- If you look right behind me
you'll see the center of the universe.
And the reason it's called the center of the universe is
because that's NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
and all of the orbiters, probe, and spacecraft
we've sent out into the solar system and beyond
send all their signals right back here to be processed
and that will ever be more apparent
than in a few days when the next Mars Rover
named Perseverance, concludes its seven month journey
to our neighboring red planet, Mars,
autonomously navigating itself
for a terrifying seven minutes,
traveling from 15 times the speed of a bullet,
to a gentle three miles per hour touchdown,
all while live streaming the key data the whole way down.
And as many of you know, for me
this is like coming home
because long before I started making YouTube videos,
I came here to work every day for nine years,
seven of which we're working on the last rover
we sent to Mars, named Curiosity.
So today we're gonna talk to some of my old friends
and see the actual rover up close
as I bring you up to speed on everything you need to know
about this rover landing.
'Cause once you have an overview of what's gonna happen
and what it even took to get us to this point,
I feel certain you're gonna feel
just as pumped about this historic landing as I am.
And to accomplish that, we're gonna talk about the who,
what, why, where and how of this rover.
And we'll start with the why and the where we're going.
3.5 billion years ago, earth and Mars were pretty similar.
Both had liquid water at the surface and both were protected
from the sun's radiation with magnetic fields.
And so it begs the question, if life first developed
on Earth at that time, could it have also developed on Mars?
So this is a massive lake in Jezero crater
billions of years ago.
And this is it now.
This is where perseverance is landing,
the bottom of an ancient lake the size of Lake Tahoe.
Because using earth as a guide at the base of a river
of fresh water is where scientists
believe we have the best chance of finding evidence
of past biological life on Mars.
So thanks to Perseverance,
we could be on the verge of the monumental first discovery
of actual life outside our planet.
And being able to pinpoint a landing spot this tight
shows how NASA is constantly advancing its technologies.
With Florida for scale,
here's an oval showing the uncertainty
of the landing spot for previous mission's Pathfinder
in 1997 and then Phoenix in 2008, Curiosity in 2012,
and now Perseverance.
Being able to shrink down a landing target
just gives you way more options
of interesting places to land.
Plus, once you do land
and start driving towards the actual science location
it can shave off a year or more of drive time.
And not only does studying Mars like this
help us understand Earth's past and future,
but the rovers we're sending are the advanced scouts,
taking data and notes for us on the ground
and sending all the info back to Earth.
They're also testing some new technologies
which I'll cover in a second,
that humans will need to use
when we are exploring the planet ourselves
in the very near future.
Because the first person to set foot on Mars
is alive right now and it could be you.
And if none of that gets your heart pumping
and you're like, but Mark, why would we spend resources
and time exploring the solar system
when we still have big issues here on this Earth
we haven't solved?
I tackled that exact question giving five reasons
we can't afford not to invest in space in another video
you can watch after this one.
So that's the where and the why.
Now let's talk about how we're going to do all that.
'Cause this is where it gets really wild.
Meet Perseverance.
And I should mention, I have my monthly videos
all planned out about a year in advance,
which is why exactly this time last year
I knew for this video I needed to fly down
to check out the rover right before it got shipped off
to Florida to be launched.
But before I checked out the rover,
I first stopped in to see Ben who was my old boss.
When I was here he was leading a small team
that designed the jet pack
that lowered the rover to the ground.
But now I heard he's all fancy in charge of like 400 people.
So I wanted to get a sense of how things
had changed for him.
So anyone we see walk by you can like boss them around?
How about this guy right here?
You can boss him around? - Yeah. I can boss him around.
- Okay, cool. Cool.
We first geeked out for a bit over a bunch of examples
of parts from previous space missions.
And a hardware wall like this is just a great illustration
of what makes JPL such a cool place to work.
Actually I designed this.
This is my hardware from Grail with Andy.
This was cool 'cause you got these like flexors
for like temperature variation.
So this isn't just for show,
this is like literally when you're trying to figure out
a way to do things, these are examples
of how it's been done before, right?
- Right. And a lot of these are made by examples
of this is the way you shouldn't do
- Oh, so that's why my hardware...
- That's why your hardware's up there, right?
- So after that we headed down to check out the rover
and meet up with my friend Emily.
But before we could just go in and see it
we had to get suited up
because the rover is looking for signs of biological life
and we don't wanna contaminate our samples
before we even arrive.
So a bunny suit and air shower can go a long way.
Emily, by the way, was the vehicle assembly lead
for the descent and cruise stages,
which is a big responsibility.
This is the rover - [Emily] The flight rover.
It will be on Mars 12 months from now.
