As the Perseverance rover landed on the Mars surface last week, Darin Skelly watched from his living room, with engineering notes in hand.

A former NASA engineer and operations integrator, Skelly supported many of the early Mars-focused missions in the late 1990s and early 2000s. At Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), for example, Skelly specialized in the integration between satellites and robotic vehicles.

That launch and integration expertise allowed him to work on the Mars Pathfinder  spacecraft, which landed a base station with a roving probe on Mars in 1997, and other early rovers like Sojourner, the 2001 Mars Odyssey, and the MER-A and MER-B probes. Skelly was the mission integration manager for the April 7, 2001 Mars Odyssey launch.

Skelly has since moved from NASA to a Herndon, VA-based national-security company that supports all of the communication systems for the Deep Space Network  . The international array of 70-meter antennas provides the communication links between the engineers on Earth and the mission and science instruments on Mars.

Skelly is Vice President for Peraton, where he leads Civil Space Business Development. (The V.P. is also a systems-engineering professor at Georgetown University.)

Though Skelly moved to the private sector, last week's successful landing brought back memories of his early civil-servant days at NASA.

Darin Skelly

"I was sitting with my family around the TV," Skelly told Tech Briefs. "I had all my timelines and my event tags and I'm checking them off, and I'm listening for the confirmation commands."

After the viewing in the living room, Skelly caught up with the program manager who runs the Deep Space Network.

"He said, absolutely, it was flawless," said Skelly. "I mean, they hit every mark."

With the rover's successful landing in Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, just before 4 pm ET, a new Mars exploration-mission begins.

The Perseverance rover, in fact, will use its seven science instruments to search for signs of past life. Perseverance even has a helicopter, known as Ingenuity.

In an edited Q&A below, Skelly spoke with Tech Briefs about how he felt during the Perseverance landing, and what he's most looking forward to finding out about Mars.

Tech Briefs: To me, it's always interesting to watch the reaction when a rover finally touches down. I think that's the most enjoyable aspect in some ways: to see everyone celebrate all the hard work that's been done. But that means, these situations are also very nerve-wracking, so I was curious. What do you think was the most challenging aspect of the Mars landing? Where do you think everybody was perhaps holding their breath the most?

Darin Skelly: I have to celebrate these events as if I'm on the current team right now. I go back to my days of Pathfinder, Sojourner, Global Surveyor, and Odyssey, and I remember tears welling up in my eyes.

At Peraton we run all the communication networks for these [rover missions]. And we created, manufactured, and applied Acusil  , which is the thermal ablator on the back shell of [the spacecraft]. I think my nerve-wracking moment was watching the rover go through the the extreme heating. Starting up engines that have been sitting for a long period of time, in the cold depths of space, and getting them up to full thrust, and having them respond quickly, is critical.

Tech Briefs: What else were you nervous about?

Darin Skelly: I was even nervous about all the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) activities and the parachute. Hypersonic parachutes are always scary to me in the way that they have to slow down the vehicle. So, all of that is concerning.

Tech Briefs: Is the excitement of a Mars landing any different during a pandemic?

Darin Skelly: It's just something good to rally around right now. It's something that we can all take a lot of pride and success and give you a sense of nationalism and pride inside. And we need that right now.

Tech Briefs: Why is this rover's work especially important? What are you most interested in discovering?

Darin Skelly: One is MOXIE  , which handles in-situ oxygen development. That's critical, if we truly want to go and effectively proceed on NASA's Artemis  vision with the Moon and on to Mars. If we really want humans on Mars, we can't bring everything. We have to be able to live off the environment and produce some stored oxygen, and MOXIE is one of the first precursors to being able to bring humans out there.

Technicians in the clean room carefully lower the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) instrument into the belly of the Perseverance rover. MOXIE will demonstrate a way that future explorers might produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere for propellant and for breathing.

And then: the Ingenuity helicopter. Can you imagine when we have a set of drones as assistance to humans exploring, and then taking that technology to where there is liquid water within the universe and other planets and some of the moons?

Yes, Mars is a hostile environment, but compared to some of the other environments, this is a good place to go figure out the technology.

Tech Briefs: How confident are you in the helicopter?

Darin Skelly: It's an outside-observer perspective. Being that I'd worked at JPL, I've seen all the details of the development. I know the protocol, the rigor, the way that they simulated the 1% atmosphere, the way that they offset gravity, the speed that they have to rotate the rotors.

I have a lot of confidence. I mean, yesterday's landing just gives you all that confidence, right? From the technology that I've seen and supported, the JPL teams are not going to send it unless it's it's ready to go. I have confidence. But you're never surprised and you learn from failures and anomalies. So, let's just keep our fingers crossed.

Tech Briefs: Why bring a helicopter to Mars? Can you kind of bring us through an example of why it's helpful to test out a helicopter.

Darin Skelly: You're going to get much greater capabilities around visualization and planning ahead for future sites that can be support-assets to the human presence when it's on the planet. It could be a demonstration and verification of technology. As we start to evolve and go to other planets, where robotic missions like Curiosity or Perseverance can't go, the helicopter could be an aerial science platform. Having drones that are vetted out on Mars is a great first step.

Tech Briefs: From a technology perspective, what do you think is the most impressive tool?

Darin Skelly: What I'm always amazed by, even going back to some of the missions that I was leading as mission integration manager, is talking to the orbital mechanics and the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) leads: The teams that do all the mission planning for landing. You can equate it to threading a needle in New York City while sitting in L.A. I mean, that's how precise these guys and gals have gotten. It's phenomenal engineering and capability and precision.

Tech Briefs: What were some of the most daunting technical problems do you think and and how were those addressed?

Darin Skelly: I can't really go there on this particular mission because I wasn't part of the mission development program. One thing is certain: You have to get off the launchpad within a limited launch window, to meet up with the planet, with the injection energy to transfer orbits, that you need to get to it. To me, that was always very daunting, and the only way that you could address it was applying more labor and more energy and more passion to it, to resolve any challenges, and get past any technical issues. Because that's the hard line in the sand.

And can you imagine a multi-million or multi-billion dollar mission where you have a line in the sand?

And guess what? We're going to get there no matter what. That really drives a team uniquely, and it builds in a camaraderie and a family feel in these teams that is really unique and special. And that's why I've spent my whole career on focusing on Mars, because of that sense of community that you build through these missions.

Tech Briefs: So what are you going to be watching for now? What are you going to watch for next? To ascertain whether these systems are working as intended?

Darin Skelly: I'm an armchair quarterback now. I'm sitting back and watching this as a civilian and enjoying every moment of the discovery.

Of course, one of the big events that is coming, is dropping down the helicopter underneath the belly of the rover. Seeing that thing take off, to me, is absolutely going to be breathtaking. I can't wait to see some of the videos coming back.

Any success around caching of the samples and getting the locations where they find microbial existence — that's going to be so exciting to me.

What are you most excited to learn from this Mars-exploration mission? Share your thoughts and questions below.

Topics:
Aerospace Automation Command, Control, and Navigation Systems Machinery Mechanical Components Robotics

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    Transcript

    00:00:55 as the countdown to mars continues the perseverance of humanity launching the next generation of robotic explorers to the red planet welcome to nasa's jet propulsion laboratory in southern california we are gearing up for nasa's perseverance rover to touch down on mars happening in an hour and a half from now the rover will attempt to land in

    00:01:57 jezreel crater it is the most difficult landing site on mars ever attempted thank you for joining us i'm your host raquel villanueva in the past mission team members gathered in our mission control for landings but this time around we have coveted safety measures in place today's landing will look a little

    00:02:18 different than what you've seen before i am in a room by myself and so is my co-host here in the space flight operations facility team members are in different parts of this building some are in mission control others are upstairs for landing operations we also have isolated rooms for our guests on the show

    00:02:40 in total we have eight locations covered by 14 robotic cameras that you will be seeing one of those locations is the dark room the heart of nasa's deep space network think of it as a giant communication switchboard this is where spacecraft phone home to us from across the solar system and interstellar space the deep space

    00:03:05 network has been tracking perseverance since it left earth and there are lots of ways you can watch landing today we have a 360 degree camera inside the control room it lets you experience the landing right along with the team while seeing this broadcast we also have the clean feed it shows an uninterrupted view of mission control

    00:03:29 and audio to tell us about it is host diana trujillo who also works on the mission thank you raquel we're so excited to be the sister live broadcast in spanish synthony program twitter youtube and facebook participation and don't forget we want to see how you

    00:04:08 are watching the landing today use the hashtag countdown to mars to send us your photos and videos to preview what interviews are coming up is my co-host from the jpl news office marina jurica thanks so much raquel the excitement is building behind me right here in mission control as we count down to the perseverance landing we will be talking to some of the many people who made

    00:04:33 today possible from scientists to engineers on the mars 2020 perseverance rover team to folks from nasa headquarters giving us a look into the future of mars exploration a little later we will also be speaking with the students who named the rover and the helicopter inspirational stories as we prepare for another landing on the red planet back to you raquel

    00:04:57 thanks marina let's give a shout out to the students around the nation learning about perseverance's mission to mars with their teachers we're happier with us on this exciting day later in the show we will be answering some of the questions you submitted through your classrooms landing on mars is complex the team will be calling out milestones as they happen

    00:05:20 it's fast-paced and you'll hear lots of technical terms to help us translate and explain what is going on in mission control is swati mohan she is part of perseverance's landing team thanks for guiding us through landing today swati hi raquel i'm happy to be here today so swati what is the status of the perseverance rover right now so perseverance is still in space right now

    00:05:45 about 9 000 miles from mars so far she is healthy and on course and it takes time to send signals between earth and mars can you let us know how that affects the information you are seeing so mars is about 127 million miles from earth right now that means it takes about 11 minutes from lights to travel from mars

    00:06:10 to earth so all the information that we receive from perseverance actually happened 11 minutes ago so the round trip is 22 minutes for us to send a command to perseverance and hear back on the ground that she's received that command this is what we call two-way light time

    00:06:31 that's good to know and can you tell us who else is in the room with you right now the operations team is split into two different areas here in the cruise mission support area we have primarily the team that has been flying perseverance from earth to mars you'll see the placards with the roles of each of the people by their stations

    00:06:54 some of the people you may hear talking today are the flight director who is the conductor of our operations orchestra here the entry descent and landing activity lead who is a member of the landing team tasked with understanding the execution of entry descent and landing and then also the telecommunications and entry descent and landing communications

    00:07:20 engineers who will be monitoring the signal from perseverance through the different paths that we have upstairs in what we call the war room we have almost the entire entry descent and landing operations team and then across the hall from them we have this surface mission control room where the surface operations team is ready and waiting to

