00:00SPEAKER(upbeat music)
00:28SPEAKER- Okay, so the next category is,
00:32SPEAKERI think we're gonna do biggest whoopsie for 2020.
00:36SPEAKEROur nominees are Cyberpunk 2077.
00:43SPEAKERThe meat question from last week's episode.
00:46SPEAKER- Meat question wins.
00:47SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, good, good talk.
00:49SPEAKERAlways meat.
00:50SPEAKER- I mean, look, if you look at the shortcomings
00:52SPEAKERof the previous meat question
00:53SPEAKERand you see how they've improved over time.
00:58SPEAKER- I mean, I realize this is not most improved whoopsie.
01:03SPEAKER- Look, this is the hill I'm ready to die on, Brad.
01:05SPEAKERI think that Cyberpunk--
01:08SPEAKER- I can't, I can't do this.
01:09SPEAKER- How you doing, man?
01:10SPEAKER- I cannot do this.
01:11SPEAKER- Not good.
01:12SPEAKERYou've been doing too much podcasting this week, Brad.
01:15SPEAKER- Yeah, it's going on hour 26 here.
01:19SPEAKERLet's get this going.
01:20SPEAKERHow are you guys doing?
01:21SPEAKERDoug's still driving a robot
01:24SPEAKERa chunk of the way across the solar system.
01:26SPEAKERThat's still a little bit more momentous
01:27SPEAKERthan what I've been up to.
01:28SPEAKER- Better than Cyberpunk and eating your own thighs, yeah.
01:32SPEAKER- Probably more responsive at least.
01:35SPEAKER- So this week, well, I guess should we cold open
01:40SPEAKERor should we start the show?
01:41SPEAKER- Let's just keep going.
01:42SPEAKER- Okay, at this point.
01:43SPEAKER- I think it's fine to flip the table
01:45SPEAKERon the format this week.
01:48SPEAKER- So this week we're joined once again,
01:50SPEAKERwell, if you're a patron, you have met Doug before,
01:53SPEAKERbut if you are not, this is your first time
01:54SPEAKERmeeting Doug Ellison of JPL, who is a camera op
01:59SPEAKERon curiosity and has been for a while now, right?
02:03SPEAKER- That is what I do, yeah.
02:05SPEAKERFour years of taking photos on Mars.
02:06SPEAKERI've taken about, I think I did the math,
02:08SPEAKER14,000 pictures on Mars, something like that.
02:11SPEAKER- Look, that's about what you take in one year
02:12SPEAKERwhen you have a new kid is my experience.
02:15SPEAKER- At least the first year of our kid, it was about the same.
02:18SPEAKER- He said 14,000 photos
02:19SPEAKERand I almost went straight to the flicker joke.
02:21SPEAKERAnd then I was like, nope,
02:22SPEAKERwe burned that one on the last episode.
02:23SPEAKER(laughing)
02:28SPEAKER- So we asked Doug to come back and talk to us
02:30SPEAKER'cause in a couple of weeks, the next Mars rover in our,
02:35SPEAKERI think it's the fifth, probably at this point,
02:38SPEAKERAmerican Mars rover.
02:40SPEAKER- Yes, yes, it'll be the fifth, yeah.
02:42SPEAKER- Yeah, is landing, hopefully everything goes well,
02:45SPEAKERlanding on Mars in a couple of weeks
02:46SPEAKERafter about a seven month trip.
02:48SPEAKERAnd we just thought it'd be fun to talk about that
02:51SPEAKERand talk about what it's like to drive a 800
02:55SPEAKERto 1,000 pound vehicle around Mars,
02:58SPEAKERdrilling rocks and taking pictures.
03:01SPEAKER- It's, February is gonna be busy.
03:02SPEAKERThere's a whole kind of fleet of spacecraft.
03:05SPEAKERWe have these windows every 26 months
03:06SPEAKERand no one really missed this window.
03:09SPEAKERSo we have a Chinese mission that gets there
03:11SPEAKERin a couple of weeks time.
03:12SPEAKERWe've got a United Arab Emirates mission
03:15SPEAKERthat gets there in February.
03:17SPEAKERAnd then we've got Perseverance,
03:19SPEAKERthe new rover landing on February the 18th,
03:22SPEAKERlunchtime Pacific time.
03:24SPEAKERThat's the minute we can tell you when it's gonna be.
03:25SPEAKERSo 1238.
03:27SPEAKER- How much collaboration is there
03:29SPEAKERbetween the different international space agencies?
03:31SPEAKERI mean, I know like in the political realm,
03:32SPEAKERthere's a certain competitive aspect to it,
03:35SPEAKERbut like scientists like just share knowledge, right?
03:38SPEAKER- So almost all missions end up sharing
03:41SPEAKERevery single piece of data they take
03:42SPEAKERwith the wider scientific community
03:44SPEAKERand thus the public through various websites and stuff.
03:46SPEAKERLike you can go and download data
03:48SPEAKERfrom all of our Mars rovers.
03:49SPEAKERYou can go and download data from China's moon rovers, right?
03:52SPEAKERLike it's all out there because that's the right thing to do
03:54SPEAKERand I think all the science community
03:56SPEAKERaround the world know that.
03:58SPEAKERBut there are legal repercussions
04:01SPEAKERbetween NASA collaborating with China.
04:02SPEAKERIt's tricky.
04:04SPEAKERPolitically, we're just not allowed to do it.
04:05SPEAKERAnd so they're somewhat on their own.
04:08SPEAKERChina does collaborate with the European Space Agency.
04:11SPEAKERNASA collaborates with the European Space Agency.
04:14SPEAKERThe Emirates mission has definitely got some US involvement.
04:17SPEAKERIt's using the Deep Space Network,
04:18SPEAKERwhich is NASA's network of ground stations
04:20SPEAKERaround the world to talk to us.
04:22SPEAKERAnd so it's, I mean, most of these missions
04:25SPEAKERend up being international in one way or another.
04:28SPEAKERJust by virtue of not one place
04:30SPEAKERhas everything it needs to do the job.
04:33SPEAKER- I think there was one planned mission
04:36SPEAKERfor this 2021 window that missed,
04:39SPEAKERwhich was the ESA Russia collab, right?
04:42SPEAKER- Yeah, so it would have been a Russian lander
04:43SPEAKERwith a European rover.
04:46SPEAKERAnd Rosalind Franklin, unfortunately,
04:47SPEAKERthey just weren't quite ready.
04:49SPEAKERAnd so the frustrating thing is that you can't say,
04:52SPEAKERwe'll go next week, that you have to say,
04:53SPEAKERwe're gonna go next window,
04:54SPEAKERwhich in this case is 26 months later.
04:57SPEAKERPeople in glass houses,
04:58SPEAKERbecause curiosity was two years late,
05:00SPEAKERthe insight lander was two years late.
05:02SPEAKERAnd so it happens and no one wants it.
05:06SPEAKERAnd it's really frustrating when someone
05:08SPEAKERhas to make the call and go, you know what guys,
05:09SPEAKERwe're just not gonna be ready.
05:11SPEAKERAnd suddenly you've now got to find a way
05:14SPEAKERto keep your entire team busy and occupied
05:17SPEAKERand trained and happy all the way for those 26 months
05:20SPEAKERwhilst you fix whatever often quite small thing
05:23SPEAKERthat made you miss your launch window.
05:25SPEAKER- Can you, at that point, can you like pull,
05:28SPEAKERI mean, I assume if they reached a point
05:30SPEAKERwhere like the rover is on a pad,
05:32SPEAKERready with a rocket underneath it,
05:35SPEAKERyou're probably not gonna pull it back into the lab
05:37SPEAKERand start adding stuff or removing stuff to it at that point.
05:41SPEAKER- It's very, very small changes.
05:43SPEAKERA lot of the changes will be like those,
05:45SPEAKERwe had some placeholder components
05:47SPEAKERand the finished ones weren't quite ready.
05:49SPEAKERAnd so it's kind of swapping out for like mocked up parts
05:52SPEAKERfor real parts.
05:53SPEAKERSometimes it can be flight software, not ready.
05:55SPEAKERThe good thing about flight software is
05:57SPEAKERas long as your vehicle's happy, once it's in space,
05:58SPEAKERit can always send your flight software late
06:01SPEAKERat the speed of light, but.
06:04SPEAKER- Hold on, are you saying that there's
06:06SPEAKERday zero patches for spaceships?
06:09SPEAKER- We have fixed bugs in curiosity's flight software
06:13SPEAKERon several occasions.
06:14SPEAKERIn fact, because curiosity and Perseverance
06:17SPEAKERare very, very similar, they kind of,
06:18SPEAKERtheir flight software started life in about the same place.
06:21SPEAKERAnd Perseverance's team have found flight software bugs
06:25SPEAKERthat they've handed them on down to curiosity and said,
06:28SPEAKERhey, we found this bug in the flight software,
06:30SPEAKERwe think it might apply to you as well.
06:31SPEAKERAnd then we've gone, you know what,
06:33SPEAKERthat's a bug that only happens during landing,
06:35SPEAKERwe don't care anymore.
06:36SPEAKEROr actually that could bite us at some point,
06:39SPEAKERlet's do that as a fix.
06:40SPEAKERAnd then we'll roll all those fixes up
06:41SPEAKERinto a new flight software build that we will send to the rover
06:44SPEAKERin a couple of, over a period of a couple of weeks,
06:47SPEAKERand then literally it will build the image on board,
06:49SPEAKERand then we'll boot up into it.
06:51SPEAKER- Wow.
06:52SPEAKERI was working on other planets, holy crap.
06:55SPEAKER- Yeah, I was working on a cyberpunk joke there
06:57SPEAKERabout maybe the thing the games industry could learn from NASA
06:59SPEAKERis not to ship stuff until it's ready,
07:01SPEAKERbut then I'm going to just leave that one aside.
07:04SPEAKERLike the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which went in 2003
07:07SPEAKERand landed in 2004, they launched without any software
07:11SPEAKERthat would allow them to have driven once they landed.
07:14SPEAKERIt was all sent between launch and landing,
07:17SPEAKER'cause you've got kind of nine months
07:19SPEAKERof fairly quiet time with the vehicle.
07:21SPEAKERAnd so that flight software,
07:22SPEAKERthey spent more time developing on the ground,
07:24SPEAKERthey sent it late, basically.
07:26SPEAKER- So when we had you on for the Patreon episode,
07:30SPEAKERwe talked a little bit about the hardware
07:31SPEAKERon these rovers being,
07:34SPEAKERI mean, it's cutting edge for space technology,
07:37SPEAKERbut it's a little bit archaic for terrestrial tech, right?
07:39SPEAKER- It's a little.
07:40SPEAKERYeah, so Curiosity and Post, for instance,
07:43SPEAKERit's a very, very similar vehicle.
07:45SPEAKERThey both use what's known as a RAD 750,
07:48SPEAKERwhich is a 133 megahertz PowerPC chip.
07:51SPEAKERIt's basically a low spec, first generation iMac,
07:55SPEAKERthe ones that look like goldfish bowls.
07:58SPEAKERIt has 128 meg of RAM, it has about four gig of flash.
08:01SPEAKERCuriosity, all of our engineering cameras
08:04SPEAKERare what we use to kind of get the lay of the land,
08:07SPEAKERhave a look around, figure out what we want to go
08:08SPEAKERand look at more closely.
08:09SPEAKERThey're all one megapixel and black and white.
08:11SPEAKERThey actually started life for a project
08:13SPEAKERthat was due to fly in 2001.
08:16SPEAKERAnd so they're a 20 year old design at this point.
08:19SPEAKERPerseverance gets a big upgrade for that.
08:20SPEAKERIt's engineering cameras are actually 20 megapixels
08:23SPEAKERand color, which is gonna be amazing.
08:26SPEAKERThose are gonna look, I saw some images taken
08:29SPEAKERin the clean room and I just, I swore out loud
08:31SPEAKERand went, "Good God, that looks like a photograph,"
08:34SPEAKERas opposed to the typical potato cam crappy space pic.
08:38SPEAKERThey just look like someone had taken a cell phone in there.
08:42SPEAKERBut generally speaking, yeah, but the operating system
08:45SPEAKERis kind of a real time operating system called VxWorks.
08:48SPEAKERThings like the 787 Dreamliner run on that.
08:51SPEAKERThings like the ASIMO robot run on that.
08:55SPEAKERAnd it's enough.
08:57SPEAKERI mean, more computing power would be nice for Curiosity.
09:01SPEAKERThe most computer intensive thing we ever do
09:05SPEAKERis visual odometry, which is kind of when we're driving,
09:07SPEAKERwe look at the train around us,
09:08SPEAKERfigure out exactly how far we've moved,
09:10SPEAKERcompare that to how far we think we've moved,
09:12SPEAKERand then we can figure out if we're slipping our wheels
09:14SPEAKERand stuff like that.
09:15SPEAKERAnd when we're driving, with that turned on,
09:17SPEAKERwe're actually only moving about a third of the time.
09:19SPEAKERTwo thirds of the time is a sat there crunching numbers.
09:22SPEAKERWhat they've done with Perseverance is throw in another board
09:25SPEAKERthat basically has a dedicated chip
09:28SPEAKERfor things like visual odometry.
09:31SPEAKERAnd so the pause to analyze the imagery basically goes away.
09:34SPEAKERSo it kind of triples how far I can drive in any given day,
09:37SPEAKERwhich is a huge upgrade.
09:41SPEAKER- It's funny, the things that gate,
09:44SPEAKERfrom talking to you and other folks from JPL
09:45SPEAKERand folks who've worked on these kinds of rovers,
09:47SPEAKERit's always stricken me how the things
09:51SPEAKERthat you wouldn't expect are the things that gate.
09:53SPEAKERLike on Curiosity and Spirit,
09:55SPEAKERit was what the amount of electricity
09:58SPEAKERthe solar cells could generate during a day,
10:00SPEAKERa lot of times, and how much the batteries could store
10:01SPEAKERand stuff like that.
10:03SPEAKERBut I never would have considered that compute
10:06SPEAKERis the thing that is holding back Curiosity
10:09SPEAKERin terms of miles per day.
10:10SPEAKER- I mean, Perseverance has a stowaway on board,
10:13SPEAKERwhich is the Ingenuity Mars helicopter.
10:15SPEAKERAnd by a huge margin, Ingenuity carries
10:19SPEAKERthe fastest CPU ever sent to Mars
10:21SPEAKERbecause inside it's actually kind of derived
10:24SPEAKERfrom a drone dev kit.
10:27SPEAKERThat's really, yeah.
10:28SPEAKERIt's a drone dev kit inside with a whole bunch of mods,
10:30SPEAKERbut it's an ARM CPU in there.
10:33SPEAKERAnd in fact, I think it's two.
10:36SPEAKER- Do they have to shield it?
10:38SPEAKERLike do extra shielding and stuff around it?
10:40SPEAKEROr is it...
10:41SPEAKER- There's kind of a, like if you've got a CPU
10:44SPEAKERsat in deep space for years and years and years,
10:47SPEAKERyou're gonna get hit in such a way
10:48SPEAKERwhere at some point you'll have a bit flip that's bad, right?
10:50SPEAKERAnd so you need a machine that's robust to that.
10:53SPEAKERWith the helicopter, they figured out that if that happens,
10:56SPEAKERthey can reboot it so quickly, it doesn't matter.
10:59SPEAKERAnd so it has, and people can look this stuff up,
11:03SPEAKERthere are PDFs that detail how this thing has been designed,
11:06SPEAKERhow it's built, what the flight computer is,
11:08SPEAKERwhat the backup kind of watchdog computer is
11:10SPEAKERand stuff like that.
11:11SPEAKERAnd so it can, so for like recognizing features and images
11:16SPEAKERand figuring out exactly where it's gonna fly,
11:19SPEAKERthey've got that faster CPU.
11:21SPEAKERFor the basic housekeeping and to keep it in the air
11:23SPEAKERif something goes wrong, it's a little low level thing.
11:26SPEAKERAnd so you kind of get around it that way.
11:30SPEAKERAnd it is only a tech demo.
11:31SPEAKERSo if something were to go wrong,
11:34SPEAKERit was a demo, it didn't work out great.
11:36SPEAKERA bit like the old Sojourner over in 1997,
11:38SPEAKERthat was kind of a tech demo, can we drive on Mars?
11:41SPEAKERThe answer is yes.
11:42SPEAKERAnd everything that's followed has been a child of that.
11:44SPEAKERThis Ingenuity helicopter
11:46SPEAKERis kind of the next generation of that.
11:47SPEAKERCan we fly on Mars?
11:49SPEAKERAnd there are people already thinking,
11:51SPEAKERwell, if this works, what science instruments
11:53SPEAKERcan we bolt onto something a bit like this in the future?
11:55SPEAKER- And I just wanna clarify, when you say helicopter,
11:57SPEAKERwe were talking a literal helicopter with rotors
11:59SPEAKERand that's not like a just a fun colloquial name
12:02SPEAKERfor something that is not actually a helicopter.
12:04SPEAKERI mean, because, you know, obviously-
12:05SPEAKER- It's a real helicopter.
12:06SPEAKERIt weighs-
12:07SPEAKER- It's not a lot of air on Mars.
12:09SPEAKER- It's like, I just wanna make sure.
12:10SPEAKER- It's like, take a plane up to about 100,000 feet
12:13SPEAKERand stick your hand out the window.
12:14SPEAKERIt's, the air is about 1% as thick as ours.
12:19SPEAKERAnd you might think that's not enough
12:20SPEAKERfor blades to grab a hold of,
12:22SPEAKERbut in terms of the energy required
12:24SPEAKERto get it off the ground,
12:25SPEAKERit's about a third of what it is on Earth
12:26SPEAKERbecause the gravity is about a third.
12:28SPEAKERSo gravity is gonna help you a bit.
12:30SPEAKERAnd as long as you don't spin rotor blades fast enough
12:34SPEAKERthat you kind of, the tips of those blades
12:36SPEAKERare traveling supersonic,
12:37SPEAKERyou just need more aggressive rotor blades
12:40SPEAKERand a light enough vehicle
12:42SPEAKERthat you close the engineering problem and they've done it.
