Welcome to "Watch This Space." I'm NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and NASA
is going forward to the Moon. This time we're doing it differently than we've
ever done it before. Recently, NASA announced nine commercial partners that
will take NASA payloads to the surface of the Moon. These are highlights from
that recent announcement. Not only are we announcing today a number of very
innovative companies that are going to go to the Moon for the first time
commercially. In other words, we're going to buy the service. We're not going to
purchase own and operate the hardware. We're gonna buy the service, but we're
also announcing a change that I think is important for NASA and that is this is a
response to the science community who has for a long time decided that we
needed to do science on the surface of the Moon and yet NASA for a long time
has focused the Moon within the human exploration and operations Mission
Directorate and not the Science Mission Directorate but now we're changing that.
We believe there is a lot of amazing science that we can do on the surface of
the Moon. In fact, science that we can't do anywhere other than the surface of
the Moon. We want multiple providers that are competing on cost and innovation so
that we as NASA can do more than we've ever been able to do before and advance
the human spirit science and human exploration go together and we should
not be surprised that I'm standing here as a scientist really excited about
exploring this celestial body right next door to us. The Moon, like any other body
in the solar system, the Moon is full of secrets that we don't know yet. For
example, if you really want to decide what the h's of the solar system just
like you look at the rings of a tree when you cut it if you want to learn
that you go to the moon and you analyze the samples that are there
today we are at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory the Charles elachi Mission
Control Center where we had the opportunity to participate in the Mars
insight Lander I am here with Emily manor Chapman who is an instrument
engineer on the Mars insight Lander and of course today we've had a very
exciting day and in fact a very successful day her part in this was the
development of instruments that have been you know not just engineered but
built and now delivered to the surface of Mars so congratulations on a
wonderful day thank you so much definitely so exciting today that's so
great tell me what is the instrument package that you worked on I work with
what we call the auxilary payload sensor suite which is a collection of
environmental or weather sensors oh so we have a sensor that can measure air
temperature wind speed atmospheric pressure and also a magnetometer that
can measure the magnetic field at Mars so tell us are we gonna get like
continuous updates on the weather you know on Mars we will starting this week
we'll do a short check out with the instrument just to make sure everything
is working correctly after landing if that's successful then we'll turn on the
instrument and it basically stays on almost continuously at that point so we
will get a full Sol's worth of weather data every Saul how long is it going to
take before there's a number of instruments here and of course your your
package is one of many instruments that's right there's a seismometer on
the mars insight Lander and there's something called the mole let's let's
talk about the seismometer first what is that gonna help us understand
so the seismometer will measure quakes on Mars or Mars quakes as we call them
okay and by looking at the type of seismic activity on Mars will tell us
something about how Mars formed and what it's made of so scientists can look at
the waves and data picked up by the instrument tell us about how do seismic
waves move through the material on Mars and looking at how they move what
and I've been told that it can even pick up like maybe even micro meteor
meteorites that actually hit the surface of Mars even on the other side of the
planet yeah that's correct we think we'll be able to detect those as well
wow that's fantastic so okay the mole tell me about the mole so the purpose of
the mole is to measure how heat changes and moves around inside of Mars so the
mole is kind of a big nail about the size of my forearm and it can actually
hammer itself underneath the surface of Mars and so with the mole we're gonna go
deeper underneath the surface of Mars and any other mission has before will go
down - up to about 15 feet and trailing behind that mole will be a series of
temperature sensors and so it will be able to take temperature over time and
again see how the heat is moving around how is it changing inside Mars and again
that tells us something about how Mars formed and what it's made of
amazing tell me what do you know about the core of Mars well first if you look
at the at our core here on earth we know that we have a kind of molten metallic
core and that core is what drives the magnetic field that we have here at
Earth and so as you said we don't see that mobile magnetic field anymore at
Mars so we want to find out is the core liquid or is it solid and what does it
made of because if we see something it's like maybe it's a solid core so you
don't have that dynamo action in the center of the planet like we do your
hair so we don't have anything to drive that magnetic field of Earth and so
we're actually gonna use radio signals between a radio signal between the
lander on Mars and an antenna here on earth looking at changes in that radio
signal will tell us about what the core is made of is it solid or is it so how
long until we start getting some you know really serious science data from
insight it will actually be about two to three months because the next thing that
we need to do with insight is so we're on the surface but as we when we landed
all of our science instruments are sitting up on top of the lander and we
really want to get our seismometer onto the ground because it's gonna take much
better data if it's actually in contact with the Martian surface and for our
probe obviously it also needs to be on the ground cuz we wanted to hambar
underneath the surface so the next two to three months we're gonna spend using