- [Mark] It's so complex when you come up
and get this close.
In fact, Perseverance is the most complex thing
humans have ever built and sent to another planet.
It's got laser, x-ray, and radar capabilities,
plus 19 cameras and a nuclear powered battery system
for energy.
And while it might look pretty similar
to the past rover Curiosity,
all the science instruments are completely different
because the science objectives have changed.
The most notable difference is this time the drill
isn't there just to create rock dust to study on the rover.
Perseverance has a hollow drill bit
to core out a chunk of rock the size of a piece of chalk
and then package it up and leave behind 43 separate samples
for a future mission to collect and send back to Earth.
That way we could study the samples for those past signs
of life using the most state-of-the-art instruments
on Earth that we could never fit on a rover.
So then to capture that chalk size rock sample,
not only is there an arm on the outside
but this time there's one on the inside too.
- It is a miniature robot arm inside the body
of the rover that manipulates the sample tube.
And there's one right here.
- Wow. And so is this what you leave behind?
- Exactly.
- Is it fair to say this is like the poop of the rover?
- Exactly. (Liz laughing)
- Okay. Do you like that analogy?
'Cause they didn't like it earlier.
- Well, yeah. - You like it?
Okay cool. (Liz laughing)
We got it. - We do like to say
that the rover's gonna poop outside.
- Okay, good.
See that's a good analogy.
So Perseverance is really only the first leg
of returning a piece of Mars to Earth.
Future missions will complete what I like to call,
the poop scoop and shoot maneuver.
This is my friend Liz by the way,
and she's in charge of all the testing
for the sample retrieval system.
- We're doing things that nobody else does
so we have to test it.
- So she tests all sorts of different configurations
in a chamber that recreates the extreme temperatures
and pressures to make sure it will function on Mars.
'Cause once you send something to space, it's gone
and you can't exactly fix it.
So it just has to work.
Which is why testing is such a big deal here at JPL.
My buddy Matt here mentioned another way
this is done.
- So we build two spacecraft, one that goes to Mars
and one that we keep here on Earth to test.
And this is an exact replica of Curiosity
who's driving around on Mars right now.
And then we use this one to test driving around obstacles
and driving over rocks.
- And he knows a thing or two about driving over rocks
because he was a rover driver for both Opportunity
and Curiosity.
This guy is like one of maybe 40 people in the world
who has driven a vehicle on another planet,
which is it's kind of a big deal.
And so a few more cool things about Perseverance are
that it has a mini helicopter drone stowed away
on its underbelly named Ingenuity.
This will be mankind's first powered flight
on another planet, which sort of makes this
a Wright Brothers moment.
And the rover and the drone will get great footage
of each other, but we're mainly testing it out
so that in the future we might use drones
to scout out terrain for us or get samples
from hard to reach locations.
Or you could have swarms of drones carrying materials
for humans from one site to another.
Perseverance is also testing out a new instrument
called MOXIE that basically amounts to a mechanical tree,
because its function is to convert CO2 into oxygen,
which future explorers will need to breathe
and for rocket fuel.
- The rover has been in this clean room for about a year
and a half, starting as just a chassis, just the skeleton.
- And then all the teams and engineers
have been taking turns coming down
and building up their part until it's done.
In fact, I was in that exact position on Curiosity
designing my hardware for about three and a half years
and when it was all tested and complete,
integrating it on the rover right here in this room.
And then for the other three and a half years
like I mentioned before, I was working with Ben
on a small team of engineers on the jet pack descent stage.
So now we've covered the where
and the why we're going,
also the how we're gonna do all that with the rover.
Now let's talk about the what.
For what's gonna happen this Thursday when it lands
and what you should expect to see.
As I edit this video, the spacecraft is gliding toward Mars
at a cool 48,144 miles per hour.
How fast is that?
It's this fast.
It's 15 times faster than a bullet.
It's traveling the length of 100 soccer fields
in exactly this long and it will keep on that trajectory
until the big moment on Thursday
when it starts its entry descent and landing, or EDL.
It's also known as the seven minutes of terror
because we've literally got seven minutes
to get from the top of the atmosphere
to the surface of Mars going from 13,000 miles per hour
to 0 in perfect sequence and perfect timing
and the spacecraft has to do it all on its own
with no help from us on Earth.
When it first hits the upper atmosphere
the friction causes the heat shield to start glowing
like the surface of the Sun.
All the while thrusters are firing to steer
and adjust its course towards the target location.
And that arrow breaking gets rid of 99% of the energy.
So for the last 1% we deploy a supersonic parachute.
Then we've gotta pop off the heat shield
we no longer need, like removing a lens cap
so the radar can start viewing the ground.
