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(wind whistling softly)

♪ ♪

(wind howling)

STEVE SQUYRES:
At the beginning, there's nothing.

There's no concept of a robot explorer

crawling across the surface
of another world.

And then, gradually, you start to think.

You start to act.

We just start to build.

And those machines come to life.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

BEKAH SOSLAND SIEGFRIEDT:
A lot of people out there would say,

"Oh, they're just robots."

(beeping, whirring)

But once we turned them on
for the first time,

they became so much more
than just robots on another planet.

("Roam" by The B-52's playing)

(electronic trilling)

♪ Boy, mercury ♪

♪ Shooting through every degree ♪

♪ Oh, girl dancing down those dirty ♪

♪ And dusty trails ♪

(over speaker):
♪ Roam if you want to ♪

♪ Roam around the world ♪

♪ Roam if you want to ♪

♪ Without wings, without wheels ♪

♪ Roam if you want to... ♪

KOBIE BOYKINS:
Once the rover's on Mars,

it has its own life.

There's energy pulsing through its veins.

And it needs to be given love.

("Roam" continues)

ASHLEY STROUPE: And so we try
and keep her as safe as possible...

...but sometimes she has
a mind of her own.

♪ Take it hip to hip ♪

♪ Rocket through the wilderness ♪

♪ Around the world... ♪

DOUG ELLISON:
And so, yeah, it's only a robot.

But through this robot, we are on
this incredible adventure together.

And she becomes a family member.

♪ Roam if you want to ♪

♪ Without anything but the love we feel. ♪

-(clicking, whirring)
-(rumbling)

(buzzing)

(song fades)

(wind howling)

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

JENNIFER TROSPER:
Something I think we all wonder about

as we look up into the night sky...

...is if we're really alone
in this universe.

And trying to understand that

is one of the great mysteries
that we have.

ROB MANNING:
Over the centuries,

Mars has been this enigmatic

little red dot in the sky.

It invigorated imaginations
of millions of people.

What could be going on
in that distant land?

STROUPE:
The overall goal of the whole Mars program

has been the question of:
Did Mars ever actually have life?

So, especially early on
in the Mars missions,

we were following the water.

That's because, at least on Earth,
everywhere that we find water...

...there's life.

(screeching)

And so the question is:

Was there water on Mars?

And what kind of water?

And could that have helped sustain life?

MANNING: So, in the mid '70s,
the two Viking missions

were kind of the epitome
of exploration at the time.

NASA sent two orbiters and two landers,

which would give us
a whole new perspective on Mars.

SQUYRES:
Uh-huh.

Ah...

Wow.

Yeah, there's the good one.

Wow.

(exhales, chuckles)

It's funny to have such intense memories

associated with a bunch
of 40-year-old pixels.

(laughs)

But I do, man.

I remember the very first time I saw it.

♪ ♪

At the time of the Viking mission,
I was a bang-it-with-a-hammer geologist.

I would go out in the field,
and I would do geologic fieldwork.

Fascinating science,

but what I found disappointing about it

was that there weren't
new places to discover.

But then I started working with the images

from the Viking orbiters,
and I would look down

on Mars using these pictures...

...and I had no idea
what I was looking at,

but the beauty of it was nobody did.

This was seeing stuff
nobody had ever seen before.

And I knew that I was gonna do
space exploration.

MANNING: The two Viking orbiters,
as they looked down on Mars, they saw...

You know, that's strange.

There could be signs
of past water flowing.

Was Mars once a green world

with living things and-and blue oceans?

SQUYRES:
We'd go there ourselves if we could.

But we can't.

And I just knew
from my training as a geologist

that if we could get a rover
down on the Martian surface

and it could move around and travel

and actually look close up at the rocks,

we might find out the truth
about Martian history.

And so, starting in the mid '80s,

I'd spent ten years
writing proposals to NASA,

but the proposals all failed. (laughs)

And I was facing
the unpleasant possibility

that I had just wasted
an entire decade of my career

with nothing to show for it.

♪ ♪

MANNING:
But then we pulled a team together at JPL.

Could we actually put the rover
that Steve Squyres imagined

and use this landing system
that we already designed?

So we produced a proposal

and presented that to NASA.

SQUYRES:
And we finally get the phone call...

...that made our dream come true.

Well, I am indeed very, very happy
that we're able to announce

that we are returning to Mars--
this time in force-- with twins.

The Mars twin rovers.

SQUYRES:
We named 'em Spirit and Opportunity.

This was ten years of writing proposals

that finally produced the result
that I'd been dreaming of.

But I think, if I had known at that time

what an arduous path
it was going to be from that point

to actually get onto the surface of Mars,

I wouldn't have felt
quite as elated as I did.

(indistinct chatter)

MAN: If we could take our seat,
I'd like to get started.

TROSPER:
Okay, I'm up here as the project engineer

in order to make sure
that the big picture fits together

between the flight system
and mission system.

I'll briefly go over launch,
cruise and EDL.

Our whole objective was to build
two autonomous

solar-powered rovers
that could survive 90 sols,

three months on Mars.

And we were really hoping
that at least one of them would work.

But we knew that if we don't get it right
we're gonna miss our launch date.

SQUYRES:
Schedule for mission to Mars

is literally driven by
the alignment of the planets,

and if you miss that launch window,
the next one comes around...

...26 months later.

MANNING: That's no time to design,
develop and test two rovers

and put them on two rockets.

And the pressure on the team
is really phenomenal.

So we had to come up with an amazing team

working around the clock to pull it off.

BOYKINS:
From a young age, I was into Star Trek.

I wanted to be Geordi La Forge.

Engineering, this is La Forge.

Shut down power to all transporters.
I'm on my way.

BOYKINS: But I didn't really know
what that job was.

You know, I knew they were the "engineer,"
but I didn't know what that was.

I just knew that I wanted to be
the person that always fixed things.

Building Spirit and Opportunity
really started on just a whiteboard.

Okay, we want to have a 90-day mission,

and we want to find evidence
of past water.

Okay, what do we need to do that?

And then this team of different engineers

has to bring that rover to life.

ASHITEY TREBI-OLLENNU:
This was my first mission.

And it was very exciting, you know,

doing something
that no one has done before.

I grew up in Ghana, and when I was a kid,
I was very fascinated by radio.

And I also was curious--
are there people inside the radio?

So, one day, I opened a radio,
and I was disappointed

to find there were no people in the radio.

So that's my fascination with engineering.

BOYKINS:
For the rover design...