12:46SPEAKERAnd there are videos of them flying a mass,
12:50SPEAKERkind of an adjusted version of this helicopter
12:53SPEAKERso it weighs about as much as it will on Mars
12:55SPEAKERin one of our vacuum chambers
12:57SPEAKERwith just enough carbon dioxide put back in it
12:59SPEAKERto be Martian atmosphere and it flies.
13:02SPEAKERIt's absolutely extraordinary.
13:05SPEAKER- I mean, I have to imagine it's A,
13:08SPEAKERit's always interesting to see real life tech
13:10SPEAKERthat we use here on the planet going into space
13:14SPEAKERand like putting drone controllers and stuff like that,
13:16SPEAKERor modified drone controllers, whatever,
13:18SPEAKERon something like this is really nifty.
13:21SPEAKERSo this one doesn't have science instruments.
13:24SPEAKERThis is basically a proof of concept.
13:25SPEAKER- It really is, basically.
13:27SPEAKERI think it's got a little downward facing camera
13:29SPEAKERthat it uses for kind of watching the ground beneath it
13:31SPEAKERfor the kind of tracking where it is,
13:34SPEAKERkind of like an optical mouse, just a little bit higher.
13:36SPEAKERAnd then it's got a kind of perspective camera
13:38SPEAKERthat sticks out the side
13:39SPEAKERthat goes from kind of just about the horizon
13:41SPEAKERto almost directly below it.
13:43SPEAKERAnd that's basically gonna generate really nice postcards
13:46SPEAKERthat are geologically useful.
13:48SPEAKERI mean, they're like, okay,
13:50SPEAKERwe have this gap in our understanding of the terrain around us.
13:53SPEAKERYou've got the rover eye view that's from about two meters up.
13:55SPEAKERYou've got the orbiter view that's from 400 kilometers up.
13:59SPEAKERIt would be nice just to pop your head over a hill
14:01SPEAKERand have a look and bridge the gap
14:03SPEAKERbetween the orbital data and the rover data.
14:06SPEAKEROne could envisage in the future,
14:08SPEAKERlike the helicopter scouting out ahead a few days in advance,
14:11SPEAKERfrom that data, you generate much better maps
14:13SPEAKERof where you wanna go next.
14:14SPEAKERAnd then from that, you can therefore plan longer drives
14:18SPEAKERwith the rover because you now know
14:19SPEAKERwhat's over that next ridge at a scale
14:22SPEAKERthat's useful for rover safety.
14:27SPEAKER- I assume that this is gonna be piloted
14:28SPEAKERin the same way that the rovers are,
14:29SPEAKERwhere you say, hey, take off, fly a hundred meters this way,
14:33SPEAKERtake some pictures, and then fly back
14:35SPEAKERand land back on the rover?
14:37SPEAKER- So the rover's actually gonna drop it onto the ground
14:40SPEAKERand then drive away and then literally park
14:42SPEAKERlike a hundred yards away.
14:42SPEAKERIt's gonna get the hell out of the way
14:44SPEAKER'cause little helicopter with big flappy blades
14:48SPEAKERspinning around kicks up a lot of dust
14:50SPEAKERand dust gets on things like lenses and stuff.
14:52SPEAKERSo they're gonna park pretty long way away from it.
14:54SPEAKERAnd then it has its own little solar panel
14:57SPEAKERso it can charge itself.
14:58SPEAKERAnd I think they've got about five test flights planned.
15:01SPEAKERSo one is literally pop up, hover, drop back down again.
15:04SPEAKEROne is pop up to about five meters,
15:06SPEAKERfly five meters one way, fly back, pop back down again.
15:10SPEAKERIt's not smart enough to find a safe place to land.
15:12SPEAKERSo what you do is you say, this is a safe place to land.
15:16SPEAKERIt can take off and then go and land there.
15:19SPEAKERBut it is rover-like in its kind of autonomy.
15:22SPEAKERIt can look after itself on the second to second basis
15:25SPEAKERbut it's only really gonna do what we've told it to do.
15:28SPEAKER- It doesn't, so it doesn't have any like blade guards
15:30SPEAKERor anything like that.
15:31SPEAKERAnd it looks like it has carbon fiber blades, so.
15:33SPEAKER- They had a set of those blades at a open house
15:36SPEAKERa couple of years ago and it is uncanny how light they are.
15:40SPEAKERThey are, they feel like nothing in your hand
15:43SPEAKERbut they're huge.
15:44SPEAKERI mean, they are about a meter across.
15:46SPEAKERI mean, that's extraordinary.
15:47SPEAKER- It's funny, the thing it reminds me of
15:50SPEAKERis those human powered helicopter flight demos
15:52SPEAKERthat like Caltech kids do.
15:54SPEAKER- Yeah, it's the same problem.
15:56SPEAKERIt's you don't have enough, they have very little power
15:59SPEAKERand so need gigantic blades to generate the lift.
16:02SPEAKERThis needs gigantic blades to generate lift
16:03SPEAKER'cause there's not enough air.
16:05SPEAKERAnd it's as long as, yeah,
16:08SPEAKERas long as you don't break the speed of sound
16:09SPEAKERwith the tips of your rotors, you're fine.
16:12SPEAKERAnd they just have super aggressive aerofoil shapes
16:16SPEAKERespecially the kind of inboard on those rotors.
16:18SPEAKERThey're very, very aggressive propellers.
16:20SPEAKERAnd yeah, I mean, it worked in the vacuum chamber.
16:24SPEAKEREverything says it should work when it gets to Mars.
16:26SPEAKERFingers crossed.
16:27SPEAKER- Yeah, I have, oh, sorry, go ahead.
16:29SPEAKER- Oh, go ahead, Brad.
16:30SPEAKER- This may be a very rudimentary or ignorant physics question
16:33SPEAKERbut does the speed of sound impacted at all
16:35SPEAKERby the extreme difference in the air density?
16:37SPEAKER- It's different, but not hugely.
16:39SPEAKER- Okay. - It's the same ballpark.
16:41SPEAKERAnd so it's always confusing when people talk
16:43SPEAKERabout the spacecraft hitting the top of the atmosphere,
16:45SPEAKERMach 25 or something, it's like, which Mach do you mean?
16:48SPEAKER- Earth matter or Mars?
16:51SPEAKER- But the effects of being supersonic or transonic
16:55SPEAKERare at Martian levels, not Earth levels, obviously
16:58SPEAKER'cause Mars isn't gonna crap
16:59SPEAKERwhat the speed of sound is on Earth.
17:02SPEAKER- That makes sense.
17:03SPEAKER- So I'm just gonna ask a question
17:04SPEAKERthat Will actually wrote in these notes.
17:06SPEAKERHe doesn't mind, but I'll go for it.
17:08SPEAKEROne of the things he has written here is
17:09SPEAKERwhy are we sending so many rovers to Mars?
17:11SPEAKERI mean, is that mostly just about proximity,
17:12SPEAKERlike ease of getting it there?
17:13SPEAKERI mean, obviously like we talked about this some
17:15SPEAKERin the patron episode, like Mars has a fascinating story
17:19SPEAKERand mystery to figure out in terms of, you know,
17:22SPEAKERwhere all the water went,
17:23SPEAKERwas there life there at some point, et cetera, et cetera.
17:25SPEAKERLike what are the factors there as far as you see it?
17:28SPEAKER- There is an overriding management
17:29SPEAKERwhen it comes to exploring planets that is flyby, orbit,
17:34SPEAKERland, rove, and return samples.
17:37SPEAKERAnd you try and do the, you know, the ideal situations,
17:41SPEAKERwe go and do that in all of the places, right?
17:43SPEAKERWe go and do that at Europa and Titan and Mercury and Venus.
17:46SPEAKERAnd Mars happens to be pretty close.
17:50SPEAKERIt happens to be enough like Earth that it's fairly easy,
17:55SPEAKERnot trivial, but fairly easy to land on.
17:59SPEAKERYou can get lots of data home from it.
18:01SPEAKERAnd we have this understanding that long ago,
18:05SPEAKERit was an awful lot like the Earth.
18:06SPEAKERIt had running water on the surface.
18:08SPEAKERThere were all the ingredients that life needs.
18:09SPEAKERWe don't know if there was life there,
18:11SPEAKERbut all the ingredients it needs were there.
18:13SPEAKERAnd so in terms of the hunt for life in our cosmic backyard,
18:19SPEAKERit may not be the absolute best candidate,
18:22SPEAKERbut it's the nearest good candidate.
18:25SPEAKERWhat we'd love to have is some gigantic submarine
18:28SPEAKERwith a huge lab inside it swimming around the oceans
18:30SPEAKERof Europa or sniffing its way through the vents
18:33SPEAKERthat spew out the bottom of Enceladus, you know,
18:34SPEAKERor wading through the lakes on Titan.
18:37SPEAKERBut those are all much, much bigger challenges.
18:39SPEAKERAnd so in terms of, you know,
18:41SPEAKERwhat is the fruit which we can currently reach,
18:45SPEAKERroving around Mars, understanding its geology,
18:47SPEAKERunderstanding its habitability,
18:49SPEAKERunderstanding the potential astrobiology of Mars
18:53SPEAKERis what we can reach right now.
18:55SPEAKERBut as our technology improves,
18:58SPEAKERthat list of flyby, orbit, land, rove, return samples
19:03SPEAKERgets further and further from Earth.
19:04SPEAKERAnd so we have plans for a Europa lander,
19:08SPEAKERwhich will be amazing.
19:10SPEAKERAnd then eventually at some point,
19:11SPEAKERmaybe there is a Europa drill that starts drilling down
19:13SPEAKERinto the surface to understand what's going on down there.
19:15SPEAKERAnd then we have amazingly a quad rotor helicopter
19:20SPEAKERthat's being, it's actually been selected.
19:22SPEAKERIt's a properly selected mission that's going to happen,
19:24SPEAKERgoing to Titan.
19:25SPEAKERIt's gonna fly around Saturn's moon, Titan.
19:28SPEAKER- Wow.
19:29SPEAKER- Yeah, that's gonna be pretty special.
19:31SPEAKERIt's, and so, you know, we, as our technology improves,
19:34SPEAKERwe push the boundary out of doing all of these cool,
19:37SPEAKERinteresting things.
19:38SPEAKER- I realize this is a big question,
19:40SPEAKERnot asking you to commit to anything here.
19:42SPEAKERDo you think we will see missions like that
19:45SPEAKERactually taking off in our lifetimes?
19:47SPEAKEROr is that a period of like multiple decades of R&D
19:50SPEAKERto even think about trying something like that?
19:52SPEAKER- I think landing on Europa,
19:56SPEAKERdefinitely within our lifetimes.
19:58SPEAKERAnd I think burrowing down the 10 plus kilometers of ice
20:03SPEAKERto go and explore it with a little robotic submarine
20:05SPEAKERis probably a little further away.
20:08SPEAKERI think that's a big ask.
20:10SPEAKER- That's a lot.
20:11SPEAKER- It's really hard.
20:13SPEAKER- Can't you just put a heating source on something
20:16SPEAKERand just warm it up?
20:17SPEAKERJust let it melt through?
20:18SPEAKER- Just take it's way down there eventually.
20:20SPEAKER- It frees behind you.
20:21SPEAKER- Oh, right.
20:22SPEAKERYeah, no space.
20:24SPEAKERNo talk backs, I guess.
20:25SPEAKER- Yeah, and so you'd need some sort of lander
20:28SPEAKERand then you'd need some sort of thing
20:29SPEAKERthat penetrates through from there.
20:32SPEAKERAnd the radiation environment on the surface of Europa
20:36SPEAKERis an absolute horror show.
20:38SPEAKER- Is that because of Jupiter?
20:40SPEAKEROr is that--
20:41SPEAKER- Yeah, it is, yeah.
20:42SPEAKERYou're trapped kind of within.
20:44SPEAKERI mean, the biggest thing in the solar system
20:47SPEAKERis Jupiter's magnetic field.
20:49SPEAKERIt stretches all the way to the orbit of Saturn.
20:51SPEAKERIt's enormous.
20:53SPEAKERAnd it is so powerful.
20:55SPEAKERIt generates currents that are in,
20:57SPEAKERthat flow around the crap being blown out from Io.
21:01SPEAKERThere are kind of eddy effect.
21:02SPEAKERIt's just, it's a horror show.
21:04SPEAKERLike the Juno spacecraft that's orbiting Jupiter right now,
21:07SPEAKERthe electronics are literally in something called the vault
21:10SPEAKERthat is like this 150 kilogram titanium box
21:14SPEAKERto try and protect it from the worst of the radiation.
21:16SPEAKERAnd even then, it only spends a few hours
21:18SPEAKERevery kind of month close to Jupiter.
21:21SPEAKERAnd then its orbit takes away the heck away from Jupiter
21:24SPEAKERso it can then send all that data back home again
21:27SPEAKERbecause it's a nightmare.
21:28SPEAKERIt's an absolute nightmare.
21:29SPEAKERNo electronics like it.
21:33SPEAKER- I guess one of the other things, we talked about this
21:35SPEAKERa lot in the other episodes, I don't wanna dig in too much.
21:37SPEAKERBut I mean, Mars also, we have a lot of infrastructure
21:39SPEAKERthere kind of compared to the other places
21:41SPEAKERin the solar system, right?
21:43SPEAKER- We do, we've been visiting it with almost every
21:46SPEAKERopportunity that we can for 20 years or so.
21:49SPEAKERAnd so we have a fleet of Mars orbiters that act
21:53SPEAKERnot just as kind of scientific platforms in their own right
21:58SPEAKERthat help map the planet, understand the planet,
22:00SPEAKERfind us the cool places to go and land and rove around,
22:04SPEAKERbut they act as relay satellites as well.
22:05SPEAKERSo Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, MAVEN,
22:09SPEAKERthe European Trace Gas Orbiter, we speak to all of those,
22:13SPEAKEReven Mars Express is an older European orbiter as well.
22:15SPEAKERWe use those as relay satellites.
22:17SPEAKERMainly it's just the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and MAVEN
22:21SPEAKERand the European Trace Gas Orbiter for Curiosity
22:23SPEAKERbecause they have the newest, shiniest versions
22:25SPEAKERof the radio so we can get more data home that way.
22:29SPEAKER- What's a good throughput tomorrow?
22:31SPEAKERIf I'm ordering DSL in the Panacea crater,
22:34SPEAKERwhat am I getting?
22:35SPEAKER- So, yeah, AT&T run out to Gale crater gets you,
22:39SPEAKERyour daily cap is about something between
22:43SPEAKER500 and 1,000 megabits per day.
22:47SPEAKER- Okay, so divide that by eight.
22:49SPEAKER- Yeah, call it 100 to 200 megabytes a day,
22:51SPEAKERit's not extraordinary, it's pretty normal.
22:53SPEAKERWhen we landed, curiosity landed in 2012,
22:57SPEAKERMAVEN wasn't there.
22:58SPEAKERThe European Trace Gas Orbiter wasn't there,
22:59SPEAKERso it was relying on two pretty old spacecraft.
23:01SPEAKERSo, curiosity actually is getting more data home
23:03SPEAKERon a day-to-day basis now than it ever has before.
23:07SPEAKER- Oh, new data plan.
23:08SPEAKER- Yeah, right, free upgrade.
23:11SPEAKERAnd so, that's kind of one of the reasons
23:13SPEAKERthat the Perseverance forever could say,
23:14SPEAKERwell, screw these crappy old one megapixel
23:17SPEAKERblack and white cameras that were designed in the late 90s,
23:19SPEAKERlet's have some new engineering cameras
23:21SPEAKERthat are 20 megapixels in color
23:22SPEAKERbecause now we have the data volume
23:24SPEAKERto return that stuff home again.
23:26SPEAKERAnd so, they knew the better infrastructure was there
23:30SPEAKERwhen designing Perseverance.
23:32SPEAKERWe didn't know it was gonna be there when we built Curiosity,
23:34SPEAKERand so, they're gonna make the most of it.
23:37SPEAKER- So, that kind of brings us to one of the,
23:40SPEAKERactually, probably the thing I'm the most excited about
23:42SPEAKERwith Perseverance, which you talked about
23:43SPEAKERon the other episode a little bit,
23:44SPEAKERwhich is the kind of landing home movies
23:47SPEAKERthat it's going to be sending back to us
23:48SPEAKERof its entire landing sequence once all that is done
23:52SPEAKERand recorded and everything.
23:55SPEAKERI mean, I've got 100 questions about that.
23:57SPEAKERAre the engineering cameras that you just mentioned,
23:58SPEAKERor I assume those are distinct from the landing cameras,
24:00SPEAKERare the cameras that are gonna be used for the landing,
24:03SPEAKERare they gonna do the landing
24:04SPEAKERand then go inactive from then on?
24:06SPEAKERI mean, I guess you guys can use everything you can, but.
24:09SPEAKER- So, during landing, the engineering cameras
24:13SPEAKERinterface directly with the flight computer's board,
24:15SPEAKERand you don't want to basically give the flight computer
24:18SPEAKERanything else to do while it's landing,
24:20SPEAKERgenerally speaking, 'cause it's kind of busy.
24:22SPEAKERAnd so, all of the, the name is EDL,
24:27SPEAKEREntry, Descent, and Landing.
24:28SPEAKERAll the EDL cameras are actually controlled
24:31SPEAKERby their own board that literally interfaces
24:34SPEAKERto something through like a USB 3.0 bus, it's crazy.
24:38SPEAKERAnd so we have a couple of cameras on the back shell
24:43SPEAKERthat will take high speed of the parachute deploying.
24:46SPEAKERThat's never been seen on Mars before.
24:49SPEAKERWe will have a camera on the sky crane,
24:51SPEAKERthat's kind of the rocket backpack
24:53SPEAKERthat carries the rover down to the ground,
24:55SPEAKERa camera on that looking down at the rover,
24:58SPEAKERa camera on the rover looking back up at the sky crane,
25:01SPEAKERand then another camera on the rover itself looking down,
25:05SPEAKERmuch like the one that took the only version of,
25:07SPEAKERthe only camera angle we had in 2012,
25:09SPEAKERwhich was a four-ish frame per second color landing movie
25:12SPEAKERat roughly HD quality and color.
