk through the UHF relay with the orbiters,

33:02SPEAKERor we can talk--

33:04SPEAKERthe commands get sent directly from Earth straight to the rover,

33:06SPEAKERbut we can also receive data directly from the rover.

33:08SPEAKERIt's just really inefficient to do it.

33:10SPEAKERAnd it can do it in two ways.

33:11SPEAKERIt can do it with a tiny little satellite dish, basically.

33:15SPEAKERIt's a directional high-gain antenna,

33:17SPEAKERbut it needs to know what time it is, because it

33:19SPEAKERneeds to know where the Earth is to point it at the Earth.

33:21SPEAKERBut there's also a low-gain antenna

33:23SPEAKERthat's just like a little stick on the back of the rover,

33:27SPEAKERand that doesn't need to know what time it is

33:29SPEAKERor where Earth is.

33:30SPEAKERWe can get into that at like 10 bits per second if we need to.

33:33SPEAKERI believe it.

33:35SPEAKERWow.

33:38SPEAKERIs there like a sextant?

33:39SPEAKERHow does the rover know where it is on Mars?

33:43SPEAKERSextant is the right word.

33:44SPEAKERSo we look at the sun.

33:47SPEAKERSo we have a gyro, an IMU on the rover, just like your cell

33:50SPEAKERphone.

33:52SPEAKERBut what we will do is every couple

33:55SPEAKERof hours that thing has been turned on, which it turns out

33:57SPEAKERis like every about 400 or 500 metres of driving, basically.

34:02SPEAKERThe assumption is that the rover's own knowledge

34:04SPEAKERof exactly which way is up has drifted by a few degrees.

34:07SPEAKERSo we will then do what's called a frame update.

34:11SPEAKERAnd we will say, OK, we're going to reset the odometer here.

34:14SPEAKERWe're going to go see where the sun is.

34:16SPEAKERAnd it knows roughly where the sun is,

34:17SPEAKERso it'll go and take a picture of it.

34:19SPEAKERAnd go, OK, the sun's actually right there,

34:21SPEAKERwhich means my x, y, z, my pitch roll yaw is this.

34:25SPEAKERAnd then we'll propagate there for the next couple

34:27SPEAKERof hundred metres.

34:29SPEAKERAnd so every now and again in the raw images,

34:30SPEAKERall these images end up online the second they

34:33SPEAKERreach the ground.

34:34SPEAKERYou can see-- and it looks just like something

34:36SPEAKERbroken with the camera.

34:37SPEAKERIt's just this big white blob and a streak.

34:38SPEAKERAnd it's actually us looking at the sun to figure out

34:41SPEAKERexactly which way we're pointing.

34:42SPEAKERAnd Spirit and Opportunity did that.

34:45SPEAKERInsight would have done that.

34:46SPEAKERAnd it's kind of cool that occasionally we

34:49SPEAKERwill look at the stars-- well, A star--

34:52SPEAKERto figure out which way's north.

34:53SPEAKERAnd the rover's knowledge of which way's north is really

34:56SPEAKERgood as a result, which is super useful for if you want to figure

34:59SPEAKERout where to point your cameras.

35:00SPEAKERDo you-- can you use a compass on Mars?

35:03SPEAKERIs there a magnetic field on Mars?

35:04SPEAKERNo, there's not, right?

35:05SPEAKERAll that's left-- yeah, all that's left is kind of this--

35:07SPEAKERThe point of the atmosphere was stripped, right?

35:09SPEAKERThere you go.

35:09SPEAKERYeah, see?

35:10SPEAKERWow, good job, Brad.

35:11SPEAKERAll that's left is a slight residual magnetic field.

35:14SPEAKERThere's like little bits of north and south scattered

35:16SPEAKERall over the place.

35:17SPEAKERIt's not like a compass at work and point north.

35:19SPEAKERIt's kind of a little very low, lumpy magnetic field

35:23SPEAKERall over the place.

35:24SPEAKERI mean, I assume that the rovers have to be incredibly hardened

35:27SPEAKERthen, right?

35:28SPEAKERBecause I assume there's a lot of solar-- what is it?

35:30SPEAKERSolar wind or kind of cosmic radiation?

35:32SPEAKERSolar radiation hitting the planet.

35:35SPEAKERWe get single-bit errors, double-bit errors.

35:37SPEAKERAnd so the flight computer--

35:39SPEAKERPeople talk about that problem on Earth, you know,

35:41SPEAKERlike, oh, you need to get ECC RAM,

35:42SPEAKERbecause a cosmic ray might slip a bit in your RAM.

35:45SPEAKERBut you guys deal with that constantly.

35:46SPEAKERThat happens all the time.

35:49SPEAKERAnd so we have rad-hardened CPUs, which

35:51SPEAKERis why our CPU is like frickin' 30 years old almost, right?

35:54SPEAKERIt's because we're not chasing a seven-nanometer CPU, right?

35:58SPEAKERWe're chasing something that will actually

36:00SPEAKERsurvive cosmic ray hits, a cosmic ray coming straight

36:04SPEAKERthrough one feature on an IC.

36:06SPEAKERWe'll flip it if it's not big enough.

36:08SPEAKERAnd so by having virtually steam-powered CPU,

36:13SPEAKERthen cosmic rays don't upset it, right?

36:16SPEAKERBecause each feature on the CPU is so damn big,

36:18SPEAKERa single cosmic ray isn't significant enough to flip it.

36:22SPEAKERBut the RAM and the flash memory are both error-correcting.

36:26SPEAKERAnd one of those things we get in the list of, hey,

36:29SPEAKERdear diary, here's what I did today is, OK,

36:32SPEAKERthis particular register of memory had a single bit error

36:35SPEAKERand I fixed it, or sometimes double-bit errors.

36:38SPEAKERThey're rare, obviously.

36:40SPEAKERAnd there are certain parts of both the RAM and the flash

36:43SPEAKERmemory that are more susceptible because they spend

36:46SPEAKERtheir time slightly hotter.

36:48SPEAKERAnd so they are slightly more kind of fragile.

36:51SPEAKERWhen they-- well, first, John Bobcar in the Discord

36:54SPEAKERhad a question about this.

36:55SPEAKERAnd they asked if the cameras degrade from radiation.

37:01SPEAKERBecause on ISS, anybody who looks

37:03SPEAKERat the pictures that come from ISS sees the hot pixels that

37:07SPEAKERare on the cannons and the consumer DSLRs

37:10SPEAKERthat they shoot with on the station.

37:13SPEAKERDo you all have the same problem?

37:15SPEAKERSo we get cosmic ray hits on our cameras.

37:18SPEAKERBut again, they're pretty low-fi.

37:19SPEAKERSo my engineering cameras are one megapixel

37:21SPEAKERand black and white.

37:23SPEAKERSo they are just above potato quality, but not much.

37:27SPEAKERAnd we do get cosmic ray hits.

37:29SPEAKERAnd you see them as big streaks through the sensor.

37:33SPEAKERThe difference is that we occasionally

37:36SPEAKERhave hot pixels that are baked one way or the other forever.

37:39SPEAKERThe real enemy for our cameras is temperature,

37:41SPEAKERbecause they don't like being warm.

37:43SPEAKERAnd anything above 24, 25 degrees centigrade,

37:46SPEAKERand they tend to produce images that are so noisy that you

37:51SPEAKERcan't really see what the hell is going on.

37:52SPEAKERAnd on a planet where the average temperature is

37:55SPEAKERlike minus 60, minus 80 centigrade,

37:57SPEAKERyou wouldn't think that's a problem.

37:58SPEAKERUnfortunately, we brought a really big hot rock

37:59SPEAKERwith us called our RTG.

38:02SPEAKEROur power supply is stuck at the back of the rover.

38:04SPEAKERThe radioisotope junk in the trunk.

38:06SPEAKERAnd our rear hazard cameras are parked right next to it.

38:10SPEAKERAnd so we measure both-- have a little electronics box

38:14SPEAKERand the CCD to take pictures.

38:16SPEAKERAnd the electronics box gets hot when you use it.

38:20SPEAKERThe CCD doesn't.

38:22SPEAKERBut typically speaking, the navigation cameras

38:26SPEAKERup on the Mars will be at minus 10, minus 20,

38:29SPEAKERmaybe above freezing point during local noon

38:33SPEAKERduring the summer.

38:34SPEAKERFront has cams about the same.

38:36SPEAKERThe rear hazard cameras are typically 20 degrees hotter

38:38SPEAKERjust by being next to the RTG.

