consider the fact that right now there's
an SUV sighs Rover crawling around the
surface of Mars zapping rocks with its
laser scooping and sampling material and
generally giving us the best view we've
ever seen from the surface of the Red
Planet
NASA's Curiosity rover has been on the
surface of Mars since 2012 following the
story of water wetter for show up on
Mars and was that there long enough to
support the biology of life it's 5 years
and Counting of exploration curiosity
has pushed our understanding of the red
planet forward and pave the way for the
next generation of gigantic
nuclear-powered Rovers hanging the Mars
to search for life itself
welcome to a special two-part
collaboration with one of my favorite
science and space youtubers just got in
his answers with Joe series Joe has dug
into the history of SpaceX how
synesthesia works and of course my
favorite topic the Fermi paradox it
turns out that while I was working on a
history of curiosity episode Joe was
working on a video about the upcoming
Mars 2020 Rover the sequel to curiosity
so it would just seem natural to
collaborate as always I'll put a link to
Joe's episode of the cards show notes
and end credits watch these videos in
any order that you like now here's what
Joe asked the same hi I'm Joe Scott and
I am super thrilled to be collaborating
with Frazer on this topic over here on
my channel I talk about all kinds of
science stuff from life extension to
futurism to space travel but today I'm
gonna be focusing on NASA's follow-up to
curiosity the Mars 2020 Rover
so when Fraser's done blowing your mind
I invite you to come check out my video
to see how NASA plans to follow that up
and what new discoveries we might find
in the future anyway I hope to see you
there now back to freezer
originally known as the Mars Science
Laboratory NASA's Curiosity rover is
part of a global effort to research the
history of Mars specifically what
happened to its water here on earth life
is everywhere wherever you can find
liquid water to find life Mars on the
other hand is a dried and dead world
with only its polar icecaps for evidence
that there was ever water on that world
was Mars always a straw in frigid or did
have water long ago when the solar
system was younger
[Music]
NASA's Spirit and Opportunity Rovers
were sent to Mars to answer the question
was there ever liquid water on the
surface of Mars actually after 13 years
on the surface of Mars with opportunity
continuing to send back the science
better question might be how long can
Rovers survive and how much punishment
can it handle by 2015 opportunity had
completed an actual marathon on the
surface of Mars just a couple of days
ago it saw its 5000 sunrise but back to
the water question in 2004 NASA
announced that opportunity had landed in
a region that had once been drenched in
water and would have been a good
habitable environment it found tiny
spherical pebbles known as concretions
which would have needed water to form it
found examples of chemicals like
sulfates hematite and Jarrah site that
would have required water to form but
was water located on the surface of Mars
long enough to support life this was
curiosity's job not only to find
evidence of water but to find out how
long water had been present on the
surface of Mars
[Music]
three-two-one main engine start zero and
liftoff of the Atlas 5 with curiosity
seeking clues to the planetary puzzle
about life on Mars curiosity was
launched on November 26 2011 and arrived
at Mars on August 5th 2012
unlike previous Rovers and Landers
curiosity was huge the size of an SUV in
order to enable the landing of a rover
this massive NASA had to develop an
entirely new landing system which used a
series of methods to slow its descent to
the surface of the red planet when it
hit the atmosphere curiosity used an
aeroshell to bleed off as much velocity
as possible
[Music]
then it discarded the aeroshell and
deployed a huge parachute but the
parachute alone wasn't enough to slow it
down as I got close to the surface of
Mars the vehicles sky crane fired its
retrorockets slowing its descent and
gently place the rover on the surface of
Mars curiosity had landed in the region
of Mars known as Gale Crater and the
crater was formed billions of years ago
when a huge asteroid smashed in the
surface of Mars and it dug out this
massive crater 154 kilometers across as
the gouged material rebounded and fell
back to the surface it created the
central mount sharp 5 kilometers high
this natural excavation gave mission
controllers the perfect spot to see the
natural layers of rock that had been
deposited over eons
it appeared that layers of material had
been deposited into the crater by water
filling it up and then over an even
longer time wind erosion blasted away
that material until Mount sharp was all
that remained and it was there the
curiosity landed at the foot of Mount
sharp ready to slowly climb its way up
the flanks studying the material
deposits and following the story of
water on the surface of Mars Spirit
Opportunity were powered by solar panels
curiosity on the other hand is so much
larger and so it uses a radioisotope
thermoelectric generator for electricity
a chunk of decaying plutonium that
throws off so much heat it can be used
to power a rover this big with this much
electricity Curiosity has a suite of
scientific instruments it can use to
study the environment around it
[Music]
the mask amarak stands up above the
rover allows it to scan its surroundings
with a high-definition camera gig single
exposure colored pictures similar to
your smartphone or monochrome images
using a filter to show different parts
of the light spectrum can even record
video so if a martian creature should
happen to scamper bot the Mars hand lens
imager allows curiosity to look at
clothes in detail at the rocks around it
using the equivalent of a magnifying
glass attached to the end of its arm
it has different lights that it can use
to illuminate the rock to pick out
different features apxs is the alpha
particle x-ray spectrometer which can be
placed right next to rock to find out
exactly what it's made of chemcam