25:16SPEAKERAnd so, all of those different camera angles
25:18SPEAKERwill document all the important parts of landing
25:21SPEAKERall the way from parachute deployment,
25:23SPEAKERheat shield deployment, rovers dropping out
25:25SPEAKERfrom the back shell, the rovers separating
25:27SPEAKERfrom the sky crane, the touchdown,
25:28SPEAKERand then the sky crane flying away.
25:31SPEAKERAnd there'll be a microphone to record sound
25:33SPEAKERthroughout all of it as well.
25:34SPEAKERAnd so the supercut of that is gonna be just amazing.
25:39SPEAKERAnd they're all good enough to be like 720p-ish,
25:43SPEAKERsome of them a little bit better,
25:44SPEAKERsome of them aren't much better than that,
25:45SPEAKERtwo-ish megapixels are kind of the lowest end ones,
25:48SPEAKERbut yeah, to be able to see it from so many different angles
25:51SPEAKERto understand, I mean, there's the outreach side,
25:54SPEAKERwhich is, it's gonna look fricking awesome, right?
25:57SPEAKERBut then there's also the engineering side
25:58SPEAKERof we think we know how this behaves.
26:00SPEAKERWe've seen it through telemetry in the past,
26:01SPEAKERexactly how did it behave?
26:03SPEAKERWe've simulated trying to deploy parachutes
26:07SPEAKERat those environments, what's it actually gonna be like
26:09SPEAKERwhen you see it deploy on Mars, that kind of thing.
26:11SPEAKER- This is the facet, like the idea that we don't know
26:15SPEAKERhow a parachute, like we have a pretty good idea
26:17SPEAKERhow the parachute opens on Mars but we have no confirmation
26:19SPEAKERthat it actually is working the way we expect.
26:22SPEAKER- Nobody's ever seen it, like maybe Mars ferries
26:24SPEAKERmaterialize out of nowhere and just waft the rover
26:27SPEAKERdown to the surface on a--
26:29SPEAKER- Skyhooks the whole way down, it's like the golden chariot.
26:31SPEAKER- Like, Curiosity tested its parachute
26:33SPEAKERin the world's biggest hairdryer,
26:36SPEAKERthe 120-foot wind tunnel up at Ames Research Center
26:40SPEAKERin the Bay Area, and what you do is you say,
26:43SPEAKER"Okay, we're gonna be doing this
26:45SPEAKER"in a Martian atmosphere at Mach 2."
26:48SPEAKERRoughly speaking, how many molecules of air
26:50SPEAKERis that per second, right, what's the dynamic pressure
26:52SPEAKERof that, and it turns out it's like a strong breeze
26:55SPEAKERin the 120-foot wind tunnel.
26:57SPEAKERAnd so, the NASA engineers, when they actually did this
27:03SPEAKERwith Spirit and Opportunity as well, they said,
27:04SPEAKER"Hey, can we deploy a parachute in here?"
27:07SPEAKERAnd the guys at Ames were like,
27:09SPEAKER"We've fired jet engines into here,
27:10SPEAKER"do what the hell you like, it's fine."
27:13SPEAKERSo, the static load from that deployment is about right,
27:18SPEAKERbut on Mars, you're doing it with thinner air,
27:21SPEAKERbut at a supersonic speed, and so it snaps open
27:23SPEAKERreally quickly, but it's the same number of molecules
27:27SPEAKERhitting at the same time, so the dynamic pressure
27:29SPEAKERis about the same, but the speed of that air is much higher.
27:31SPEAKERAnd so, our understanding, and when I was doing education
27:36SPEAKERand public outreach, I worked on the Curiosity
27:38SPEAKERlanding animation, and we tried to make it look real.
27:40SPEAKERThey say that actually, you get this initial snatch
27:44SPEAKERas the parachute beats the end of all of its cables,
27:47SPEAKERit kind of ripples for a second, and then it just snaps open
27:50SPEAKERalmost instantaneously, and you get this massive jolt
27:53SPEAKERoff the back of the spacecraft.
27:55SPEAKERIt pulls like 60,000 pounds of force, right, it's huge.
27:59SPEAKERAnd you pull 12G for a few seconds
28:02SPEAKERwhile the moment that parachute's inflated.
28:05SPEAKERNow, there are a couple of research programs,
28:07SPEAKERone called LDSC, the Low Density Supersonic
28:10SPEAKERAccelerator Program, but then also Perseverance Project
28:13SPEAKERitself went and said, let's just fly some rockets up
28:15SPEAKERto a couple of hundred thousand feet
28:17SPEAKERand deploy parachutes out the back of them.
28:19SPEAKERIt's a more Mars-like environment,
28:21SPEAKERit's at the right kind of speed, at the right kind
28:23SPEAKERof atmospheric density, 100,000 plus feet up in the air.
28:27SPEAKERBut it's nitrogen and oxygen, it's not carbon dioxide,
28:30SPEAKERand gases behave differently.
28:32SPEAKERAnd so, it'll be nice to see exactly what goes on
28:35SPEAKERwhen you try and deploy a parachute at Mach 1.8-ish.
28:39SPEAKERA few dissertations written about the stuff
28:42SPEAKERthat comes out of this, probably.
28:45SPEAKERHow much of that stuff gets actually published?
28:47SPEAKERAnd NASA has a technical report server,
28:49SPEAKERJPL has its own technical report server,
28:51SPEAKERand you can do Google searches like Mars parachute,
28:54SPEAKERjust add PDF on the end, and you'll
28:55SPEAKERget a bunch of the reports that are published about how
28:57SPEAKERwell these things perform.
28:59SPEAKERI assume somebody has crunched the numbers at this point.
29:01SPEAKERI mean, you have a rough idea how long the landing sequence
29:03SPEAKERwill take, and times x number of cameras and microphones.
29:07SPEAKERLike, do you know what the total quantity of data
29:08SPEAKERis going to be of all those recordings,
29:11SPEAKERand how long it'll take to send back?
29:13SPEAKERI don't know.
29:13SPEAKERThe only thing I have seen is it'll take some weeks
29:15SPEAKERto get it all back.
29:17SPEAKERWhat they will do is trickle it out
29:19SPEAKERof the board that was controlling those cameras
29:21SPEAKERduring landing and storing all that data.
29:23SPEAKERThey'll trickle it over to the flight computer in chunks,
29:25SPEAKERand then it will come back home like normal data.
29:28SPEAKERIt could take a while.
29:29SPEAKERIt took a couple of weeks for Curiosity
29:31SPEAKERto send back that landing movie.
29:33SPEAKERAnd this is going to be six times worse.
29:36SPEAKERI feel like you managed my expectations pretty well
29:39SPEAKERin the last episode, because I was very excited
29:40SPEAKERabout the idea of recording video on another planet
29:42SPEAKERuntil you pointed out that the video will essentially--
29:45SPEAKERwell, at least once they're on the ground-- will essentially
29:47SPEAKERbe just like still photography, because there's not exactly
29:50SPEAKERa lot of tumbleweeds on Mars.
29:52SPEAKERVery would a video on Mars be discernible from a still image?
29:57SPEAKERWe do see stuff move.
29:59SPEAKERWe see things like clouds occasionally
30:00SPEAKERoverhead of the Curiosity.
30:01SPEAKERWe see dust devils blowing by.
30:05SPEAKEROccasionally when we look for dust devils,
30:06SPEAKERwe actually get a little bit of the rover
30:08SPEAKERin one corner of that image.
30:09SPEAKERAnd there's a fabric cover over the back of our power supply.
30:12SPEAKERWe'll see that blow backwards and forwards in the breeze.
30:15SPEAKERAnd when we take movies with Curiosity,
30:17SPEAKERlike they're a frame every 12, 15, 20 seconds or so.
30:22SPEAKERSo they're not really movies.
30:23SPEAKERThey're kind of more time lapsed.
30:24SPEAKERBut like a couple of months ago, we saw a big ass dust devil
30:27SPEAKERabout half a mile away just waft by over a period of four
30:31SPEAKERminutes.
30:32SPEAKERSeems like eight meters across, 50 meters tall,
30:35SPEAKERabout 600 meters away.
30:37SPEAKERAnd it just sat there, was just spinning its way past us.
30:40SPEAKERIt was awesome.
30:42SPEAKERSo one of the things--
30:43SPEAKERso I mean, it is disappointing that there won't be a Twitch
30:46SPEAKERstream of the landing from the rover's perspective.
30:48SPEAKERI've got to say, if we could work on that,
30:50SPEAKERthat would be great.
30:52SPEAKERWe'll get right on that.
30:53SPEAKERYeah.
30:54SPEAKERWhat up, operators?
30:55SPEAKERIt's your boy, Perseverance, here.
30:58SPEAKERDon't forget to like and subscribe.
31:01SPEAKERThis is-- slam that like button.
31:03SPEAKERXS Perseverance 420XX, yes.
31:05SPEAKERYeah.
31:08SPEAKERDoug, there's a bunch of new science stuff.
31:11SPEAKERSo the history of this rover is that it was--
31:16SPEAKERwhy build one when you can buy two for twice the price?
31:20SPEAKERThe famous Jodie Foster slash Carl Sagan contact line.
31:24SPEAKERBut this was one of the twins that was made for Curiosity.
31:26SPEAKERAnd then we spent the time intervening, upgrading,
31:30SPEAKERand adding new science, and taking the lessons
31:33SPEAKERwe learned from Curiosity, and making
31:35SPEAKERthis rover better, faster, stronger.
31:40SPEAKEROther adjectives as well.
31:41SPEAKERYeah.
31:42SPEAKERSo the rover itself, I think, is new.
31:45SPEAKERIf you put them side by side, you'd
31:47SPEAKERstruggle to tell them the chassis apart.
31:50SPEAKERI think Perseverance is slightly longer, by like an inch or two.
31:53SPEAKERIt's a little bit bigger.
31:54SPEAKERBut as a design, only a parent would
31:57SPEAKERbe able to tell them apart in terms
32:00SPEAKERof what the chassis looks like.
32:01SPEAKERIt's a little bit heavier.
32:02SPEAKERIt's got a bit more stuff inside.
32:04SPEAKERThe wheels are a big upgrade.
32:06SPEAKERSo we've learned a whole bunch about what Mars likes
32:09SPEAKERto do with thin aluminum wheels.
32:10SPEAKERAnd so Perseverance actually has slightly narrower wheels,
32:14SPEAKERand less kind of angular tread on those wheels.
32:18SPEAKERAnd so they've tested those for destruction.
32:20SPEAKERAnd there's nothing Mars can bring to the table that will
32:23SPEAKERhurt the Perseverance wheels.
32:26SPEAKERBecause the Curiosity wheels, there
32:28SPEAKERwas concern that they were going to wear out
32:30SPEAKERbefore the rover was done with the science, right?
32:33SPEAKERThey look horrific.
32:36SPEAKERThey've got holes in them, some which you could probably
32:38SPEAKERput your hand through.
32:40SPEAKERBut they still work, and they work absolutely fine.
32:42SPEAKERIn fact, we could shed the inner 2/3 of one of our wheels.
32:44SPEAKERAnd in terms of driving around, the rover don't care.
32:49SPEAKERAnd there are papers published about how exactly we
32:52SPEAKERwould do that if we had a wheel that was so damaged,
32:54SPEAKERwe actually wanted to get rid of it.
32:56SPEAKERYou'd try and kind of peel it like a tin can against a big rock
33:00SPEAKERand shed it in some way.
33:03SPEAKERBut I believe the sky crane, the rocket backpack that
33:07SPEAKERlands the rover on the ground for Perseverance
33:10SPEAKERis the engineering model from Curiosity.
33:11SPEAKERThat's like legit leftover bits and pieces.
33:15SPEAKERI'm sure there are some spare electronics boards.
33:17SPEAKERI know that the Perseverance team
33:18SPEAKERhas been borrowing some of the test bed hardware of Curiosity,
33:22SPEAKERbecause they're very, very similar for doing
33:24SPEAKERflight software testing and stuff like that.
33:26SPEAKERThe big upgrades are in what Perseverance is designed to do,
33:28SPEAKERwhich is to identify, collect, document, and then save and then
33:34SPEAKERdump somewhere really well documented samples that are
33:38SPEAKERgoing to get returned to Earth.
33:40SPEAKERIt is the proper first step in a coherent Mars sample return
33:44SPEAKERprogram.
33:46SPEAKERThat's the ultimate goal, that there is no amount of science
33:49SPEAKERor engineering that we could do to put the best research
33:52SPEAKERlabs on Earth on Mars.
33:55SPEAKERBecause if you think, put it this way,
33:57SPEAKERthe samples that were brought back by Neil and Buzz
34:00SPEAKER51 years ago from the moon, the best science
34:03SPEAKERbeing done with all those Apollo moon rocks
34:05SPEAKERis being done right now.
34:06SPEAKERBecause better instruments, better laboratories,
34:10SPEAKERbetter techniques have developed now
34:11SPEAKERthan they were last year or 10 years ago or in 1969.
34:15SPEAKERAnd so the very best science we'll
34:16SPEAKERbe able to do in understanding the history of Mars,
34:18SPEAKERits habitability, maybe present or past bacterial life
34:22SPEAKERor what have you is by bringing bits of it home.
34:27SPEAKERWhat amount of bits are we talking about here?
34:29SPEAKERLike a couple of ounces per sample or grams?
34:33SPEAKERSo it's got about 40 or so of these coring tubes on board.
34:40SPEAKERAnd each one, when you drill into a rock,
34:43SPEAKERit collects a piece of rock about the size
34:45SPEAKERof a Sharpie, something like that.
34:47SPEAKERAnd the hope is that we'll return a couple of dozen
34:49SPEAKERof those back to Earth.
34:51SPEAKERAnd so the fact that there is a meeting
34:54SPEAKERthat actually the public could dive into, amazingly,
34:57SPEAKERwhere they're trying to figure out the exact strategy of,
35:00SPEAKERif we did something really good, should we take two of them
35:05SPEAKERand save one and dump it somewhere else
35:08SPEAKERand save one and dump it here kind of thing?
35:10SPEAKERBecause in 2026, another robot has got to come along,
35:15SPEAKERpick them all up, drive them back
35:17SPEAKERto a lander that's got a rocket on it, shove them in the rocket,
35:19SPEAKERand the rocket's got to then take off from Mars,
35:22SPEAKERback into orbit around Mars.
35:23SPEAKERThen a gigantic Mars orbiter's got to go and find that,
35:27SPEAKERrendezvous with it, stick it in an entry capsule,
35:29SPEAKERand leave Mars and come back to Earth.
35:31SPEAKERAnd the systems engineering, the architecture of,
35:36SPEAKEROK, we're going to be driving around.
35:38SPEAKERNot all the good science is going to be in the same place.
35:41SPEAKERSo do we collect a bunch of stuff
35:42SPEAKERand then dump it in one spot?
35:44SPEAKERDo we take two of everything, dump one set here,
35:48SPEAKERthen drive somewhere else cool, collect a whole bunch of stuff
35:50SPEAKERand dump another set there?
35:51SPEAKERAnd then when it comes to that fetch rover in six,
35:55SPEAKERseven years from now, coming to collect these,
35:57SPEAKERdecide which is the best set to go and get, you could--
36:01SPEAKERYou just hold everything and hope that you
36:03SPEAKERfind a good place to drop it.
36:05SPEAKERYou could say, let's make sure we hold on to something.
36:08SPEAKERBecause if, for example, that fetch rover doesn't work,
36:11SPEAKERwell, Perseverance could then drive over
36:13SPEAKERto where the lander is, drop them there,
36:15SPEAKERand the lander could pick them up and put them in the rocket.
36:18SPEAKERSo the risk posture of that, when
36:23SPEAKERyou have very limited results, like you have x number of tubes
36:26SPEAKERand you can only get y number of tubes home,
36:28SPEAKERis really interesting.
36:29SPEAKERIt's a fascinating problem to try and solve.
36:31SPEAKERCould you even venture, I guess, at the value per ounce
36:35SPEAKERof that material once it gets back here?
36:37SPEAKERIt's like it must be in the billions, right?
36:39SPEAKERVery roughly, let's very roughly ballpark this.
36:43SPEAKERThe Perseverance is about $2 and 1/2 billion.
36:46SPEAKERThe fetch rover and the lander that will take it
36:49SPEAKERand the little Mars Ascent Vehicle
36:51SPEAKERare probably going to be, when you add them all up,
36:53SPEAKERa very similar value.
36:55SPEAKERAnd the European Space Agency is actually
36:58SPEAKERgoing to build that little fetch rover.
36:59SPEAKERIt's going to be more like the science of spirit
37:01SPEAKERand opportunity, and it's not going
37:02SPEAKERto have any science instruments.
37:04SPEAKERIt's job is just to scoot around as quick as it can,
37:06SPEAKERseveral hundred meters a day, covering ground
37:09SPEAKERto go get these samples and bring them back quick.
37:12SPEAKERAnd then you've got the European Space Agency
37:14SPEAKERis building the return orbiter that's
37:16SPEAKERgoing to be probably one of the biggest spacecrafts sent
37:19SPEAKERto Mars.
37:19SPEAKERIt's going to be huge, because it has to get there,
37:21SPEAKERbreak into orbit, maneuver down to the same orbit
37:24SPEAKERas the sample canister that's been lofted by the Mars Ascent
37:27SPEAKERVehicle, find it, capture it, put it in another capsule,
37:31SPEAKERand then come home.
37:34SPEAKERThat's going to be, I can imagine that easily,
37:36SPEAKERbeing $1 or $2 billion.
37:37SPEAKERAnd so programmatically, you're probably
37:39SPEAKERtalking something between $5 and $10 billion
37:41SPEAKERfor the whole program to return a couple of pounds of rocks.
37:45SPEAKERAnd you'll probably have a kilogram of rock.
37:47SPEAKERYeah.
37:49SPEAKERBut so priceless is the answer.
37:53SPEAKEROften people say, well, how much would it
37:55SPEAKERcost to replace one of the Mars rovers?
37:58SPEAKERAnd the answer is, well, can you promise me
38:00SPEAKERthat you can replace it?