    00:07:43 take over as soon as perseverances will touch the ground and you have been part of this mission for years now can you tell us what have you been working on i've been working on perseverance for almost eight years now as a guidance navigation control engineer

    00:08:03 working primarily on entry descent and landing one of my big tasks was to help with terrain relative navigation perseverance will be the first mission to fly terrain relative navigation so while she's descending on the parachute she'll actually be looking at the ground with a camera seeing where she is with respect to the

    00:08:24 martian surface and choosing a safe spot to land that she can get to after so many years of working on the mission it's an honor to be here today as the mission commentator we're happy to have you here thanks swati we'll be checking back in with you in just a few minutes as perseverance approaches its next milestone

    00:08:45 but for now let's learn more about the rover's mission once it lands on mars you know mars is the closest place that we can reach with robotic exploration that we think had a really good chance of having ancient life the perseverance rover will land at a location called jezreel crater jezreel crater is a very interesting

    00:09:08 place it's a crater that once held a lake there are a lot of craters on the surface of mars that could have once hosted ancient lakes but not every crater that we think had a lake actually preserves evidence that that lake was there it had an inflow channel and it had an outflow channel that means it was filled the crater was filled with water

    00:09:28 in jezreel we have probably one of the most beautifully preserved delta deposits on mars in that crater this is a wonderful place to live for microorganisms and it is also a wonderful place for those microorganisms to be preserved so that we can find them now so many billions of years later there is no other place on mars that has the unique combination of a lake setting

    00:09:51 a beautifully preserved delta and the diverse mineralogy that we have in jezreel crater so it's truly a special landing site the major goal of the perseverance mission is to investigate astrobiology on mars and in particular to address the question of whether life ever existed on mars the perseverance rover starts with

    00:10:12 design that's very similar to curiosity we've added to it a whole new set of science instruments and these science instruments were purposefully selected to help us in the search for biosignatures we're going to be taking microphones with us for the first time we're going to have that human sense on another planet

    00:10:33 perseverance carries with her a grand experiment in space fairing technology a helicopter the name of which is now ingenuity one of the major upgrades that perseverance has from curiosity is that it's able to self-drive for a distance of up to 200 meters per day as the rover is driving it's literally building the map of the road it's driving on on mars scientists for years have told us that

    00:11:02 to really unlock the secrets of mars we have to bring samples from mars back to earth so what marsh 2020 is going to do is to drill samples put them in small tubes we're going to seal it in its own individual tube we set them on the surface to provide a target for the second two missions which hopefully will get in development

    00:11:24 in the next several years and could potentially get the samples back to earth by 2031. perseverance is a very very profound first step in both our understanding of our place in the universe and a stepping stone towards human

    00:11:42 exploration on mars [Music] you are watching live mars landing commentary and perseverance is about to reach another important milestone swati can you tell us what is happening we are at a milestone where the operations team determines whether they're ready to turn off the transmitter to perseverance turning off

    00:12:08 the transmitter is like taking your hands off of the wheel at this point ford perseverance would be on her own to execute entry descent and landing over 500 000 lines of code let's listen in go propulsion go art lead go team chief

    00:12:33 go ace go launch cruise phase lead go deputy mission go edl phase lead go mission assurance mission assurances go chief engineer

    00:12:53 chief is go project manager projects go mission manager all stations are go for transmitter off copy flight go for transmitter off there you have it raquel we have deemed perseverance ready to execute entry descent and landing on her own thank you swati as we just heard

    00:13:17 perseverance is now operating on its own as it cruises closer to mars to help explain what this mission means for the agency is nasa's associate administrator thomas zurbukin thomas this is our fifth rover sent to mars since 1997 can you tell us how perseverance is going to kick-start a new era wow this is such an important date today

    00:13:42 and and it really is the beginning of a new era in a sense that we're going from exploration can offer experiments on rovers looking around doing analysis to the sample return phase in which we're not only looking around looking at the geology but really turning our rower into a robotic geologist and astrobiologist collecting samples that

    00:14:08 we will bring back to earth and for us of course those are where the best laboratories are of all of humanity some of them still remain to be explored by some that are not yet in the science community yet and that's what we're looking forward to it's that new face the other element that i want to talk about is the amazing technologies that are there and of

    00:14:27 course one of my favorites is the ingenuity helicopter this in search of this extraterrestrial wright brothers moment you know controlled flight for the first time elsewhere raquel great and we have a student question on video for you from macy hi my name is macy ragsdale my question is is anything alive on mars

    00:14:52 thank you well macy i'm so glad for your question that's a question i ask myself is anything alive there and frankly at the surface where we're going right now with uh perseverance we do not believe there's anything alive uh right there because of the radiation that's there it's chilling cold and there's really no water there but guess what

    00:15:14 we think that three billion years ago this looked like a stream that you may see on earth and frankly a lot more similar than earth but water with a magnetic field just like the earth with an atmosphere and the question is at that time three billion years ago were there single cell organisms just of the type that developed on earth so is there life

    00:15:36 on on mars overall we don't know but where we're going right now we're really looking for ancient life and that's what we're so excited about thank you for your time today thomas and thanks to everyone who has been using the hashtag countdown to mars here are some of the photos that you've sent in so far let's take a look now please keep sharing with us how you

    00:16:01 are watching this moment today for now let's go back to swati for an important update to what's going on in mission control as we get closer to another milestone hey raquel this next milestone is a communications poll so during landing not only will perseverance talk directly to earth but we'll also be talking to two spacecraft

    00:16:29 that are currently orbiting mars the mars reconnaissance orbiter and the maven spacecraft this pool is to confirm with the mars reconnaissance orbiter spacecraft and the maven spacecraft teams that they are ready and on track to support the relay from perseverance let's listen in crackers have you performed the contract and

    00:17:16 readiness of the orbiters we have performed the voice check and the readiness poll and can confirm that mro maven eda radio science one and two uhf dte csn and edl gdds are all ready to support copy edl calm so we've just heard that we have a confirmation from each of the

    00:17:44 different orbiters and all of their support equipment on the ground that they are ready and are on track to support the relay from perseverance great thank you swati and we just heard that communications readiness poll which means we are ready to relay the data perseverance will send to get a better idea of what the rover looks like as it

    00:18:07 approaches mars we have a nasa program called eyes the visualization lets anyone watching track perseverance here's how the program works follow perseverance on its journey to the surface of the red planet with eyes on the solar system from your desktop or mobile device go to eyes.nasa.gov click on the banner and now you're with perseverance in real

    00:18:34 time through every step of edl entry descent and landing this interactive experience lets you ride along from whatever perspective you choose click and drag scroll in scroll out check out the descriptions and explanations to increase your edl expertise

    00:18:55 experience every entry descent and landing event precisely designed and executed to land perseverance safely on mars the eyes experience is based on predictive data but during this broadcast you'll see a different visualization called ranger and it's based on the real communication the team and mission control receives from

    00:19:16 perseverance in near real time this is the visualization the team will follow as data fills their screens while monitoring the health of perseverance on its nerve-racking course to another successful mars landing enjoy the ride [Music] you are watching live mars landing commentary stepping outside mission

    00:19:55 control to talk to us is perseverance system engineer matt smith thanks for joining us today matt hey raquel well coming from mission control we are going to hear terms related to landing can you help us understand what some of them mean sure definitely um one thing you'll hear a lot about is telemetry so telemetry is

    00:20:14 just our way of talking about data that's coming from the spacecraft and telling us important things like temperatures on the vehicle pressure how much fuel we have left and other things that we need to understand for the health and safety of the vehicle you'll also hear the word nominal hopefully nominal means everything is expected everything is okay we're good

    00:20:35 to go uh you'll hear also a lot about velocity and deceleration so velocity is just our speed combined with the direction we're going and deceleration is our slowing velocity so we're coming in at over 2 12 000 miles per hour and we're going to slow down to a nice comfortable 2 miles per hour at landing and that's our deceleration

    00:20:56 speaking of landing you may hear a couple important terms at landing itself one is remu stable so the remu is a device on the rover that measures the rover's orientation and whether it's moving so we want a nice stable landing spot without any motion you'll also hear uhf stable hopefully uhf stable refers

    00:21:17 to good telecommunications link with the rover and indicates that we've had a good separation between the descent stage and the rover after the sky crane maneuver finally you may also hear tango delta nominal or touchdown nominal that means we've touched down on the surface of mars within the expected range of safe landing speeds

    00:21:39 thanks for that breakdown now this is your first mars mission what have you learned from this experience yeah one of my takeaways is that you can almost never be too careful when it comes to mars you definitely can't take mars for granted you know we've checked and double checked and triple checked everything on our way to mars and even though we've done this once before

    00:21:59 using the uh sky crane technique on the curiosity rover um you know i think everyone's gonna have their uh everyone's gonna hold their breath until we're on the surface of mars this time around and we have a social media question coming in nor the door on instagram asks how complicated is the automated landing sequence and who wrote the code

    00:22:21 yeah it's quite complicated uh the automated landing uh software needs to do literally hundreds of things all on its own just right with sub second timing accuracy and it's the result of many hundreds of people over many years stretching all the way back to curiosity and then improved for the perseverance landing today at jezreel crater

    00:22:42 great thanks for your time today matt and good luck thanks now landing on mars is hard landing on mars during a pandemic is even harder the team behind the perseverance rover faced one of its biggest challenges when the coronavirus pandemic struck here's how they kept the mission going when the pandemic struck

    00:23:12 the future was certainly unknown it was like walking into a blind dark alley you didn't know what was there what was in front of you what you were going to have to deal with it's something that nobody expected it's something nobody could plan for we all were asked to start working from home rather than your first priority being mission success and

    00:23:32 and getting to the launch pad your first priority immediately gets displaced and it's now the safety of the people and it took a lot of work to put stuff together in order to keep momentum going to keep people working safely keep them healthy and to keep the project on schedule we called the effort march 2020 safe at work and the objective was to keep the team as safe or safer

    00:23:56 than they would be if they were not working you know putting a spacecraft together that's going to mars and not making a mistake it's hard no matter what trying to do it during the middle of a pandemic it's it's a lot harder at liftoff as the countdown to mars continues the perseverance of humanity launching the

    00:24:16 next generation of robotic explorers to the red planet certainly never done something like this before try to lead a team that's flying a spacecraft on the way to mars while getting ready for landing while doing it all from home there's no doubt that working in isolation not virtual isolation but in