the robotic arm and the robotic arm you could think of like one of those
carnival games with the claw and you go and pick stuff up and put it on the
ground and that's basically robotic arm has a have little claw and you go pick
up the instruments and set them onto the ground so
in the neck then the coming a couple weeks we're gonna be looking out where
did B land taking lots of images to see what's in front of the Lander picking
where do we want to put the seismometer where do we want to put the mole and
then actually start that process of using the robotic arm to pick up those
instruments and get them onto the surface of Mars amazing well Emily thank
you for your great work what an amazing accomplishment today we're all so proud
of you and your entire team here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and of course
the insight team so thank you so much for your great work thank you absolutely
well I'm here with Vivian son who is a systems engineer here at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory and she has been involved in picking the landing site for
the Mars 2020 Rover which of course is a mission happening in 2020 and we're all
very excited about that so tell us what goes into selecting a landing site on
Mars for the 2020 Rover right so actually this process began several
years ago so it first started in 2013 when an open call was put out to the
Mars community basically saying that anyone who wishes to propose a landing
site for this Mars 2020 mission can do so and the only requirements are that
this landing site had to demonstrate that there used to be liquid water at
this site and that this liquid water had a chemistry that could have supported
life had it existed on Mars at that time and so with those requirements the first
landing site workshop was held in 2013 and there were about 30 years so
landings like candidates that were put forth by different members of the
community and so at the workshop we discussed the pros and cons of each site
would each site had to offer what kind of samples we might collect at every
site and so in this sort of fashion we've had several more landing site
workshops we just concluded with the fourth and final one this past fall just
about a month ago and throughout that process that initial
list of 30 landing site candidates was eventually whittled down to the three
that we had just a month ago which is of course jezero crater northeast syrtis
and Columbia Hills and so at the conclusion of the final landing site we
discussed again the pros and cons of every location what a kind of mission
might look like to each of those sites and then we came out with jezero crater
you mentioned that the water was critically important as the the maybe
maybe the the the type of chemicals that would have been in that water that may
have been able to help support life and and that's what went into this selection
process so what we're actually going to do is cache samples on the surface of
Mars with the Mars 2020 Rover what what do we get when we cache samples why do
we do that so the reason why we've really
to cache samples with Mars 2020 and the reason why this is such a critical step
for Mars sample return and understanding the history of Mars and its potential
for ancient life the reason is because even though our Rovers are incredibly
sophisticated on the surface of Mars they're still limited compared to the
analyses that we could do here on earth in our laboratories where we have access
to the most the state-of-the-art technologies and so to really look at
them sample to look at a rock and be able to tell whether something is the
true bio signature or whether it's something that was truly evidence for
past life you really need to do that kind of analysis here on earth with our
sophisticated labs yeah yeah so the idea is Mars 2020 just passes a sample then
we have to do a Mars sample return mission which of course we don't have a
date for yet but in my view we need to do it as soon as possible to get those
samples back to earth and at the end of it the goal is to discover whether or
not Mars is habitable or maybe at one time was habitable or even today
could it have life is that the intent here yeah so for sure we want to
understand whether the environments that we're investigating were habitable or
not and from the satellite data or the orbital data that we have we have pretty
good hints that there probably habitable that they used to have water and that
that water had chemistry that could have supported life if it existed there but
what we don't know is if there was life that's one question if there was life do
we have evidence that preserves for example fossils or other bio signatures
do we have that evidence that there was past life in any of these
that's something that we can only figure out by returning those samples back okay
well Vivian I want to tell you we're grateful for your work we're looking
forward to coming back 26 months from now and we have a a successful Mars 2020
landing on the surface of Mars and we'll we'll revisit this again and talk more
in depth about what the next steps are so thank you so much and Mars is a
wonderful place we need to learn more thank you you bet we now have an
opportunity to meet Mimi um who of course has been highly involved in
what's called Mars helicopter so when we said Mars 2020 to Mars in 2020 of course
it's not only going to have the rover it's also going to have attached to the
rover a helicopter that Mimi has been involved in developing now for many
years as a matter of fact over four years so tell me how did this come to
your mind as an idea was it was it out there before was it your brainchild had
it how did this come into being no a feasibility of helicopters flying at
Mars have been proven in the early in the 90s okay in fact Bob elrom who's the
chief engineer on our project he had done research in those days showing that
you know feasible it's possible there's enough atmosphere to lift fly a
helicopter the challenge of course is it has to be very light yeah
similarly over in Ames you Larry Young has some research that have been proven
but the thing that had not made it possible until recently is the
availability of technologies with these lightweight capable flying vehicles okay
so around 2012 or so our previous director Charles elachi was on a lab