38:02SPEAKERIf we cut you a check tomorrow, can you
38:04SPEAKERpromise that four years from now it will land safely
38:05SPEAKERand do all this stuff?
38:07SPEAKERNo, you can't.
38:07SPEAKERYou've still got risk.
38:08SPEAKERYou cannot possibly lay down.
38:09SPEAKERSo once these spacecraft have got where they're going,
38:11SPEAKERthey are priceless.
38:12SPEAKERThey are essentially irreplaceable.
38:13SPEAKERWow.
38:14SPEAKERI don't know if this is getting a little far afield
38:17SPEAKERof your own discipline.
38:18SPEAKERBut I mean, once material like that is back here,
38:20SPEAKERI can't imagine how, I guess for lack of a better term,
38:23SPEAKERpenny-pinching scientists would have to be with that material
38:26SPEAKERand what they committed to, especially for tests
38:28SPEAKERwhere it wouldn't be viable after it was used or something.
38:31SPEAKERI mean, I'm sure that they reuse as much as they can.
38:33SPEAKERBut you've only got so much, right?
38:35SPEAKERAnd I'm sure--
38:36SPEAKERSo Destin from Smarter Every Day,
38:38SPEAKERhe did an amazing YouTube video that's a tour of the Apollo
38:41SPEAKERsample lab down at Johnson.
38:43SPEAKERAnd I mean, the Apollo mission was ridiculous.
38:47SPEAKERIt returned hundreds of pounds of rocks from the moon.
38:50SPEAKERBut of those rocks, something like 95%
38:55SPEAKERhas never been touched, right?
38:56SPEAKERThe vast majority has been kept in storage.
38:59SPEAKERAnd they just trickle it out a little bit at a time
39:02SPEAKERwhen there's a really compelling scientific case to do so.
39:07SPEAKERThere are missions that are far worse than that.
39:09SPEAKERHayabusa 2, which is a Japanese mission that
39:11SPEAKERwent to an asteroid, collected samples, and came home.
39:13SPEAKERIt landed around Christmas time.
39:16SPEAKERI believe it has 5 grams of sample on it.
39:20SPEAKERAnd that's 10 times more than they were hoping for.
39:22SPEAKERThey were hoping for like maybe a gram, right?
39:24SPEAKERIt's like 5 grams.
39:26SPEAKERYeah, it's like crunching up a pencil lead.
39:28SPEAKERThat's all you get, right?
39:31SPEAKERBut literally, you need just a few grains.
39:34SPEAKERAnd there are laboratories that can take it apart an atom
39:37SPEAKERat a time to understand exactly what's going on.
39:41SPEAKERAnd you don't need a lot to do a huge amount of science with it.
39:46SPEAKERAnd so even just one sample tube of a really nice kind
39:50SPEAKERof sedimentary mudstone thing, you
39:53SPEAKERcould spread that between 100 different labs,
39:56SPEAKERand they could all do incredible research with it.
39:58SPEAKERWell, yeah, and there's a lot of stuff
39:59SPEAKERthat people can do that's non-destructive as well, right?
40:01SPEAKERYes, yes.
40:03SPEAKERYeah, I mean, the best science typically is it can be--
40:08SPEAKERthat's wrong face words.
40:09SPEAKERBut some of the best science is done destructively.
40:11SPEAKERBut some of it can be just, you know,
40:12SPEAKERlet's understand exactly what the composition of this thing
40:14SPEAKERis.
40:15SPEAKERLet's understand not just the elemental composition,
40:17SPEAKERi.e. it's got this much iron, this much nickel,
40:19SPEAKERthis much cadmium, whatever, but the mineralogical composition.
40:23SPEAKERBecause you can take those ingredients,
40:25SPEAKERthose atoms of various elements, and mix them in different ways.
40:28SPEAKERAnd so your iron and your sulphur can
40:31SPEAKERbe various forms of iron sulphates
40:34SPEAKERthat form different minerals, stuff like that.
40:36SPEAKERAnd that mineralogy tells you something
40:38SPEAKERabout what was going on when it was formed.
40:41SPEAKERIt's like you've got all the ingredients in your kitchen.
40:43SPEAKERThat doesn't mean every time you go into the kitchen,
40:45SPEAKERyou're going to come out with a tray of cookies.
40:46SPEAKERYou might come out with bolognese, right?
40:49SPEAKERAnd so you can learn more about what was going on
40:53SPEAKERwhen that stuff was made.
40:55SPEAKERIt's funny you say that.
40:56SPEAKERThat's one of my favourite cookbooks of all time
40:57SPEAKERis Michael Ruhlman's Ratio, which is basically
41:00SPEAKERjust a series of ratios for baking different things.
41:04SPEAKERAnd it's like bread and cake, basically the same stuff
41:08SPEAKERput together in different order and processed differently.
41:10SPEAKERAnd the same thing applies to geology, I guess.
41:13SPEAKERYeah, it is very rare to find a new mineral on Mars.
41:20SPEAKERA friend of mine, Kim Maxwell, at the time,
41:23SPEAKERshe was Kim Lichtenberg.
41:25SPEAKERShe did her thesis on a particular iron sulphate
41:28SPEAKERmineral - and Kim, if I get this wrong, I apologise -
41:30SPEAKERa particular iron sulphate mineral that hasn't been found
41:33SPEAKERon Earth, and she just mapped from orbit.
41:35SPEAKERIt's in a particular part of Mars.
41:36SPEAKERIt's really interesting about the geological history
41:40SPEAKERit could tell us about.
41:41SPEAKERUnfortunately, to have the rights to name it,
41:43SPEAKERyou have to be able to find some on Earth.
41:45SPEAKERAnd so she doesn't get to call it Lichtenbergite
41:47SPEAKERuntil someone finds some on Earth.
41:53SPEAKERSo this is one of the things that always strikes me.
41:56SPEAKERAre all of your rover people, are you all geology nerds?
42:01SPEAKERSo you know what?
42:04SPEAKERSome are really into the geology.
42:06SPEAKERAnd I'm not a geologist, and I understand some of it.
42:12SPEAKERAnd I understand just enough of it to be dangerous,
42:14SPEAKERbut not enough to be useful.
42:17SPEAKERBut some people pay really close attention.
42:19SPEAKERAs you can imagine, a project like the Curiosity Team
42:22SPEAKERhas a lot of meetings, and the various subsystems
42:25SPEAKERhave weekly meetings.
42:27SPEAKERThe whole project has a weekly meeting called the Strategic
42:30SPEAKERMission Planning meeting.
42:31SPEAKERAnd the highlight for everybody every week
42:33SPEAKERis when our project scientist Ashwin gives us a report of,
42:36SPEAKERhere's the science we've done in the past week.
42:38SPEAKERBecause ultimately, that's what it's for.
42:41SPEAKERSome people will find it rewarding
42:42SPEAKERfrom a purely technical point of view.
42:44SPEAKERI know people who are in this purely from a systems
42:46SPEAKERengineering point of view.
42:47SPEAKERThey don't really care about the spacey stuff or the science.
42:49SPEAKERThey just care about solving really difficult problems.
42:53SPEAKERThat's the angle they come at it.
42:55SPEAKERSome of the people like the, let's drive over a hill,
42:58SPEAKERsee what's next.
42:59SPEAKERSome people like the, if we put all this together,
43:02SPEAKERwe could find out if we're alone.
43:07SPEAKERBut everyone enjoys Ashwin's slides
43:10SPEAKERof what the science has been recently.
43:13SPEAKERSorry.
43:14SPEAKERSo I have a slightly esoteric question off the back of that.
43:17SPEAKERSo you talk about getting experimental data and results
43:20SPEAKERon a weekly basis.
43:21SPEAKERI'm sure, for scientists, it's very exciting,
43:24SPEAKERbut I assume the average layman would look at it
43:26SPEAKERas being pretty mundane data.
43:28SPEAKERWell, when we spent most of Christmas
43:30SPEAKERparked in front of a big field of sand, this is awesome.
43:36SPEAKERSo setting aside what I am sure is
43:39SPEAKERthe impossibility of this question for a second,
43:41SPEAKERand just as a hypothetical, let's
43:44SPEAKERsay that he shows up one week with firm evidence
43:48SPEAKERof indigenous microbes that have been found on Mars.
43:52SPEAKERSomething outlandish that basically is
43:54SPEAKERproof positive of life.
43:55SPEAKERDo you know if there is a plan in place institutionally
43:59SPEAKERin terms of--
44:00SPEAKERthis is maybe a big question-- but how
44:03SPEAKERthat would be handled internally, how
44:04SPEAKERthat would be messaged?
44:06SPEAKERI mean, that's essentially the most profound discovery
44:11SPEAKERin the history of humanity.
44:12SPEAKERSo how would you handle something of that enormity?
44:14SPEAKERDo you have any idea what step one would even be?
44:17SPEAKERSo gigantic science discoveries get managed very well.
44:21SPEAKERIf, for example, we always joke, what if there's a dinosaur bone
44:24SPEAKERover the next hill?
44:25SPEAKERAnd so a lot of what we do is public the very second
44:29SPEAKERit's on the ground.
44:31SPEAKERThe images we take with our engineering cameras are released
44:34SPEAKERto a public website as part of the same pipeline that
44:37SPEAKERprocesses them on the ground when they reach the ground.
44:39SPEAKERAnd so if the timing is right and it goes from--
44:44SPEAKERthe rover dries, we take a bunch of imaging,
44:46SPEAKERit goes straight up to Mars orbiter,
44:47SPEAKERand then straight from the Mars orbiter down to the ground.
44:49SPEAKERIf that timing is right, there can be JPEGs at mars.nasa.gov
44:53SPEAKERthat the public can look at within an hour of those pictures
44:55SPEAKERbeing taken on Mars.
44:56SPEAKERAnd if there's a giant freaking alien sat on the ground,
45:00SPEAKEReveryone's going to see it all at the same time.
45:03SPEAKERAnd there are communities of people
45:05SPEAKERwho sit there and just pound refresh on those pages,
45:08SPEAKERget the notifications as soon as they change.
45:10SPEAKERTo be clear, eight years ago, that was me.
45:15SPEAKERAnd the beautiful images from our colour microscope
45:21SPEAKERcalled MAHLI, M-A-H-L-I, MAHLI.
45:24SPEAKERThey end up online, I think, a little bit later than that,
45:27SPEAKERbecause they take a bit more processing.
45:28SPEAKERAnd then the colour images from our cameras
45:30SPEAKERup on top of the mast called Mastcam,
45:32SPEAKERthey end up online as well.
45:33SPEAKERSo within a day or two, everything
45:35SPEAKERthe rover's done in terms of pictures is online.
45:38SPEAKERBut if we were to make some ridiculous discovery,
45:40SPEAKERit's more likely to be through something like the SAM
45:42SPEAKERinstrument, which is one of our onboard labs,
45:44SPEAKERor KEMIN, which is the other onboard lab.
45:45SPEAKERAnd the same is going to be true of Perseverance.
45:48SPEAKERThe kind of epic discovery is going
45:49SPEAKERto be through one of the more squiggly line instruments.
45:53SPEAKERAnd in the case of Perseverance, the two
45:54SPEAKERare called PIXL and SHERLOCK.
45:57SPEAKERThey're both kind of really--
45:59SPEAKERthey're a bit like SAM and KEMIN,
46:02SPEAKERbut they do it on a pixel by pixel basis looking at a rock.
46:05SPEAKERThey're extraordinary instruments, in themselves,
46:08SPEAKERmore complicated than most spacecraft are.
46:10SPEAKERWhat's the process for deciding what instruments
46:14SPEAKERgo on the spacecraft?
46:15SPEAKERIt's competitive.
46:16SPEAKERIt's competitive.
46:17SPEAKERSo some of it gets assigned.
46:19SPEAKERYou go, OK, we're building a Mars rover.
46:21SPEAKERIt's going to need engineering cameras so we can get around.
46:23SPEAKERSo JPL, you're building the rover,
46:25SPEAKERgo build the engineering cameras.
46:26SPEAKERBut then the rest of it will go out
46:28SPEAKERto an announcement of opportunity.
46:29SPEAKERYou can Google the original announcement of opportunity
46:32SPEAKERfor the payload on board the Mars 2020 rover.
46:35SPEAKERAnd you can see, OK, if you want to be on top of the mast,
46:37SPEAKERyou're going to get this much power, you're
46:39SPEAKERgoing to get this cold, you can't
46:41SPEAKERhave more than this much weight or this much volume, whatever.
46:44SPEAKERThe constraints of, I want to be a thing on the end of the arm,
46:46SPEAKERI want to be a thing in the rover,
46:47SPEAKERI want to be a thing on the mast, or whatever.
46:49SPEAKERAnd people will write proposals and say,
46:53SPEAKERI think I want to put one of these on it.
46:54SPEAKERNow, a lot of the camera stuff was, hey,
46:58SPEAKERwe built one of these for Curiosity.
47:00SPEAKERWe think we can do a better one for Perseverance.
47:02SPEAKERAnd so a lot of the color science cameras
47:03SPEAKERare upgrades from Curiosity.
47:07SPEAKERThe instrument everyone loves is just the laser spectrometer.
47:10SPEAKERThe pew, pew, pew zaps and rocks.
47:12SPEAKERWe've gone from ChemCam to SuperCam,
47:14SPEAKERbecause obviously, SuperCam's bound to be better than ChemCam.
47:17SPEAKERIt's an upgraded version of ChemCam,
47:19SPEAKERbut it's very, very similar.
47:20SPEAKERThey're very close heritage.
47:21SPEAKERMastCam is about the same.
47:22SPEAKERThere are versions of that color microscope
47:24SPEAKERthat we have as built into part of the Sherlock instrument,
47:27SPEAKERso we can still do that.
47:29SPEAKERBut some of it is new.
47:31SPEAKERAnd you go, OK, a board will review these proposals
47:35SPEAKERfor how good the science would be,
47:38SPEAKERhow much is it going to cost, how much we trust
47:40SPEAKERthat they can get it built on time within the mass
47:42SPEAKERconstraints, the volume constraints, the power
47:44SPEAKERconstraints.
47:46SPEAKERAnd they get ranked, and they get picked.
47:49SPEAKERIt's the same way that actual entire missions get picked,
47:52SPEAKERlike the Psyche, a mission that launches to an asteroid
47:57SPEAKERin a year or two's time.
47:58SPEAKERThat was competed.
47:59SPEAKERThere were other missions that were going up
48:01SPEAKERagainst that to get picked.
48:03SPEAKERAnd they'll say, hey, we've got $500 million
48:07SPEAKERplus the rocket.
48:08SPEAKERWho's got some ideas?
48:10SPEAKERAnd the community sent in ideas.
48:14SPEAKERI want to land here.
48:16SPEAKERI want to fly by this.
48:18SPEAKERI want to orbit that.
48:19SPEAKERAnd the best ideas will get seed money,
48:22SPEAKERlike an extra, simply it's a couple of million bucks
48:25SPEAKERto really mature that proposal to make it a watertight mission
48:29SPEAKERdesign.
48:31SPEAKERAnd then those will get competed.
48:32SPEAKERSo for example, the Titan helicopter,
48:35SPEAKERcalled Titan Dragonfly, there were multiple--
48:39SPEAKERmany proposals for that.
48:40SPEAKERSo that's like a billion dollar mission.
48:42SPEAKERThere were loads of proposals, and then two
48:44SPEAKERgot the money to really mature their idea.
48:46SPEAKERThey were called CAESAR.
48:48SPEAKERThat's a comet sample return mission, and Titan Dragonfly.
48:51SPEAKERAnd CAESAR would actually go and visit the comet
48:53SPEAKERthat the European Rosetta mission was exploring.
48:56SPEAKERIt would go back to that comet, collect some samples from it,
48:59SPEAKERand return them to Earth.
49:01SPEAKERAnd both, you have to go, which is going to be more awesome?
49:05SPEAKERBringing some fricking comet home, or flying around Titan?
49:08SPEAKERAnd it's like, they're both amazing.
49:11SPEAKERWe should be able to do both of them.
49:12SPEAKERIn fact, let's go and bring stuff back from 20 comets
49:15SPEAKERand land on everything.
49:17SPEAKERBut we only have so much money.
49:19SPEAKERAnd so you have to say, you know what?
49:21SPEAKERCAESAR's a really exciting mission.
49:23SPEAKERAnd hopefully at some point, we'll
49:24SPEAKERget to go and get samples back from a comet.
49:26SPEAKERBut Titan Dragonfly, in terms of new cutting-edge science,
49:31SPEAKERin terms of pushing the engineering
49:32SPEAKERforwards without kind of ridiculous risk,
49:36SPEAKERlet's go and fly around Titan for a bit.
49:38SPEAKERDo you think another terrestrial object seems valuable?
49:42SPEAKERYeah, could NASA's interplanetary operation
49:45SPEAKERscale kind of ad infinitum with more budget?
49:48SPEAKEROr would you hit another ceiling at some point of like,
49:51SPEAKERwell, more money is not really going to help at this point.
49:52SPEAKERWe've got, I don't know, technological hurdles
49:55SPEAKERor something of that nature.
49:57SPEAKERYou end up with kind of stress points
50:01SPEAKERin kind of a whole array of things.
50:04SPEAKERLike, do we have enough ground stations
50:05SPEAKERto talk and listen to all these damn spacecraft?
50:08SPEAKERBack in the late '90s, early 2000s, they realized, oh, god,
50:10SPEAKERthere's going to be so many spacecraft in the mid 2000s.
50:12SPEAKERWe need to build some more antennas.
50:14SPEAKERAnd so the Deep Space Network got some big upgrades
50:16SPEAKERin advance of that.
50:17SPEAKERAnd that's actually been happening again recently.
50:20SPEAKERI think it was yesterday or the day before,
50:22SPEAKERwe turned on and rolled out into full use
50:25SPEAKERa new 34-meter beam waveguide antenna in Madrid, Spain.
50:29SPEAKERIt's kind of unveiling was put back a bit by the snow
50:33SPEAKERthat Spain has had recently, but that kind
50:37SPEAKERof infrastructure stuff.
50:38SPEAKERThen you've got a, can we build them?
50:42SPEAKERYou have various subcontractors.