    00:24:36 physical isolation from everyone else is a challenge we had to rethink and redesign what it meant to operate a spacecraft in flight when we couldn't all be in the same room in mission control seeing the data come down from perseverance it was a major change going to that you know looking at everyone on a screen instead

    00:25:00 of in person because of the pandemic you can't uh you know just pop over your cubicle wall and talk to the person next to you it's definitely been a challenge to figure out how to communicate and get everything done remotely but we've managed to make it work we are explorers our job is to go into the unknown and this is just another example of

    00:25:22 the unknown we're really doing something that's transformative and trying to understand whether or not life evolved on another planet that's the fundamental objective of this mission we're all still connected by this incredible mission and this this wonderful team that we have the opportunity to be a part of so that

    00:25:42 keeps at least me going pretty much everybody that i've talked to that's associated with the mission has has said the same thing which is you could not have come up with a better name than perseverance it's an amazing serendipity we get to persevere through working on perseverance [Music]

    00:26:14 [Music] joining us now is perseverance deputy project manager matt wallace matt just how ambitious is this mission his team stay on track with unexpected challenges like the pandemic well it's a very ambitious mission you know working on a host of new uh extremely capable science instruments to do that that science mission that

    00:26:47 we've talked about but also a number of technology experiments to provide feed forward information into the next set of robotic explorers or even an exploration of mars so there's a lot for us to do we look a lot like curiosity but in fact we're carrying 50 percent more uh payload down to the surface of mars uh and so it is a it's been a big

    00:27:11 challenge um you know and it was particularly challenging when the endemic struck came at a critical time in our processing we were just months away from launching we're trying to essentially get the spacecraft assembled to do the final test

    00:27:29 did not have a lot of margin in our schedule our focus just entirely shifted from that to keeping the team safe and keeping their families safe um and we had to do that quickly to make the adjustment quickly uh i think you know we got you with a lot of help a lot of people stepped up to make it happen the team was tenacious

    00:27:51 uh and we managed to get it launched and flight to mars it's you know thanks to a lot of help and matt just how large is the team that worked on perseverance it's a big team a couple thousand people here just at jpl in fact have worked on on the mission and then almost every other nasa center has contributed in some significant

    00:28:16 and critical way as well we have um over a thousand industry partners that have provided hardware into this mission from 44 different states 60 different cities and of course we have international contributions from europe and many other international providers as well so it's a it's a big team it's taken a lot of

    00:28:38 people to get us to where we're at that is a big team this is the most difficult landing site ever attempted now why do you think perseverance is ready to land in jezreel crater now jezreel is tough i mean it's scientifically fascinating because it's got a lot of things like craters and uh you know fields and cliffs and sand

    00:29:02 dunes and that sort of thing which are great for the science community that's the type of features they're looking for to learn more about mars but they're all anti-hazards for us uh and so we've had to add new technology uh to relevant navigation which is the ability essentially to divert away from hazards uh and but we have taken this system through the same types of paces that we

    00:29:26 have in previous missions we've used the same techniques the same best practices for engineering verification and in many cases we've used the same people this in fact is my my fifth mars rover mission and i'm not alone there's other people on the project in the same in the same situation so um

    00:29:45 you know the team has given it everything they've gotten to put it all put it all out there and to make this successful and i think we're ready thanks matt and good luck on your fifth mission thank you very much well jezreel crater is a location on mars that's intrigued scientists for years let's head over to marina to learn more

    00:30:06 about the science goals of the mission that's right raquel here to explain why we want to go there is deputy project scientist katie stack morgan welcome katie thanks marina glad to be here now perseverance is landing on mars at the jezreel crater why is it that you and the team chose this particular area yeah so scientists believe jezreel

    00:30:33 crater is one of the best places on mars and possibly the entire solar system to look for friends of ancient life israel contained an ancient lake and has within it one of the best preserved ancient delta deposits in the on the surface of mars and deltas form when a river enters a relatively open body of water like an impact crater and deposits the sediment that it's carrying into the lake and we

    00:30:56 know based on studies of deltas and lakes here on earth that they're great places to concentrate and preserve organics and support microbial life we're also excited because gyro exposes rocks that um are between three and a half to more than four billion years old and represent a variety of different geological processes now this might be a tough choice but

    00:31:17 what do you think would be the most rewarding scientific discovery that we expect to get from this mission it's hands down i think the most rewarding discovery i think we can make with perseverance would be finding a truly compelling ancient bio signature on mars the rocks in and around jezreel crater record a period of time when life first arose in the solar system and we

    00:31:38 have the opportunity with perseverance to study the evolution of the planet from a once habitable world likely capable of supporting ancient life to the cold barren planet we know mars is today and why do you think katie it's so important to find out if there really is or was ancient life on mars well the question of whether there's

    00:31:59 life beyond earth is one of the most fundamental and essential questions we can ask and our ability to ask this question and develop the scientific investigations and technology to answer it is one of the things that make us as a species so unique and based on everything we know about mars in the past it absolutely should have been capable of supporting each life so we

    00:32:20 can find out an answer to the question where there were habitable environments was there life and studying the possible emergence of life on ancient mars can also help us better understand the conditions that led to life on our own planet that's so fascinating katie now we're going to take a question from a student vara

    00:32:40 hi i'm laura and my question is why was mars able to sustain lakes and rivers apes ago but cannot now isn't it old enough to make water and isn't it always thank you yeah that is such a great question um and one of the things that protects our atmosphere here on earth and allows liquid water to be stable on our own

    00:33:05 planet is the fact that we have a magnetic field protecting that atmosphere we think that mars lost its magnetic field way back europe billions of years ago and left the atmosphere exposed to things like solar and cosmic rays that basically blew that atmosphere away and once that happened liquid water wasn't stable on the surface of mars anymore it was too cold and there and

    00:33:24 the pressure was too low and so now mars is not capable of supporting liquid water and likely not capable of supporting life at its surface well thank you so much to vara for that great question and a big shout out to all the kids that are watching out there today and thank you so much to you katie for joining us that was so great thank you

    00:33:44 now sending it back over to you raquel thanks marina earlier we were able to catch up with the communication systems engineer chloe sakir she helps us break down the system used to track perseverance during landing the communications infrastructure supporting perseverance's landing is quite complex we've rallied a truly global network of relay and

    00:34:08 communications assets to help us capture and record those precious minutes of entry descent and landing or edl we receive a stream of engineering telemetry via these communication assets that helps us see and understand exactly what's happening perseverance sends direct to earth x-band tones each of which provides us with indications of critical entry descent and landing

    00:34:31 events during entry descent and landing we have two mars orbiters listening for the ultra high frequency or uhf signals from perseverance these orbiters relay these signals to deep space network stations on earth madrid in spain and goldstone in california the mars reconnaissance orbiter or mro has reconfigured its software to perform a type of relay called bent pipe this will

    00:34:55 provide us with near real-time telemetry during entry descent and landing we have coverage from the mars reconnaissance orbiter from just before entry to a few minutes after landing the telemetry we receive will be delayed by the time it takes light to travel from mars to us back on earth additionally the mars atmosphere and volatile evolution spacecraft or maven is recording these

    00:35:17 uhf signals and will be relaying that recording hours after landing maven will be covering us from around the time of cruise stage separation until a few minutes after landing we also receive what we call heartbeat tones which are indications that the spacecraft is alive and progressing throughout entry descent and landing it's important to note that while

    00:35:38 unexpected we could lose our communication lengths and still land safely because perseverance is doing entry descent and landing completely autonomously she doesn't need our help to joystick the landing the communication links give us added visibility and you can see chloe hard at work inside mission control right now

    00:35:59 perseverance's landing might look like the system the curiosity rover used back in 2012 but landing on mars is difficult there's always a risk involved here's what needs to happen for perseverance to touch down safely in jezreel crater nothing can be taken for granted when you get to mars there's a lot of things

    00:36:20 we just don't know space always has a way of throwing us curveballs and surprising us i mean until we get the data that says we're on the ground safely i'm gonna be worried that we're not gonna make it [Music] entry descent and landing is often referred to as the seven minutes of terror

    00:36:39 because it takes about seven minutes to get from the top of the atmosphere of mars to the ground safely the spacecraft has to do all of this by itself there are many things that have to go right to get perseverance onto the ground safely there's a lot counting on this this is the first leg of our sample return relay race there's a lot of work on the line

    00:37:02 starting about 10 minutes before atmospheric entry we get rid of really the spacecraft part of of the rover that's been supporting us we come screaming in to the martian atmosphere at 12 to 13 000 miles per hour and the heat shield is what dissipates all that initial energy through friction the vehicle will continue actually flying itself through the atmosphere

    00:37:24 it's sort of like a transforming vehicle that went from spacecraft and now it's kind of like an aircraft actively guiding itself when we're going slow enough we deploy a parachute the biggest supersonic parachute we've ever sent to another planet it's critical for slowing down the vehicle perseverances entry descent and landing borrows heavily from that of curiosity

    00:37:47 but fundamentally perseverance is a different rover she's bigger she has different instruments we've added a lot of smarts on the inside to make it more capable so that it can deal with the landing site that we've given the science team identified jezreel crater as basically an ancient lake bed and one of the most promising places to look for evidence of ancient microbial life and

    00:38:07 to collect samples for future return to earth uh the problem is it's a much more hazardous place to land when you look at jezreel all you see is danger how do we go to a site that we never thought was safe enough to go to before so the heat shield which has protected us all the way through entry is no longer necessary we need to get that off so that we can actually see the ground

    00:38:25 and we can see the ground in a couple different ways perseverance will be the first mission to use terrain relative navigation so while it's descending on the parachute it will actually be taking images of the surface of mars and determining where to go based on what it sees this is finally like landing with your eyes open having this new technology really allows

    00:38:47 perseverance to land in much more challenging terrain than curiosity or any previous mars mission could amongst the rocks and the craters and the cliffs these things are hazardous to the rover but these are the things that are interesting to the scientists once perseverance has figured out where she is get us in the back shell and

    00:39:09 parachute and light up our rockets rockets help us dear to a safe landing spot that's nearby that descent stage takes us all the way down to about 20 meters off the ground that's when we start the sky the rover has hit the ground the descent stage will cut loose from the rover and fly away to a safe distance

    00:39:34 surviving that seven minutes is really just the beginning for perseverance its job right being the first leg of sample return to go look for those signs of past life on mars all that can't start until we get perseverance safely to the ground and then that's when the real mission begins [Music] [Music]

    00:40:16 with us now is al chen he is perseverance's entry descent and landing lead al you were part of the curiosity rover landing does it get any easier the second time around it absolutely does not especially when considering we're trying to land the biggest heaviest and most complex rover we've ever built at the most dangerous