...it was a deliberate decision
to make the characteristics humanlike.

TREBI-OLLENNU:
When you're a geologist

and you're working in the field,
you typically take the rock

and then break it up to look inside of it.

So the robot needs the robotic arm

that has multiple instruments to take
measurements and microscopic images.

Like a Swiss Army knife.

SQUYRES: Now, the resolution
of the rovers' cameras is

the exact equivalent
of human 20/20 vision.

So, all of a sudden, they start to look
an awful lot like eyeballs.

BOYKINS: And then the height
of the rover was five foot two.

That's the average height
of a human being.

So it would feel like, as the rover
was driving, taking these images,

that a human being
was walking along the surface.

ELLISON:
It's just a box of wires, right?

But you end up with this

cute-ish-looking robot that has a face.

TROSPER: So we had these
amazing science instruments,

but once you put all that stuff
on the rover,

the mass gets bigger.

Then this is gonna be a big problem
for landing on Mars.

But then what I'm trying to look at
is actually literally using

six little bungee cords
attached here to airbags.

And the challenge here is that there's
a lot of different ways to do this.

A lot of different ways to do this.

We don't know which one is the best,
and we really only get one shot at it.

TROSPER:
So our landing system

had these big airbags that inflated.

And they would bounce it
across the surface.

MANNING:
The biggest problem right off the bat--

we started doing the math for how much
the Spirit and Opportunity

were going to weigh,

and will those airbags
be able to handle that weight?

So we started doing tests.

-What the...?
-This is just dandy.

-This is not a problem. Yeah.
-No, this is a... this is a good rock.

-I like this rock.
-Yes.

TROSPER:
And so we were trying out the airbags

with the types of rocks
we could encounter on Mars.

We do the first big drop.

(laughing):
Huge gaping holes in these airbags

get ripped by the rocks, and we're like,
"Oh, this is not good.

Not good at all."

MANNING: The parachutes were
another story altogether.

MAN (over speaker):
Three, two, one.

MANNING: But we did those tests
with this big rocket-shaped payload

and dropped it out of the sky
from a helicopter.

First one, the parachute tore to shreds.

(helicopter blades whirring)

The second one...

MAN:
Oh!

MANNING:
...was torn to shreds.

And so we realized
we didn't have a working parachute.

Unfortunately, that chute
that just exploded was the chute

that we were planning on taking to Mars.

Cut to the quick.
You're in very, very serious trouble.

What part of this gives you gas?

Where are you concerned?

PETE THEISINGER: There's a list of threats
that these guys have come to me with,

and I've added all those threats up.

They go in the category of everything
we can think of that can go wrong.

I understand your concern...

TROSPER:
In the back of your mind, you're like,

"This is a billion-dollar national asset.

This could be a complete disaster."

(machine whirring)

MAN (over speaker):
Okay, we're ready.

Here we go.

(vibrating, rattling)

SQUYRES:
So we built Spirit and Opportunity

with the intention
of them being identical twins.

(laughing):
And they kind of started out that way,

but things diverged quickly.

-(vibrating and rattling stop)
-MAN: Okay, we're all clear.

ELLISON:
All the way through assembly and testing,

it was always Spirit

hitting some sort of test first
and she would fail.

(indistinct chatter)

-We lost a bushing.
-We lost a bushing?

Look on… look on the deck.

ELLISON:
And along comes Opportunity.

(laughing):
Everybody... Okay.

Three, two, one.

-(whirring)
-MAN: Oh.

MAN 2:
Ah!

-Thank you.
-(man whistles)

ELLISON: And on every test, Opportunity
came through with flying colors.

So, even before they left this planet,
Spirit was troublesome,

Opportunity was Little Miss Perfect.

BOYKINS: So, after so much time
testing and building our rovers...

...now it's time to put Oppy
on the ground.

♪ ♪

This is the very first time

we breathe life into the rover.

Move.

Her first steps.

I'm getting tingly.

'Cause it was like...
(gasps) "It's alive!"

(applause)

SQUYRES: She becomes
almost like a living thing to you.

A real living robot
that you can imagine going to Mars

and doing the things
that you've dreamed of doing there.

To say it's like a child being born
would be to trivialize parenthood,

but it feels sort of like that.

MANNING:
But you feel like it's not clear

your child is really ready
for this wild and woolly world.

SQUYRES: Had we done
all the testing we wanted to do?

Absolutely not.

But eventually, you just run out of time.

And it was time to fly.

(birds chirping, insects trilling)

BOYKINS:
We're out here at 5:30 in the morning,

but, you know, for us,
this is a lot of time,

lot of hours, lot of sleepless nights
coming together, so...

It's sort of surreal. I don't know
if it's really gonna happen yet.

You know, it's like the whole
butterfly thing going on at this point.

♪ ♪

Lucky peanuts.

TROSPER:
So, Spirit would launch first.

And Opportunity three weeks later.

MARK ADLER:
This is Delta Launch Control at

T-minus eight minutes, 40 seconds,
and counting.

TROSPER: And I was in
the control room for Spirit at JPL.

And I actually like it
when I have a job to do

because then I'm focused

and-and it's a little harder
to get emotional,

because you have something
you have to focus on.

ADLER: This is the final checks
of the Spirit MER-A spacecraft.

TROSPER:
I'm a farm girl from Ohio.

I grew up raising sheep, pigs, cows.

And my dad had worked
in the Army Corps of Engineers...

...on the very first rockets, and he would
just tell these amazing stories.

But aerospace engineering wasn't
something that girls around me did.

So I just couldn't imagine
that I would ever have

the opportunity to send a rover to Mars.

TROSPER (over radio):
MER-2 is go for launch.

MAN (over radio):
Roger.

BOYKINS:
T-minus ten... you start freaking out.

ADLER:
Nine, eight, seven,

six, five, four,

(echoing):
three, two, one.

-BOYKINS: The engines start.
-ADLER: And liftoff!

(rumbling, whooshing)

BOYKINS:
You hear that rocket.

No firecracker, no firecracker,

no firecracker, no firecracker,
no firecracker, no firecracker,

-no firecracker, no firecracker.
-(cheering)

♪ ♪

MAN: Load relief integrated in.
Vehicle's responding.

Vehicle's recovering very nicely
from the liftoff transition.

I don't know whether I shed a tear,
but I think, you know,

this rocket is carrying
my hopes and dreams.

(chuckles):
And, um...

you know, it's very...

it's very difficult to describe. (laughs)

But you-you feel
your life's work in the rocket.