38:40SPEAKERAnd in fact, literally a couple of weeks ago, I was like,

38:43SPEAKERthey're getting really noisy.

38:44SPEAKERAnd they do get worse over time by virtue

38:46SPEAKERof being hot for so long.

38:48SPEAKERWhen we first had noisy crappy images,

38:50SPEAKERwe thought, is this because we're parked next to the RTG?

38:52SPEAKERBut it's not.

38:53SPEAKERIt's just the temperature.

38:54SPEAKERIt's not the decay of--

38:55SPEAKERYou're not getting particles.

38:57SPEAKERYeah, it's not the actual radiation coming out

38:58SPEAKERof the RTG, which is negligible.

39:00SPEAKERIt's just they're hot.

39:02SPEAKERAnd when they're hot, they produce more noise.

39:04SPEAKERAnd also, they are more susceptible to cosmic ray hits.

39:09SPEAKERYeah.

39:09SPEAKERThose rear cameras are important because you all

39:11SPEAKERdrove back the direction you intended to now, right?

39:15SPEAKERSo Opportunity did that.

39:16SPEAKEROpportunity drove backwards a lot

39:18SPEAKERbecause it had one steering actuator that was burst.

39:22SPEAKERCuriosity, we drive forwards.

39:23SPEAKERAnd what we've actually done is compared to other rovers,

39:26SPEAKERthe suspension has basically been flipped so that on paper,

39:30SPEAKERwe have more traction if we drive backwards.

39:32SPEAKERThat means whatever you get yourself stuck into,

39:34SPEAKERyou should be able to get out of, right?

39:38SPEAKERSmart.

39:39SPEAKERAnd for the autonomous driving stuff,

39:42SPEAKERthey tend to use the navigation cameras that

39:43SPEAKERare up on the mast in the breeze anyway.

39:45SPEAKERAnd so it'll take a couple of images looking ahead of itself,

39:48SPEAKERgo that safe, and then carry on.

39:49SPEAKERMost of the time, what it's doing

39:51SPEAKERis it's just tracking exactly where it is just

39:53SPEAKERby doing kind of visual odometry,

39:55SPEAKERlike a very, very slow version of an optical mouse

39:57SPEAKERusing our navigation cameras.

40:00SPEAKERI'm going to say to it, get over there because we've looked at it

40:02SPEAKERand we know it's safe.

40:03SPEAKERAnd so it'll just trundle its way along.

40:05SPEAKERAnd the only kind of self-checking it's doing

40:07SPEAKERis, am I where I think I am?

40:09SPEAKERAnd am I tilting too much?

40:11SPEAKERAnd is the suspension moving too much?

40:13SPEAKERWe will set limits for that based

40:14SPEAKERon what we think is going to happen.

40:16SPEAKERAnd if something worse than that happens or something's wrong

40:18SPEAKERand so we stop, then we can do autonomous driving

40:21SPEAKERwhere we literally say, go as far as you can in this direction

40:24SPEAKERgiven the time available.

40:25SPEAKERAnd it will take loads of pictures and look for hazards

40:27SPEAKERand map a route around the dangerous stuff and carry on.

40:30SPEAKERAll at 133 megahertz.

40:32SPEAKERIt's sweet.

40:33SPEAKERIt's amazing.

40:34SPEAKERReal hard.

40:35SPEAKERI have a question that probably sounds kind of frivolous.

40:38SPEAKERBut do you think we're going to see in our lifetimes

40:41SPEAKERor maybe even on Perseverance?

40:43SPEAKERSounds like you've got some knowledge of that project.

40:45SPEAKERBut do you think the imaging hardware and the transmission

40:48SPEAKERcapabilities will advance to the point--

40:50SPEAKERand this is where the frivolous part comes in--

40:52SPEAKERwhere we will be able to start sending,

40:53SPEAKERlet's say, modern iPhone quality video back

40:56SPEAKERfrom a place like Mars?

40:57SPEAKERI mean, I know that's probably pretty low value

41:01SPEAKERin a scientific sense.

41:02SPEAKERBut I think that the value of inspiring the public

41:04SPEAKERwith footage like that is not negligible.

41:08SPEAKERSo there's many sides to that question.

41:10SPEAKERAnd the first is, if you were to take

41:11SPEAKERa video on the surface of Mars, what would it look like?

41:13SPEAKERAnd the answer is, it would be indiscernible from still image.

41:16SPEAKER[LAUGHTER]

41:17SPEAKERThat was one of my follow-up questions,

41:18SPEAKERis, is there actually anything going on there that's worth--

41:21SPEAKERwell, you know, but even a panning shot,

41:23SPEAKERI feel like has got some--

41:23SPEAKERBut I know what you mean.

41:24SPEAKERI know exactly what you mean.

41:25SPEAKERAnd so the cameras we've got on Curiosity,

41:27SPEAKERwe have the engineering cameras that

41:29SPEAKERare like the potato, black and white, or megapixel

41:31SPEAKERthat are what we use to get the lay of the land.

41:33SPEAKERThey're what we use to drive.

41:34SPEAKERThey're what we use to plan where

41:35SPEAKERwe're going to put the robotic arms, stuff like that.

41:37SPEAKERWe also have color science cameras.

41:39SPEAKERWe have a mast cam that are two megapixel color.

41:43SPEAKERThey're basically HD sensors.

41:44SPEAKERThey're 1,600 by 1,200.

41:46SPEAKERAnd the same sensor is used for our left and right mast cam

41:49SPEAKERup on top of the mast, and the microscope,

41:51SPEAKERand a descent imager that's bolted to the rover that

41:53SPEAKERtook the movie you may have seen we took while we were landing.

41:56SPEAKERAnd that movie was about three or four frames per second.

42:00SPEAKERAnd the reason we've still got these one megapixel black

42:03SPEAKERand white sensors is because they were basically

42:05SPEAKERwhat was knocking around when Curiosity was being designed.

42:07SPEAKERAnd they were a heritage design from Spirit and Opportunity,

42:11SPEAKERwhich remember, were launched in 2003.

42:13SPEAKERSo you've got to think, well, it was being designed in 2000.

42:16SPEAKERAnd they were from a mission that

42:18SPEAKERwas due to fly in 2001 that got canceled.

42:21SPEAKERAnd so now the engineering cameras on Curiosity

42:24SPEAKERare basically derived from a design started

42:26SPEAKERin the mid to late '90s.

42:28SPEAKERThat's why they're only one megapixel.

42:29SPEAKERBut you think about it, it's like,

42:31SPEAKERwe've got a one megapixel CCD in the mid '90s.

42:34SPEAKERThat's like, whoa, dude, that's amazing, right?

42:36SPEAKERThat was a really expensive digital camera

42:39SPEAKERfor people on Earth.

42:40SPEAKERYeah, so now, basically our engineering cameras

42:43SPEAKERare direct descendants of that.

42:45SPEAKERPerseverance when, guys, really?

42:48SPEAKERWe really should think about upgrading.

42:50SPEAKERAnd so we've gone from-- the engineering cameras

42:52SPEAKERhave gone from one megapixel in black and white

42:54SPEAKERto 20 megapixels and color.

42:57SPEAKERThe other thing that's changed since Curiosity landed

42:59SPEAKERis when Curiosity landed, we had one very old Mars orbiter

43:03SPEAKERand one fairly old Mars orbiter to get our data home.

43:06SPEAKERAnd so our expected return from the surface wasn't that huge.

43:10SPEAKERWe weren't expecting to get gigabits of data in a day.

43:14SPEAKERNow we've got those orbiters still going

43:16SPEAKERand some new ones, which means the amount of data

43:18SPEAKERyou can get home in a given day is dramatically improved.

43:21SPEAKERTherefore, it's worth taking bigger cameras because you

43:24SPEAKERcan get all that data home.

43:25SPEAKERThere would have been no point taking a 20 megapixel camera

43:27SPEAKERon Curiosity, we'd never have got the data home.

43:30SPEAKERPerseverance, everything's a little bit newer.

43:32SPEAKERThe radios are basically the same.

43:34SPEAKERIn many ways, Perseverance is kind

43:35SPEAKERof a clone of Curiosity with some very focused upgrades.

43:40SPEAKERBut the infrastructure around Mars

43:42SPEAKERis now dramatically better so we can get more data home.

43:45SPEAKERSo these engineering cameras have got a big upgrade.

43:48SPEAKERThe science cameras are largely the same.