    00:40:35 landing site we've ever attempted jezreel may look great and you know promising from a science perspective but it's absolutely treacherous for landing there's a cliff cliff wall that's about 200 feet tall that runs right through the middle of landing site there are craters full of sand that even if we landed them we would not be able to drive out of and there are rocks to the

    00:40:53 east and actually all over the place rock fields that would be a bad day for us if we were to land on them now al what new technology makes this type of land dangerous landing possible perseverance is carrying two new technologies that are really kind of under the hood smarts that are allowing us to end at this treacherous landing site

    00:41:12 the first is range trigger that's the ability we've given perseverance the ability to decide for herself based on where she is when to deploy the parachute previously we used to deploy parachutes that supersonic parachute based just on navigated velocity but now perseverance has the smarts to figure out where she is and deploy that parachute at just the right place to

    00:41:30 make sure that we shrink where we could come down that actually reduces the area that error ellipse where we can come down on the ground from something that was on the order of 15 miles long by 12 miles wide for curiosity to about 5 miles long by 4 miles wide for perseverance so that's quite a bit of reduction

    00:41:49 second the next piece of technology that's helping us land there is train relative navigation um in the past after we've popped off the heat shield we've taken pictures of the ground as it's been coming up but we haven't really done anything with them this time perseverance is carrying a camera to take pictures but also a kind of second brain to help that figure out

    00:42:06 what those pictures are telling it and match it up with an onboard map from a satellite uh that allows it to figure out exactly where she is suddenly then she can she can then fly to safe spots that are nearby when she really knows where she is it allows the site to not have to be as flat and boring as a pancake as if some of our past sites had been the entire area we

    00:42:24 could come down now we just need little pieces of that site to be small enough and safe enough for us to land in safely and fly there after we've just after we've gotten rid of the parachute and we also have a social media question coming in sansacari14 on instagram is asking how does the sky crane decide where to

    00:42:43 move itself after the payload lands after the payload lands after the rover touches down uh the the sky crane the descent stage which is that rocket powered jet pack above it the first stop of course is to make sure you don't hurt the rover so it'll turn forward or backward so that the engine plumes don't pass over the rover so it'll come up and

    00:43:02 start to turn and it'll go in whichever direction is closest to north so it can either go forward if that's the way north is or go toward the rear of the rover if that's where north is and it'll fly about a third of a mile or so away thanks for talking to us today al thank you very much now let's head back to mission control for an update from swati

    00:43:24 hi raquel so remember that command that we sent at around 11 35 to turn the transmitter off we are just about to get confirmation that perseverance has received the command the command took 11 minutes to go to perseverance and then the reply took 11 minutes to get back from perseverance to the ground so we should hear

    00:43:49 any second now that we have officially turned off the transmitter and after that we will be about four minutes from the start of entry descent and landing mode at this point we will transition from the cruise approach mode to entry descent and landing and that means our travel from earth to mars is done and now we just

    00:44:12 need to get to the surface so far things are looking good great [Music] come back our tracking stations have all confirmed the results of the transmitter drive off and in lock one way copy ace gds flight

    00:44:56 flight gtf at this time i'd like to disable the alarms before edl main so please disable all the alarm files and start a new downlink session we'll talk about ecp copy that proceeding now we are now officially one way and the transmitter is off rover mission has helped shape the other started with the landing of the

    00:45:27 pathfinder more than 20 years ago leading up to where we are today with perseverance perseverance deputy project manager jennifer trosper has worked on every mars rover mission and she joins us now uh jennifer how does perseverance fit into the history of exploring mars thanks raquel it's great to be here well perseverance is nasa's fifth rover on

    00:45:54 mars and i've had the privilege of working on every one of them and the very first rover was the sojourner rover we sent in 1997 and it was the size of a microwave oven and even at that small size sojourner was able to transform the way that we explore mars from stationary landers to small roving robots that go from place to place just like a geologist would on earth so once

    00:46:20 we had that roving capability then we sent our twin rovers spirit and opportunity spirit and opportunity were tasked with finding evidence of ancient water on mars now they did they're great explorers and both of them found ample evidence that water had once existed on the surface of mars

    00:46:40 but we had a question another question then was mars ever habitable if water had been there and that's when we sent curiosity now curiosity was a major upgrade to our rover fleet she's the size of a small car she landed with the sky crane system instead of airbags and she also carries along her own sample analytics lab and she's still operating today

    00:47:04 and during her exploration she has found evidence of a habitable environment in an ancient lake bed on mars so now we're sending perseverance perseverance is tasked with answering the question and looking for evidence of ancient microbial life on mars and in order to do this she has to be the smartest and most capable rover we've ever sent

    00:47:27 speaking of perseverance can you tell us more about how perseverance is smarter than its predecessors yes we've made a lot of upgrades to help her along with the surface mission one of them is for her autonomous traverse capability when i say autonomous traverse i mean we tell her where we want her to end up and she has to figure out the safe and best way to get there in order to do that she

    00:47:51 uses her cameras algorithms a computer so we've given her another computer we've upgraded the cameras and we've upgraded the algorithms now she drives three times as fast as curiosity could drive in this autonomous traverse mode in fact her average daily distance for driving about 200 meters is close to the maximum distance any rover has ever driven in a day on

    00:48:14 mars so she's fast another thing that we've done which is the most significant upgrade that we've made is the sample caching system itself curiosity has a robotic arm like perseverance has a robotic arm but on the end of perseverance's robotic arm is a coring drill that will go and take rock cores transfer them into sample tubes and into

    00:48:37 the rover where another robotic arm will take those tubes will seal them and store them and eventually drop them on the surface of mars for future return to earth great and we also have a social media question about perseverance erica a s on instagram wants to know what the wheels of the rover are made out of great question well you may think we

    00:49:00 make them out of some material you've never heard of it turns out they're made of aluminum now perseverance's wheels are a little thicker than curiosities but they're actually both made out of aluminum and one more question for you can you tell us more about the importance of where you are right now in the building yes i am above on the second floor above

    00:49:22 the cruise mission support area that you've been watching and this is the surface mission support area so as soon as perseverance lands all commands i'll take this this room will take over become headquarters for operating perseverance on mars thanks for taking the time to talk to us today jennifer thank you now we now know perseverance's place in

    00:49:44 history let's take an up close look at the rover with mars 2020 system testbed engineer elio morillo thank you i'm standing in front of the mars 2020 perseverance scaled model as you can tell this vehicle is about the size of a mini cooper these wheels are obviously black here and they look

    00:50:07 like rubber but they're actually fully made of metal these wheels are designed to allow us to climb over obstacles and of course climb over hills and minimize the amount of slipping once we're traversing on the surface of mars here in the front of the rover we have the sample caching system and of course at the very front end of this is the robotic arm which this entire system is

    00:50:27 arguably the most complex robotic system we've ever sent outside of earth here at the tip of the arm we have a turret which contains a suite of instruments along with some drills and coring capabilities that will allow us to do contact science once we get to the surface of mars not only that this robotic system is equipped to collect samples about the size of a

    00:50:50 piece of chalk that then eventually will be stored inside of the vehicle and dropped off in a later location so that an eventual mission can go and return these samples to earth something we've never done in the past here in the front we have the remote sensing mast something of note is that this mechanism is going to be stowed upon the touchdown

    00:51:10 on the surface of mars and one of the first critical activities we do is deploy this mechanism this mechanism includes several cameras that are going to give us some of the most breathtaking images we've ever taken on mars along with that we have some lasers as well as a spectrometer they're going to allow us to do some remote science here you see some of these extrusions

    00:51:28 that are part of the larger weather suite of instruments that will allow us to characterize the local climate around perseverance so that's a quick tour of the rover but i gotta get back to work so back to you [Music] [Music] perseverance is collecting samples of martian rock for future return to earth

    00:52:03 we've heard that scientists have been wanting to bring martian samples back for many generations and here to talk a little bit about that is nasa's planetary science division director lori glaze who joins us now to talk about the role perseverance will play in nasa's future goals welcome lori hi now as you just heard we've heard that scientists have been wanting to bring

    00:52:27 back these martian samples for a very long time why do we need to bring them back that's really a great great question you know we actually have examples of mars already here on earth that came here as meteorites but we don't know exactly where they came from on mars and then they also have had to make the trip from mars to earth and so they got altered during that time and

    00:52:49 then during their entry and descent into the earth's atmosphere that also changes what those those rocks are like so being able to go to mars and actually collect the sample where we know exactly where it came from and we know we can preserve it and keep it pristine and carry it all the way back here this will be incredibly important to help us answer questions about

    00:53:12 the geologic history of mars understanding how it formed and evolved and also really important questions about whether or not life actually existed on mars three and a half billion years ago and whether that life if it existed has been preserved in the surface of mars now lori these sample tubes that perseverance is going to be collecting

    00:53:34 they're the cleanest things ever created on earth tell me a little bit about that oh my goodness we worked so hard the team here at jpl is absolutely incredible to assure that those sample tubes are incredibly clean one of the main goals of this mission is to be able to detect if there's actual life that's preserved ancient life preserved in those rocks in

    00:53:58 those samples and we definitely don't want to be carrying you know our own dna off to mars and then bring it back here to confuse our our scientists when they're trying to study those samples so it it is an incredibly clean uh set of equipment that's been sent there as you said the cleanest thing we've ever sent into space now this is a very complicated campaign

    00:54:20 can you break down for us how it's going to work and if there's any international partners working with us you are correct the the marsh sample return campaign is incredibly complex in fact it's probably the most challenging thing we've ever tried to do but we're definitely not going to try and do it alone we have great partners with the european space agency and the

    00:54:42 way this campaign is going to work well perseverance is the first step chapter one uh is going to mars and collecting the samples chapter two is going to be a sample return lander that we hope to launch in around 26 to 28 2026 to 2028 and that lander uh it'll be an american lander carrying a fetch rover that's provided by european space agency and that little fetch rover will drive out

    00:55:08 and pick up the samples that perseverance left on the surface of mars and the fetch river will bring them back and load them into a rocket that we call the mars ascent vehicle which will be the first ever launch from another planet and it will launch those samples into orbit around mars in the meantime european space agency will have an orbiter that's in orbit around mars that

    00:55:29 can rendezvous and capture those samples and then bring them back to earth for for us to study back here in our amazing laboratories a lot of firsts it sounds like lori and another first how is perseverance and the mars sample return mission going to help the future exploration human exploration of mars i'm so glad you asked that i think we're