50:43SPEAKERLockheed Martin has built a lot of spacecraft for NASA.
50:46SPEAKERBall Aerospace has built--
50:50SPEAKERspacecraft was in JPL--
50:51SPEAKERcan build spacecraft from pretty much the ground up.
50:54SPEAKERAnd so there's only so much of that capability
50:57SPEAKERaround the country.
50:59SPEAKERAnd then there's the money issue.
51:01SPEAKERIt's like, OK, what can we afford to do?
51:02SPEAKERWe are entrusted by the nation with a very large amount
51:06SPEAKERof money.
51:06SPEAKERPlanetary science gets a billion or two dollars per year.
51:09SPEAKERThat's a lot of money.
51:11SPEAKERAnd it's very easy to look at a mission like Curiosity
51:14SPEAKERand go, well, it's only one latte a fortnight
51:17SPEAKERover an area the size of Wales, or some
51:19SPEAKERof the ridiculous nonsensical metric, right?
51:24SPEAKERBut very roughly speaking, the Curiosity rover
51:27SPEAKERcosts each American about $10, right?
51:30SPEAKERAnd on a year-to-year basis, to keep it running,
51:33SPEAKERit costs every American about $0.10,
51:35SPEAKERwhich I don't think is bad return on money.
51:38SPEAKERI think that's pretty good.
51:39SPEAKERAbout a quarter each, roughly, to keep Curiosity going.
51:42SPEAKERLook, I'd rather do that than buy more F-35s, Doug.
51:45SPEAKER[LAUGHTER]
51:48SPEAKERSo it's like NASA likes to retain the ability--
51:52SPEAKERwithin the agency somewhere, and NASA
51:54SPEAKERhas many centers around the country--
51:56SPEAKERto retain the ability to, without depending
51:58SPEAKERon a contractor, build a spacecraft from the ground up.
52:02SPEAKERAnd so JPL is one of those places.
52:03SPEAKERGoddard is also one of those places.
52:05SPEAKERSo that if Lockheed vanished tomorrow,
52:08SPEAKERwe could still build these spacecraft.
52:10SPEAKERI mean, that ain't happening, but--
52:12SPEAKERNo, but it's important.
52:14SPEAKERIt's important to retain that institutional knowledge.
52:16SPEAKERAnd every time the space agency has stopped doing that,
52:21SPEAKERwe've had to spend a ton of money ramping it back up
52:24SPEAKERin time.
52:25SPEAKERThere was a horrific bathtub in the '80s and '90s
52:27SPEAKERof planetary science.
52:28SPEAKERPlanetary science basically dried up in the '80s and '90s,
52:31SPEAKERand it was a huge effort to get that back underway.
52:36SPEAKERAnd I hope we never go back to those dark days,
52:38SPEAKERbecause there are planetary scientists who
52:41SPEAKERwere adrift for a decade.
52:44SPEAKERAnd there were basically no Mars missions
52:48SPEAKERbetween the '70s and the '90s, very roughly speaking.
52:53SPEAKERAnd we've not stopped since, which I think
52:55SPEAKERis a really good thing, because you can build on what you learn
52:57SPEAKERnot just from a scientific point of view,
52:59SPEAKERbut from an engineering point of view, and so on and so forth.
53:01SPEAKERThe other thing we've done is we've almost
53:04SPEAKERbifurcated our missions.
53:05SPEAKERAnd so we've got these big things.
53:06SPEAKERWe've got a giant thing going at Europa in a few years.
53:09SPEAKERWe've got Perseverance weighs about a ton.
53:12SPEAKERWe've also been developing tiny spacecraft.
53:13SPEAKERSo some of you may remember when the InSight spacecraft went
53:17SPEAKERto Mars a few years ago, it actually
53:19SPEAKERhad two little cube sets that are briefcase-sized cube sets
53:23SPEAKERcalled Marko.
53:24SPEAKERAnd no one had sent a spacecraft that small outside of Earth
53:27SPEAKERorbit before.
53:28SPEAKERAnd those little guys worked all the way out to Mars,
53:30SPEAKERand a couple of weeks thereafter, in fact.
53:33SPEAKERAnd so now having proven, hey, you know what?
53:35SPEAKERIt doesn't take a ton or four tons of spacecraft
53:38SPEAKERand a billion bucks to go do something cutting edge.
53:40SPEAKERBut actually, if you focus what you want to do
53:43SPEAKERenough, $20 million and something the size of a briefcase
53:47SPEAKERwill get it done for you.
53:49SPEAKERAnd it lets you--
53:52SPEAKERit's like packing a couple of things on top of your shipping
53:54SPEAKERcontainer from China.
53:55SPEAKERIt costs nothing if it fits into the mass of the rocket.
54:01SPEAKERSo the humongous SLS rocket that NASA
54:04SPEAKERis supposed to be launching later this year,
54:06SPEAKERor maybe early next year, with the Artemis I mission,
54:10SPEAKERthe part I'm excited about is the fact
54:11SPEAKERit's going to carry a dozen CubeSats.
54:14SPEAKERAnd in terms of the mass of those things,
54:16SPEAKERthey are a rounding error in what that rocket can carry.
54:20SPEAKERI mean, SpaceX is launching a Falcon 9 in the morning that's
54:23SPEAKERgot more than 100 spacecraft on it.
54:25SPEAKERAnd they're all these small, dedicated, very specific
54:28SPEAKERpurpose--
54:30SPEAKERbasically, what's the minimum viable product to go and take
54:32SPEAKERthis measurement?
54:33SPEAKERPlanet is basically a huge fleet of CubeSats
54:37SPEAKERthat do for the entire Earth what the Landsat missions have
54:40SPEAKERdone in the past.
54:41SPEAKERAnd they're doing it with tiny, tiny spacecraft.
54:43SPEAKERSo I know nobody wants to have to do more with less.
54:46SPEAKERBut what you're describing almost sounds like maybe
54:48SPEAKERit is the pathway to landing on everything, like you said.
54:51SPEAKERI mean, small, very focused, and cheap.
54:54SPEAKERYeah, I think the technology has got to a point
54:56SPEAKERwhere we can do a whole bunch of cool science
54:58SPEAKERwith smaller missions in more places for less money.
55:03SPEAKERBut there are still these big questions
55:05SPEAKERlike you want a big-ass camera flying around Europa
55:09SPEAKERto go map it.
55:10SPEAKERYou want-- like the James Webb Space Telescope
55:13SPEAKERis north of $9 billion.
55:15SPEAKERThere's no real easy way to get around the fact
55:17SPEAKERthat the laws of physics say to get really detailed photographs
55:20SPEAKERof deep space, you need a big-ass lens,
55:22SPEAKERor you need a gigantic mirror.
55:24SPEAKERThey ain't cheap.
55:26SPEAKERAnd so I think you get this bifurcation.
55:29SPEAKERYou can't just AI up-sample the pictures of things
55:32SPEAKERyou've never seen before.
55:33SPEAKERZoom, zoom, enhance.
55:35SPEAKERYeah.
55:36SPEAKERRight, front cover of Science Magazine.
55:38SPEAKERUntil they fixed Hubble, that's basically what they were doing.
55:41SPEAKERBut there are some things, like the little laboratory
55:47SPEAKERwe've got inside Curiosity, the SAM instrument,
55:49SPEAKERyou're never going to get that inside a CubeSat,
55:51SPEAKERbecause the laws of physics will not allow that.
55:53SPEAKERBut you can go and answer certain dedicated things.
55:57SPEAKEROr if you need infrastructure stuff,
55:59SPEAKERyou could have smaller relay satellites around Mars,
56:01SPEAKERstuff like that.
56:03SPEAKERLittle-- just like Marco did when InSight landed.
56:06SPEAKERAnd so what's really cool about those missions
56:09SPEAKERis they can become not just a platform
56:11SPEAKERfor pushing new technology, they can also
56:13SPEAKERbecome a platform for training new engineers and scientists.
56:17SPEAKERAnd they become the ones who then
56:18SPEAKERhelp go and design the next big, amazing, huge thing.
56:20SPEAKERSo I know people who were on the Marco project who are now
56:24SPEAKERworking on Europa Clipper, or a mission called
56:28SPEAKEREmit that's going to go to the space station, stuff like that.
56:31SPEAKERAnd a mission like Curiosity being eight-plus years in
56:34SPEAKERand running on $50 million bucks a year
56:37SPEAKERis a training ground for new engineers
56:40SPEAKERwho are then going to operate other spacecraft in the future.
56:42SPEAKERI have a-- my engineering camera team is pretty young.
56:46SPEAKERA lot of them are fresh out of college.
56:48SPEAKERAnd I've been reviewing intern resumes today
56:52SPEAKERto have a summer intern on our Ecamm team
56:54SPEAKERto help improve some of our upping scripts, our downing
56:56SPEAKERscripts, with the hope that, you know what,
56:58SPEAKERif this person works well, maybe you can hire them in two years.
57:00SPEAKERThat's amazing.
57:02SPEAKERSo in terms of science fiction brought to life,
57:07SPEAKERthe helicopter is pretty high up there.
57:10SPEAKERBut the other thing that's really amazing to me
57:12SPEAKERabout Perseverance is MOXIE, the oxygen generation experiment.
57:17SPEAKERIt's-- the short story is it's ridiculous to take everything
57:24SPEAKERwith you that you need when you're going somewhere
57:26SPEAKERlike Mars, right?
57:27SPEAKERLewis and Clark did not take every single thing
57:29SPEAKERthey were ever going to need to eat all the way across the country.
57:34SPEAKERMars has a whole bunch of building blocks of stuff.
57:37SPEAKERYou know, Mars has a lot of carbon dioxide.
57:39SPEAKERIt's called its atmosphere, right?
57:42SPEAKERIt has, if you scoop down into the ground a little bit,
57:44SPEAKERit has water ice, right?
57:45SPEAKERAnd so now you've got C, you've got H, and you've got O.
57:49SPEAKERThat's pretty much everything you need
57:50SPEAKERto make anything new and shiny.
57:52SPEAKERYou can make oxygen, you can make rocket fuel,
57:54SPEAKERyou can make breathable air, right?
57:56SPEAKERAnd so MOXIE is the first step in that.
57:59SPEAKEROK, can we take Mars's carbon dioxide atmosphere
58:02SPEAKERand, using a pretty small little lab, turn it into oxygen?
58:06SPEAKERAnd it's not going to generate hundreds and hundreds
58:09SPEAKERof litres of oxygen, but it's going
58:11SPEAKERto prove that a small lab can actually
58:13SPEAKERgenerate oxygen in the Martian environment,
58:16SPEAKERbreathing in Mars air, not just sticking it in a vacuum chamber
58:19SPEAKERand giving it a nice fresh carbon dioxide to breathe.
58:22SPEAKERAnd it'll take a lot of power.
58:24SPEAKERIt'll be a bit like the SAM instrument on Curiosity.
58:26SPEAKERWhen we're going to do a SAM experiment on Curiosity,
58:28SPEAKERwe kind of, in terms of our power story,
58:31SPEAKERwe kind of brace for it for a few days in advance.
58:33SPEAKERWe make sure we're fully charged with our battery
58:35SPEAKERbecause it takes a lot of power to run that thing.
58:37SPEAKERMOXIE is going to be the same.
58:39SPEAKERBut as a tech demo, you can then go, OK,
58:41SPEAKERthis technology now works.
58:43SPEAKERWe can now scale that up for humans going to Mars
58:46SPEAKERat some point in the future.
58:48SPEAKERWell, it's the thing that's amazing to me
58:50SPEAKERabout Mars exploration.
58:51SPEAKERI don't know if this pertains to the Viking stuff in the '70s,
58:54SPEAKERbut starting in the '90s, there's
58:57SPEAKERa straight through line where there was a new technology
59:00SPEAKERlaunched with a mini MVP.
59:02SPEAKERAnd then there's a bunch of other, hey,
59:05SPEAKERlet's see what works and what doesn't.
59:07SPEAKERAnd those technologies that worked
59:08SPEAKERmove forward on each new generation of probe or rover.
59:15SPEAKERAnd this is just the next step or the next potential step,
59:19SPEAKERI guess.
59:20SPEAKERYeah, absolutely.
59:21SPEAKERI mean, you can look at Curiosity and Perseverance
59:23SPEAKERand say they are a direct descendant
59:25SPEAKERof the little Sojourner rover from 1997.
59:28SPEAKERSix wheel drive, four wheel steering.
59:31SPEAKERThere is probably deep in the code of the software used
59:35SPEAKERto drive Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, Perseverance code
59:40SPEAKERthat was written in the time of Sojourner,
59:44SPEAKERbecause it's the same problem you're trying to solve.
59:46SPEAKERYou learn the lessons as you go.
59:48SPEAKERAnd Spirit and Opportunity's landing system
59:52SPEAKERwas directly derived from Mars Pathfinder.
59:54SPEAKERPerseverance's landing system is basically the same as Curiosity's
59:57SPEAKERwith a couple of fairly modest upgrades.
1:00:02SPEAKERWhat happens when you kind of stop
1:00:03SPEAKERis suddenly that progression, that institutional knowledge
1:00:06SPEAKERof here's how we go and do landings on Mars goes away.
1:00:10SPEAKERBut it's not completely thrown away.
1:00:12SPEAKERFor example, if we go and land on Europa,
1:00:14SPEAKERit'll probably be something that looks an awful lot
1:00:16SPEAKERlike a sky crane that landed Curiosity and Perseverance.
1:00:20SPEAKERIt will probably be a sky crane type thing lowering it
1:00:23SPEAKERonto the ground on the bottom of three ropes
1:00:25SPEAKERthat looks terrifying in animations,
1:00:26SPEAKERbut actually isn't as scary as it sounds.
1:00:30SPEAKERAnd it's way less scary than what
1:00:32SPEAKERwe did with Spirit, Opportunity, and Mars Pathfinder
1:00:34SPEAKERback in the day.
1:00:35SPEAKERThose were the big balls, right?
1:00:37SPEAKERYeah, gigantic airbags, like the ones in your car,
1:00:39SPEAKERbut way more expensive, as Steve Squires would say.
1:00:43SPEAKERGigantic airbags.
1:00:44SPEAKERSo the landing system for those, like all landing on Mars,
1:00:47SPEAKERbig heat shield, that gets you from 25 times the speed of sound
1:00:50SPEAKERto about Mach 2.
1:00:51SPEAKERIf you do nothing else, you hit the ground at about Mach 2.
1:00:53SPEAKERThat's a bad thing.
1:00:54SPEAKERSo you pop out a parachute, a big ass parachute,
1:00:59SPEAKERand even the parachute the size of the one for Curiosity
1:01:03SPEAKERis still doing 200 miles an hour.
1:01:05SPEAKERAnd so you then have to solve the last kilometer problem,
1:01:09SPEAKERis I'm doing 200 miles an hour, and I'm a kilometer up.
1:01:11SPEAKERHow do I ideally get to a stop before I'm underground?
1:01:16SPEAKERAnd so the way Spirit, Opportunity, and Mars Pathfinder
1:01:21SPEAKERdid it was the back of their entry capsule
1:01:24SPEAKERhad some solid rocket motors on it.
1:01:25SPEAKERAnd solid rocket motors are great in that they are simple,
1:01:28SPEAKERand you turn them on and they work, but you can't turn them off.
1:01:31SPEAKERAnd so about 100 metres before they slammed into the ground
1:01:34SPEAKERat 200 miles an hour, they fired those rockets,
1:01:37SPEAKERand that brings the whole stack to about a dead stop 10
1:01:41SPEAKERor so metres above the deck.
1:01:42SPEAKERYou cut the rope, and then you just drop in your gigantic air
1:01:45SPEAKERbags, and then you bounce, and you roll, and you bounce,
1:01:48SPEAKERand you roll.
1:01:49SPEAKERThey're looking like--
1:01:50SPEAKERDAN SHAPIRO (VOICEOVER): You land right side up, right?
1:01:51SPEAKERSIMON HUGHES (VOICEOVER): So the cool thing
1:01:52SPEAKERis that whichever side you land down, you open that first,
1:01:55SPEAKERand the whole thing kind of rights itself.
1:01:57SPEAKERDAN SHAPIRO (VOICEOVER): OK.
1:01:59SPEAKERSIMON HUGHES (VOICEOVER): But airbags can get in the way.
1:02:03SPEAKERWinds can be a nightmare.
1:02:05SPEAKERWhere the Spirit rover landed was only a picked landing site,
1:02:08SPEAKERbecause they figured out how to deal with the winds with that
1:02:11SPEAKERcrazy system.
1:02:13SPEAKERWith Curiosity, basically it's the same,
1:02:16SPEAKERbut they went, what if we didn't use solid rocket motors?
1:02:19SPEAKERWhat if we use liquid-fuelled rockets
1:02:21SPEAKERthat we can turn up and down?
1:02:23SPEAKERThen we don't hit the ground really hard in airbags.
1:02:26SPEAKERWe could just plop the rover directly onto the ground.
1:02:30SPEAKERAnd in that respect, it's a lot more sane
1:02:34SPEAKERthan gigantic airbags, and bouncy, bouncy, bouncy,
1:02:36SPEAKERand rolling, and hitting the ground at 20G.
1:02:40SPEAKERI mean, the landing of Curiosity on the ground
1:02:43SPEAKERwas way gentler than any of the Apollo astronauts
1:02:46SPEAKERlanded on the moon.
1:02:46SPEAKERIt was 75 centimetres per second.
1:02:49SPEAKERIt was just a gentle plop on the ground.
1:02:51SPEAKERIt's just very, very gentle.
1:02:54SPEAKERAnd you could say, well, why not put the rockets underneath?
1:02:57SPEAKERWell, you put the rockets underneath, you land,
1:03:00SPEAKERbut your rover is still about two metres above the surface.
1:03:02SPEAKERAnd how do you get it onto the ground from there?
1:03:04SPEAKERSo I would love to have been a fly on the wall
1:03:11SPEAKERat the first meeting where people like Adam Steltzner
1:03:14SPEAKERand then his colleagues had to go to NASA headquarters
1:03:17SPEAKERand say, OK, so big new rover.
1:03:21SPEAKERWe took a look at the airbags.