43:50SPEAKERSo the Mastercam is now called Mastercam Z.

43:54SPEAKERThe Z stands for zoom, so they can actually

43:56SPEAKERzoom in and out together as a stereo pair.

43:58SPEAKERAnd they'll also be able to take movies

44:00SPEAKERat a couple of frames per second.

44:02SPEAKERBut also for Perseverance, and this really is the cool part,

44:04SPEAKERand I'm very jealous.

44:06SPEAKERFor the landing, the only thing we had on Curiosity for landing

44:10SPEAKERwas that kind of four frames per second

44:12SPEAKERlooking at the bottom of the rover during landing.

44:14SPEAKERAnd that took a couple of weeks to get all that data home.

44:17SPEAKERPerseverance has multiple cameras

44:20SPEAKERon the back of the entry capsule to watch the parachute deploy.

44:23SPEAKERIt has a camera on the kind of rocket backpack, the Skycrane,

44:28SPEAKERlooking down at the rover during landing.

44:30SPEAKERIt has another one on the rover looking up

44:33SPEAKERat the Skycrane during landing.

44:35SPEAKERIt has another one on the rover looking down during landing.

44:39SPEAKERAnd these all get turned on and off at different parts

44:41SPEAKERduring landing for when it's useful.

44:43SPEAKERThe data gets fed through a USB bus

44:46SPEAKERonto a dedicated storage on the rover

44:48SPEAKERand then trickled back later, plus a microphone.

44:52SPEAKERSo you've got multiple camera angles and audio.

44:54SPEAKERAnd they're not like three frames per second.

44:56SPEAKERThey're kind of 25, 30 frames per second.

45:00SPEAKERAnd so we'll be able to--

45:01SPEAKERit'll take weeks and weeks and weeks

45:03SPEAKERto get all that data home.

45:04SPEAKERThere's a lot of data.

45:05SPEAKERBut we'll be able to do an awesome super cut

45:07SPEAKERwith the soundtrack of landing on Mars with Perseverance.

45:08SPEAKERWow, that's incredible.

45:09SPEAKERWhat's the target landing date or time frame?

45:12SPEAKERIt's the middle of February.

45:15SPEAKERI can't remember exactly what day it is, but it's lunchtime.

45:17SPEAKERI do know that.

45:19SPEAKERIt's early in February.

45:20SPEAKERWait, this February?

45:21SPEAKERThis coming February, yeah, it launched--

45:22SPEAKEROh, god, I didn't realize it had launched already.

45:24SPEAKERIt's six to nine months, basically,

45:26SPEAKERto get from Earth to Mars.

45:27SPEAKEROh, wow.

45:27SPEAKERIt launched from--

45:28SPEAKERIt's been and burned, right?

45:29SPEAKERSo InSight launched in Vandenberg.

45:31SPEAKERPerseverance launched from Florida.

45:34SPEAKERSo InSight launched from Vandenberg

45:37SPEAKERbecause it's a very, very, very small light spacecraft.

45:41SPEAKERIt was very, very small.

45:42SPEAKERAnd you do get a benefit from launching east around the Earth,

45:46SPEAKERbecause the Earth's rotating that way already.

45:48SPEAKERSo you get a couple hundred meters per second benefit

45:50SPEAKERfrom launching east with a rocket.

45:52SPEAKERBut the smallest, cheapest rocket basically

45:54SPEAKERon NASA's shopping list was so overpowered for InSight,

45:59SPEAKERthey were like, we don't need that.

46:00SPEAKERAnd by the way, the east coast range

46:02SPEAKERis going to be kind of really congested at that time.

46:04SPEAKERHave you thought about launching out of Vandenberg instead?

46:07SPEAKERAnd so that's what they did.

46:08SPEAKERAnd what's cool is we got to watch a Mars mission launch,

46:10SPEAKERand a bunch of us went up to Mount Wilson to watch it.

46:14SPEAKERAnd it did kind of half a lap around the Earth.

46:17SPEAKERAnd then the engines on the rocket

46:19SPEAKERfired again somewhere over Antarctica

46:21SPEAKERto blast on its way to Mars.

46:22SPEAKERThat's awesome.

46:23SPEAKERI know this is not really your department,

46:25SPEAKERbut whoever is responsible for calculating the kind of,

46:28SPEAKERI guess, it's like Newtonian mechanics

46:30SPEAKERof hitting a target that far away, that far in the future,

46:34SPEAKERlike, is there still a lot of pressure felt there?

46:36SPEAKEROr is that stuff so solved at this point

46:39SPEAKERthat it's just like plugging numbers into formulas and like--

46:42SPEAKERYou just use Kerbal, right?

46:43SPEAKERThat's how it all works now, I assume.

46:45SPEAKERI wonder if there's still a lot of stress along with that.

46:47SPEAKERI'm in Kerbal, if it lands right way up,

46:49SPEAKERyou spend the billions on it.

46:50SPEAKERIt's fine.

46:51SPEAKERSo my buddy Mark is actually involved

46:53SPEAKERin what's called mission design.

46:54SPEAKERIt's kind of the big picture trajectory stuff.

46:58SPEAKERAnd you'd think it's just Isaac Newton is driving divide by x,

47:04SPEAKERmultiply by this, blah, blah, blah.

47:05SPEAKERCongratulations, you've landed on Mars.

47:07SPEAKERBut there are so many different things that come into play.

47:09SPEAKERFor example, he worked on the trajectory for InSight.

47:11SPEAKERHe had to show InSight is going to get from Earth to Mars.

47:14SPEAKERHe also had to prove that the upper stage

47:17SPEAKERof the rocket over the next 50 years

47:20SPEAKERwas not going to hit Mars, because the upper stage

47:22SPEAKERof the rocket is filthy.

47:26SPEAKERIt's not been kept in a clean room.

47:28SPEAKERIt's covered in alligator farts or whatever

47:30SPEAKERit is that Florida smells of.

47:33SPEAKERWell, actually, Vandenberg.

47:34SPEAKERYou said launch of Vandenberg, but it was built in Alabama.

47:38SPEAKERSo you have to prove that various bits of the rocket

47:40SPEAKERaren't going to hit Mars.

47:41SPEAKERAnd so when you launch, you aim to miss.

47:44SPEAKERThat also means that your spacecraft,

47:46SPEAKERif it's dead on arrival into space,

47:48SPEAKERisn't going to crash into Mars as a dead vehicle.

47:52SPEAKERAnd then you have typically four or five little windows

47:56SPEAKERyou pre-plan in advance to nudge your trajectory.

47:59SPEAKERThey're called trajectory correction maneuvers.

48:01SPEAKERThe very, very poor analogy is an archer shooting an arrow.

48:06SPEAKERAnd while it's flying, you get to nudge it a couple of times.

48:10SPEAKERBut here's a weird one for you.

48:13SPEAKERIf you're in deep space for nine months,

48:16SPEAKERthe pressure of photons bouncing off you

48:20SPEAKERis enough that it actually moves your trajectory in that time.

48:22SPEAKERSo solar pressure is a real thing.

48:25SPEAKERAlso, your spacecraft is warm, and therefore it's

48:29SPEAKERemitting photons of IR energy.

48:32SPEAKERThey thrust the other way.

48:34SPEAKEROh, wow.

48:35SPEAKERIf you have your spacecraft at an angle towards the sun,

48:38SPEAKERthose photons now want to impart torque on your spacecraft,

48:41SPEAKERand they want to turn it around, which means now you're

48:43SPEAKERfiring thrusters to keep it pointing back the other way.

48:46SPEAKERAnd even though those thrusters are designed just

48:48SPEAKERto turn you around, they also impart a little nudge

48:50SPEAKERin one direction as a result. So it's a constantly moving

48:54SPEAKERtarget all the way up to Mars.

48:56SPEAKERAnd the last of those trajectory correction maneuvers--

48:59SPEAKERyou can cancel the last few if you

49:00SPEAKERthink you're in really good shape--

49:01SPEAKERbut the last of those trajectory correction

49:03SPEAKERmoves can be as close as like six hours out.

49:06SPEAKERBecause the window, the point you

49:09SPEAKERneed to deliver it to at the top of the Martian atmosphere,

49:12SPEAKERis incredibly small.

49:14SPEAKERIs that because Mars is small and the atmosphere is thin?

49:17SPEAKERIt's because you're coming in at such a shallow angle

49:20SPEAKERthat if you're just a little bit high,

49:22SPEAKERyou'll go very, very long.