tour and he will see these drones being used to demonstrate autonomous
navigation algorithms and after the Tory said hey why don't we do this at Mars
Wow and so we connected him back in fact I happened to be on the bus in his tour
because he was visiting our division autonomous systems division and I was
deputy divisions manager of autonomous systems division at the time anyway so
so why don't we do this so we connected him back to Bob Bell Ram who had done
research in the 90s and then he started from there okay so maybe tell me why is
it important to have a helicopter on Mars today we explore planets from
spacecraft in orbit and Rovers on the surface but we're not using the aerial
dimension to explore surfaces so the helicopter would open doors to exploring
you know exploration through aerial dimension yeah
and that will help with forward reconnaissance far ahead of Rovers or in
the future astronauts right astronauts are there to explore and so for
reconnaissance is very important and it's a new dimension secondly we'll be
able to get to places we simply can't get to today right right and and even in
the future with Rovers or even astronauts for example you know sites of
these cliffs right recently there are these exposed ice carps that have you
know we would have to fly there to get a sample and analyze them on Leonard
assets or bottom of crevasses and steep volcanoes yeah a new dimension adding it
so so when the Mars 2020 rover lands the helicopter will be underneath it is that
correct that's right and then it will be released it will unfold and then it will
take off how long will it be able to fly we plan to do incremental series of
flights so the first thing we would want to do is repeat the flights that we have
demonstrated in Mars like atmospheric density in our 25-foot chamber here all
right so that would be the first flight we'll want to do you exactly what we
have modeled and demonstrated on earth and so we will go up and hover and come
down go up to 3 meters so I want to take a moment when you lift off of Mars and
then set down on Mars what do you think that moment will be like I would if you
yeah if I dare say so it would be just like a rights brother moment yeah really
because flying in this thin atmosphere is it just hasn't been done before
yeah so it's Ordinary tell me about the atmosphere we compared it to earth what
is what is it has it's very thin so compared to earth less
than 1% of Earth's atmospheric density so we have algorithms that show that we
can fly we can control but too real and we have done experiments on earth in our
chamber but to definitively demonstrate doing this on Mars it's the huge master
will be and ok so as you mentioned you have your Wright brothers moment where
you actually take off the surface of another world and then land again with a
helicopter okay then after that what's the next test that you want to do then
we'll start doing incrementally further lateral flight so we'll ascend and then
go laterally start with modestly with a few tens of meters and they come back
and land and then after that you know falling incrementally further up to 150
meters or so out and back okay and that would fully confirm all the models all
the assumptions that we've done in and can definitively include what it's it's
weird to think about because when you're in atmosphere that's that thin as you
mentioned less than 1% of Earth's atmosphere it seems like once you start
going it becomes very difficult to stop so everything it has to be so much more
precise the way the way you start moving requires a certain you know a certain
amount of you know L over D in order to tilt the helicopter and move it but then
you have to be able to stop it but the atmosphere is sufficiently thin is does
it does it scale is it comparable to Earth's atmosphere I mean it seems like
it's far more complicated than it is what normal people might think that it
is yes it's very counterintuitive the thin atmosphere reacts the the blase
reactive friendly with the thin atmosphere for example their residence
resonances in all rotorcraft you know and on earth very with very thick
atmosphere a lot of the resonances get dampened out sure within atmosphere they
continue ring so for example our development our test demonstration and
the design and the selection of frequencies have to be very carefully
aligned and be aware of those reaction of the vehicle while it's a thin
atmosphere response is actually slower in
since and faster than others so for example you know you turn the blade and
here on atmosphere you are pushing so much air you suddenly turn right there
it takes a little longer so definitely our team had had to model from the very
fundamentals of a blade taking a blade that's you know where 1.2
meter diameter blades so rotor system so 1/2 a point 6 meter or so per blade we
actually had to cut into 33 virtual pieces and analyze them for the lift and
the drag of each of the piece well you know with the high fidelity CFD analysis
take the lift and drag integrated them and then model how the dynamics of the
vehicle would be in this thin atmosphere these little Reynolds numbers and this
is you know low density area you're starting from scratch starting from
scratch and it's been a surprise nice surprise and it's made it very fun yeah
but definitely starting from the fundamental right so that's why when you
asked us now about how would you feel what does it mean that very first like
to unconditionally confirm our models in the real environment fantastic first of
its kind it'll be monumental we're so looking forward to seeing it happen and
of course it's gonna be part of the Mars 2020 Rover so it's really not that far
away we're almost there and we look forward to coming back here
in 26 months in order to watch a very safe and effective Mars 2020 lander and
thereafter a Mars helicopter take off and land on the surface of another world
for the first time in human history Thank You Mimi um for all of your great
work thank you and waiting to see all of your accomplishments in the future
well thank you for watching watch this space I'm NASA Administrator Jim
bridenstine you can follow me on twitter at jim bridenstine and of course if you
want to watch this again you can do so at nasa.gov slash watch this space