(whooping, whistling)

(cheering, whistling)

BOYKINS:
I have raised this child.

Yeah!

That's sort of what it feels like.

And now it's that child's moment to shine.

SQUYRES:
But it was hard to say goodbye.

I devoted 16 years of my life
to these rovers.

And then you put 'em on top of a rocket

and you shoot 'em into space

and you're never going to see 'em again.

TROSPER:
For Opportunity,

I was out with my, uh, family,
and we were watching

from the same launchpad that my dad
had launched his missions from.

And he had since passed away.

And he was the proudest dad anybody...
anybody could ever have.

It was just very emotional--
for me, for my mom, for my family--

to just see how he had encouraged
and inspired me

to do space exploration.

(whooshing)

BOYKINS: The travel time to Mars
for both rovers was six and a half months.

Spirit and Opportunity were only
three weeks behind each other,

so they're not super far apart
in celestial terms.

So we have a trajectory to Mars,
and we want to make sure

that we are following that road to Mars
as we move along.

It's like you're in Los Angeles
and you want to hit a golf ball

to hit a door handle
at Buckingham Palace,

and that's what we're trying to do.

BOYKINS:
We call it the quiescent period.

Six and a half months of quiescent time,
nothing going on.

Well, that's not exactly true.

(explosive booming)

MANNING:
We got hit by the largest series

of solar flares
that had ever been seen before.

And we saw this big ejection
of the sun's energies and particles

racing toward our spacecraft.

♪ ♪

TREBI-OLLENNU:
Throughout solar flares,

the sun releases bursts of plasma.

Plasma is a highly charged
cloud of electrons.

MANNING: And the energetic particles,
which could actually kill a human,

they go slamming right into our rovers.

All the way in to the computer.

BOYKINS:
Really bad for spacecraft.

(rattling)

MANNING: Now software we put on board
had been corrupted.

So we had to reboot both rovers.

BOYKINS: So we told our Johnny Fives
to go to sleep.

This is really scary.

TROSPER: So you're loading this
new version of software up on the vehicles

and transitioning to it.

You know, control, alt, delete,
hoping it all works.

♪ ♪

(whirring)

(beeping)

(powering up)

(clicking, whirring)

MANNING:
It worked. They rebooted.

And it took us a couple of weeks
to clean up our computers.

By then, the sun had calmed down,

the software was loaded,
and we were ready to land on Mars.

SQUYRES:
But at that time,

two thirds of missions to Mars had failed.

Mars was a spacecraft graveyard...
(chuckles) when we flew.

(whooshing)

A few years before,
NASA launched two missions to Mars,

Mars Polar Lander
and Mars Climate Orbiter.

(explosion)

Both failed.

One burned up in the atmosphere.

The other one crashed on the surface.

BOYKINS:
Mars Climate Orbiter--

it was a communication error.

We were converting
what was given to us in English--

we thought it was given to us in metric.

And that's ridiculously embarrassing.

Big news from outer space,
ladies and gentlemen.

Apparently now, scientists claim
there is no intelligent life...

-at NASA. Yeah.
-(laughter)

Couldn't find it.

SQUYRES:
And so all eyes were kind of on us.

Our team felt that Spirit and Opportunity

needed to be a mission of redemption.

BOYKINS:
As part of the team, we felt as though,

if this landing didn't succeed...

...this might be the end of NASA.

Good evening, everyone,
and welcome to what promises to be

both an exciting and eventful night
here at JPL.

This is live coverage
of Spirit's landing on Mars...

Live coverage
of Opportunity's landing on Mars.

And tonight, the navigation team says
all systems are go.

♪ ♪

TROSPER: Spirit and Opportunity were
going to land on opposite sides of Mars

three weeks apart.

The anxiety is very high.

I don't know at what point I, uh,
went on blood pressure medication.

WAYNE LEE (over radio): And a pleasant
good evening to the flight deck.

Our current speed is
11,320 miles per hour,

which is fast enough to traverse
a distance equal to the United States

in 12 minutes.

At this time, we'd like to invite you
to sit back and enjoy the landing.

BOYKINS:
So, entry, descent, landing.

It's approximately 86 events where,
if one thing goes wrong...

(whooshing)

...we will lose the rovers.

It's the scariest thing
you can ever think of,

because the communication time

from the rover saying, "Hey,
I'm doing this," to Earth is ten minutes.

There is nothing you can do

other than hope they'd survive.

TROSPER:
We call it the six minutes of terror...

is the time from when the spacecraft

enters the top of the Martian atmosphere

until it does all the autonomous--
all on its own-- activities it needs to do

to get safely landed on the ground.

LEE (over radio):
Atmospheric entry in...

three, two, one.

(whooshing)

TROSPER: Everything is on the line
in the six minutes of terror.

LEE: The vehicle is now
at the top of the Martian atmosphere.

At the time of peak heating,
the heat shield will be heated

to temperatures upwards
of 1600 degrees Celsius.

(wind whistling)

BOYKINS:
Parachute opens.

Slows you down more.

LEE (over radio):
Current velocity is 446 miles per hour.

At this time, we expect
the vehicle has gone subsonic.

BOYKINS: You have this thing
called the heat shield that's super hot,

and you have to get rid of it.

MANNING:
But now the hard part begins.

The lander has to rappel down
on a 20-meter rope.

BOYKINS: So now you have a parachute,
you have this back shell,

you have this lander.

The airbags inflate.

At 40 feet,
the back shell fires retro-rockets,

slows the rover down
to zero miles per hour

and then cuts the last cord.

(quiet chatter)

LEE (over radio):
We won't see a signal at the moment.

MAN: We saw an intermittent signal
that indicated we were bouncing.

However... however, we currently
do not have signal from the spacecraft.

LEE:
Please stand by.

MANNING:
Spirit vanishes.

The signal goes away.

Completely gone.

In other words, she may have crashed.

BOYKINS:
Silence.

Everybody waiting for a signal.

Everybody waiting for something.

(takes deep breath)

MANNING: I was thinking
that we did all of this in vain.

That maybe we lost this mission.

♪ ♪

POLLY ESTABROOK:
Do you see it? Do you see it?

-Do you see it?
-What do we see? -W-W-Wait, wait.

(cheering, excited chatter)

It's there, Rob!

(excited chattering)

LEE (over radio):
We have a very strong signal

in the left-hand polarization channel,

indicating that… (continues indistinctly)

(excited chattering)

MANNING (over radio):
We're on Mars, everybody.