49:24SPEAKERAnd if you're a little bit low, you'll

49:25SPEAKERcome up very, very short.

49:27SPEAKERAnd the difference between going very long and very short

49:30SPEAKERis kind of how harsh the entry is.

49:32SPEAKERSo if you come in too steep, you get very, very hot.

49:35SPEAKERYou can trash your heat shield.

49:37SPEAKEROr in some cases, basically, the idea with Mars landing

49:40SPEAKERis you get everything done before you're underground.

49:43SPEAKERIf you come in too steep, you don't have enough time

49:45SPEAKERto get it all done before the surface is now above you

49:47SPEAKERand you've had a bad day, right?

49:49SPEAKERGot it.

49:51SPEAKERAnd so the good thing we have now

49:55SPEAKERis that the Deep Space Network, which

49:56SPEAKERwe use to communicate with our spacecraft,

49:58SPEAKERis also how we navigate our spacecraft.

50:00SPEAKERAnd most of the time, we're not just listening to a spacecraft.

50:04SPEAKERWe actually send it a signal, a carrier signal.

50:08SPEAKERIt turns it around and sends it back,

50:10SPEAKERbecause our ability to generate a really good, solid, stable

50:13SPEAKERfrequency is way better than the spacecraft's.

50:16SPEAKERAnd so we call that two ways, when we're in a two-way lock

50:18SPEAKERwith the spacecraft.

50:20SPEAKERAnd just like a few hours before landing,

50:23SPEAKERI was watching the residual signal of Curiosity.

50:28SPEAKERIt was in a two-way lock.

50:30SPEAKERAnd the antenna, the little low gain antenna

50:32SPEAKERon the back of Curiosity during its flight to Mars,

50:35SPEAKERwas rotating.

50:36SPEAKERSo the whole spacecraft was spinning

50:38SPEAKERlike a top all the way to Mars at 2 RPM.

50:40SPEAKERAnd the antenna wasn't quite in the middle.

50:42SPEAKERIt was off to one side.

50:43SPEAKERAnd you could actually see, as a residual Doppler shift,

50:47SPEAKERthis thing moving about two feet in one direction

50:51SPEAKERand two feet back again as the spacecraft rotated.

50:56SPEAKERYou were down to millimeters per second of precision.

50:59SPEAKERThat's incredible.

51:00SPEAKERAnd our knowledge of where Curiosity

51:02SPEAKERwas when it hit the top of the atmosphere

51:04SPEAKERwas within about 600 meters.

51:07SPEAKERIt had traveled half a billion miles.

51:08SPEAKERIt's ridiculous.

51:11SPEAKERAnd what was cool with Curiosity,

51:12SPEAKERand Perseverance has this too, is

51:14SPEAKERthat all the previous spacecraft basically--

51:18SPEAKERyou throw it at the top of the atmosphere, fingers crossed.

51:20SPEAKERYou come out where you come out.

51:21SPEAKERAnd then you parachute down and you land.

51:23SPEAKERWith Curiosity, we told it where we

51:25SPEAKERthought it was going to be when it hit the atmosphere.

51:27SPEAKERAnd from then on, it was propagating that and actually

51:29SPEAKERflew through the atmosphere to manage its energy

51:33SPEAKERto make sure it wasn't going to go too long or come up short.

51:36SPEAKERAnd try and aim for the middle of our landing ellipse.

51:39SPEAKEROld missions, that landing ellipse,

51:40SPEAKERkind of the error of where it could land

51:42SPEAKERis anything within about 100 miles long and 20 miles wide.

51:45SPEAKERBy virtue of being active as it went through the atmosphere,

51:49SPEAKERCuriosity's landing ellipse was about 10, but 3, 4, 5 miles,

51:53SPEAKERsomething like that.

51:54SPEAKERAnd because I was still doing data visualization back then,

51:56SPEAKERand one of the things I did was the pretty 3D view

51:59SPEAKERof Gale Crater with every different potential landing

52:02SPEAKERellipse bolted onto it.

52:03SPEAKERAnd I kept getting new ellipses to do 3D renderings of.

52:07SPEAKERWe landed less than two miles from the middle

52:09SPEAKERof that landing ellipse.

52:10SPEAKERAnd the neat thing about using the rocket--

52:13SPEAKERI can't remember what you call it, but the moments of terror.

52:16SPEAKERSky crane.

52:16SPEAKERSky crane, yeah.

52:17SPEAKERYeah.

52:17SPEAKERIs that if there's big rocks or something

52:19SPEAKERthat you don't expect where you think you're going to land,

52:21SPEAKERyou can divert and go someplace else a little and move away.

52:23SPEAKERCuriosity was too dumb for that.

52:26SPEAKERSo Curiosity literally-- it was trying

52:28SPEAKERto land towards the center of this landing ellipse.

52:30SPEAKERAnd we had certified that ellipse to be clear of--

52:34SPEAKERto a certain percentage, like 90-something percent of it

52:37SPEAKERis this safe for the rover.

52:38SPEAKERAnd you have to certify the entire landing ellipse

52:40SPEAKERto be as safe as possible.

52:42SPEAKERPerseverance is cleverer than that in that when the heat

52:47SPEAKERshield gets thrown away, the camera

52:50SPEAKERwill look down at the ground and basically cross-reference

52:53SPEAKERwhat it sees with a map on board and go, OK, I know where I am.

52:56SPEAKERI'm exactly here.

52:58SPEAKERSo I'm going to try and land in that spot

52:59SPEAKERthat we know is really, really safe.

53:01SPEAKERAnd so now, instead of having to certify an entire 10-by-5-mile

53:07SPEAKERzone as safe for landing, you only

53:09SPEAKERhave to certify enough safe lily pads within that zone

53:13SPEAKERthat it can reach when it comes to dropping out

53:15SPEAKERof the back shell, flying under the rockets,

53:17SPEAKERdiverting to one of those pads, and then landing there.

53:20SPEAKERBecause the first thing you do when you drop out of the back shell

53:23SPEAKERis you wait a couple of seconds.

53:25SPEAKERThen the rockets get turned on.

53:26SPEAKERAnd the first thing it does is it does a huge divert maneuver.

53:29SPEAKEROtherwise, the first thing you're going to do

53:30SPEAKERis slam straight back into your parachute.

53:32SPEAKERSo it basically takes a hard left or a hard right.

53:36SPEAKERBut with Perseverance, it can take a hard whatever direction

53:39SPEAKERit needs to take to go and land in a safe spot.

53:41SPEAKERThat's awesome.

53:42SPEAKERYeah, it's got the land division system, LVS.

53:44SPEAKERAnd if you try and pronounce LVS quickly, you get Elvis.

53:48SPEAKERAnd so with their engineering model,

53:51SPEAKERit got flown on a helicopter out in the Mojave.

53:53SPEAKERIt had Elvis on the side.

53:54SPEAKERThat's funny.

53:56SPEAKERDoug, I don't want to take too much of your time

53:58SPEAKERbecause I know you have work to do.

54:01SPEAKERBrad, do you want to do some last passes?

54:03SPEAKERHow are you feeling?

54:04SPEAKERYeah, I guess the last real question I have is I didn't go

54:10SPEAKERand check specifically which ones I have in mind here.

54:12SPEAKERBut I feel like deep space probes

54:14SPEAKERand also some planetary rovers, you hear very frequently like,

54:18SPEAKERoh, we have extended the useful mission life of this thing

54:20SPEAKERout months to years past what we expected it to be.

54:23SPEAKERI think that happened-- I won't say

54:25SPEAKERthat happened with one or both of the voyagers, maybe.

54:28SPEAKEROh, yeah, absolutely.

54:29SPEAKERBut I'm curious, is that kind of extension quietly actually

54:34SPEAKERplanned for and expected behind the scenes?

54:37SPEAKEROr is that a bunch of unneeded redundancies being brought

54:41SPEAKERonline to push things out?

54:43SPEAKEROr is that just like the smartest engineers in the world

54:45SPEAKERjust figuring out how to squeeze blood

54:46SPEAKERfrom a stone over the course of years?

54:48SPEAKERYeah, my version of this question

54:50SPEAKERis, is the mission length that you guys say in public,

54:53SPEAKERlike the MVP and then everything after that is planned for,

54:57SPEAKERbut gravy?

54:58SPEAKERThe short version is that you said spirit and opportunity

55:01SPEAKERare going to last 90 days.