    00:55:52 going to get a lot of great information from mars sample return with again being able to land the heaviest payload we've ever landed on mars will be that sample return lander that's critical to us learning how to land humans on mars and then we are definitely going to want to be able to launch the humans back off of mars so that mars ascent vehicle is going to be critical that that first

    00:56:14 step of the first launch from another planet so exciting laurie and speaking about the mars generation we're now going to take a student question for you from livia hi my name is olivia and my question is what made you want to study mars and why are you working so hard and willing to wait so long for a sample thank you

    00:56:40 olivia that is such a great question and and i enjoy mars just because it can tell us so much about how our solar system formed and evolved um all of the planets can tell us different parts of that story and mars is a really key piece of that and one of the main reasons we're willing to wait so long to get the sample back is that we've got great new scientists that are all about

    00:57:02 your age and in about 10 or 15 or 20 years you'll be the generation that's going to actually get to work with these samples when when they come back you'll be the scientists and engineers that will will be the the next generation to to change how we think about uh about mars and how we think about life in the solar system that was a great question lori reach for

    00:57:25 the stars future little scientists and engineers thank you so much for joining us here today lori it's my pleasure thanks back to you raquel for another mission update thanks marina the cruise team for perseverance controls the rover on its way to mars and moments ago they handed it over to the landing team and it looks like team leaders in mission control are

    00:57:48 about to talk to both teams so let's listen in the cbm change uh as i mentioned previously is to the edl reserve two-way non-coherent level activity copy flight edl face go ahead tough talk i guess to the team right uh you know i'm terrible pep talks i think you my

    00:58:13 reputation precedes me there and uh look i know this hasn't been easy right i'm not even sure we've even been all in the same room at the same time i mean i'm staring at folks across the uh across the internet as well uh even now right only yeah voice check okay

    00:58:32 um i do want to just extend uh my heartfelt appreciation from the edl team to the uh to the launch cruise team uh you've done everything we've asked for right i mean you've battled anomalies you've you know dealt with cessies he's done everything he delivered a healthy spacecraft to the place that we want to go and she's right on target right he did

    00:58:50 the last maneuver literally two months ago right this is pretty incredible in my opinion um and she's armed with the right information to help us land you know doing the founder update last night we're ready to roll you've done everything right um and you've put up with us too right you've put up with our eccentricities

    00:59:04 and the things we like to do in edl land so i very much appreciate that so uh you all should sleep in on friday since uh i you know you guys have earned it um thanks for literally and figuratively putting us in the right position to succeed and

    00:59:20 let's land on mars together copy edl phase and as flight director i also would like to thank the whole team crewsops edl ops edl team and the surface ops as well it's been an amazing journey i think we all know that and it's been my honor and pleasure to work with you all side by side

    00:59:42 and your tireless efforts and endurance in the face of our challenges has been truly truly inspiring so kudos to you mission would you like to see something yeah just echoing the same words that uh that al and maggie have uh have mentioned you guys have overcome great obstacles in the last six and a half

    01:00:03 months and it started with an earthquake in this room on launch day at l minus 20 minutes so i can't be more proud than all of the achievements that you guys have have pulled off in the last six and a half months whatever happens in the next hour and a half you can be proud of the

    01:00:22 achievements that you've accomplished so far i look forward to seeing you on the other side and i only wish that the rest of our team could be sharing this moment with us uh this is a very unusual event this room is only as half as full as it would be if we weren't in this pandemic so

    01:00:38 missing everybody on the team who's not with us here today and go edl welcome to the edel family [Applause] and with that godspeed perseverance all right activity go ahead and continue the report sure thing fight um we've since completed the edl start anchor as i was mentioning we changed our cbm

    01:01:13 row to edl reserve two-way non-coherent that row reinforces our cbm windows disabled keeps our packetization on it turns off our ranging and switches to the auxiliary oscillator we have also started our real-time data products and reinforced medley on at this time now we just heard perseverance team

    01:01:35 leaders thank the cruise team for their work in guiding the rover to mars now did you know the rover name and mars helicopter name came from students well a couple weeks ago marina was able to catch up with them thanks raquel earlier this year nasa and our partners held a nationwide essay contest to name our mars rover alex mather a seventh grader from springfield

    01:02:02 virginia submitted the winning essay that was selected by nasa from a field of more than 28 000 entries from k through 12 students in every state in the u.s vanessa rouhani's essay for ingenuity was so compelling nasa thought it would be a perfect name for the history making helicopter a technology demonstration carried aboard the perseverance rover alex and vanessa join

    01:02:27 us now welcome you guys hello space nerds hi now you got to go to florida and watch the launch live back in july alex what were you feeling as you saw that rocket launch into the sky i read a lot of books written by astronauts and every single one of them always talks about the raw power

    01:02:51 behind the space launch and i definitely feel like watching the launch invoked that sense of of well inspiration mixed with anticipation along with that rumble in my chest that's very inspirational and i'm sure that you have had many conversations with your classmates since this all began what kind of questions have they

    01:03:14 asked you i got some people asking me about what this helicopter is what this rover is what are they actually going to do so i love that this whole experience sparked a greater interest in the mission in my community why do you think it's so important for kids to be inspired by space exploration because space is the future and kids are

    01:03:34 the future learning about space and watching the story of humanity spread to the stars happen is watching the future happen and seeing history unfold the best way to keep our home safe and protect our planet is to learn from the worlds around it so i think it's really important for the next generation of scientists to be engaged in that type of exploration to make our home the best

    01:03:57 place it can be now speaking of the future what has your life been like since naming the rover and helicopter has it sparked any future aspirations for the two of you oh man i am currently applying to a science and technology school for high school i'm hoping for a nasa internship sometime along the way with my ultimate

    01:04:20 goal being to join the incredible team of scientists and engineers who are about to make this happen this whole experience has definitely shown me that i want to go into the space industry i came home from florida did all my college applications and checked aerospace engineering on all the boxes i mean the whole time we were there i was thinking why would anyone

    01:04:39 want to do anything else so true and the best of luck to both of you thank you so much for joining us here today alex and vanessa thank you for having us thank you so much i had a great time now your essays as well as the top 155 finalist essays are riding on the perseverance rover along with nearly 11 million of the names from all over the

    01:05:05 world that were submitted before launch and if you miss the chance to get your name on perseverance then you will get another chance to reserve a spot on the next mission to mars so make sure that you sign up now at mars.nasa.gov for your boarding pass as virtual celebrations are happening all over the globe let's take a look at some of your submissions on our social

    01:05:30 channels showing us how you're celebrating the perseverance landing right now and remember to hashtag count down to mars and send those in we would love to show them off look at these kids they are getting so excited everyone's watching it a lot of classrooms are watching it oh and great someone did a lego version of perseverance which is awesome

    01:05:57 it looks fantastic we love getting all your pictures out there we've gotten a lot of artwork from kids which has been great i know i have a nine-year-old john at home and he loves to draw the rover and look at that that is awesome that's better than anything i could bake that's for sure perseverance in a cake that looks so great delicious i want to get into that

    01:06:20 another great send-in from david bowie reel thank you so much for your submissions remember hashtag countdown to mars we love to see how you're celebrating now you might know our next guest from shows like emily's wonder lab joining me now is emily kelandrelli thank you so much for being here with us today hi thanks so much for having me

    01:06:44 now you are very passionate about getting kids interested in science and space exploration why do you think kids are so excited about space well i know the reason i'm excited about space and i think it's the same reason that many others are excited about space and it's that the people in the space industry work to answer two of the biggest questions that humans have ever

    01:07:06 asked are we alone in the universe and where did we all come from and by sending a rover to mars we are gaining evidence for the answers to these questions more evidence than we ever had before and i think that's so exciting it is and i know you get loads of interesting questions from kids have you gotten any about mars specifically oh my gosh yes everybody loves smarts

    01:07:31 it's in movies and books and tv shows and everybody loves mars so one of the things that i get asked a lot is that you know it's called the red planet why is it red well it's red because it's literally rusty the top layer of soil on mars has iron oxide in it or rust and rust has that brownish red color so it's it's red because it's rusty and also because it's red they ask is it red hot

    01:07:55 is it really hot on mars and well no actually it's colder than the earth it's farther away from the sun so as you would imagine it's a little bit colder than the earth it also has a really thin atmosphere so the heat that it does have it has a hard time keeping in and so it's a little bit colder but then i also get asked what would i weigh on mars that's a really fun question so on

    01:08:16 mars it's a little bit smaller than the earth so the gravity there is weaker it's about 3 8 the gravity that we have here on earth so if you wait 100 pounds here on earth you weigh 38 pounds on mars or 100 kilograms here on earth 38 kilograms on mars those are all super fun i think even some adults want to know the answers to those questions emily

    01:08:37 now why do you think it's so important to educate kids about science and give them that great foundation well science is the language of nature and learning about science and learning how to think like a scientist means you are learning how to systematically seek out truth in the world you are learning the scientific method you're learning how to be a critical thinker and

    01:08:59 honestly those skills are great for whatever you end up wanting to do in life true if you want to be a scientist or an opera singer that holds true what are you most excited about today i mean humans are launching a robot to mars that doesn't happen every day i think in all of the hecticness that is going on

    01:09:18 today and all of the nerves i just everyone can take a moment to sit back and remember that we live in a time when humans have the ability to send a robot to another planet and that is just that's so cool to me it is very cool emily take a deep breath thanks for joining us here thanks for having me sending it back to you now raquel

    01:09:40 thanks marina we are offering lots of ways to ride along with us to mars now put yourself right into the action now with our perseverance photo booth you can pose next to the rover place yourself in our mission control and even see what you might look like taking a selfie on the red planet there you'll also have a chance to sign up to send your name to mars on nasa's

    01:10:04 next flight to the red planet it's all available at go.nasa.gov mars 2020 toolkit and joining us now is jpl chief engineer and landing veteran rob manning he will be breaking down key moments coming up and very few people know more about landing on mars than rob going back to the pathfinder mission in 1997. thanks for joining us today rob yeah

    01:10:33 thank you very much rick for having me here and what a wonderful experience what a wonderful day for a beautiful day in california we we're just so excited here anxious worried but very hopeful rob i have a question for you there is a landing tradition at jpl that involves eating peanuts for good luck uh can you

    01:10:54 tell us how did that start yes it started in the mid 1960s what happened was we had a series of missions that had failures the ranger program in the early 1960s and one after another failed and what happened was one day a fellow by the name of dick wallace on the on ranger number seven on the seventh attempt decided to bring peanuts to the ops area just before the before