You see us jumping up and down.

We're not jumping for joy.

We're jumping for relief.

Both rovers landed safely
on the surface of Mars.

(excited chatter)

The signal's going up and down.
It means that...

(chatter continues indistinctly)

NARRATOR:
Spirit rover diary.

January 4, 2004. Sol one.

♪ ♪

CHRIS LEWICKI (over radio): Ladies and
gentlemen, you are privileged to be

in one of the most exciting rooms on Earth
at the moment.

ABIGAIL FRAEMAN:
I was actually a high school student

when Opportunity landed.

I was selected, um,

as one of 16 students
from around the world...

...to be in the mission control room
with the science team

when Oppy sent down her first images.

MAN (over radio):
Full Navcams are coming down now.

Full Navcams.

(applause)

LEWICKI (over radio):
Wow!

We are on Mars.

(cheering)

TROSPER: When those first
images come, the relief...

the relief, you know, the level
of my bl-blood pressure going back down.

Then we're all on cloud nine.

(squealing excitedly, laughing)

(sighs)

My child has arrived.

(laughs) It's...

♪ Ah... ♪

Welcome to Mars.

NARRATOR:
Opportunity rover diary. Sol one.

The signal from the vehicle
is solid and strong.

Opportunity is on Mars.

♪ ♪

(whirring)

(buzzes, beeps)

BOYKINS: Opportunity landed in a small
little crater in the Meridiani Planes.

And it was a 300-million-mile hole in one.

NARRATOR:
Pancam, Navcam and Hazcams

are all returning spectacular images.

What in God's name are we looking at?

(rover beeps, buzzes)

SQUYRES:
I will attempt no science analysis,

'cause it looks like nothing
I've ever seen before in my life.

(laughter)

As we had expected, holy smokes.

I'm sorry, I'm just... (stammers, sighs)

(laughter)

I got no words for this.

There was this dark sand everywhere.

And then poking out in the distance
were these light-colored rocks.

They were jumping up and down and saying,

"Oh, my gosh, that's bedrock, you guys.
I see bedrock."

And, you know, of course,
I didn't know what that meant.

I didn't know why that was important.

But I don't think
I slept a wink that night.

It was so exciting.

NARRATOR: It's the stuff that
can tell you what happened right here

in this exact place long ago.

(beeps, whirs)

(beeping)

NARRATOR: Hundreds upon hundreds
of people around the world

have worked on this project.

And it all had to go perfectly
to make this moment happen.

♪ ♪

(beeping)

Spirit's alive, Opportunity landed safely,

and we've got real bedrock
in front of us at Meridiani.

Now it's time for sleep.

(birds chirping)

REPORTER:
Hello, everyone.

This is a big day for the rover on Mars.

And it's ready to do exactly
what it was designed to do

and be a robotic geologist.

Per custom, our morning
wake-up song is coming right up.

("Born to Be Wild" by Steppenwolf playing)

♪ Get your motor runnin' ♪

♪ Head out on the highway... ♪

SQUYRES:
A tradition in human spaceflight...

...has been to wake the crew up.

The crew wake-up song,
which they would play music.

You know, "Wake up, guys.
It's time to get to work."

("Born to Be Wild" guitar riff playing)

♪ Born to be wild... ♪

STROUPE:
The Martian day-- we call it a sol--

is about 40 minutes longer
than an Earth day.

So your schedule is shifting
by about an hour every single day.

SQUYRES:
We were all living on Mars time.

And it was a tough way to live

'cause, you know, the daily planning
meeting today is gonna start at noon,

and two and a half weeks later,
we started a new day at midnight.

♪ We were born, born to be wild... ♪

TROSPER:
And so we were tired, we were jet-lagged,

and we needed to wake up, too.

♪ I never wanna die ♪

(playing faintly over speaker):
♪ Born to be wild... ♪

(clicking, whirring)

TROSPER:
And now we were on this 90-sol race

to find out as much
as we could about Mars.

♪ ♪

SQUYRES: We picked the Spirit
landing site, Gusev Crater,

that looked like it had a huge,
dried-up riverbed flowing into it,

and we went there hoping to find
evidence of past water

and past habitability.

I mean, there has to have been
a lake in Gusev Crater

at one time.

FRAEMAN: But all Spirit found
was this prison of lava rocks.

(beeping, whirring)

No evidence at all for any interaction
with water on these rocks.

(clicking, beeping)

ELLISON:
On the other side of Mars,

Opportunity's landing site was unlike
anything we'd ever seen before.

NARRATOR:
Opportunity. Sol eight.

We've gotten down
the first images of the soil

right in front of the rover.

It's the strangest-looking thing
we've ever seen on Mars.

SQUYRES: So it turns out
the surface of Mars at this location

is covered by

an uncountable number
of little round... things.

(chuckles)

(whirring)

And when she got to the outcrop...

...these little round things
were embedded in the rock

like blueberries in a muffin.

FRAEMAN: And it turns out the composition
of these little blueberries

was a mineral called hematite,

which is a mineral that often forms
in the presence of water.

(applause, cheering)

SQUYRES: From the mineralogy,
from the geochemistry,

everything that we needed

to come to a reasonable conclusion
that there was once water on Mars

was right there
in the walls of Eagle Crater.

But...

this is a very acidic environment.

Not a place where life
could have developed.

So, yes, there had been liquid water,

but this wasn't water
that you or I would want to drink.

(beeping, whirring)

It was basically like battery acid.

You would not want
to put your toes in there.

You probably wouldn't have
any toes left if you did.

What you really want is nice, flowing,
neutral-pH groundwater.

And so to go and find
a story of habitability...

...you've got to go
on a bit of a road trip.

But the problem is

these rovers only have 90 days to live.

VANDI VERMA: Rover drivers are those of us
who operate the rover on Mars.

(quiet chatter)

It's such a fun job, but you can't

just use a steering wheel to drive it.

Because it takes anywhere
from four minutes to 20 minutes

for a signal to reach Mars.

So we'd send the commands,
we then go off and sleep...

...and then the rover will execute
the drive that day.

And by the time the drive is done,

we come back
and we get the results of that

and start planning again.

I grew up in India.

And when I was about seven years old,

somebody gave me this book
which was about space exploration,

and I was just blown away.

Did you see how close we get
to that rock in the beginning?

During the mission,
I was pregnant with the twins.

And so it was a different way
for me to relate to the twin rovers.

I thought about these two beings that are

so connected and so similar

and yet are going to have
completely independent lives.