55:02SPEAKERThat's bullshit, right?

55:03SPEAKEROK, that's the short version.

55:04SPEAKERBearing in mind that I have on my wall here

55:06SPEAKERmy last shift from the opportunity mission, which

55:09SPEAKERwas day 5,086 of a 90-day mission, right?

55:15SPEAKERThat's some Scotty engineering right there, just to be clear.

55:17SPEAKERYeah.

55:18SPEAKERSo it's a little bit of everything.

55:22SPEAKERSo when NASA picks a mission-- and they

55:25SPEAKERpick missions by different means.

55:27SPEAKERSome of it's competitive.

55:28SPEAKERSome of it is just assigned, right?

55:31SPEAKERBasically, when the check gets cut, for want of a better

55:34SPEAKERphrase, they say, OK, we're giving you this,

55:36SPEAKERbut we want 90 days, right?

55:37SPEAKERYou said 90 days.

55:38SPEAKERThis is for 90 days.

55:40SPEAKERAnd you're going to make damn freaking sure your spacecraft

55:42SPEAKERcan last 90 days, right?

55:45SPEAKERAnd so you build redundancy.

55:47SPEAKERYou build margin.

55:50SPEAKERAnd a good case is spirit and opportunity, right?

55:53SPEAKERThey were famously going to last three months,

55:55SPEAKERand one lasted six, seven years.

55:56SPEAKERThe other lasted almost 15 years.

55:59SPEAKERAnd I can show you the scientific paper

56:01SPEAKERwritten by some of the engineers before launch that said,

56:04SPEAKEROK, with this launch window, if we send this design

56:07SPEAKERof spacecraft to that landing site,

56:09SPEAKERwith a little bit of margin, it'll die after 110 days.

56:13SPEAKERThe solar panels will be too dirty.

56:14SPEAKERWe won't be making enough power, and we will die just

56:17SPEAKERafter our 90 days.

56:18SPEAKERAnd legit, it was like 101 days for one of them,

56:21SPEAKERand 115 for the other.

56:22SPEAKERIt was close.

56:24SPEAKERBut there is margin in that modeling.

56:26SPEAKERAnd you get there, and you think you know how your spacecraft's

56:32SPEAKERgoing to behave.

56:33SPEAKERAnd you've been as conservative as you can within all

56:36SPEAKERthe constraints that you've got.

56:37SPEAKERYou've got your budget constraint.

56:38SPEAKERYou've got your time constraint.

56:39SPEAKERYou've got your mass constraint, your volume constraint,

56:42SPEAKERyour complexity constraint.

56:43SPEAKERWhat can you do in the time you have, with the money you have,

56:46SPEAKERand the space you have, and the rocket you have?

56:48SPEAKERYou make it as good as you possibly

56:50SPEAKERcan within all of those constraints.

56:51SPEAKERWhen it gets there, how does it actually behave?

56:54SPEAKERAnd typically, it behaves a little better

56:56SPEAKERthan your worst case scenario.

56:58SPEAKERBut you have to assume your worst case scenario.

57:00SPEAKEROtherwise, you're going to fuck up.

57:01SPEAKERSo it was generating a bit more power than we thought it would.

57:06SPEAKERIt was staying a little bit warmer than we thought it would,

57:08SPEAKERso you don't have to spend as much energy keeping it warm.

57:11SPEAKERAnd with Spirit and Opportunity, we

57:13SPEAKERthought they would get dusty, and dusty, and dusty,

57:16SPEAKERand then with so little power on its panels, it would die.

57:19SPEAKEROccasionally, with both rovers, one sunny day,

57:23SPEAKERwe'd wake up in the morning and have a crap tonne more power.

57:26SPEAKERAnd it's because the solar panels have been cleaned off

57:28SPEAKERby fortuitous gusts of wind, and dust devils, and stuff

57:30SPEAKERlike that.

57:33SPEAKERBut I will tell you, by the end of Opportunity's mission,

57:35SPEAKERshe was arthritic, and broken, and highly forgetful.

57:38SPEAKERI mean, of the instruments on the robotic arm,

57:41SPEAKERone of the spectrometers was dead.

57:42SPEAKERIt was dead.

57:43SPEAKERIt had a small radioactive source in it.

57:46SPEAKERThe half-life was like 250 days, and it had stopped basically

57:49SPEAKERbeing useful like a year in.

57:52SPEAKERThe microscope, sometimes you'd ask it to take a picture,

57:54SPEAKERand it would go, sorry, what?

57:55SPEAKERAnd you'd ask again, it would go, oh, microscope.

57:57SPEAKERGosh, yeah, no, I've got one of those.

57:58SPEAKERI'll take a picture for you.

58:00SPEAKERIts flash memory had got so unreliable,

58:02SPEAKERwe stopped using it.

58:03SPEAKERAnd so with Opportunity, believe it or not,

58:05SPEAKERwe would boot the rover up in the morning,

58:06SPEAKERimmediately basically have a RAM drive to put our data in it.

58:10SPEAKERWe'd send as much data home as we could in a given UHF pass.

58:13SPEAKERAnd when the rover went to sleep,

58:15SPEAKERif you hadn't got your data, it was just fucking gone, right?

58:19SPEAKERGone.

58:19SPEAKERSo we were basically using a RAM drive.

58:21SPEAKERIt was called cripple mode.

58:22SPEAKERIt was no flash, because the flash memory kept

58:25SPEAKERwarm, rebooting the vehicle.

58:26SPEAKERIt would take weeks to recover and stuff like that.

58:28SPEAKEROh my.

58:29SPEAKERHere's the best example of why, yes, we plan for 90.

58:32SPEAKERWe act conservative in the hope that it will last longer,

58:36SPEAKERbut we were not expecting it to last multiple years.

58:41SPEAKERSpare parts are-- you build spares of everything,

58:44SPEAKERbecause you don't want Gary the engineer to drop something,

58:48SPEAKERand suddenly your $2.5 billion spacecraft's going nowhere.

58:51SPEAKERSo there are spare radios, spare instruments, spare everything.

58:55SPEAKERAnd if you don't need them for the vehicle,

58:57SPEAKERyou tend to use those spares on your test bed.

59:00SPEAKERThere was a spare radio for Spirit and Opportunity.

59:04SPEAKERAnd the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project

59:06SPEAKERcame along and said, you using that?

59:09SPEAKERI'm like, no, you can have it.

59:11SPEAKERThanks.

59:12SPEAKERAnd so the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter,

59:13SPEAKERwhich is like an $800 million orbiter--

59:16SPEAKERit's a communications satellite, a weather satellite,

59:18SPEAKERit takes pictures of Mars that are as good as Google Earth,

59:20SPEAKERit's an incredible spacecraft-- it

59:22SPEAKERhas a spare radio from the MER project, Spirit and Opportunity.

59:26SPEAKERUnfortunately, it's basically the exact same phone number

59:28SPEAKERas Spirit.

59:29SPEAKERThey're on the exact same frequency

59:32SPEAKERin the Deep Space Network channel allocations.

59:34SPEAKERThey're like 32 different channels.

59:35SPEAKERThey're on the same channel.

59:37SPEAKERIf you'd have known that Spirit was still

59:39SPEAKERgoing to be working when MRO got there two years later,

59:42SPEAKERyou would not have given them their radio,

59:45SPEAKERbecause that now means whenever you try and send commands

59:47SPEAKERto MRO, Spirit's like, is that for me?

59:51SPEAKERThat's me, right?

59:51SPEAKERThat's my frequency.

59:52SPEAKERYou're trying to tell me something.

59:53SPEAKERBut I don't understand this.

59:54SPEAKERYou're speaking gibberish to me.

59:55SPEAKERThere must be something wrong with my radio.

59:57SPEAKERI'm going into safe mode.

59:58SPEAKERAnd vice versa.

1:00:00SPEAKERYou send a command to Spirit, and MRO picks that.

1:00:02SPEAKERMRO's like, yeah, that's not for me.

1:00:05SPEAKERThis is deeply fucked up shit.

1:00:07SPEAKERI'm going into safe mode.

1:00:08SPEAKERSo for years, you couldn't talk to MRO

1:00:12SPEAKERwhen Spirit was on the side of Mars facing Earth,

1:00:14SPEAKERand you couldn't talk to Spirit when MRO was on the Earth

1:00:17SPEAKERfacing side of Mars.

1:00:18SPEAKERWow.

1:00:19SPEAKERIt was a nightmare.