1:03:23SPEAKERNot going to work, but we've got--
1:03:25SPEAKER[LAUGHTER]
1:03:27SPEAKER--slide one, please.
1:03:31SPEAKERSo it seems like the scariest part of the whole thing
1:03:35SPEAKERin terms of problems that you can't fix from Earth
1:03:39SPEAKERis that landing sequence, right?
1:03:42SPEAKERIf something goes wrong there and the computer doesn't--
1:03:44SPEAKERthe rover doesn't pick it up, the rocket sled
1:03:47SPEAKERdoesn't pick it up, that's potentially the end.
1:03:52SPEAKERIs there other stuff beyond that?
1:03:53SPEAKERI mean, it seems like everything else--
1:03:55SPEAKERlike looking at what was done with Spirit and Opportunity,
1:03:58SPEAKERespecially over the incredible lifespan
1:04:01SPEAKERthat those little rovers had, you all seem like wizards,
1:04:06SPEAKERis what I'm saying, basically.
1:04:08SPEAKERWe can figure out ways to do an awful lot with not very much.
1:04:12SPEAKERLanding is probably the hardest part.
1:04:14SPEAKERAfter that, the riskiest part is probably the launch,
1:04:17SPEAKERbecause that is riding a bomb for eight minutes, right?
1:04:21SPEAKEROnce we've landed, it's a case of does everything
1:04:24SPEAKERbehave the way we expected it to?
1:04:28SPEAKERAnd you kind of have to learn how to fly your spacecraft
1:04:32SPEAKERonce it gets there.
1:04:34SPEAKERIn the case of something flying through deep space,
1:04:36SPEAKERlet's say you're sending something to an asteroid,
1:04:39SPEAKERyou've probably got a year or three of crews
1:04:41SPEAKERyou're going to spend flying to your thing.
1:04:42SPEAKERAnd so you've got some time to get to know your spacecraft
1:04:45SPEAKERand stuff like that.
1:04:46SPEAKERWith a curiosity or perseverance,
1:04:48SPEAKERit's a completely different spacecraft
1:04:50SPEAKERfor the first nine months.
1:04:51SPEAKERIt looks like a flying solar powered donut.
1:04:55SPEAKERAnd it's spinning through space at 2 RPM.
1:04:59SPEAKERAnd it's a deep space spacecraft.
1:05:02SPEAKERAnd then in the case of seven minutes,
1:05:04SPEAKERit turns from that into a rover with six wheels on the ground.
1:05:06SPEAKERAnd now it's sat on a big rock that's rotating through space.
1:05:10SPEAKERAnd that change, in seven minutes,
1:05:13SPEAKERis so many different configurations of the vehicle.
1:05:16SPEAKERIt goes from being this deep space mission
1:05:17SPEAKERinto being a fiery entry capsule,
1:05:19SPEAKERinto hanging under a parachute, into being a thing that's
1:05:22SPEAKERflying under rockets actively, looking at the ground
1:05:25SPEAKERto figure out where it's safe, to then lowering
1:05:27SPEAKERthe rover onto the ground, cutting the bridles,
1:05:29SPEAKERand flying away.
1:05:30SPEAKERAnd there are so many things that can go wrong.
1:05:33SPEAKERIt's ridiculous how many things can go wrong that give you
1:05:36SPEAKERa bad day.
1:05:38SPEAKERAnd you cannot simulate it all in one go on Earth,
1:05:42SPEAKERbecause Earth is so un-Mars-like.
1:05:44SPEAKERYou cannot rehearse that entire thing.
1:05:46SPEAKERYou can rehearse bits of it.
1:05:47SPEAKERYou can simulate other bits of it.
1:05:49SPEAKERYou can test the interfaces between all the bits of it.
1:05:51SPEAKERBut you can't do it all on Earth,
1:05:53SPEAKERbecause there isn't any way you can go and do it.
1:05:55SPEAKERIt's too different.
1:05:56SPEAKERThe one good thing that Perseverance has is,
1:05:58SPEAKERwe've done it once before.
1:06:00SPEAKERThat was curiosity.
1:06:02SPEAKERAnd so they learn things with the Curiosity landing
1:06:05SPEAKERthat they have fed into the Perseverance landing.
1:06:08SPEAKERAnd the biggest upgrade, actually,
1:06:09SPEAKERis that the moment it drops out of the back shell
1:06:13SPEAKERto do the powered landing part, the bit where it's actually
1:06:16SPEAKERflying under rockets, just before that happens,
1:06:19SPEAKERit's actually going to take pictures of the ground.
1:06:21SPEAKERIt's going to identify features on the ground,
1:06:23SPEAKERlook them up in a map it has on board, and go, that's safe.
1:06:26SPEAKERThat isn't that safe.
1:06:28SPEAKERI'm going to land there.
1:06:29SPEAKERI know that bit to be safe.
1:06:31SPEAKERThe geologists on Earth mapped it and said,
1:06:33SPEAKERthat's a nice lily pad.
1:06:34SPEAKERI'm going to go and land there.
1:06:36SPEAKERAnd so when it drops out the back shell,
1:06:37SPEAKERthe first thing it will do is fly in that direction
1:06:40SPEAKERand then try and land there.
1:06:42SPEAKERThat means you don't have to find a 10 by 5 mile
1:06:46SPEAKERpatch of Mars.
1:06:47SPEAKERIt's all perfectly safe, which is basically impossible.
1:06:50SPEAKERYou just have to find a patch that big that
1:06:52SPEAKERhas some safe bits in it that you
1:06:54SPEAKERknow the vehicle can get to.
1:06:57SPEAKERAnd so that's why Perseverance will
1:07:00SPEAKERbe able to land way closer to exciting geology,
1:07:03SPEAKERbecause we don't have to find a gigantic parking
1:07:05SPEAKERlot for it to land in.
1:07:08SPEAKERAnd then after that, it's like, OK,
1:07:10SPEAKERwe thought we knew how we operated Curiosity.
1:07:12SPEAKERWe are still learning new, cool things
1:07:14SPEAKERwe can do with Curiosity eight years later.
1:07:17SPEAKERPerseverance is like, OK, we think
1:07:18SPEAKERwe know how it's going to operate.
1:07:19SPEAKERHow is it actually going to behave?
1:07:20SPEAKERHow are the instruments actually going
1:07:22SPEAKERto behave when they're not in a test bed at JPL
1:07:25SPEAKERor one of the other institutions that built the instruments?
1:07:27SPEAKERNow it's actually on Mars.
1:07:29SPEAKERIt's going through daily temperature swings.
1:07:30SPEAKERThere's dust.
1:07:31SPEAKERThere's wind.
1:07:34SPEAKERYou learn how to operate your spacecraft, and that getting
1:07:36SPEAKERto know you phase can last a couple of months
1:07:38SPEAKERwith something like Curiosity or Perseverance.
1:07:41SPEAKERAnd then over the months that follow,
1:07:42SPEAKERthey'll get better at operating it.
1:07:43SPEAKERThey'll understand it better.
1:07:44SPEAKERThey'll be able to do it quicker.
1:07:47SPEAKERAnd assuming the landing goes well,
1:07:49SPEAKERI'm sure there are no problems that a vehicle can present that
1:07:51SPEAKERwe won't be able to figure out in some way.
1:07:54SPEAKERCuriosity, we've got two flight computers.
1:07:56SPEAKERWe've got an A computer and a B computer.
1:07:58SPEAKERThe A computer's kind of crappy.
1:07:59SPEAKERThe flash memory doesn't really work.
1:08:01SPEAKERBut we've still got it as a lifeboat if we need it.
1:08:03SPEAKERAnd we've been on the B computer most of our mission.
1:08:05SPEAKERAnd it's been behaving absolutely fine.
1:08:08SPEAKERAnd so the ingenuity of some of the engineers who really
1:08:13SPEAKERunderstand the systems of the vehicle is extraordinary.
1:08:15SPEAKERGetting the absolute most out of a tired old Rover.
1:08:19SPEAKERI saw it with opportunity to ridiculous degrees.
1:08:22SPEAKERAnd I'm seeing it with Curiosity now.
1:08:25SPEAKERAnd Perseverance, with a whole bunch of new toys,
1:08:29SPEAKERit's going to find a whole new way to use those.
1:08:33SPEAKERI think-- let's see.
1:08:34SPEAKERI think-- so the last thing I wanted to touch on--
1:08:36SPEAKERwe talked about this a little bit on the Patreon episode.
1:08:39SPEAKERBut after we talked about the deep space network last time,
1:08:43SPEAKERI wondered why we don't just put a big giant radio in one
1:08:47SPEAKERof the Lagrange points that either trails or leads
1:08:51SPEAKERthe planet so that we can talk more.
1:08:56SPEAKERYeah, so let's just take Curiosity, for example.
1:08:59SPEAKERSo we talk to Curiosity once a day.
1:09:03SPEAKERWe basically send an email in the morning that says,
1:09:05SPEAKERhere's your to-do list.
1:09:06SPEAKERGet on with it.
1:09:08SPEAKERAnd then the way we get data back is in lumps.
1:09:11SPEAKERWait, do you guys like Wunderlist or things
1:09:13SPEAKERor something like that?
1:09:14SPEAKEROr what's your-- you've got bullet journals?
1:09:16SPEAKERWhat's your strategy there?
1:09:18SPEAKERIt's just a very plain text.
1:09:20SPEAKERThe crazy thing is, if you were to actually look
1:09:22SPEAKERat the flight software commands, they're almost human readable.
1:09:25SPEAKERThey look like kind of scripting language.
1:09:27SPEAKERThe way the flight software has been written
1:09:28SPEAKERis that the way we command the rover is actually
1:09:31SPEAKERabstracted quite a long way.
1:09:33SPEAKERSo that when we're planning, one of the steps in our planning
1:09:35SPEAKERis literally reading through the commands one at a time,
1:09:38SPEAKERlike a code review.
1:09:39SPEAKERI'm sorry, I'm going to have to ask you to just give us two
1:09:43SPEAKERor three sample commands, command lines.
1:09:45SPEAKERI have to kill you.
1:09:48SPEAKERI will code it enough.
1:09:50SPEAKERI could show you a command to take
1:09:51SPEAKERa picture with one of my engineering cameras.
1:09:53SPEAKERI would read something like, take an image.
1:09:57SPEAKERIt's this important on a scale of 100 is not important to 1
1:10:00SPEAKERis vitally important.
1:10:02SPEAKERI want you to use this camera and this camera.
1:10:05SPEAKERI want you to point them using this method in this direction.
1:10:10SPEAKERI want you to shrink it or not.
1:10:12SPEAKERI want you to subframe it or not.
1:10:15SPEAKERAnd then I want you to compress it in this way.
1:10:17SPEAKERThank you very much.
1:10:18SPEAKERYou could look through those commands
1:10:20SPEAKERand the subframing and the compression.
1:10:23SPEAKERIt makes sense.
1:10:25SPEAKERAnd it has to be, because unlike deep space missions
1:10:28SPEAKERwhere you send up two weeks of stuff
1:10:31SPEAKERand you've had six months to plan it,
1:10:33SPEAKERwe don't know what Curiosity is going
1:10:35SPEAKERto see over the next hill.
1:10:37SPEAKERWe have to be responsive on a tactical day-to-day basis.
1:10:41SPEAKERAnd so Mars surface operations broadly and Mars rover
1:10:45SPEAKERoperations specifically are very different to operating
1:10:47SPEAKERother deep space missions.
1:10:49SPEAKERSo we give it a to-do list.
1:10:52SPEAKERIt does all that stuff.
1:10:53SPEAKERAnd then the data comes home in these chunks
1:10:55SPEAKERthrough these relay passes with the orbiters,
1:10:58SPEAKERlike MAVEN, Marshall Constance Orbiter, the Trace Gas Orbiter.
1:11:01SPEAKERAnd we'll get something between 100 and 1,000 megabits
1:11:05SPEAKERon one of those passes.
1:11:06SPEAKERIt depends exactly where in the sky the orbiter is
1:11:09SPEAKERand stuff like that.
1:11:11SPEAKERWe take the last of that data to decide what we're
1:11:14SPEAKERgoing to do next with the rover.
1:11:16SPEAKERBut that data has to make it home.
1:11:17SPEAKERAnd it gets home from the orbiters
1:11:19SPEAKERdown to the deep space network.
1:11:21SPEAKERAnd we have antennas in Madrid, Spain.
1:11:23SPEAKERWe have antennas in Canberra, Australia.
1:11:24SPEAKERWe have antennas in Goldstone, which is basically
1:11:27SPEAKERhalfway between Barstow and Vegas.
1:11:30SPEAKERAnd in terms of getting the data home,
1:11:33SPEAKERthat's fine almost all the time.
1:11:35SPEAKERThere's almost always a ground station that can see Mars.
1:11:38SPEAKERThat's why these ground stations are 120 degrees apart
1:11:41SPEAKERaround the world.
1:11:43SPEAKERBut there are times when we cannot talk to Mars.
1:11:46SPEAKERAnd that's known as solar conjunction.
1:11:48SPEAKERIt's when basically the sun is in the way.
1:11:50SPEAKERAnd at radio frequencies, having the sun in the way
1:11:53SPEAKERis like trying to whisper across a crowded room.
1:11:55SPEAKERThe sun is shouting at every wavelength imaginable.
1:12:00SPEAKERAnd we're trying to whisper our way to a spacecraft.
1:12:02SPEAKERAnd it's whispering back again.
1:12:03SPEAKERAnd we just can't reliably decode that data.
1:12:07SPEAKERIt turns out, generally speaking,
1:12:08SPEAKERwe can hear the spacecraft reasonably reliably.
1:12:12SPEAKERBut they can't hear us reliably.
1:12:13SPEAKERAnd so you'd hate to send a command
1:12:15SPEAKERand for that command to be bad and the rover
1:12:18SPEAKERto not know that it's bad and something bad to happen
1:12:20SPEAKERwith the vehicle.
1:12:20SPEAKERSo we stand down for anything between two and four weeks.
1:12:24SPEAKERThe last time we did it was August of 2019.
1:12:27SPEAKERIf you've got an Apple Watch, you
1:12:29SPEAKERcan actually change a planetarium mode.
1:12:31SPEAKERAnd you can scroll forwards time.
1:12:33SPEAKERAnd you can see when Earth and Mars are going
1:12:34SPEAKERto be opposite sides of the sun.
1:12:36SPEAKERSo the next one is this October.
1:12:38SPEAKERAnd so what we do is we basically
1:12:39SPEAKERgive the rover a couple of weeks of stuff
1:12:41SPEAKERto do that's not too complicated.
1:12:43SPEAKERIt's collecting a bit of data here and there.
1:12:45SPEAKERIt's not driving anywhere.
1:12:47SPEAKERAnd we send it up a few days in advance
1:12:50SPEAKERto make sure it's on board and happy and healthy.
1:12:52SPEAKERAnd then we say, OK, see you in a couple of weeks.
1:12:54SPEAKERAnd it comes out the far end.
1:12:55SPEAKERAnd we pick it up and carry on.
1:12:57SPEAKERNow, you could imagine a situation where you have--
1:13:00SPEAKERand Will has done his homework--
1:13:04SPEAKERa Lagrange point where there are places in the solar system
1:13:08SPEAKERwhere you can essentially balance
1:13:09SPEAKERa spacecraft in the gravitational influence
1:13:11SPEAKERof, say, the sun and the Earth, for example.
1:13:14SPEAKERAnd you could park a big spacecraft over there
1:13:16SPEAKERto act as a middleman, right?
1:13:18SPEAKERAct as a deep space relay.
1:13:22SPEAKERThe problem is that the receivers we need on the ground
1:13:28SPEAKERare so incredibly sensitive.
1:13:30SPEAKERThey are cryo-cooled.
1:13:31SPEAKERThey are racks and racks of electronics.
1:13:33SPEAKERThey're incredibly high tech.
1:13:36SPEAKERAnd getting one of those reliably and stably
1:13:39SPEAKERinto something small enough you could launch into space
1:13:41SPEAKERwould be really, really tricky.
1:13:44SPEAKERSo that's receiving the data from the spacecraft.
1:13:47SPEAKERTo send data to the spacecraft, we shout really loud.
1:13:51SPEAKEROur smaller antennas typically shout at 20 kilowatts
1:13:55SPEAKERof emitted RF power.
1:13:57SPEAKERAnd we can turn them up to the bigger antennas.
1:14:00SPEAKERWe can run them at 100 kilowatts, even more than that.
1:14:02SPEAKERAnd it's hard to generate that much power in deep space.
1:14:06SPEAKERGigantic solar panels on the mission like Juno,
1:14:09SPEAKERwhich has some of the biggest solar panels we ever
1:14:11SPEAKERsent into deep space, would generate something like 10
1:14:14SPEAKERto 15 kilowatts as far from the sun as the Earth is.
1:14:18SPEAKERAnd so it would be conceivable that you could develop
1:14:23SPEAKERsome sort of spacecraft that would perhaps
1:14:26SPEAKERbe able to hear the Mars orbiters,
1:14:29SPEAKERmaybe receive their data if they turned their data rate way,
1:14:33SPEAKERway down, and then maybe send that data back down to Earth.
1:14:38SPEAKERBut that's a huge investment.
1:14:41SPEAKERThat's hundreds and hundreds of millions
1:14:42SPEAKERof dollars a spacecraft you've built to go and do that.
1:14:44SPEAKERAnd all it's really going to buy you
1:14:46SPEAKERis a couple of weeks a year.
1:14:48SPEAKERNow, when we send humans to Mars,
1:14:51SPEAKERyou're absolutely going to want that there in advance.
1:14:53SPEAKERAbsolutely, because you do not want
1:14:55SPEAKERhumans to be out of touch for three weeks,
1:14:57SPEAKERbecause God knows what they're going
1:14:57SPEAKERto get up to on the far side of the solar system.
1:15:01SPEAKERWe've all seen the Martian--
1:15:03SPEAKERBrothers and sisters, it's time for the Martian revolution.
1:15:04SPEAKERI played that video game.
1:15:07SPEAKERThe time is now.
1:15:09SPEAKERAnd so you'd want something.