The rovers have their own personality,

and it's hard for me to pick
which one of them is my favorite.

Can't really pick one, you know.

It's sort of like this twin thing.
(laughs)

(indistinct chatter)

TROSPER: In Gusev Crater,
Spirit was in a much colder site.

Opportunity was at the equator,
kind of like the vacation spot on Mars.

And so Spirit just had
a tougher mission ahead of her.

BOYKINS: And so Spirit,
she finds this rock we dubbed Adirondack.

She touches the rock.

(beeping)

And she doesn't call home.

(indistinct radio chatter)

Uh, yes, sir, I'm not seeing
anything from our displays.

Um, you're not seeing
any signal at this time?

-MAN (over radio): Uh, that's a negative.
-Copy.

TROSPER:
I was one of Spirit's mission managers.

And so I didn't go home for several days.

We're all kind of somber
in the mission support area

where we're commanding Spirit and trying
to get any information from her.

(indistinct radio chatter)

And Mark Adler was picking
the wake-up song for the day.

And I was just like,
"Oh, do we have to play a wake-up song?"

You know, I was just worried about Spirit.

You know, the fun part of the wake-up song
was lost on me at that point.

ADLER (over speaker):
And all stations, this is mission.

Uh, today is not the day
to buck a tradition, I think,

so we're gonna play a song.

("S.O.S." by ABBA playing)

♪ Where are those happy days? ♪

♪ They seem so hard to find ♪

♪ I tried to reach for you ♪

♪ But you have closed your mind ♪

♪ Whatever happened to our love? ♪

♪ I wish I understood ♪

♪ It used to be so nice ♪

♪ It used to be so good ♪

♪ So when you're near me,
darling, can't you hear me? ♪

♪ S.O.S. ♪

(chuckling)

♪ The love you gave me,
nothing else can save me ♪

♪ S.O.S. ♪

♪ When you're gone ♪

♪ Though I try, how can I carry on? ♪

TROSPER:
I thought, "What a perfect song."

ABBA, "S.O.S."

(whirring, beeping)

("S.O.S." continues faintly over speaker)

NARRATOR: We got back a beep,
but Spirit's a very sick rover.

Her flash memory on board the vehicle
has somehow become corrupted,

so she's been awake
through the last two nights,

crashing and rebooting over and over.

She's up all night.
She's like the teenage kid

who just can't stop,
can't stop playing their video game.

I mean, she was just going
and going and going.

Until her batteries were almost drained.

So we said,
"Let's try to get her shut down."

But we gave her
the gentle shutdown command,

and she wouldn't shut down.

And so we started to get
a little panicked,

'cause now we have to send Spirit
a "shut down, damn it."

It's a command that,
no matter what else happens,

it makes the rover shut down.

MAN (over speaker): 1-4-2 decimal alpha,
decimal shut-down-damn-it until 24 hours.

("S.O.S." continues)

MANNING: We were about ready
to tell the world that we had lost Spirit.

(indistinct radio chatter)

But then, suddenly...

-WOMAN (over radio): Go ahead, Telecom.
-Can confirm data is flowing.

(cheering, applause)

NARRATOR:
After a few nights of severe insomnia,

the rover is now sleeping peacefully.

Go power! (laughs)

NARRATOR:
Spirit is back.

Like a well-oiled machine, isn't it?

-(laughter)
-(song ends)

SQUYRES (over TV):
...is kind of an estimate.

The thing that's ultimately gonna limit
the lifetime of these vehicles

is buildup of dust on the solar arrays.

You can think of 90 sols
as being when the warranty expires.

Okay, that's how long
the mission is intended to last.

We expect to get
at least 90 sols out of it.

How much more than that we get
depends on what Mars gives us.

(whirring)

TROSPER: We were concerned
that after 90 sols on Mars

Spirit and Opportunity would not
have enough power

and that would be the way
that the rovers died.

♪ ♪

(beeping)

(whirring)

(beeping)

(beeping)

(wind howling)

TROSPER:
And then we see these dust devils,

and we were concerned about what
they could do to Spirit and Opportunity.

MANNING:
We'd taken this picture

some weeks before, and it was getting
really, really red and dusty.

You could barely see
the solar panels anymore.

But the morning after the dust devil,

it's like somebody came along with Windex.

(imitates bottle spraying)

And the solar panels were as clean
as the day that we landed.

TROSPER: Turns out these dust devils were
the best friends these rovers had.

TREBI-OLLENNU: They were literally
our life support machines.

They come in at the right time

to breathe… They let off...
let off oxygen into us,

and then we get our energies back.
(laughs)

-(cork pops)
-(jovial chatter)

MAN:
Here's to us.

(cheering, applause)

TROSPER: So, we had met our main
mission success requirements: 90 sols.

And we start thinking we have
maybe unlimited life on these rovers

because the dust devils
have really helped us out here.

So let's go, let's hit the road,
pedal to the metal,

and go see Mars.

SQUYRES: We got to sol 90
for both rovers, and we had fun.

So we were doing rover drag races.

I mean, the two rovers were
competing with each other

to see who could do
the most meters on a given sol.

With Spirit, we had this disappointment.

Like, this landing site is not
what we thought it would be.

♪ ♪

FRAEMAN:
But Spirit looked off,

and there were
these hills rising in the distance

which were named the Columbia Hills.

And so, if there's any potential evidence
of drinkable water,

maybe we'll find it in them hills.

And on the other side of the planet,

our lucky rover Opportunity
was on a whole nother adventure.

NARRATOR:
Opportunity rover diary.

What we really need is more bedrock
deeper down in the ground.

The closest thing is that big crater
off to the east, named Endurance.

SQUYRES:
The beautiful thing about a crater is that

it's a time-ordered sequence of events
with the old rocks at the bottom

and younger and younger and younger
and younger rocks piled on top.

There's scientific gold down there.

But we had never intended
to drive a rover down such a steep slope.

(whirs, beeps)

ELLISON: It's very easy
to kill a robot on another planet

when you're in a place like Endurance.

I would plan to drive
as far down as we need to drive.

FRAEMAN: The tension between
scientists and engineers is

the scientists are the ones
who want to do the crazy thing.

You know, "I want to drive at this

35-degree slope
because that rock is so interesting,"

and the engineers are the ones who say,

"No, no, that's not safe.
You can't do that.

This thing you want to do
is completely bananas."

Frankly, if we can't climb
pretty reliably up these rocks,

we're not going into this crater.

STROUPE:
So we built a big test bed

with basically a full-scale model
of the rover.