1:00:22SPEAKERAnd it's only because handing out the spare parts bin,

1:00:25SPEAKERbut the spacecraft was still going.

1:00:27SPEAKERNow, with curiosity, we didn't say 90 days.

1:00:30SPEAKERWe said one Mars a year, which is basically two Earth years.

1:00:34SPEAKERAnd that was conservative in a lot of ways.

1:00:38SPEAKERBut the main conservative approach is money.

1:00:41SPEAKERIt takes money to run the spacecraft like we have salaries.

1:00:46SPEAKERWell, DRO time costs money, and everything costs money, right?

1:00:50SPEAKERThe good thing is the deep space network time

1:00:52SPEAKERwe can share with other Mars missions,

1:00:53SPEAKERbecause one antenna can do multiple missions at a time

1:00:55SPEAKERif they're close enough in the sky

1:00:57SPEAKERthat the antenna can be pointed at them all the same time.

1:01:00SPEAKERAnd as far as the Mars rover and lander and orbiter

1:01:02SPEAKERare concerned, they're in the same beam width

1:01:04SPEAKERof a deep space network antenna.

1:01:06SPEAKERBut yeah, it takes a lot of money.

1:01:08SPEAKERI mean, our budget-- and you can look this up

1:01:10SPEAKERin the budget documentation at Congress and stuff--

1:01:13SPEAKERis MSL is about $50 million a year.

1:01:18SPEAKERNow, that's a pretty small kind of up on top of the $2.5 billion

1:01:22SPEAKERit topped to design it, build it, launch it, and operate it

1:01:24SPEAKERfor those first two years.

1:01:26SPEAKERAn extra year for $50 million is kind of a bargain.

1:01:30SPEAKERBut it is.

1:01:31SPEAKERAnd the thing is--

1:01:33SPEAKERand this is something that Steve Squires, who basically

1:01:36SPEAKERis the scientist who made Spirit and Opportunity happen.

1:01:38SPEAKERHe wrote in his very good book called "Robing Mars."

1:01:42SPEAKERHe realized at some point early in the mission,

1:01:44SPEAKERhe's like, oh god, we're never going to be done.

1:01:47SPEAKERWe will never be finished, because once we're

1:01:49SPEAKERdone in a particular location, guess what?

1:01:51SPEAKERWe can drive somewhere else and look at that instead.

1:01:53SPEAKERAnd that's true with Curiosity.

1:01:55SPEAKERWe've-- like eight years in, so we're six years

1:01:57SPEAKERover our original two years, we're still trucking.

1:01:59SPEAKERYeah, we have less power than we did when we landed.

1:02:01SPEAKERWe don't have solar panels.

1:02:02SPEAKERWe have an RTG, like the Voyager spacecraft do.

1:02:06SPEAKERAnd we're down 20-ish percent.

1:02:08SPEAKERAnyone can do the math, right, on the half-life of Plutonium

1:02:10SPEAKER238.

1:02:12SPEAKEROne of our flight computers is basically crap.

1:02:15SPEAKERIt's useless.

1:02:15SPEAKERWould you believe it's a flash memory problem?

1:02:17SPEAKERAnd so we've just reconfigured that to be a lifeboat

1:02:20SPEAKERif we need it.

1:02:21SPEAKERSo it'll be the Apollo 13 kind of lunar module

1:02:24SPEAKERif we need it in the future.

1:02:26SPEAKERBut our wheels are a little beaten up,

1:02:30SPEAKERbut they're still working.

1:02:31SPEAKERThe cameras are all still pretty good.

1:02:33SPEAKERWe've used some of the consumables inside the rover,

1:02:35SPEAKERbut not that many.

1:02:37SPEAKERAnd so we've just got to the really, really good stuff.

1:02:41SPEAKERWe've got to the clay-bearing minerals

1:02:43SPEAKERthat can only have been formed in the presence of neutral pH

1:02:45SPEAKERwater, and now we're approaching the sulphate-bearing minerals

1:02:49SPEAKERthat were probably formed in the presence

1:02:50SPEAKERof kind of acidic, nasty water.

1:02:52SPEAKERAnd above that is kind of the dry, arid era of Mars.

1:02:55SPEAKERAnd so ahead of us is this storybook

1:02:59SPEAKERof what the hell happened to Mars?

1:03:01SPEAKERWe know it was habitable.

1:03:02SPEAKERWe found all the ingredients life would ever possibly need.

1:03:05SPEAKERWe found rocks that can only have formed

1:03:06SPEAKERin rocks that formed in the bottom of a river that

1:03:09SPEAKERwas flowing in water that was clean enough

1:03:11SPEAKERyou could have drunk it somewhere between ankle

1:03:13SPEAKERand waist deep.

1:03:15SPEAKERLike, that's really specific.

1:03:16SPEAKERYeah, that's amazing.

1:03:17SPEAKERAnd that story is right ahead of us.

1:03:19SPEAKERThe aliens were there, and they put their hand in the thing.

1:03:21SPEAKERAnd then all the stuff came out, and it got sucked back in

1:03:25SPEAKERat the end of the movie is what happened, I think.

1:03:28SPEAKERI've got two words for you-- sand worms.

1:03:29SPEAKERWe're approaching this big field of sand dunes

1:03:32SPEAKERright ahead of our curiosities right now.

1:03:34SPEAKERAnd I swear to God, I expect the sand worms just

1:03:36SPEAKERkeep flying out right at us.

1:03:37SPEAKERI hate sand worms.

1:03:40SPEAKERYeah, I realize that this is potentially quite risky,

1:03:43SPEAKERputting you on record here or whatever.

1:03:45SPEAKERBut is there a narrative emerging around that stuff?

1:03:49SPEAKERIs there kind of a general line of thought

1:03:51SPEAKERyet about what that event or that period of Martian history

1:03:55SPEAKERmight have been, or do we just not have the data yet

1:03:58SPEAKERto quite start piecing that?

1:04:00SPEAKERObviously, you're talking about there potentially

1:04:02SPEAKERwas running water and standing water,

1:04:03SPEAKERand there might have been more of an atmosphere at one point,

1:04:06SPEAKERstuff like that.

1:04:07SPEAKERBut is there kind of a shape of an overall story yet,

1:04:11SPEAKERor are we not there?

1:04:12SPEAKERWe don't know all the details.

1:04:14SPEAKERI mean, here's a brilliant case study.

1:04:18SPEAKERLike a week ago, we drove past two big rocks

1:04:20SPEAKERthat were sat kind of out in the middle of nowhere,

1:04:22SPEAKERand they're kind of shiny.

1:04:23SPEAKERAnd in fact, they're probably metallic meteorites just

1:04:26SPEAKERsat on the ground.

1:04:27SPEAKERTheir very existence, the size they are,

1:04:31SPEAKERmeans that Mars must have had a much thicker atmosphere

1:04:34SPEAKERat some point in the past.

1:04:35SPEAKERBecause if you tried to throw that rock

1:04:36SPEAKERat the Martian atmosphere now, it

1:04:38SPEAKERwould hit the ground so quickly, it would be smashed to pieces.

1:04:41SPEAKERInteresting.

1:04:42SPEAKERBecause of the thinness of the atmosphere today.

1:04:44SPEAKERTheir very existence on the surface

1:04:47SPEAKERtoday tells you there must have been a thicker

1:04:49SPEAKERatmosphere in the past.

1:04:50SPEAKEROtherwise, they wouldn't be there.

1:04:51SPEAKERIt's a really cool--

1:04:52SPEAKERwe think Mars once had a thick atmosphere.

1:04:54SPEAKERYou're damn right it did, otherwise this rock

1:04:55SPEAKERwouldn't be here.

1:04:56SPEAKERIt's really cool.

1:04:58SPEAKERThe kinds of minerals, the clay-bearing minerals

1:05:01SPEAKERthat we've seen around where Curiosity has been the past

1:05:03SPEAKERcouple of years, can only have formed

1:05:05SPEAKERin the presence of liquid water at neutral pH.

1:05:09SPEAKERThe form, early on in the mission especially,

1:05:13SPEAKERit looked like concrete slabs had been smashed up,

1:05:15SPEAKERbecause you've got little round pebbles rolled up

1:05:18SPEAKERin the sandstones, because it formed

1:05:20SPEAKERat the bottom of a flowing river.

1:05:21SPEAKERAnd you can figure out how fast that river was flowing,

1:05:24SPEAKERbased on how round those rocks are, right?