1:15:10SPEAKERAnd I don't think you're going to have--
1:15:13SPEAKERwhen we finally have people landing on Mars,
1:15:15SPEAKERwe probably will have the infrastructure in place at Mars
1:15:18SPEAKERto end up relaying live video while it happens kind of thing,
1:15:22SPEAKERand certainly live voice comms from Mars, things like that.
1:15:27SPEAKERYou might be able to get low data rate voice
1:15:29SPEAKERcomms through fairly modest Lagrange Station spacecraft.
1:15:35SPEAKERBut generally speaking, it would be a huge investment.
1:15:38SPEAKERIt doesn't get you a lot more science.
1:15:40SPEAKERSo we just give our spacecraft a couple of weeks off.
1:15:45SPEAKERThe last time we did it on Curiosity, which is August 2019,
1:15:48SPEAKERwe actually went--
1:15:49SPEAKERsome people have actually planned vacations
1:15:51SPEAKERaround solar conjunction in the past.
1:15:54SPEAKERLast time we didn't.
1:15:55SPEAKERWe actually said, OK, now that we
1:15:57SPEAKERdon't have to worry about Curiosity for two weeks,
1:15:59SPEAKERwe're going to do an entire ground data system software
1:16:02SPEAKERupdate.
1:16:03SPEAKERAnd we moved from Red Hat 5 to Red Hat 7.
1:16:07SPEAKERAnd we had a whole user acceptance test.
1:16:10SPEAKERCuriosity is on the far side of the solar system,
1:16:13SPEAKERnot giving a crap.
1:16:13SPEAKERWe're all testing all our flight software.
1:16:15SPEAKERWe're pretending to write commands for the rover.
1:16:18SPEAKERAnd so two weeks later, when Curiosity came back,
1:16:21SPEAKERwe had a massive ground data system upgrade,
1:16:24SPEAKERbecause that's the only time we have
1:16:26SPEAKERto do that is when the rover's busy for two weeks,
1:16:28SPEAKERon the wrong side of the solar system.
1:16:31SPEAKERAnd so in some respects, it's nice to be
1:16:34SPEAKERable to have the time to go on a big, long vacation
1:16:37SPEAKERor clean house.
1:16:42SPEAKERSo thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us again.
1:16:46SPEAKERI'm sorry, can I jump back in?
1:16:47SPEAKEROne last thing.
1:16:48SPEAKERI just wanted to circle back around to a previous question,
1:16:50SPEAKERbecause I don't think we quite closed the loop on it
1:16:52SPEAKERabout a truly profound discovery.
1:16:55SPEAKERYes, we did.
1:16:56SPEAKERWell, let's say if you were talking
1:17:01SPEAKERabout that sort of thing would probably come off
1:17:03SPEAKERof one of the onboard labs on the rover.
1:17:05SPEAKERSo that kind of discovery is going
1:17:07SPEAKERto be one that is eked out by the science team
1:17:10SPEAKERfrom the data very carefully over time.
1:17:12SPEAKERLet's say the SAM instrument, they did a run,
1:17:16SPEAKERand something really interesting came up.
1:17:19SPEAKERThe way that becomes public knowledge generally--
1:17:22SPEAKERand a good example is, for example,
1:17:26SPEAKERLIGO discovering gravity waves, or the scientists
1:17:29SPEAKERwho thought they found their phosphine in Venus' atmosphere
1:17:33SPEAKERa few months ago, that kind of thing.
1:17:36SPEAKERThe science team works with their institutions to say,
1:17:40SPEAKERlook, we think we found the thing X.
1:17:44SPEAKERWe think we found something really exciting here.
1:17:47SPEAKERWe've done all the work we can with our lab.
1:17:49SPEAKERWe have done the best science that we can with the instrument
1:17:53SPEAKERwe have and our understanding of how it behaves.
1:17:57SPEAKERA few months from now, this data is going to be public domain.
1:18:00SPEAKERSo we need to get it published, and on the day of publication,
1:18:04SPEAKERwe will have a big press event to unveil it.
1:18:07SPEAKERSomething like this has happened.
1:18:08SPEAKERWe all can recite Bill Clinton outside the White House talking
1:18:14SPEAKERabout that rock that we thought maybe
1:18:15SPEAKERhad microbes from Mars in it.
1:18:18SPEAKERThere are a dozen movies that have taken that clip
1:18:20SPEAKERand used it.
1:18:22SPEAKERAnd that was kind of a strong maybe.
1:18:25SPEAKERAnd they did the best science they could.
1:18:27SPEAKERThey put it together in a series of papers
1:18:29SPEAKERthat were going to get released in the journal.
1:18:30SPEAKERAnd the day of release, you do the press event
1:18:33SPEAKERto explain it all.
1:18:35SPEAKERI don't think we're ever going to--
1:18:36SPEAKERwe're going to have a holy shit aliens.pdf, right?
1:18:40SPEAKERYou're not going to get the footage of the Martian microbe
1:18:43SPEAKERwith the top hat and a cane tap dancing on the slide, right?
1:18:46SPEAKERNot quite.
1:18:47SPEAKERIt's a form on demand.
1:18:49SPEAKERNo chestbursters.
1:18:50SPEAKERIt's going to be eked out from the data we have.
1:18:54SPEAKERAnd I think what the instrument team that
1:18:58SPEAKERmade that kind of discovery would do is go,
1:19:00SPEAKERhere's what we found.
1:19:02SPEAKERHere's what we think it means.
1:19:04SPEAKERHey, scientific community, what do you think?
1:19:06SPEAKERAnd that's what happened with the Venus phosphine
1:19:08SPEAKERstory a few months ago.
1:19:10SPEAKERAnd the scientific community looked at it
1:19:12SPEAKERand kind of went, eh, we're not so sure.
1:19:17SPEAKEROr you might be onto something.
1:19:19SPEAKERAnd so that happened with Allan Hill's 84001, that rock
1:19:23SPEAKERthat Bill Clinton talked about.
1:19:26SPEAKERIt's happened with the Venus phosphine story.
1:19:29SPEAKERAnd I think it'll happen with the methane story.
1:19:32SPEAKERCuriosity Sam instrument has found methane from time to time.
1:19:36SPEAKERSometimes there's loads of it, like a cow
1:19:38SPEAKERfarted 10 feet behind us, and sometimes there's nothing.
1:19:43SPEAKERAnd we cannot figure it out.
1:19:45SPEAKERWe don't know.
1:19:46SPEAKERWe cannot figure out a way for that much to appear,
1:19:49SPEAKERthat much to vanish.
1:19:52SPEAKERIf you have methane on the surface of Mars now,
1:19:54SPEAKER400 years from now it should be gone,
1:19:56SPEAKERbecause it breaks down under the UV radiation from the sun.
1:19:59SPEAKERAnd so there has to be coming out of something.
1:20:01SPEAKERYou can make it through geological processes.
1:20:02SPEAKERThere's a process called serpentinization,
1:20:04SPEAKERI think it's called, that can produce methane.
1:20:06SPEAKERThere could be bugs farting away, producing methane.
1:20:11SPEAKEROr there could be half a dozen cows on the other side
1:20:13SPEAKERof the planet, we've just not seen them yet.
1:20:16SPEAKERAnd so the Sam team, all their data is public.
1:20:20SPEAKERYou can go to what's known as the PDS, the planetary data
1:20:22SPEAKERsystem, and download all of Sam's data.
1:20:25SPEAKERIt's all there.
1:20:27SPEAKERAnd you can go and see the methane spike in their data
1:20:29SPEAKERand try to figure out what you think it means.
1:20:32SPEAKERAnd I don't think there's going to be a kind of holy shit
1:20:36SPEAKERaliens press briefing.
1:20:38SPEAKERBut there may be another increment of,
1:20:42SPEAKERwe think we found some tentative biosignature.
1:20:45SPEAKERWe think we found something that perhaps
1:20:46SPEAKERlooks a bit like a cell wall.
1:20:48SPEAKERWe've found something that we can only explain
1:20:51SPEAKERthrough biology, whatever.
1:20:54SPEAKERAnd this is what we think we found.
1:20:56SPEAKERHey, scientific community, help us out here.
1:20:59SPEAKERAnd we've had those big scientific leaps in the past.
1:21:05SPEAKERWe had it with Allen Hills 84001.
1:21:06SPEAKERWe had it with the picture of the black hole.
1:21:09SPEAKERWe had it with phosphine at Venus.
1:21:11SPEAKERWe've had it with the day they announced
1:21:14SPEAKERthey had found the Higgs boson at the LHC.
1:21:17SPEAKERThose big discoveries get done the right way.
1:21:22SPEAKERAnd a lot of people, quite rightly,
1:21:24SPEAKERhave issues with the scientific embargo process,
1:21:26SPEAKERor by some members of the press, get the papers in advance
1:21:29SPEAKERand stuff like that.
1:21:30SPEAKERBut I think that it does give the media a chance
1:21:34SPEAKERto try and understand the story and then
1:21:36SPEAKERshare it all at the same time.
1:21:37SPEAKER- Well, and when we've usurped that process along the way
1:21:41SPEAKERwith, you know, cold fusion is the example
1:21:43SPEAKERI always think about, you know.
1:21:45SPEAKER- Any day now.
1:21:47SPEAKER- It has backfired almost.
1:21:49SPEAKERLike, the reason we do that is 'cause it's,
1:21:51SPEAKERthe more people who see it before it becomes widely public,
1:21:53SPEAKERthe more likely we are to find mistakes
1:21:55SPEAKERor flaws in logic or whatever it happens to be.
1:22:00SPEAKERSo yeah, it's a good thing.
1:22:02SPEAKERIt's a good thing to do that, I think.
1:22:05SPEAKER- Doug, I wanted to ask you one more question before we go.
1:22:09SPEAKERSo we get wheels on the, wheels on,
1:22:12SPEAKERdo we call it the, we don't call it the Earth,
1:22:14SPEAKERwe call it wheels on Mars, I guess, right?
1:22:17SPEAKERThea Touchdown, the rover's on the,
1:22:19SPEAKERwhat are the team's first priorities after that,
1:22:21SPEAKERand what is that, you know, what are those first few
1:22:25SPEAKERminutes, hours, days, weeks, months, out to the first,
1:22:29SPEAKERyou know, I assume this is another 90-day mission
1:22:31SPEAKERthat hopefully will go a lot longer.
1:22:34SPEAKER- Yeah, it's, so Perseverance has pretty much the same
1:22:38SPEAKERkind of warranty that Curiosity does.
1:22:39SPEAKERIt's like one Mars a year, which is roughly two Earth years.
1:22:42SPEAKERAnd bang, bang, curiosity is still tracking along
1:22:44SPEAKERin pretty good shape, you know, eight years later.
1:22:48SPEAKERSo immediately, it's, we're on the ground,
1:22:53SPEAKERis the vehicle safe?
1:22:55SPEAKERAnd in fact, if people go watch the Curiosity landing
1:22:58SPEAKERvery closely, those first few seconds,
1:23:02SPEAKERyou can, and you have to go and watch, like,
1:23:03SPEAKERthe original live footage, not like the edited highlights.
1:23:05SPEAKERThe original live footage, you'll actually see,
1:23:09SPEAKERyou'll hear Alan Chen, who was one of the EDL engineers,
1:23:14SPEAKERhe would say, "Sky crane has started,"
1:23:17SPEAKERwhich is when the rover is literally lowering on those ropes
1:23:19SPEAKERunderneath the rockety backpack.
1:23:22SPEAKERAnd then you'll see the EDL phase lead, Adam Steltzner,
1:23:27SPEAKERlooking at two of the engineers in that room.
1:23:29SPEAKEROne was the engineer monitoring the little gyroscope
1:23:33SPEAKERinside the rover, because that could tell you which way is up.
1:23:36SPEAKERAnd another was the engineer monitoring the radios
1:23:39SPEAKERto see if the rover is also still talking to us.
1:23:42SPEAKERAnd if you listen closely, you'll hear on a different loop,
1:23:45SPEAKERyou'll hear someone say "tango delta nominal,"
1:23:48SPEAKERwhich was their code to basically have one engineer
1:23:52SPEAKERwatching the flight software that had transitioned
1:23:54SPEAKERto tango delta was touchdown, right?
1:23:56SPEAKERTango delta nominal.
1:23:58SPEAKERThe flight software has transitioned to a nominal touchdown.
1:24:01SPEAKERSo, the rover thinks it's landed.
1:24:03SPEAKERWe're not ready to start celebrating yet,
1:24:06SPEAKERbecause the rover's touchdown,
1:24:09SPEAKERhave all three ropes from the sky crane cut.
1:24:13SPEAKERIs the sky crane just gonna go, "Ah, screw this,"
1:24:15SPEAKERand just slap straight on the back of the rover, right?
1:24:16SPEAKERIt just had a bad day.
1:24:19SPEAKERIs it going to try and fly away
1:24:20SPEAKERand then take the rover with it?
1:24:22SPEAKERAnd so, they had a rule, it's like, you know what?
1:24:24SPEAKERAfter 10 seconds, we're either in good shape or bad shape.
1:24:29SPEAKERAnd so, Adam was looking at those two engineers
1:24:33SPEAKERand you can watch him looking across the room
1:24:35SPEAKERand you can see him asking them to count down
1:24:37SPEAKERfor those 10 seconds, and you'll hear them say,
1:24:39SPEAKER"Rimu is good," that's the rover's
1:24:41SPEAKERinertial measurement unit, "Rimu is good,"
1:24:42SPEAKERand "UHF is good."
1:24:45SPEAKERAnd only after 10 seconds of that does he turn around,
1:24:47SPEAKERstab Al Chen in the back, and Al,
1:24:49SPEAKERwho was the voice of the spacecraft, can then go,
1:24:51SPEAKER"Touchdown confirmed, we're safe on Mars."
1:24:54SPEAKERWhat I thought was a lovely sentence he then said
1:24:56SPEAKERthat was lost in the cheers was, "It's time to see
1:25:00SPEAKER"where our curiosity can take us."
1:25:02SPEAKER(laughs)
1:25:03SPEAKER- Aww.
1:25:03SPEAKER- Which is a lovely line, it was such a nice line.
1:25:06SPEAKERAnd so, a similar protocol's gonna be in place,
1:25:08SPEAKERlike, okay, the rover thinks it's landed, are we sure?
1:25:12SPEAKER'Cause we're gonna be getting the same kind of data home,
1:25:14SPEAKERlike a trickling, like eight kilobits per second of data
1:25:18SPEAKERon, you know, you really don't get much information.
1:25:21SPEAKERIt's what we got with InSight.
1:25:21SPEAKERIt's like altitude, heading, temperatures,
1:25:25SPEAKERpressures, voltages, nothing sexy.
1:25:27SPEAKERBut enough to tell you if you've landed successfully.
1:25:29SPEAKERFirst thing that we're then gonna do is wait a little bit,
1:25:32SPEAKERyou know, let the dust settle down,
1:25:34SPEAKERand then, just like with Curiosity,
1:25:35SPEAKERtake a picture out the front, take a picture out the back,
1:25:37SPEAKERand then send them straight home as a tiny thumbnail.
1:25:40SPEAKERAnd if we're really lucky, as we did with Curiosity,
1:25:42SPEAKERas we did with InSight, we might well get those thumbnails
1:25:45SPEAKERdown within that same communications pass
1:25:47SPEAKERthat's still happening.
1:25:48SPEAKERYou know, we time the landing not just to be
1:25:51SPEAKERin the right space at the right time,
1:25:53SPEAKERbut also to be under one of the Mars orbiters
1:25:55SPEAKERwhile it's happening so the orbiter
1:25:56SPEAKERcan relay the data home in real time.
1:25:59SPEAKERLike, the corner you have to get into
1:26:02SPEAKERin solving all those timing problems is very, very small.
1:26:05SPEAKERSo maybe-
1:26:06SPEAKER- Do the orbiters take pictures as well
1:26:07SPEAKERwhile this is all happening?
1:26:08SPEAKER- It may well be.
1:26:09SPEAKERSo the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
1:26:10SPEAKERhas tried to take an image of the landing.
1:26:13SPEAKERIt tried with Curiosity and got a hit,
1:26:15SPEAKERactually got a picture of it hanging under its parachute.
1:26:19SPEAKERThere were a lot of memes of,
1:26:20SPEAKER"Sorry, my Martian spice satellite was too busy
1:26:23SPEAKER"taking a picture of my one-ton Mars rover
1:26:24SPEAKER"hanging under a parachute on another planet" kind of thing.
1:26:27SPEAKERWe tried again with Phoenix, we got it.
1:26:29SPEAKERTried again with InSight and they missed,
1:26:31SPEAKERbecause the landing ellipse was a lot bigger for InSight.
1:26:33SPEAKERAnd so, literally, you can just be pointing in the wrong way.
1:26:37SPEAKERThey probably got a better chance
1:26:38SPEAKERwith Percervance than they did with InSight,
1:26:41SPEAKERand so we may get that picture,
1:26:42SPEAKERbut that picture takes a couple of days to get back.
1:26:45SPEAKERAnd then the orbiter will then set
1:26:47SPEAKERand the spacecraft's on its own for a few hours.
1:26:50SPEAKERAnd so you have a little bit of data
1:26:52SPEAKERfrom immediately after landing,
1:26:54SPEAKERmaybe a thumbnail or two
1:26:55SPEAKERfrom the front and the back of the cameras.
1:26:57SPEAKERAnd then a couple of hours later,
1:26:58SPEAKERanother communication pass is gonna happen.
1:27:01SPEAKERAnd the engineers can then really knuckle down and go,
1:27:03SPEAKERokay, how healthy is the vehicle?
1:27:05SPEAKERIs the power supply generating the power we expect?
1:27:08SPEAKERIs the temperature as warm or as cold as we expect?
1:27:11SPEAKERVery basic housekeeping.
1:27:14SPEAKERAnd then the first few days, you very gingerly say,
1:27:17SPEAKERokay, let's deploy the camera mast and get the cameras up
1:27:21SPEAKERand have a look around properly for the first time.
1:27:23SPEAKERAnd then it's okay,
1:27:24SPEAKERlet's exercise the robotic arm for the first time.
1:27:27SPEAKERLet's use each of the scientific instruments
1:27:28SPEAKERfor the very first time.