MAN:
Oh, little slippage here.

STROUPE:
We tried to simulate the geometry.

We tried to simulate the soil.

(indistinct chatter)

TREBI-OLLENNU: You know,
the first time you go to test bed

and you just drive straight up,

it comes straight down. (laughs)

(groaning)

STROUPE:
So we inched our way down.

Or I guess, you know,
we should use metric.

We centimetered our way down.

(whirring, beeping)

Very carefully planning the drive

to keep Opportunity
from getting into too much trouble.

(quiet chatter)

MAN:
Did we clear it?

STROUPE: So we came back in
the next morning and looked at the images,

and you could hear the gasp
from different parts of the room.

The surface around the side of the crater

wasn't as grippy as we'd hoped it was,
and she apparently started

sliding down the hill...

(buzzing)

...towards this giant boulder.

(alarm beeping)

♪ ♪

STROUPE: But we have something
called autonomy built into the rovers.

We allow the rover to think for itself.

Because the rover knows more
about the situation on Mars than we do.

STROUPE: So, when Opportunity
went down into the crater...

...she noticed that she was
sliding too much downhill

and stopped just centimeters

from the tip of her solar panel.

That short of crashing
into this giant rock.

Which could've been
mission-ending for Opportunity.

We all had heart attacks,
but her autonomy saved us.

And we were so proud
of our lucky rover.

SQUYRES:
With Opportunity,

we had a big, big, big photo printed.

It was a north-to-south strip
that was acquired from orbit.

And it showed Eagle Crater
where we landed,

Endurance Crater where Opportunity was,

and we rolled it out on a table.

Way, way down at the end,
there was this big crater,

you know, kilometers to the south,
that we named Victoria Crater.

ELLISON:
And I know it's ridiculous

to take a mission that was
supposed to be three months and go,

"So, we've got this crater.

We think it'll maybe take
two years to get there."

But we did it anyway.

So, first things first.

♪ Ow! ♪

("Walking on Sunshine"
by Katrina and The Waves playing)

(laughter)

♪ Hey, yeah ♪

(over speaker):
♪ I used to think maybe you loved me ♪

♪ Now, baby, I'm sure ♪

♪ And I just can't wait... ♪

MANNING:
So, Victoria Crater was miles away.

♪ Oh, yeah ♪

♪ I'm walking on sunshine, whoa-oh ♪

♪ I'm walking on sunshine... ♪

MANNING:
But it was a pretty clear shot.

There's no hills or mountains in the way.

Just these ripples of dust.

♪ And don't it feel good ♪

♪ Hey... ♪

TREBI-OLLENNU:
So we do what we call blind driving.

♪ Oh, yeah ♪

♪ And don't it feel good... ♪

So we told Opportunity,

"You're blindfolded.
Trust me. Keep going."

♪ I feel the love, I feel the love
that's really real ♪

♪ I feel alive, I feel the love,
I feel the love that's really real... ♪

TREBI-OLLENNU: And with blind drive,
the way we count progress

is the number of wheel turns.

♪ I'm walking on sunshine, whoa-oh ♪

♪ I'm walking on sunshine... ♪

MANNING:
So, the wheels had turned on the drive.

♪ I'm walking on sunshine... ♪

But to our shock...

-♪ And don't it feel good. ♪
-(song ends)

...Oppy hadn't moved at all.

(whirring)

MAN:
This is the previous day.

MAN 2:
Went to exactly where it got stuck.

It literally didn't make
much more progress after about this point.

But the rover thought
it was executing its plan

as though it were all the way down here.

VERMA: So, the entire day, Opportunity
was just spinning its wheels in place

and digging itself deeper
and deeper and deeper.

(beeping, whirring)

ELLISON: There's no book that's,
you know, "Chapter Four:

Extracting Mars Rovers from Sand Dunes."

So we built a copy of the sand dune
at JPL, stuck her over it.

TREBI-OLLENNU: From an engineering
perspective, it was exciting...

(chuckles)

...because we like...
we-we like a challenge.

So it's almost like quicksand.

And we spent six weeks trying
to learn how to extricate Opportunity.

STROUPE:
But the soil had no friction on it at all.

It was almost like trying
to drive through cake flour.

ELLISON: The engineers decided the only
chance is stick it in reverse and gun it.

(whirring)

But on Mars, it was getting worse.

It looked like we were getting
even deeper.

This could be fatal.

NARRATOR:
Sol 483.

Power has dropped substantially.

At the moment, we're just keeping
our nose above water.

(whirring)

♪ ♪

NARRATOR:
Sol 484.

Long-term drive options are now back.

(cheering, applause)

MANNING: We said, "Okay,
let's be a little bit more conservative

about our driving from here on out."
(chuckles)

And so we carefully drove south,

and we finally eventually made it
to Victoria Crater.

SQUYRES:
There was a group of us

sitting around a table
drinking margaritas at a party.

And somebody came up with the idea,
"Hey, let's have a bet."

Picked up a cocktail napkin,

and we all wrote down our names.

And everybody had to put in 20 bucks.

MANNING:
We said, "Okay. Who believes that

zero, one or two rovers
are alive next year?"

SQUYRES:
We kept that same cocktail napkin,

and we did it year after year
after year after year.

MANNING: And every year, Steve Squyres,
the project's principal scientist,

voted that both rovers
would be dead in the next year.

My logic being
that someday I would eventually win,

and when I did win, it would cheer me up
at a time when I'd be feeling sad.

(indistinct chatter)

MANNING: I voted just the opposite--
that both rovers would still be alive.

So, actually, I did pretty well
through the years in these bets.

(whirring)

SQUYRES: At this point, Spirit,
our kind of hardworking blue-collar rover,

was exploring the Columbia Hills.

But she had been having
mechanical problems.

And then the right front wheel failed.

-The five-wheel, five-wheel drive.
-MAN: Okay.

STROUPE: Somebody said,
"This is a lot like that grocery cart

with the stuck wheel
that's easier to pull than push."

We're like, "Pull!
Yes, let's go backwards."

ELLISON: So, Spirit slowly drove
backwards through Columbia Hills,

dragging this broken wheel as it went.

And it was awful
because winter was coming.

♪ ♪

BOYKINS: So, a Martian winter
is twice as long as it is on Earth.

(shuddering):
So it gets really cold.

It gets so cold that you have to use
much of your energy

to keep all of your hardware
above a certain temperature,

or it's likely to break.

SQUYRES: At the Spirit site,
we desperately needed a way

to tilt the solar arrays towards the sun.