    01:11:17 the launch and guess what that mission worked now we're not supposed to be too super superstitious we're engineers and scientists after all but we love tradition and ever since then before launch and before critical events like enter descent landing we have brought out peanuts and shared them with the team and it's been really a wonderful little experience and and so this is

    01:11:35 something we will do we're doing right now and uh and it's something that we we just can't help ourselves it's just part of the experience well speaking of the experience how did the perseverance team keep the tradition alive this year well this year we're passed out little packets of penis to the team and they can sneak a pic one peanut in their mouth

    01:11:54 for uh as part of to keep the tradition alive but you know this is part of the covet experience but we can't leave this one undone so this is what we're doing and we're and uh and this is gonna help us land safely all right thanks rob i have some questions for you a little later on but we are heading back to swati mohan who

    01:12:12 is part of the landing team she'll be calling out key milestone and events as they happen from mission control so let's listen in right now so right now we're still about 20 minutes from entry and the edl phase is giving a last-minute um confirmation of what will be happening in the upcoming

    01:12:36 changes to the vehicle just to remind the team and this will allow us to steer our trajectory as we make our way through the atmosphere and this is one of the things that allowed msl the curiosity rover

    01:12:57 to to land where it did and we're depending on the same type of entry guidance this time around to help get us very close to our target as we make our way through entry finish the finish our guided entry profile we'll do a maneuver called heading

    01:13:19 alignment where we point toward the target and get ready to deploy the parachute but before we deploy the parachute we need to get rid of a set of balanced passes that have been giving us a center of gravity or cg offset

    01:13:40 throughout the guided entry phase so these are called the the enter balance masses we also call this maneuver sucker sufr or straighten up and fly right so we'll go ahead and eject those masses when we get a trigger from the gnc system

    01:14:01 telling us that we're at the appropriate range to the target to do so as soon as we deploy those we will no longer have a cd offset and we'll be ready to deploy the parachute 17 seconds later right where the perseverance team is sitting now what's in store for them as we approach

    01:14:27 landing i'm gonna hold here for uh pdf prep as uh we're about to start that anchor copy piece two and activity please call that out when it's ready copy flight all right now rob uh you've been right where the perseverance team is sitting now uh

    01:15:04 what's in store for them as we approach landing well this is the this is the nail biting time um fortunately we still have ones and zeros coming but very soon as we approach true stage separation the the transmitter on this rover that's been we've been using all the way to get to mars is going to be turned off

    01:15:22 um so and we will lose our ability to see ones and zeros but the good thing is once the cruise stage is gone there's another radio that will continue transmitting uh a tone so that like like a flashlight that will allow us to see at least see that the vehicle is still on and that and that color of that flashlight tells us a

    01:15:40 little bit with what state this the rover is in but soon after that um it won't be very long before we'll be able to hear more ones and zeros coming from the spacecraft um so this is a really exciting time and and it's just important to remind people this is a uh there's a lot that can go wrong in a date like today there's there are thousands of things that have to go

    01:15:58 right yeah we had success in the past landing on mars you think it gets easier but it really doesn't why is it still so difficult well it's well because it's involved thousands and thousands of things hundreds of thousands of lines of code we there there is uh there's 79 pyrotechnic devices each have to work perfectly

    01:16:19 one critical wire short or one key thing mechanism that doesn't work or breaks and it's mission over and so it's you know and and so and it's very easy we're human beings we're not perfect mistakes can be made we each count on each other to to find uh our own mistakes and and we work very hard to to learn from the mistakes of the past um

    01:16:44 we've had many failures half remind people roughly half little around half of the missions to mars over history have failed um and so it's it's it's that could happen today too even though we've had a nice wonderful string of successes in the united states it's still a a still a bit of a gamble a gamble

    01:17:03 that we've we have hoped that we have we have aired in the side of luck and and and we've stacked the dice that stacked the deck and uh loaded the dice to make this thing succeed um but um if we do if we do fail and something bad happens today i can tell you we're going to learn it we'll have the data that tell us what happened we'll know why we'll figure it

    01:17:24 out and and if we are allowed we will pick ourselves up and get us back on the horse and if congress and nasa allow we will try again as we always do we will learn from our mistakes and what are the possible scenarios we could be looking at today

    01:17:42 well there's things things like uh one of the key stressful elements for all of us is parachute inflation uh but just even separating from the cruise stage is a pretty major event lots of devices have to work properly um certainly on the heat shield separation uh getting getting the the descent engine started there's no less than than

    01:18:01 uh 16 rocket motors that have to work one two eight to control during entry another eight to control it during landing i said it's a lot of stuff and it all has to work and guess what we haven't done this before with this vehicle ever this is this first attempt to actually land we can't try this on earth we can't do

    01:18:22 we don't have test pilots to try it out on this planet before the big show so this vehicle is doing it for the first time we've done the best testing we can do in bits and pieces but you know it's it's as best as we could do and and uh but i think our team is up to it we've this team is the best it's a diverse intelligent amazing group of people people from all over the world who

    01:18:41 worked on this not just here in california but all over nasa contributors from aerospace universities countries around the world it is just an incredible remarkable engineering achievement and i am just so proud of this team thanks rob now let's listen back into mission control right you're about 14 minutes from entry

    01:19:04 interface the vehicle is currently preparing the heat rejection system that has kept the thermal system cool inside the aeroshell for about the last six months this will allow the spacecraft to more easily cut the line in upcoming cruise stage separation which is under four minutes now we have now enabled the rover pyrobus

    01:19:34 that's the pyrotechnic uh system uh that that was powering off the cruise stage devices and these are the these are the things in the cruise stage that will that we no longer need with the pirate ticket system working we can you can we can explode the devices preparing for the upcoming cruise stage duration in about 3 minutes 15 seconds

    01:19:54 by powering off all the devices on the cruise stage in order to take me safe once the cruise stage is jettisoned yeah this is a this is a this tree stage has been very reliable we are firing our first pyros to event the hrs liquid and gas ah this has been the coolant because we kept their vehicle from getting too hot

    01:20:19 in the way of mars we have to vent it into space and so this is one of the first uh major events that take place as part of entry descent landing the transvent acre is complete we will see the next anchor in approximately three minutes okay we are currently 12 and a half minutes from entry interface we are

    01:20:47 coming up on cruise stage separation in two minutes and 20 seconds what's happening now rob okay we'll just we're just waiting the the rover is completely in charge it's doing all the things we've taught it how to do it's all built into the software we've tested it over and over and over again this team has spent 24 hours a day seven

    01:21:09 days a week testing this thing for years and and and so this is uh this is really the culmination of all that work so this vehicle is is gonna is getting ready to push that cruise stage away uh once it gets pushed away um it it the entry system the rover inside with the rover is still in charge is going to get ready to take the vehicle turn it to the right orientation and aim it to mars

    01:21:32 and and uh and prepare for entering the atmosphere this won't be long um be prepared for this event taking about a minute and a half from mistake separation about 11 minutes 20 seconds from entry interface okay so it's about 10 minutes from cruising separation until it enters the top of the atmosphere from then on and

    01:21:59 out things happen telemetry will have stopped telecom is confirming that the spacecraft has switched to broadcasting tones these tones are received directly from perseverance but have very limited information content we won't receive real-time information until about 9-10 minutes from now once the mars

    01:22:24 reconnaissance orbiter starts relaying information from perseverance we are under a minute from cruise stage separation about ten and a half minutes from entry interface it's getting exciting i have to admit i am quite anxious uh but very hopeful this machine is going to do what we ask you're seeing the heartbeat terms

    01:22:45 okay that means that we there's no more ones and zeros coming it's just the vehicle telling us it's still alive we are continuing to receive tones from perseverance coming standing by for cruise stage separation we have indication that cruise stage separation has been confirmed by the spacecraft we're off on a good start in one minute

    01:23:36 press advances landing software will wake up and begin the no preparations for entry the first action it will do is to fire warm-up pulses with the entry thrusters these pulses ensure that the spacecraft gets the thrust that it wants during entry interface we're about nine minutes from entry interface okay so now the vehicle's on its own

    01:24:01 it's gonna it's turning itself into the direction of facing the heat shield toward mars and uh and we'll eventually uh uh hitting the top of the atmosphere we're not far away this is gonna go very quickly from here on out that's confirmation that uh we got shadowed by the crew stage as it

    01:24:27 passed through our beam to the earth telecom indicated actually that we could see a signal that the crew stage went between the perseverance engine capsule and earth so we saw a little blip the data stream indicating the crusade separation we have confirmation that vehicle has started warming up those entry thrusters

    01:24:54 normal pulses have begun at this point the spacecraft is trying to stop its spin from the cruise two revolutions per minute down to zero and then we'll turn to its desired orientation from entry it will separate the two balanced maps that have kept it balanced during all of cruise this will allow the entry capsule to

    01:25:23 have lift when it enters the atmosphere we have competition that has turned to the desire entry attitude we are about seven and a half minutes from entry interface okay the vehicle is pointed in the right direction thrusters are warmed up and doing their

    01:25:45 job and now we've spun down from the two revolutions per minute that the vehicle had the whole way to on the way to mars is a spin stabilized spacecraft and then from here on out it's going to just be a bullet and it's going to control its orient orientation and attitude via rockets on the back of that

    01:26:04 points carrier lock yes sorry camera dte from radio science from green bank reports carrier lock you see the carrier on the downlink flight level one we are continuing to wait for entry interface for about six minutes and 45 seconds from entry interface we have confirmation from uh greenback

    01:26:33 that they are receiving direct earth telemetry via that path the spacecraft performance is currently transmitting heartbeat tones these tones indicate that perseverance is operating normally and has nothing significant to report just as expected

    01:26:55 we're currently just over six minutes from entry interface okay and now we wait as soon as we get to the top of the atmosphere the atm will be very quickly which is the entry point it won't be very long before the the atmosphere will start getting thicker and thicker it's going very quickly at a at a fairly

    01:27:26 steep angle of 15 degrees into the atmosphere as it starts to slow down just under about five and a half minutes from entry interface we're still receiving heartbeat tones we expect to continue receiving heartbeat tones until about five minutes after entry at that time perseverance will be no longer in view of our

    01:27:45 antennas here on earth about 90 seconds prior to entry the mars reconnaissance orbiter should begin receiving telemetry from perseverance and streaming it to earth in near real time there are a few expected short outages such as when we have a plasma back out or when we enter the peak heating phase aside from these outages caused by the

    01:28:08 plasma blackout antenna switching or high dynamic events spacecraft events we should have telemetry until about 90 seconds after landing a prisma blackout is when the signal from perseverance isn't strong enough to make it through the