1:05:26SPEAKERAnd how far down the river you must

1:05:27SPEAKERbe, based on how small they are, and stuff like that.

1:05:29SPEAKERIt's amazing what the scientists can figure out

1:05:31SPEAKERfrom the evidence we have.

1:05:33SPEAKERNow, the assumption is, Mars's atmosphere slowly wafted away

1:05:38SPEAKERas it did.

1:05:39SPEAKERThe planet gets colder.

1:05:41SPEAKERThe water kind of goes subsurface or boils off.

1:05:45SPEAKERAnd as a result, Mars then becomes colder and drier

1:05:48SPEAKERand colder and drier and colder and drier.

1:05:50SPEAKERAnd it doesn't take greatly to think that, OK,

1:05:53SPEAKERthat sulphate-bearing unit is kind

1:05:55SPEAKERof the last vestige of an aqueous Martian history,

1:05:59SPEAKERwhere there's not a lot of it around.

1:06:00SPEAKERWhat there is is so rich, and whatever

1:06:02SPEAKERcrap's underground anyway, it's basically sulphuric acid

1:06:05SPEAKERis what's left.

1:06:06SPEAKERAnd then you keep going a bit more,

1:06:08SPEAKERand now you're left with just this dry desert we have today.

1:06:11SPEAKERBut it's still geologically active.

1:06:13SPEAKERRocks are getting eroded.

1:06:14SPEAKERSand is getting blown around.

1:06:16SPEAKERI see that sand land on my frickin' lenses

1:06:18SPEAKERevery now and again.

1:06:20SPEAKERAnd the real detail of exactly what happened

1:06:24SPEAKERis going to be in the layers of rock

1:06:25SPEAKERthat are literally about 400 metres ahead of where

1:06:27SPEAKERCuriosity is right now.

1:06:28SPEAKERWe've driven 25K, and we're like 400 metres

1:06:31SPEAKERfrom the real meat of the mission.

1:06:33SPEAKERThat's incredible.

1:06:34SPEAKERGod, there's something really melancholy about that story,

1:06:36SPEAKERhonestly.

1:06:38SPEAKERIt's a billion-year tragedy.

1:06:40SPEAKERPotentially, yeah.

1:06:40SPEAKERThat's potentially, formerly, much more

1:06:43SPEAKERlush or robust planet, kind of slowly dwindling over eons.

1:06:48SPEAKERSo in Gale Craters, like 100 miles wide,

1:06:50SPEAKERit was probably a crater when it was wet,

1:06:53SPEAKERbut there wasn't a mountain in the middle.

1:06:55SPEAKERThe mountain has come since.

1:06:56SPEAKERAnd it is probable that Gale Crater was a giant lake.

1:07:00SPEAKERIt would have been really pretty.

1:07:02SPEAKERIf you take the views we have and up-res them with some--

1:07:06SPEAKERmaybe a bit of snowfall or some rainfall, a nice river.

1:07:09SPEAKERThe sky's going to be a different colour, sun's out,

1:07:11SPEAKERnice and warm.

1:07:12SPEAKERIt would have been absolutely spectacular.

1:07:14SPEAKERI guess we can at least take faith

1:07:16SPEAKERthat some nice artist renderings will be commissioned once we

1:07:19SPEAKERhave a clearer picture.

1:07:20SPEAKERSomebody will at least visualise that stuff for us,

1:07:22SPEAKERwhich is at least nice to look forward to.

1:07:25SPEAKERThat's cool.

1:07:26SPEAKERThat's cool, but kind of sad.

1:07:28SPEAKERDoug, thank you so, so much for taking the time to do this.

1:07:30SPEAKERWe really appreciate it.

1:07:31SPEAKERThis is instantly one of my favourite conversations

1:07:34SPEAKERI have ever had in my life, actually.

1:07:37SPEAKERWe are incredibly lucky and privileged to work

1:07:39SPEAKERon the mission we do.

1:07:40SPEAKERAnd genuinely, it's one of the best parts

1:07:42SPEAKERof doing a mission like this is getting

1:07:44SPEAKERto tell people about it.

1:07:44SPEAKERSo it's an absolute pleasure.

1:07:46SPEAKERIt is honestly-- a tremendous honour

1:07:48SPEAKERis the only way I can describe being able to talk

1:07:50SPEAKERabout something like this.

1:07:52SPEAKERThere's so much more--

1:07:53SPEAKERI want to talk about one of the things that--

1:07:55SPEAKERthere's a ton more stuff I'd love to talk about.

1:07:57SPEAKERBut I think we've taken enough of your time.

1:07:59SPEAKERAnd we'll have to see if we can get you back later

1:08:02SPEAKERat some point in the future again if you have another hour

1:08:04SPEAKERor some time to spend.

1:08:05SPEAKERAbsolutely.

1:08:06SPEAKERReal quick, just kind of parting question since, I mean,

1:08:08SPEAKERnot to speak for your time, but if we do,

1:08:10SPEAKERmaybe get you back at some point.

1:08:12SPEAKERDoes your experience on this project

1:08:14SPEAKERimmediately make you eligible to move on to Perseverance

1:08:16SPEAKERat some point?

1:08:17SPEAKEROr is that a whole new bidding process

1:08:19SPEAKERif you get to work on that?

1:08:21SPEAKERAnd so the staffing crunch problem

1:08:24SPEAKERwe have is that a lot of people on MSL

1:08:26SPEAKERhave been poached from Curiosity over to Perseverance.

1:08:30SPEAKERAnd so it's kind of the remaining skeleton crew

1:08:32SPEAKERon the deck of the good ship Curiosity

1:08:34SPEAKERtrying to keep her active and busy and healthy.

1:08:37SPEAKERAnd the staffing challenge is like, OK, the new hotness

1:08:40SPEAKERis always going to get the money.

1:08:42SPEAKERIt's always going to get the people it needs.

1:08:43SPEAKERAnd our challenge is to keep hold of the people

1:08:45SPEAKERwe need to keep the mission going.

1:08:46SPEAKERThat's fair.

1:08:47SPEAKERAnd it's not easy.

1:08:51SPEAKERSome of us have basically said, look,

1:08:52SPEAKERI'm not prepared to work Mars time.

1:08:54SPEAKERI have a small family.

1:08:55SPEAKERIt's not fair on them for me to work Mars time for three months.

1:08:58SPEAKERSo I'm out.

1:08:59SPEAKERI'm not doing Perseverance.

1:09:00SPEAKERYou guys take this hot early period.

1:09:03SPEAKERAnd we've picked people for our team

1:09:05SPEAKERbecause I have an engineering camera uplink lead in training

1:09:08SPEAKERright now whose wife has said, you're not doing Mars time.

1:09:11SPEAKERI'm like, I'll take you.

1:09:12SPEAKERYou can come to Curiosity because you're not

1:09:13SPEAKERgoing to get sold on my Perseverance.

1:09:15SPEAKERAt some point, I'm sure I'll go work on Perseverance.

1:09:17SPEAKERThe engineering camera team on Perseverance

1:09:19SPEAKERare former Curiosity engineering camera teams.

1:09:22SPEAKERI trained some of them on MSL.

1:09:24SPEAKERBut not for a while.

1:09:28SPEAKERI've got other roles I'm training for on Curiosity.

1:09:30SPEAKERI'm kind of diversifying my portfolio of responsibilities

1:09:34SPEAKERon Curiosity because I love this mission.

1:09:36SPEAKERI love the people.

1:09:37SPEAKERI love what we're doing with it.

1:09:38SPEAKERI genuinely think, even though it's an eight-year-old rover,

1:09:40SPEAKERit's the best days are yet to come.

1:09:42SPEAKERYeah, like you said, you're right on the cusp of the good stuff.

1:09:45SPEAKERThe creativity and the cunning it's

1:09:48SPEAKERgoing to take to keep doing good stuff

1:09:49SPEAKERwith an aging decrepit old rover with decreasing power,

1:09:53SPEAKERdecreasing money, right, is a really interesting challenge

1:09:56SPEAKERand one I'm really looking forward to.

1:09:58SPEAKERBut then someone will say, hey, Curiosity's

1:10:01SPEAKERkind of winding down a bit.

1:10:03SPEAKERWant to come take some 20 megapixel color pictures?

1:10:05SPEAKERI'll be like, ah, shit.

1:10:07SPEAKERWell, yeah, OK, yeah, OK, yeah, fine.

1:10:10SPEAKERYou've won me with your color goodness, you bastards.