But the only way to do that
was to tilt the entire vehicle.

♪ ♪

Spirit would have to climb backwards

up this rocky, rugged terrain...

...to stay alive all through the winter.

(beeping)

And it's not just the seasons.

You've also got things like dust storms.

SQUYRES: Sometimes dust storms
will blow up into a global storm.

And this one hit Opportunity the hardest.

-NARRATOR: Sol 1,226.
-(thunder crashes)

Opportunity has been
fighting for her life.

Mars took off its gloves
and pounded the Opportunity site

with record high levels
of dust in the sky.

♪ ♪

(thunder crashes)

STROUPE: So we had to tweak the rover's
onboard decision-making process

so that when the power
started getting too low...

...Opportunity could shut herself down
to preserve her batteries.

(indistinct radio chatter)

STROUPE:
Nobody wanted to say out loud

that we thought the mission
could end at any moment.

We could see the dust storm.
We could track it from orbit.

But it took weeks
before it started to clear.

The original time that was, uh,
predicted for the data to come down

was 12... 20:40 UTC,
but we are a bit tight.

So we actually had a lot of suggestions
on morning wake-up songs today,

so I thought I would just continue
to play them as we get the data.

(indistinct chatter)

("Here Comes the Sun" by The Beatles
playing)

STROUPE:
And then we just had to wait and see

if we were gonna survive.

♪ Here comes the sun ♪

♪ Doo-da-doo-doo ♪

♪ Here comes the sun ♪

♪ And I say it's all right ♪

♪ Little darling ♪

♪ It's been a long cold lonely winter ♪

♪ Little darling ♪

♪ It feels like years
since it's been here ♪

♪ Here comes the sun ♪

♪ Doo-da-doo-doo ♪

-♪ Here comes the sun ♪
-(beeping)

♪ And I say it's all right ♪

(whirring)

♪ Little darling ♪

♪ The smile's returning to the faces ♪

(cheering)

♪ Little darling, it seems like years... ♪

ELLISON:
I don't think anyone expected the rovers

to survive all these disasters.

♪ Here comes the sun ♪

♪ Here comes the sun... ♪

You get this feeling of--

there's nothing Mars
can do to us at this point.

Like, we've survived everything.
We're basically invincible.

♪ Here comes the sun, doo-da-doo-doo... ♪

But the mission wasn't done.

We were still hoping we would find
a place where life could have arisen,

with neutral-pH water, with water
you maybe could even have drunk.

(song ends)

(wind whistling softly)

(cheering, applause)

Thank you.

-Dr. Squyres.
-Nice to be here.

-Thank you so much for joining us.
-Yeah.

Now, um, this is a model of one
of the rovers that's on Mars right now.

-That's right.
-Which... Is this...

Is this, uh, Spirit or Opportunity?

SQUYRES:
Uh, they're basically identical twins,

-so they look the same.
-So you can't tell the difference

-between your two children.
-Uh...

You're a terrible father
is what you're saying.

-(laughs)
-(audience laughing)

Um...

SQUYRES:
So, Spirit and Opportunity's mission

had kind of taken on a life of its own
with the public.

The traffic once again
is heavy today on Mars.

Rovers Spirit and Opportunity still at it.

So far, they have traveled
nine and a quarter miles

and captured more than 156,000 images.

SQUYRES:
NASA does a lot of

wonderful things in space science.

But try to explain gamma-ray spectroscopy

to an eight-year-old-- it's hard.

But a robot geologist--

anybody could sort of understand
what it was about.

And now exploration and adventure

can become a very large
shared human experience.

(whirring)

MAN:
What is he doing?

MANNING:
The rovers became a phenomenon.

They represented exploration
and curiosity and interest in the world.

Godspeed to the Mars rover,
wherever you are tonight.

MANNING:
And the more these rovers lasted

and the more promise
of future discovery...

Elbow. Has a wrist.

MANNING: ...people around the world were
becoming really attached to these rovers.

STROUPE:
But I don't think any of us fully realized

the impact that we were having
on the public until Spirit got stuck.

TROSPER:
My alter ego, Spirit, had a problem.

She already had a broken wheel,

and she had gotten a little bit embedded.

And then another wheel broke,
and it was getting close to winter.

(beeps, whirs)

But I figured, knowing Spirit,
that she'd figure it out.

♪ ♪

STROUPE:
This mound of rocks,

this may be
what we're hung on right there.

And both on Mars and in the test bed,
as we drive, it does sink.

This first slide here just is an overview
of the energy requirements for Spirit.

Um, the numbers in red are the ones
where we won't have enough energy

to survive for an extended period of time.

STROUPE: So now it was really
a race against the clock.

We were making very slow progress,
but we had to try and try to beat winter.

And we started getting letters
and phone calls from the public.

This real sense of, you know,

we have to do
whatever it takes to save Spirit.

VERMA: And the public
called this campaign "Free Spirit."

And it showed us that

humans are capable of forming
a connection and a bond to a robot.

NARRATOR:
Sol 2,196.

Spirit has been prepared
for her winter sleep.

She is tucked into bed,

and now we all watch carefully
for the signal or lack thereof.

BOYKINS:
As the rover starts to get hypothermia,

she can't communicate anymore.

And then she either wakes up
the next morning

or she doesn't wake up at all.

When the sun came back up,

we'd listen, we try to hear

a whisper, a tone.

Anything.

And we don't.

It did feel like we were,

you know, watching a friend go,
in a lot of ways.

I know people think it's weird 'cause
I sound like I'm talking about a person,

but even though she wasn't a person,

it was still a huge part
of all of our lives.

TROSPER: Spirit was our rugged
and adventurous rover,

and her environment required more of her.

And so maybe it's just because
I was Spirit's mission manager

and I wanted her to be like me, but...

...I feel like I connected
with Spirit in that way.

You know, maybe she was just
a little tired, too,

after all her hard work.

♪ ♪

SQUYRES: At any rate,
if we can get something like

a hundred meters out of today's drive,

just project that line that you see...

MANNING: So, by this time,
only a handful of people

who were on the design originally
are still left on the team.

So we're in another generation of
engineers who are operating Opportunity.

♪ ♪

SIEGFRIEDT:
Never in a million years did I think

I would be able to work on Opportunity.

When I was in eighth grade,
I saw this news story

of Spirit and Opportunity landing.

I was just some small-town girl

in the middle of nowhere in Texas.

But I knew that's what I wanted to do.