    01:28:25 superheated super fast air flowing around the spacecraft all the way down to earth once the temperature drops below that peak heating we do reacquire the signal from perseverance we are currently about four and a half minutes from entry intervase perseverance continues to report heartbeat tones indicating everything is nominal

    01:28:46 okay what we wait what we're looking for now is where mars reconnaissance orbiter should be in view soon of our vehicle and be able to listen to ones and zeros coming from a separate radio that's really designed to talk between spacecraft camera reports the electro radio is powered on ready to receive signals from

    01:29:03 the lander okay mro is ready and less enabled and waiting for the to hear from our rover constance's orbiter has reported that it's ready to receive the signal from perseverance it should be in a few minutes here we're just flight local one from entry interface we don't need these ones and zeros as swati said

    01:29:30 but to land safely but we really need it for our own uh health and well-being today to keep our nerves in control around this time a second spacecraft maven should begin picking up telemetry from perseverance and will continue to record that telemetry until several minutes post landing

    01:29:48 we won't get that data for several hours after landing as it's being recorded and then will be forwarded to earth later we are continuing to receive heartbeat tones indicating that everything is nominal we're currently at about three minutes until entry interface okay very soon we'll be getting ones and zeros i hope my radio on the rover

    01:30:27 the entry interface is nothing more than just an arbitrary place in the sky that we've defined to be above the atmosphere but but from that point on uh there's definitely uh atmosphere and above it there isn't there are two minutes from entry interface criteria will transmit heartbeat tones indicating everything is nominal

    01:30:51 so the tones can tell us whether something's bad or not is happening so so far the heartbeat is is doing well so the vehicle thinks it's help it's in good shape to land which is a great sign we're just under two minutes from entry interface as it gets closer to mars preservance is actually being pulled in by gravity and accelerating by the time

    01:31:27 price range reaches entry interface point he should be going just under 5.4 kilometers per second we had about 90 seconds from entry interface and standing by for mars reconnaissance orbiter to pick up the telemetry we are one minute from entry interface mro is in receive mode

    01:32:32 we have confirmation that the confidence inspirator is now relaying data from perseverance we're about 30 seconds from entry interface programs is going about 5.2 kilometers per second and is about 190 kilometers altitude above the surface of mars confirm your jeff dataflow about seconds from entry interface

    01:33:02 5.3 kilometers per second and an altitude of 150 numbers from the surface of mars we have confirmation of entry interface preservance is currently going 5.3 kilometers per second at an altitude of about 120 kilometers from the surface of mars the secret is now waiting until it begins

    01:33:49 feeling the atmosphere go down once there is enough atmosphere it will start controlling its path to the landing target navigation is also confirming that we can see a little bit of that slowdown of the atmosphere on the perseverance entry capsule our current velocity is about 5.36

    01:34:20 kilometers per second and an altitude of about 67 kilometers from the surface we are probably seeing mro plasma blackout at this point the vehicle should be doing its turns right now cameron has lost luck president we have indications that perseverance is

    01:34:51 now performing bank reversals in the atmosphere these are the steps in order to control its distance to the landing target uh perseverance has just passed through the point of maximum deceleration and has indicated that it felt approximately 10 earth gs of deceleration

    01:35:13 [Music] yes yes we saw a small outage uh of the uhf telemetry from mars reconnaissance orbiter during that peak heating phase likely caused by the plasma blackout perseverance is still continuing to perform bank reversals in the atmosphere

    01:35:35 to control its distance to the landing target perseverance is going about one kilometer per second at an altitude of about 16 kilometers from the surface of mars we have entered heading alignment which means presidents is no longer trying to control the distance to mars

    01:36:09 but ends to the target on mars but instead is flying straight to the target periscope our current velocity is about 550 meters per second and an altitude of about 15 kilometers from the surface amaro is reporting good telemetry log we are coming upon the straighten up

    01:37:07 we are starting to straighten up and fly right maneuver where the spacecraft will jettison the entry balance masses in preparation for parachute deploy and to roll over to give the radar a better look at the ground yes the navigation has confirmed that the parachute has deployed and we are seeing

    01:37:27 significant deceleration in the velocity our current velocity is 450 meters per second at an altitude of about 12 kilometers from the surface of mars first advance is now slowed to subsonic speeds and the heat shield has been separated this allows both the radar and the cameras to get their first look at the surface current

    01:37:57 velocity is 145 meters per second and an altitude of about 10 km nine and a half kilometers above the surface yes yes yes now has radar lock on the ground current velocity is about 100 meters per second 6.6 kilometers of the surface [Applause] perseverance is continuing to descend on the parachute we are coming up on

    01:38:46 the initialization of terrain relative navigation and subsequently the priming of the landing engines our current velocity is about 90 meters per second at an altitude of 4.2 kilometers we have confirmation that the lander vision system has produced a valid solution and part of training relative navigation we have timing of the landing engines

    01:39:22 current velocity is 83 meters per second at about 2.6 kilometers from the surface mars we have confirmation that the back shell has separated we are currently performing the divert maneuver current velocity is about 75 meters per second at an altitude of about a kilometer off the surface of mars here in safety bravo

    01:39:44 we have completed our terrain relative navigation current speed is about 30 meters per second altitude of about 300 meters off the surface of mars we have started our constant velocity accordion which means we are conducting the sky crane about to conduct the cycling maneuver we've lost direct to earth to tones

    01:40:14 as expected as expected sky cream maneuver has started about 20 meters off the surface we're getting signals from mro [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

    01:41:01 since perseverance is continuing to transmit direct through marzipan orbiter to earth [Applause] oh my god oh my gosh still getting telemetry from the lander all right all stations

    01:41:38 we got it we're gonna wait for the images wow this is so exciting the team is beside themselves it's so surreal stay tuned we might get some pictures so much has been riding on this yet we just heard the news that perseverance is alive on the surface of mars

    01:42:22 it's not uh flight despite we have seen the completion of edl 3000 copy activity that is as expected amarillo is still seeing a strong signal from the lander [Applause] we have just heard the news that perseverance is alive on the surface of

    01:43:01 mars congratulations to the mission and looks like we have some more news in it looks like we're getting the first image here take a look at the first image this is ol3 i have the target point on the map when you are ready we are ready ol3 go for it flight i'll be uh moving in showing you the safe zone that we've landed in

    01:44:00 the team has just put the first image from perseverance on the surface of mars now it comes from the engineering cameras known as the hazard camera this camera is mainly used to help the rover drive safely around mars and we will get higher resolution photos later in the day this is amazing stand by for steve

    01:44:54 [Music] [Music] you did you led the team we just got our second image in our second image is in okay this these these we have a camera in the front and out rear the the spacecraft uh it's uh it's it's they're near the ground so these are pretty

    01:45:47 close you can see the wheels there uh and and and they're a little dirty because you've got glass covers over these these cameras but uh we took these seconds after landing so so there's still dust in the air from our landing event uh so this is this is happening um you know this happened just seconds ago just arrived and

    01:46:07 this is really amazing and uh we even know where we landed this is the most amazing thing the vehicle has told us where it's landed because figured it out you know this is a sign nasa works nasa works and when we put our arms together and our hands together and our brains together we can succeed this is what nasa does this is what we can do as a country on

    01:46:29 all of the problems we we have we need to work together to do these kinds of things and make success happen [Music] joining us now is the acting administrator of nasa steve jurisic steve welcome and congratulations hey thank you what an amazing day how does it feel to have another rover

    01:47:01 on mars uh it's amazing um uh to have perseverance join curiosity on mars and what what a just a credit to the team i mean just what an amazing team um to work through all the adversity that goes and all the challenges that go with landing a rover on mars plus the

    01:47:23 challenges of covid and um and just an amazing accomplishment and what does this mean for nasa and its future plans so for robotic exploration know every time we uh execute a mission with new instruments we discover new things and things we never thought we would discover so that's that always informs

    01:47:44 our future robotic missions both landers rovers and orbiters this mission also has technology on it one of the cool things is the ingenuity helicopter um it's an experiment on this mission but if it's successful we can use it as an observation science observation platform by putting instruments on it and also use it as a scout

    01:48:08 for future rover missions and uh and then just the entry center landing um capability um it'll allow us to land more and more larger more ambitious robots on the surface of mars and then for human exploration um we have the medley mars intercept landing instrumentation which is going to give us edl

    01:48:30 information we have the mars environmental dynamics analyzer it's going to give us uh properties size and properties of dust particles because when we send people we're going to have to deal with that dust and just it's just this is just an incredible mission because of the science and the technology and then

    01:48:49 caching samples for a mars sample return mission that will be a an amazing mission the first round trip to mars and back and bringing the samples cached by perseverance back to earth to examine with state-of-the-art equipment in our laboratories here on earth we have so much to look forward to

    01:49:10 and we also have a student question coming in from landon let's take a look hi my name is landon applegate i'm in sixth grade and i'm going to academy for academic excellence and my question is do you think we could get resources from mars to help on future missions or even as like a launching point great question land and actually we have an experiment called the mox the mars

    01:49:37 oxygen in situ resource utilization experiment or moxie and it's going to demonstrate generating oxygen from atmospheric co2 and that could help generate you know generate breathable oxygen and even if we can liquefy it oxidizer for propulsion systems so that's a tech demo on perseverance and then we're going to continue to characterize the frozen

    01:50:01 water on and below the surface of mars and eventually try to figure out how to extract that water from the martian soil or we call regolith and then we can use that for potable water and also break it down into oxygen and hydrogen for rocket fuel so absolutely we're going to try to eventually figure out how to live off the land to support human missions to mars

    01:50:26 thanks for taking the time to talk to us today steve thank you and now that perseverance has safely touched down on mars let's learn more about what's in store for the rover joining us now is surface mission manager jessica samuels jessica your surface operations team has now taken over

    01:50:48 what are they doing now yes hi raquel we are so excited here in the surface mission support area uh the team will do a handover with the entry descent and landing team and pass any critical information and then this team behind us will be the team that does the health and safety assessments daily as we progress on this mission

    01:51:12 and what do the upcoming weeks look like for your team so as we enter mars time now the commanding team will be working overnight while the rover is asleep so that we can perform the initial checkouts of our key rover functions and our science instruments and we have to do this all in time for the regularly scheduled communication pass which

    01:51:37 happens in the morning and so we will be working around the clock making sure that perseverance is healthy and we will begin this exciting adventure and can you tell me what's it like living on mars time it's uh it's a little bit like constantly uh you know flying and changing your time zone uh the rover