But even with the parachute,
it's still traveling 200 miles per hour
which is way too fast to land.
And so that's where we cut loose of the back shell
and fire the rockets.
But we can't quite land in this configuration
because the rockets will kick up too much debris
and damage the rover.
So then we lower it from a 21 foot rope
and gently land the rover on the surface
as my sky cream zooms off to face an honorable,
catastrophic ending as far away from the rover
as it's remaining fuel will carry it.
And so in just seven minutes, the spacecraft
has completely metamorphosized,
shedding all its sacrificial elements
until you're left with just a rover
sitting alone safely on the surface of Mars.
Now everything you just saw was a CGI animation,
but a few days after landing
we'll all be blown away by actual HD landing footage
from the 23 cameras and 2 microphones on board.
We'll see the parachute inflate
and hear the crunch of the aluminum wheels
as they touch down and make contact
with the Martian surface.
And because Mars is so far away
to get a signal from the vehicle to our planet
it takes about 12 minutes at the speed of light.
So that means after the spacecraft sends a signal
that it's reached the top of the atmosphere,
by the time that signal reaches Earth
to kick off the seven minutes of terror,
for at least five minutes
the vehicle has actually already been on the surface
either alive or dead.
Which is why it has to be autonomous.
That means it makes all its own choices
on the exact timing of things
and where to steer without anyone from Earth controlling it.
Which means all we can do is watch and monitor and hope.
And this is a good time to remember
that as easy as these dedicated teams of engineers
make it look, landing on Mars is really hard.
Historically, only about half the attempts
have been successful,
but the willingness to take big risks
to reap big rewards is the foundation
on which NASA is built.
The livestream to watch the landing starts on Thursday
February 18th at 11:15 AM Pacific.
It will hit the top of the atmosphere
an hour and a half later at 12:48 PM
which starts the seven minutes of terror
and we touch down at 12:55.
I will leave a link to the livestream
in the video description
as well as some other really cool sites
such as this video game-like demo
where you can interactively experience the seven minutes
of terror in preparation for the landing.
We covered the where and the why we're going,
we covered the how with the rover,
and the what with the landing details.
Now it's time for the who,
the human side to sending robot explorers to other planets.
What makes NASA and JPL really great aren't its robots,
it's the people who build them.
And while it's not really possible for me
to capture what it's gonna feel like for them
to see it land this Thursday,
the best I can do is to show you what it felt like
for me eight years ago
when I was in a very similar situation.
I made a video when Curiosity landed,
but at the time my channel
had less than 100,000 subscribers.
So I know that most of you haven't seen this footage,
but even if you have with the landing less than a week away
it's a great time for a second watch to get you pumped up.
And for context here, you should know
that during my time I was working on the rover,
I had a son and lost my mom to ALS.
And while my contribution was small
relative to the overall picture,
I tried to capture the human element here
of what it feels like to basically have
seven years of your life and career
vindicated with that beautiful phrase,
"touchdown confirmed we are safe on Mars".
So with that, consider this my tribute
to everyone out there working to push the limits
of human understanding with a little bit of help
from a durable little young Mark Rober.
(instrumental music)
- So we're still two days from landing,
but you can see the news media
has already started to descend on JPL here.
Since we're all kind of nervous around here
our office pools look a little different than most.
This is the landing ellipse for the rover
and we all kind of place guesses on where we think
it's gonna come down.
So we're headed down to NASA JPL
to hang out with everyone and watch the landing.
So it's pretty exciting.
Kind of sick to my stomach at the same time.
Basically, seven years of my life and career
have come down to about seven minutes.
Kind of freakin' out.
(instrumental music)
I owe half my chromosomes to that guy right there.
- Excellent chances. - Excellent chances.
- I'm not nervous.
- Okay
- No, it's gonna work. (instrumental music)
When Mark gets nervous, he starts shivering
like he's freezing.
And right now it's probably about 85 degrees out here.
So Mark is really nervous.
(instrumental music continues)
(engineers speaking indistinctly)
(rover swooshing)
- [Engineer] Dynamic phase. Come back again with...
(instrumental music continues)
(rover swooshing)
We are in power flight.
Standing by.
Touchdown confirmed. We're safe on Mars.
(all cheering) (instrumental music continues)
- Woo!
That was honestly a moving experience to see that picture
come up that showed just the shadow of the rover
just dominating the Martian landscape.
It's just a crazy thought to think
because it's, you know something I've designed,
I've touched, I've built, I've integrated, I've tested
is now safely resting on another fricking planet,
which is, it's a crazy feeling.
(instrumental music continues)