1:27:30SPEAKERIt's kind of a characterization and checkout phase
1:27:34SPEAKERthat can last a couple of weeks.
1:27:36SPEAKERAnd in the space of curiosity,
1:27:38SPEAKERwe did a big flight software update
1:27:39SPEAKERbecause the flight computer didn't have enough room
1:27:42SPEAKERfor all the landing software
1:27:44SPEAKERand all the surface operation software.
1:27:45SPEAKERSo there's that flight software migration as well.
1:27:50SPEAKERAnd then it's okay, let's drive for the first time.
1:27:53SPEAKERAnd so it's super intensive
1:27:57SPEAKERbecause when you're doing it for the first time,
1:27:58SPEAKERmake damn sure you're sending good commands to your vehicle.
1:28:01SPEAKERAnd so the planning can take 18 hours, right?
1:28:05SPEAKERAnd you're working on mast time.
1:28:06SPEAKERYou are working the Martian night shift
1:28:08SPEAKERas far as the rover is concerned.
1:28:09SPEAKERIt sends you data back home in the afternoon.
1:28:11SPEAKERYou have until the rover wakes up the next morning
1:28:14SPEAKERto make sure you've got commands ready
1:28:16SPEAKERto tell it what it's gonna do the next day.
1:28:18SPEAKERAnd so you go to mast time,
1:28:20SPEAKERwhich doesn't give a crap about earth time.
1:28:21SPEAKERIt slides 40 minutes a day, roughly speaking.
1:28:24SPEAKERIt's like a permanent state of mild jet lag.
1:28:27SPEAKERAnd they'll do that for about 90 days.
1:28:29SPEAKERAnd within those 90 days,
1:28:31SPEAKERone of the things they're gonna do is deploy the helicopter
1:28:34SPEAKERand do its test flight program.
1:28:35SPEAKERThat's hopefully within those first 90 days.
1:28:38SPEAKERHopefully within the first month, probably.
1:28:41SPEAKERAnd then you understand how the vehicle works.
1:28:44SPEAKERYou understand how the team works.
1:28:46SPEAKEROn top of all of this,
1:28:47SPEAKERthese guys are gonna do most of this remotely.
1:28:49SPEAKERThey refurbished the whole building
1:28:52SPEAKERto be their mission planning area,
1:28:53SPEAKERand very few of them actually get to use it
1:28:55SPEAKERbecause of corona.
1:28:58SPEAKERAnd you're all on web conferencing software
1:29:02SPEAKERrather than in a room together.
1:29:04SPEAKERThat has a level of challenge
1:29:06SPEAKERthat they weren't prepared for.
1:29:10SPEAKERAnd so that learning how to operate the spacecraft,
1:29:13SPEAKERhow to operate the team,
1:29:14SPEAKERmay take a little bit longer than usual.
1:29:16SPEAKERBut then you settle into a rhythm.
1:29:19SPEAKERThe three month mark, you give up the Mars time
1:29:21SPEAKERand you work basically when Mars time
1:29:24SPEAKERand Pacific hours line up well enough.
1:29:26SPEAKERYou operate the vehicle every single day.
1:29:28SPEAKERAnd when they don't,
1:29:29SPEAKERyou operate it two days in a go.
1:29:31SPEAKERAnd then you settle down so it's just five days a week
1:29:35SPEAKERwhen it lines up with Mars time.
1:29:39SPEAKERAnd they'll be at that phase
1:29:40SPEAKERat the end of the first year or so.
1:29:43SPEAKERAnd then what is amazing is that I've just got going
1:29:47SPEAKERand suddenly the end of the prime mission,
1:29:49SPEAKERthose first two years,
1:29:51SPEAKERthey'll be screaming down on them.
1:29:53SPEAKERAnd suddenly it's like,
1:29:54SPEAKERwe need to have got a whole bunch of stuff done
1:29:56SPEAKERby the end of our prime mission.
1:29:57SPEAKERWe said we were going to have samples
1:29:59SPEAKERon the ground over here at that point.
1:30:00SPEAKERWe've got to get it done.
1:30:01SPEAKERAnd so at some point there'll be this focused effort
1:30:04SPEAKERto write, we know how this thing works.
1:30:06SPEAKERTime to up the pace.
1:30:08SPEAKERTime to let's make some ground here.
1:30:10SPEAKERWe had that with Curiosity in the end of its first year
1:30:14SPEAKERthrough the second and third year.
1:30:15SPEAKERIt was like, we need to get this down mountain
1:30:16SPEAKERwe've been talking about for years and years and years.
1:30:18SPEAKERLet's get there, shall we?
1:30:21SPEAKERAnd then the number of people on the mission
1:30:24SPEAKERwill slowly roll off.
1:30:25SPEAKERThe people involved in that early commissioning phase
1:30:27SPEAKERwill roll off onto other missions
1:30:28SPEAKERand people better at just doing mission ops
1:30:30SPEAKERwill roll in and backfill them.
1:30:32SPEAKERAnd then you're in for the slow cruise.
1:30:35SPEAKERAnd then the science team starts having data
1:30:38SPEAKERfrom those amazing instruments
1:30:39SPEAKERand is trying to put together those first papers
1:30:41SPEAKERwith those first scientific results.
1:30:43SPEAKERAnd so the science team is then,
1:30:44SPEAKERit's split between operating the instruments every day
1:30:47SPEAKERand doing the science with the results every day.
1:30:50SPEAKERAnd it's very easy to burn out.
1:30:52SPEAKERIt's very easy for all this to become too much.
1:30:54SPEAKERAnd particularly with corona,
1:30:58SPEAKERit can be just so hard to just be,
1:31:02SPEAKERset a conference to death
1:31:03SPEAKERand still not have time to look after yourself.
1:31:06SPEAKER- Well, and the fidelity of communication
1:31:09SPEAKERacross video conferencing is so,
1:31:12SPEAKERit doesn't seem like it's lower,
1:31:14SPEAKERbut it's so much lower when,
1:31:16SPEAKERlike, I mean, we did,
1:31:17SPEAKERwe've done it five times in this episode
1:31:18SPEAKERwhere we're talking over each other
1:31:19SPEAKERand nobody realizes until you're already halfway
1:31:21SPEAKERthrough a sentence.
1:31:23SPEAKER- Like when I'm training new engineering camera people
1:31:25SPEAKERon curiosity, I have used the phrase, read the room.
1:31:29SPEAKERCan't do that over WebEx, don't work.
1:31:31SPEAKERLike you can't tell,
1:31:33SPEAKERyou can't look over your shoulder
1:31:34SPEAKERand see how the rover planners are doing when it comes,
1:31:36SPEAKERyou know, you can't look over
1:31:38SPEAKERand see how the science planner is doing
1:31:39SPEAKERor the tactical uplink leader is doing.
1:31:40SPEAKERYou can't see if the rover planners are kind of stressed
1:31:42SPEAKERand you're not, you know what,
1:31:43SPEAKERI'm not gonna ask for that extra thing today.
1:31:45SPEAKERThis today's plan is already fat enough.
1:31:49SPEAKERI'm not gonna push my luck.
1:31:50SPEAKERLet's just, you know, let this one slide for today.
1:31:52SPEAKERWe'll try and do that tomorrow, whatever.
1:31:54SPEAKERYou just don't get that gut feeling under WebEx.
1:31:57SPEAKERI mean, today, actually like the,
1:31:59SPEAKERone of my former trainees, Taren,
1:32:01SPEAKERis on shift at Ecamm on curiosity today.
1:32:04SPEAKERToday, we are planning souls 3,000 and 10, 11 and 12,
1:32:08SPEAKERI think it is,
1:32:09SPEAKERwhich represents exactly 10% of curiosity's mission
1:32:13SPEAKERwill have been planned remotely as of today.
1:32:15SPEAKER- Wow.
1:32:16SPEAKER- And I am incredibly proud
1:32:21SPEAKERthat my little Ecamm team has carried on
1:32:25SPEAKERwith almost without skipping a beat.
1:32:26SPEAKERAnd incredibly proud to be part of the whole mission team
1:32:29SPEAKERthat has managed to not just keep the lights on,
1:32:32SPEAKERbut keep the rover busy, scientifically productive.
1:32:36SPEAKERThere is nothing this rover can do
1:32:38SPEAKERthat we haven't done remotely.
1:32:39SPEAKERBut our first fully remote shift,
1:32:41SPEAKERwhich was, he said, looking at the calendar,
1:32:44SPEAKERMarch the 20th, last year,
1:32:48SPEAKERwas our first full remote uplink shift.
1:32:50SPEAKERWe drilled a freaking hole on Mars.
1:32:52SPEAKERThat's the most complicated thing our rover can do
1:32:53SPEAKERis drilling a hole.
1:32:55SPEAKERAnd we've since had another drill campaign,
1:32:59SPEAKERthen a really crazy focused drill campaign
1:33:01SPEAKERwhere we did three drill holes in one rock
1:33:03SPEAKERand we ran them through every lab multiple times.
1:33:06SPEAKERAnd then we've had a phase where we were sprinting
1:33:08SPEAKERas far as we could to get to some big sand dunes
1:33:10SPEAKERwe wanted to study over Christmas.
1:33:12SPEAKERWe did that.
1:33:13SPEAKERWe're now sprinting out away again.
1:33:15SPEAKERMeanwhile, we did a flight software update
1:33:17SPEAKERon our backup computer.
1:33:19SPEAKERWe're working on a big flight software update
1:33:20SPEAKERfor the whole rover for a point in the future.
1:33:23SPEAKERWe're figuring out how to operate the vehicle on less power
1:33:25SPEAKERbecause our power story never gets better.
1:33:27SPEAKERIt's only ever gonna get gradually worse over time.
1:33:29SPEAKERCan we operate the rover more efficiently?
1:33:31SPEAKERCan we do more stuff in parallel?
1:33:33SPEAKERI've trained three people remotely
1:33:35SPEAKERto operate the engineering cameras.
1:33:37SPEAKERWe didn't even think that was gonna be possible.
1:33:40SPEAKERAnd just like with a degraded rover,
1:33:44SPEAKERwe figure out how to make it do cool stuff
1:33:45SPEAKERwith a degraded, for want of a better phrase, world, right?
1:33:51SPEAKERWe figure out a way around it and make it do stuff.
1:33:53SPEAKERI do not envy, I'm a little bit jealous
1:33:56SPEAKERof the Perseverance team getting to be soul one,
1:33:58SPEAKERlet's do cool shit together.
1:34:00SPEAKERBut I'm not envious of them having to try and wrangle,
1:34:03SPEAKERespecially those with families,
1:34:05SPEAKERtrying to work mass time with a family,
1:34:08SPEAKERbut you still gotta work from home,
1:34:10SPEAKERtrying to find a corner of the house
1:34:12SPEAKERwhere you can be doing your office work
1:34:14SPEAKERfrom like 11 p.m. till 10 a.m.
1:34:17SPEAKERIt's gonna be really hard on families.
1:34:20SPEAKER- Family doesn't understand that you have an extra hour
1:34:22SPEAKERin your day 'cause you're sitting right next to them.
1:34:25SPEAKER- California homes aren't really set up
1:34:27SPEAKERfor this kind of remote working either.
1:34:30SPEAKER- No, they're really not.
1:34:31SPEAKERI mean, like we just crossed Sol 3000 with curiosity.
1:34:35SPEAKERAs with all these big milestones,
1:34:37SPEAKERsomeone designs a logo and we all get a link to Land's End
1:34:40SPEAKERwhere we can go and get it put on polo shirts,
1:34:42SPEAKERhe said, pointing at his polo shirt.
1:34:44SPEAKERAnd we make, like with curiosity,
1:34:46SPEAKERwe make damn sure there are two links.
1:34:49SPEAKERThere is a link for team members
1:34:50SPEAKERto go and order stuff for themselves.
1:34:53SPEAKERSo it says MSL flight ops team on your shoulder.
1:34:56SPEAKERAnd there is a link for people to,
1:34:58SPEAKERso you can go and order a shirt for your spouse,
1:35:02SPEAKERyour kids, your grandma who's looking after the kid,
1:35:05SPEAKERwhatever, because they're a part of this puzzle too.
1:35:08SPEAKERLike I couldn't do my job on the day-to-day
1:35:11SPEAKERwithout my family around me, without my wife helping out,
1:35:15SPEAKERwithout her family helping out.
1:35:20SPEAKERThe joke, and we've made it many times,
1:35:22SPEAKERis that we're only working ever so slightly more remotely.
1:35:27SPEAKERIt's 200 million kilometres, what's an extra?
1:35:30SPEAKERWhat's an extra?
1:35:34SPEAKERBut it feels a lot further away.
1:35:36SPEAKERAnd to be doing the Mars gig from home isn't easy on anybody,
1:35:40SPEAKERespecially for the Perseverance team
1:35:42SPEAKERwho are going to be on Mars time.
1:35:44SPEAKERI know some of them will be going into work,
1:35:45SPEAKERyou know, they'll be masked up,
1:35:47SPEAKERthey'll be doing regular testing and stuff like that.
1:35:49SPEAKERAnd so they've got the stress of, you know,
1:35:50SPEAKERbeing in the same room as other people and stuff like that.
1:35:52SPEAKERIt's really, really hard work.
1:35:54SPEAKER- Yeah, all this in "Don't touch your face" too.
1:35:58SPEAKERGood God.
1:35:59SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, and I mean, the worst part of all,
1:36:01SPEAKERif you don't watch the Curiosity landing footage,
1:36:03SPEAKERis two people desperately trying to high-five each other
1:36:06SPEAKERand they just kept missing.
1:36:07SPEAKERAnd we won't get to see that when Perseverance lands.
1:36:10SPEAKER- The secret is to look at the other person's elbow,
1:36:12SPEAKERit turns out.
1:36:14SPEAKERJust look at the elbow and then boom,
1:36:16SPEAKERit's really straightforward.
1:36:19SPEAKER- I have actually trained people on how to do good high-fives
1:36:21SPEAKERin case they found themselves in a, you know,
1:36:23SPEAKERlive on CNN situation with a $2 billion face.
1:36:25SPEAKERI'm like, dude, this is how you do a high-five
1:36:27SPEAKERin a high-stress situation.
1:36:28SPEAKERLook at the elbow and go for it, right?
1:36:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I was gonna say, if you want,
1:36:33SPEAKERif you need a high-five consultant,
1:36:34SPEAKERI have done videos on the internet
1:36:36SPEAKERabout how to high-five effectively.
1:36:37SPEAKERSo for a nominal fee, I'm happy to come down any time done.
1:36:42SPEAKER- Once the run is over,
1:36:43SPEAKERyou can go down and give us all a seminar.
1:36:45SPEAKER- Yeah, we'll do a high-five lesson.
1:36:46SPEAKERSo like, Norm and I even did a running, jumping high-five
1:36:49SPEAKERon a high-speed camera it tested back in the day
1:36:52SPEAKERthat only injured one of us twice.
1:36:54SPEAKERSo I think on, Brad, unless you have anything else
1:36:58SPEAKERon that note. - No, I think that,
1:36:59SPEAKERthat does it for me.
1:37:01SPEAKER- Doug, thank you so much again for coming in
1:37:03SPEAKERand answering our inane questions about this stuff.
1:37:06SPEAKER- But there are inane questions about my stuff.
1:37:08SPEAKERIt's all pretty cool and exciting.
1:37:09SPEAKERWhatever I can come at it.
1:37:12SPEAKER- Cannot thank you enough for being so gracious
1:37:13SPEAKERwith your time.
1:37:14SPEAKER- It's especially on a Friday evening.
1:37:17SPEAKERIt's a pleasure.
1:37:20SPEAKER- And I guess that'll do it for us this week.
1:37:22SPEAKERAs always, thank you to our fabulous TechPod patrons.
1:37:26SPEAKERAs always, you can find out about the Patreon
1:37:29SPEAKERat patreon.com/techpod,
1:37:31SPEAKERwhere you can get access to the fabulous TechPod discord
1:37:34SPEAKERand talk to people like Brad and me and Doug
1:37:37SPEAKERand a bunch of other wonderful nerds.
1:37:38SPEAKER- Yes, and hear Doug's previous appearance,
1:37:42SPEAKERnot to, I mean, I hate to sound like I'm trying
1:37:44SPEAKERto upsell here, but please subscribe to our thing.
1:37:47SPEAKERBut yeah, Doug's previous episode was a Patreon exclusive.
1:37:51SPEAKERAnd we got into some of the topics we touched on here
1:37:54SPEAKERin a lot more depth about VPNing to a Mars Rover
1:37:57SPEAKERand a lot of other interesting stuff like that.
1:38:00SPEAKERSo if you like what you heard here and wanna hear more,
1:38:03SPEAKERthat is there waiting for you.
1:38:06SPEAKER- And as always, thank you to our executive producer,
1:38:09SPEAKERtier patrons, The Bunny Fiend, Jacob Chappell,
1:38:12SPEAKERDavid Allen, and James Kamik.
1:38:13SPEAKERYou all rock and we appreciate you.
1:38:16SPEAKERAnd everyone who subscribes to the Patreon.
1:38:20SPEAKERI think that'll do it for us this week.
1:38:22SPEAKERWe'll be back next week with another episode
1:38:25SPEAKERof Brad and Will Made a TechPod.
1:38:27SPEAKERSee you all next time.
1:38:29SPEAKEROh, wait, wait, wait, we didn't do plugs, we got a plug.
1:38:31SPEAKERDo you have anything you'd like to plug?
1:38:33SPEAKER- Pay your taxes.
1:38:35SPEAKER- Okay, go.
1:38:37SPEAKERLook, I was contemplating a tax revolt
1:38:40SPEAKERuntil about November 8th or 6th.
1:38:43SPEAKERI can't remember what the exact date was, but yeah.
1:38:46SPEAKERYeah, so yeah.
1:38:48SPEAKEROkay, I'll pay my taxes next year, I guess.
1:38:50SPEAKERThank you again.
1:38:51SPEAKER- Same.
1:38:52SPEAKER- See you all next week.
1:38:53SPEAKERBye everybody.
1:38:53SPEAKER(upbeat music)
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