    01:52:00 um you know on earth the rover wakes up at the same time every day but on earth that's 40 minutes later so the team is going to be shifting our work schedule by 40 minutes as we come into work over the next few weeks so it'll be uh it'll be exciting and uh and some uh some late late nights but uh but we're also excited and uh we can't wait it's a whole new lifestyle yes

    01:52:25 we also have a student question for you this is sophia's video hi my name is sophia lopez and my question for nasa is how's perseverance going to survive and here's a drawing that i made from perseverance thinking about earth thank you well sofia perseverance survives um with a power source um that charges its batteries uh overnight while it sleeps

    01:52:52 and it keeps heaters uh on so that all of our critical electronics can stay warm as well as our mechanism but it's really survived by the team that performs the health and safety assessments every day and communicates with the rover and makes sure that she's she's doing okay

    01:53:14 well thanks for your time jessica and good luck living on mars time thank you should be fun let's head back to marina as she gives us a sneak peek into the future at jpl thanks so much raquel it's definitely bustling behind me is not quiet like it was just 20 minutes ago and congrats to the whole team what an amazing accomplishment mike watkins is the

    01:53:42 director of nasa's jet propulsion laboratory he was the mission manager during the curiosity rover landing on mars welcome mike oh thanks glad to be here you can see all my mask markings well you were just celebrating and rightly so now you've been around for a number of mars landings what makes this one special

    01:54:06 well you know two things i mean it's the biggest and best rover we've ever sent to mars um and and it can really you know do amazing things in terms of you know its own scientific exploration of this habitable environment you know at jezreel but you know it's also as as as you've heard today you know it's the first step in march sample return so really you

    01:54:22 know it's it's not only doing its own mission it's setting us up for a series of missions and to bring those samples back and you know a lot of the effort to develop the rover was specifically designed you know for that sampling and caching system it's one of the most complex robotic systems ever made and you know having it down safely means mars sample return continues right on

    01:54:40 course and and and we are moving forward wonderful now jpl has a long history with robotic space exploration why do you think it's so important to continue to push those boundaries you know there's a lot of reasons i mean obviously you know for for places that are far away like mars and even farther away uh you know like europa uh right now robots are the robotic expressions

    01:55:03 the only way we can make those scientific discoveries and really understand these early uh habitable environments in the case of europa maybe it's even still habitable and you know we're not ready to to go there with astronauts yet uh but the robots are ready to go there and so we always uh you know our forerunners and pathfinders of of of human exploration and we start

    01:55:22 by sending you know our eyes and and arms there in the form of a robot and it is just fantastic to be able to do that and to learn from each rover learn from the science and the engineering and make the next one better and make more and more discoveries and every time we do one of these missions we make fabulous discoveries and uh and you know each one is more exciting than the last

    01:55:43 the future does look exciting now as director of jpl what would you like to say to those teams right now celebrating oh you know obviously they they have earned it let me tell you i mean they uh have worked you know for years and years on this mission and then in the past year of course we had the covet experience and and you know i want to thank not only the team but also you

    01:56:03 know all of jpl you know a lot of folks had to had uh had to pitch in here you know in terms of making sure our remote telework you know our it systems were good enough to to support folks working from home you know all of the folks looking at at ppe and our safe distancing and reconfiguring facilities uh to make them safe for the employees um it's just an incredible amount of

    01:56:24 work by the entire lab and of course especially by this team and uh you know and in one sense you know the seven minutes of terror are very exciting uh but on the other hand you know the missions just started right we built the mission you know not to land but actually to drive and get the samples and do other uh technology um you know demonstrations and so you know for

    01:56:44 much of the team you know uh this part of the mission is over but but for most of the team the mission's really just starting and so uh you know i think they're very excited but uh you know everybody i think can take a big uh a deep breath and a sigh of relief now that we are safely down on the surface yes that collective sigh of relief and i hear a lot of excitement and celebration

    01:57:04 behind me as well so thanks so much for joining me mike it's my pleasure and thanks to everyone for joining us too congrats again to the mars 2020 perseverance team for a successful landing back to you raquel now there will be a flight test coming up for the ingenuity mars helicopter and if this technology experiment is successful it would mark the first time

    01:57:28 we have taken a power controlled flight on another planet sometimes you have to do something just to show that you can do it when the wright brothers flew for the first time they do an experimental aircraft and in the same way the mars helicopter is designed to show that we can fly power and helicopter flight in the

    01:57:50 martian atmosphere from day one this was the unwavering dream of our team to get our helicopter launched to mars so that we can get the opportunity to do the very first rotograph flight test in the actual environment of mars it's extremely difficult to fly at mars because atmosphere is so thin compared to earth

    01:58:18 at mars is less than one percent so the first and foremost challenge is to make a vehicle that's light enough to be lifted and then the second is to generate lift the rotor system has to spin very hundred fast six hundred we're spending between two thousand and three thousand revolutions per minute and it takes a lot of energy so it's that balance of a

    01:58:42 very light system yet having enough energy that's needed to you know spin the rotor so fast to lift and on top of it having to design in the autonomy it has to be fully autonomous from the time it takes off the time it lands what we do do on the ground is we plan the flights and so we determine from here

    01:59:02 where we want the helicopter to go our experiment window is 30 martian days so we have planned up to five flights of incremental difficulty very first flight the main thing is we want to get the legs off the ground and so we will basically go up about three meters and we'll hover there

    01:59:26 and then we'll come down again and that will be the first you know really major milestone most of our flights will be at the three to five meter height we will be going horizontally again at a few meters per second probably go out you know 50 70 liters and come back in successive flights we'll probably push that further try to go further so our priority will

    01:59:45 be to get back engineering telemetry and not so much images but i'm sure they'll return a few you know because they'll always look cool at this point we've tested all we can on earth we have mathematical models that shows how it will fly at mars and we've tested it in the simulated environment that we can create on earth it really is time now to

    02:00:07 do the real flood types at mars nothing is a given but we have done everything we can in terms of a test program here on earth the vehicle is performing extremely well so far it's been doing exactly the right thing even right now and it's bolted onto the perseverance rover so there's a very good chance that we'll pull it off yes but it's still high risk

    02:00:27 and none of us forget that you could have a glitch that you know could be an end of mission yes it's going to be exciting reacting to any surprises we have we can't wait what's really most important is everything we're learning here is for the future rotograph systems that we want to introduce into space exploration

    02:00:53 mimi ong is the project manager for ingenuity she joins us now as they await a chance to check out their helicopter in the coming days welcome mimi thank you marina oh my goodness we've been talking about this for months mimi did you ever think you'd be here at this point i mean what's going on in your head right now this is super exciting now we have been

    02:01:16 working on mars helicopter for over six years testing and carefully designing it for operation at mars so what's going through my mind ingenuity mars helicopter is finally at the destination that it is designed for now that ingenuity is on mars what is the timeline you hope to accomplish as you move forward

    02:01:39 we have a series of major milestones between now and ingenuity's first flight so tomorrow we'll turn on the helicopter and the space station could confirm health after experiencing the dynamics through the edl just now and the next major milestone will be when the rover deploys the helicopter to the surface and that marks the first moment that ingenuity operates on its

    02:02:02 own in a stand-alone manner and surviving that first cold frigid night of mars will be a major milestone we'll execute a series of checkouts and then we will perform that very important first flight and if the first flight is successful we have up to four more flights in the 30 martian days that we have set aside for our flight experiments

    02:02:23 and that's when you finally can breathe right mimi [Laughter] now why is it so important to have that aerial dimension to space exploration a helicopter flying far ahead of rovers and astronauts in the future can provide high definition reconnaissance information for the rovers and the astronauts before they

    02:02:45 take the long journeys and as importantly being able to fly will enable us to get to places that we cannot get to with rovers and astronauts like sites of steep cliffs deep inside crevices areas of high scientific interest it will be game changing game changing is right and we've talked about this a lot you've mentioned the risk is huge mimi but the reward is high

    02:03:10 what will be your greatest reward you know our team started with the question of whether a helicopter can fly at mars given the extremely thin environment and we systematically demonstrated a series of technical steps we demonstrated lift first and then we demonstrated lift and the first ever power control rotorcraft flight and simulated mars

    02:03:34 atmospheric density and then we went on to build the full up helicopter that can not only fly but operate and survive autonomously at mars all under 1.8 kilograms about four pounds and each of these major milestones have been a first and the success of each of these has been so rewarding and along the way the rewards just kept coming and i have to

    02:03:59 tell you at this moment is going up exponentially so after all these tests analysis simulations and more tests on earth our team now gets the chance to test prove and learn how it works in the actual environment of mars our team can ask for a bigger reward than that oh mimi i'm so happy for you and your

    02:04:24 team and now we're going to take a question from social media on instagram for you at not vibhuti asks is the helicopter going to be doing science well the helicopter ingenuity is a technology demonstration and we are we are demonstrating the ability to fly and learning how to fly for the very very first time and so this is a

    02:04:50 technology demonstration and a pathfinder for future larger rotorcraft future missions that will carry much larger instruments so on this mission we're not doing any science we're concentrating on engineering uh data how did the vehicle perform and as you saw uh bob bellram uh in the video before we will be taking a few color picture first ever color pictures uh from uh the

    02:05:15 flying aerial vantage point but they'll be icing on the cake for this one this is all about engineering data and how do we fly compared to all our tests we have done on earth mean so much for your team and the future generations of scientists and engineers to look forward to thank you thank you so much for joining us mimi and good luck to your team with

    02:05:37 that first test flight thank you so much now we look forward to the perseverance rover and ingenuity helicopter beginning their journeys on mars as their adventures are just about to start go perseverance and go ingenuity back to you raquel thanks marina landing on mars is never easy but this team has persevered and nasa's

    02:06:02 fifth rover is on the red planet you can still hear them buzzing in the back right now and to get the latest updates on perseverance as it explores mars follow at nasa persevere on facebook and twitter i'd like to thank everyone watching for joining us today and to the students and teachers tuning in we hope you learned a

    02:06:24 lot from today's landing and thank you for all your questions we have a news briefing coming up at 2 30 p.m pacific time that briefing will wrap up the day and include reactions from perseverance team members we'll leave you now with some of the landing celebration photos you've shared with us set to youngblood's cover of david

    02:06:46 bowie's life on mars i'm raquel villanueva thanks for watching [Music] but a friend is nowhere [Music] and she's hooked on the silver screen [Music] ask you to foreign he's in the best [Music]

    02:08:27 so [Music] another word [Music] [Music] 10 times [Music] [Music] [Music] oh

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