1:10:13SPEAKEREuropa Express, there's all sorts of other stuff

1:10:15SPEAKERcoming, too, right?

1:10:16SPEAKERYeah, I mean, Europa Clipper.

1:10:17SPEAKERThe surface mission people tend to be surface mission people

1:10:20SPEAKERquite a lot of the time, because it's

1:10:21SPEAKERkind of a different paradigm.

1:10:23SPEAKERWhen you're just an orbiter, like a Mars orbiter,

1:10:25SPEAKERor you're going to be like the Europa Clipper mission,

1:10:27SPEAKERIsaac Newton is driving all the time,

1:10:28SPEAKERand so you know where you're going

1:10:30SPEAKERto be two weeks from now.

1:10:31SPEAKERSo you can plan everything months in advance.

1:10:33SPEAKERWith Curiosity, we don't know what's just over the next hill,

1:10:36SPEAKERand so the story changes, which is why we have

1:10:38SPEAKERto do planning on the day-to-day.

1:10:40SPEAKERAnd so it's a different mindset.

1:10:42SPEAKERIt's a different game.

1:10:42SPEAKERAnd I've seen people go from missions like Cassini.

1:10:45SPEAKERWe had some Cassini people, when Cassini finished a couple

1:10:48SPEAKERyears ago, they moved to Curiosity.

1:10:49SPEAKERSome of them got it, some of them just didn't,

1:10:51SPEAKERand they went off to go work Europa Clipper instead.

1:10:53SPEAKERSo it's really cool.

1:10:55SPEAKEROK, the five people under the age of 40 on the Discord

1:11:00SPEAKERwill kill me if I don't ask this,

1:11:02SPEAKERbut does that mean you all are hiring?

1:11:03SPEAKERAnd if so, how does one get a job at JPL?

1:11:08SPEAKERWhat do you all look for?

1:11:10SPEAKERSo JPL has more work to do than it is capable of doing,

1:11:15SPEAKERI would say, and we'll be farming stuff out

1:11:18SPEAKERin the not too distant future if we're not careful.

1:11:21SPEAKERWe are hiring.

1:11:22SPEAKERThere at JPL has a jobs page.

1:11:24SPEAKERIt is big.

1:11:25SPEAKERIt has a lot of vacancies on it.

1:11:26SPEAKERI will warn you that some of those vacancies

1:11:28SPEAKERare kind of standing vacancies that

1:11:29SPEAKERsit there so that a particular bit of JPL

1:11:32SPEAKERcan hire people at will.

1:11:33SPEAKERThat's a pipeline to hire somebody.

1:11:36SPEAKERAny big company does that, but a lot of them are real.

1:11:40SPEAKERThe trick is to try and figure out exactly who is involved.

1:11:44SPEAKERIt doesn't take a great leap to figure out

1:11:46SPEAKERwho is involved in a particular project at JPL.

1:11:49SPEAKERYou can email them in the blind and say, hey, Mr. This,

1:11:53SPEAKERDr. That, whoever.

1:11:54SPEAKERI saw this job posting about this project.

1:11:57SPEAKERCan you tell me more about it?

1:11:59SPEAKERLearn more about it before you go and apply.

1:12:00SPEAKERThe other way, especially for younger people,

1:12:03SPEAKERis internships.

1:12:05SPEAKERI have an engineering camera team member

1:12:07SPEAKERwho joined JPL beginning this year.

1:12:10SPEAKERThen two months later, it's like, go home.

1:12:13SPEAKERPoor person.

1:12:14SPEAKERShe started training on the engineering cameras

1:12:16SPEAKERbasically in about May, June.

1:12:18SPEAKERShe's certified as an engineering camera

1:12:20SPEAKERup in Cleed in September, and fully certified

1:12:22SPEAKERto operate the cameras on their own just after Thanksgiving.

1:12:26SPEAKERShe had been an intern for four consecutive summers at JPL.

1:12:29SPEAKERAnd she'd worked on a bunch of different projects.

1:12:31SPEAKERShe'd worked on Europa Clipper.

1:12:32SPEAKERShe'd worked on another mission I

1:12:33SPEAKERwas involved in for a while.

1:12:34SPEAKERShe worked on Mars 2020, different parts

1:12:36SPEAKERof different projects.

1:12:38SPEAKERAnd after her last internship, at the end of your internship,

1:12:41SPEAKERyou'd go around and you'd speak to people who were hiring.

1:12:43SPEAKERAnd she came and spoke to us.

1:12:45SPEAKERAnd we're like, you're awesome.

1:12:46SPEAKERYou want to come work with us?

1:12:47SPEAKERAnd she's like, yeah.

1:12:48SPEAKERIt's that simple.

1:12:49SPEAKERYou have a pre-made relationship at that point.

1:12:51SPEAKERThat's great.

1:12:52SPEAKERAnd in fact, I am speaking to a potential intern

1:12:55SPEAKERtomorrow morning.

1:12:57SPEAKEROur little team normally has one intern each summer.

1:13:00SPEAKERWe canceled it this year just because we're just

1:13:02SPEAKERgetting our heads around remote operations.

1:13:04SPEAKERWe don't know how we'll also handle trying to kind of mentor

1:13:07SPEAKERan intern at the same time.

1:13:08SPEAKERBut we're in a better space now.

1:13:10SPEAKERWe know next year's internships are going to be remote.

1:13:13SPEAKERAnd so we put out an AO for an internship.

1:13:16SPEAKERAnd the first thing we've done is offer first right

1:13:18SPEAKERof refusal to the person we canceled on this year.

1:13:21SPEAKERI said, hey, look, we're in better shape.

1:13:23SPEAKERWe're going to do our internships this coming year.

1:13:25SPEAKERAre you still interested?

1:13:27SPEAKERAnd I'm going to speak to them tomorrow.

1:13:28SPEAKERBecause they've got an interesting resume.

1:13:30SPEAKERThey're interested in what we're doing.

1:13:31SPEAKERI'm like, OK, come play with us for 12 weeks.

1:13:33SPEAKERLet's see how it goes.

1:13:34SPEAKERWell, in remote, it makes it more accessible

1:13:37SPEAKERto people who can't necessarily get to California as well,

1:13:39SPEAKERright?

1:13:40SPEAKERYeah.

1:13:40SPEAKERI mean, generally, they still like it.

1:13:43SPEAKEREspecially in mission operations, it used to be commutable.

1:13:46SPEAKERBut we have let some of our team members, like younger team

1:13:49SPEAKERmembers especially, of like, I just

1:13:51SPEAKERwant to go home and spend this craziness with my family

1:13:53SPEAKERinstead.

1:13:53SPEAKERAnd so our most recent certified engineering camera person

1:13:57SPEAKERis back home with family in Hawaii.

1:13:58SPEAKERAnd I'm like, take us with you.

1:14:02SPEAKERI would go there.

1:14:02SPEAKERAnd she's just extended, so she's like, you know what?

1:14:05SPEAKERI was going to be there for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

1:14:06SPEAKERI might as well stay till March.

1:14:07SPEAKERI'm like, you might as well.

1:14:08SPEAKERThat's a really good idea.

1:14:10SPEAKERSo but generally speaking, at some point,

1:14:13SPEAKERwe will start moving back to the lab, even if it's

1:14:15SPEAKERonly a few days a week on lab and the rest of the time

1:14:17SPEAKERat home, which I think is what everyone would rather

1:14:20SPEAKERhave in the future.

1:14:21SPEAKERBut the notion of having remote operations.

1:14:24SPEAKERBut also, there are ways to get involved

1:14:25SPEAKERin our missions that aren't working for NASA

1:14:28SPEAKERor working for JPL.

1:14:29SPEAKERThere are subcontractors that build the stuff on our spacecraft

1:14:32SPEAKERthat then operate the stuff on our spacecraft.

1:14:34SPEAKERThere's a camera team called Malin Space Science Systems

1:14:36SPEAKERdown in San Diego who build almost all the cool cameras

1:14:39SPEAKERon our spacecraft.

1:14:40SPEAKERThere's a robotics company in Pasadena called

1:14:42SPEAKERHoneybee Robotics.

1:14:43SPEAKERTheir headquarters are in Pasadena and Manhattan.

1:14:46SPEAKERAnd they've built mechanisms for a whole bunch of spacecraft,

1:14:48SPEAKERand they still command them.

1:14:49SPEAKERThere are subcontractors, and there

1:14:51SPEAKERare ways of getting involved that aren't just NASA.