consists of a laser that curiosity
blasts out from its mass at targets at
the 7 meters away laser vaporizes a tiny
bit of rock which curiosity can analyze
to see what it's made of
[Applause]
kemon or the chemistry and mineralogical
instrument gathers rock samples
pulverizes them and then beams x-rays
through the powder to study what they're
made of Sam is the sample analysis of
Mars it's like an oven inside curiosity
picks up samples heat them until they
vaporize and then studies the gases to
find out what was in the sample the
minerals in these samples will tell
scientists if Mars was once habitable
the radiation assessment detector or rad
measures the ongoing radiation on the
surface of Mars as well as the amount of
radiation the mission received on its
voyage from Earth to Mars the dynamic
albedo of neutrons or Dan is an
instrument designed to measure the
amount of water ice located in the
regolith beneath the rover's wheels in
the rover environmental monitoring
station measures what the weather's like
on Mars and there were a couple of other
instruments that help study what was
happening as the spacecraft was coming
in for a landing now you know the
incredible suite of instruments that
curiosity brought to bear on the Red
Planet time to talk about the
discoveries and we'll talk about that in
a second but first I'd like to thank
Dave Johnson heroic Hedgehog Steven
Tilly Kurt Howse Zach Schulz Zachary
fluke and the rest of our 805 patrons
for the generous support feel we're
doing you want to get on the action head
over to patreon.com slash universe today
at the time that i'm recording this
video curiosity has spent more than
2,000 Earth days crawling across the
surface of Mars triple its original
mission plan it's traveled a total of
eighteen point zero one kilometers and
Counting so our opportunity still has it
beat for distance traveled and there are
just too many highlights to get to for
this video curiosity is taken thousands
of pictures sample dozens of rocks sniff
the atmosphere since the radiation load
both on the surface and in space that
rover has seen things seemed thanks
but over the course of more than five
years crawling around the surface of
Mars curiosity has added an enormous
amount of data to planetary scientist
knowledge about Mars this main goal of
course was that search for the history
of water by studying the isotopes of
hydrogen carbon and argon in the rocks
curiosity was able to determine that
Mars once had a much thicker atmosphere
and water on the surface of the planet
and then over the eons the constant
solar wind blasted its hydrogen into
space began a cold and dry NASA's maven
orbiter continues to see this
atmospheric loss to this day and any
future terraformers will need to deal
with it but it wasn't just through the
decreasing water vapor in the atmosphere
curiosity crawled into an ancient
streambed and found the kinds of rocks
that would have tumbled downstream for
several kilometres at some point in the
ancient past there was a stream flowing
here
that was about knee-deep and it flowed
for a long time curiosity found that
Mars was once the ideal habitat for
microbes in an ancient mud deposit in a
region called Yellowknife Bay curiosity
found sulfur nitrogen oxygen phosphorus
and carbon like this is how you get
microbes not only that but in the clay
and the samples wasn't overly rich in
salt which means that it would have been
drenched in drinkable water but I found
more than the raw chemicals of life
found the organic molecules that make up
life itself it sampled rocks from a
different region and turned of organic
carbon compounds which had been
preserved in the rocks it's actually
very difficult to know which compounds
are present because of the toxic
perchlorates that formed later and may
alter the structure of the organic
compounds but the organics are in there
when those fascinating discoveries made
by curiosity was the detection of
methane in the atmosphere of Mars
now methane on earth is a byproduct of
life and it reacts quickly enough in the
atmosphere that there must be some
source replenishing it but volcanism
could also produce methane on Mars so we
still don't have a conclusive answer one
extremely interesting finding however
was that during a two-month period the
background levels of methane jumped by a
factor of 10 what could cause this we
still owe no curiosity is absolutely
sure however that the surface of Mars
receives a high amount of radiation and
any humans who plan to visit Mars will
need to limit their time on the surface
and just traveling to Mars an astronaut
would receive 15 times the annual
radiation limit for a worker at a
nuclear power plant not to mention the
time spent on the surface because
curiosity has such a long live power
source we can expect it to carry on for
many more years continuing to explore
the environment inside Gale Crater
crawling up the flanks of Mount sharp
following the history of water and
helping scientists on earth understand
this hostile environment we don't know
what we'll find next but we can be sure
that there will be much more science
coming out of this mission for years to
come and of course I'll let you know
when they find anything interesting now
don't forget to follow this story into
the future Joe Scott picks up the trail
and talks about the future missions
which will be continuing the exploration
of Mars did you watch the curiosity
landing live have you got fond memories
of the missions so far let me know your
thoughts in the comments you all more
space news I'm now writing a weekly
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it's quick easy to digest with lots of
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universe today comm slash newsletter in
our next episode NASA made the
announcement that they've narrowed down
an upcoming mission to two
candidates nuclear-powered helicopter
for Titan or a return to Rosetta's Comet
67p I battle Tim dog every day astronaut
to give in to you which mission they
should support two missions enter one
mission leaves that's next time finally
here's a playlist starting of course
with Jo Scott's half of the
collaboration