I wanted to help find life
on other planets.

MOOGEGA COOPER:
When I was about 17,

there was a naming contest
for Spirit and Opportunity.

(laughs)

I ended up submitting the names

Romulus and Remus.

Their father was Mars, the god of war.

I don't know what I was thinking, but...

that is when my brain was completely
turned on to Mars and space exploration...

...and eventually led me
to NASA's Mars program.

SIEGFRIEDT:
When I first started at JPL,

Opportunity was this older rover

that was in her extended, extended

times a thousand mission. (chuckles)

But she is the reason
I started aerospace engineering.

I knew Opportunity was the place
I wanted to start my career.

All stations, this is your TDL.

We will begin the downlink briefing
in about five minutes.

(beeping, whirring)

SQUYRES:
Now that Spirit's gone,

there's this--
what do we do next with Opportunity?

Do we just kind of noodle around
till the wheels fall off?

Or do we put our foot on the gas
and just go as fast as we can

and try to reach that big crater next?

STROUPE:
Miles and miles away,

this huge crater called Endeavour.

It would have the oldest rocks

that Opportunity would've
been able to look at so far.

But it was many years away.

And we might not make it,
but it was where the next good stuff was,

so we might as well try.

NARRATOR:
Sol 1,784.

Opportunity has been trekking
toward Endeavour Crater,

driving as frequently
and for as long as possible.

This week, she won
the reverse galactic lottery

-and was struck by lightning.
-(thunder cracks)

Sort of.

She got hit by a cosmic ray
that stalled her for a few days.

But she is okay and back to driving.

Sol 2,042.

Opportunity seems to have
become a meteorite hunter.

She has discovered
three meteorites so far

on her journey to Endeavour.

Sol 2,213.

-Oppy is in her fourth winter on Mars
-(wind whistling)

and the coldest yet.

So, in order to save energy,
the rover is sleeping more

to keep her electronics warm.

ELLISON: So we're sprinting
and we're sprinting and we're sprinting.

Some days getting great distance,
some days not going very far at all,

but we keep going.

NARRATOR: Opportunity is only about
two kilometers away from Endeavour Crater.

She'll make landfall at Spirit Point,

named in honor of Oppy's silent sister.

ANNOUNCER:
Welcome to the very first Mars Marathon

here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

(cheering, applause)

The Opportunity rover has achieved
a marathon's distance on Mars

just a week and a half ago.

(cheering)

ANNOUNCER:
Congratulations, everyone!

BOYKINS:
So, at this point, we have

well exceeded our warranty
and then the extended warranty

and then the phone call
on your phone that says,

"Hey, we'll give you more warranty."
We've run past that, too.

♪ ♪

(beeping)

And Oppy started to show signs of age.

Her gray hair was the dust accumulation

in the crevices between the cables.

STROUPE:
One of the shoulder joints

in Opportunity's arm
started getting arthritis.

We ended up realizing that
if we keep trying to move it,

it's gonna quit somewhere
that we don't want it to be.

VERMA:
So we just kept the arm out

in front of the rover
for the rest of the mission.

And with arthritis setting in,

Opportunity also started to have problems
with the right front wheel.

So, when you were driving it,
you had to think

in terms of it always veering off
and how you were gonna correct for that.

SIEGFRIEDT:
Once she started getting older and older,

Oppy started losing her memory.

She would go to sleep.

(beeping)

And she would essentially forget
all of the science information

and all of what she had done
before she'd wake up.

And around the same time that Opportunity
started losing her memory...

...my grandmother was diagnosed
with Alzheimer's.

And to see my own grandmother
become not herself anymore...

-A…
-Bicycle.

...it was one of the hardest things
to go through.

♪ ♪

And so when I started seeing Opportunity
start slipping away, too...

...we had to figure out a way to operate

in this new paradigm
of her having amnesia.

(whirring)

And we did so successfully

just by forcing her to stay awake.

So she could send us earthlings
all the data

before she went to sleep
and forgot everything she did.

I think Opportunity helped me to really

better deal with
my grandmother's situation.

And to... to understand that part of life.

But she was still the perfect child.

And she kept trying her damnedest

to complete her mission,

to find neutral water
that can support life on Mars.

♪ ♪

FRAEMAN:
After several years of travel,

we finally started to see the rim
of Endeavour Crater rise in the distance.

♪ ♪

ELLISON: And even though this thing
is ten-plus miles wide...

...it wasn't till we pulled up
right to the edge, and suddenly...

...whack!

FRAEMAN: When Oppy reached the rim
of Endeavour, everything changed.

It almost felt like
the start of a whole new mission.

It was a whole new environment to explore,

stepping back tens or hundreds
of millions of years in time.

(laughing):
So I loved this part of the mission.

NARRATOR:
Sol 3,300.

Opportunity is feverishly working to
complete analysis of the rock Esperance,

which may hold the clues
to an ancient habitable environment.

(whirring)

(beeps)

This is a clay that has been
intensely altered

by relatively neutral-pH water,

representing the most favorable
conditions for biology

that Opportunity has encountered.

This was a huge discovery.

Water.

Drinkable, neutral water
once existed on the surface of Mars.

♪ ♪

And not only was there water, but it could
possibly sustain ancient microbial life.

So that is just revolutionary.

SQUYRES:
It showed us that the really ancient Mars

was much more suitable for...

the origin of life.

MANNING:
This was the Holy Grail.

This is the reason we had gone to Mars.

Oppy discovered Mars was

a wet world very much like Earth.

There were oceans.

Water played a huge role
in its early history.

It completely altered the planet.

SIEGFRIEDT: And Opportunity spent years
exploring Endeavour Crater,

making incredible discoveries
that tell that story of water.

So we could go back in time to a planet
that might actually have had life.

♪ ♪

BOYKINS: A lot of people ask why
I think it's important to explore Mars.

And I think one of the things
that will come out of

Spirit and Opportunity's legacy
is some of the answers to why.

Mars had water.

What happened to that water?

And can we take the information
and understand

how that could happen here on Earth?

And can we understand our part in that?

Are we doing something
that can accelerate...

...that change here on Earth?

Because that's not something
you recover from.

♪ ♪

(whirring)

ELLISON:
So we're 14 years into the mission,

and sol 5,000 only comes along once.

Like, it was a big landmark.

We've got an aging rover.

She's forgetful. She's arthritic.

Cameras are still working.

What can we do?

I jokingly said
a few days before sol 5,000,

"We need to take a selfie."

FRAEMAN: So, we'd been seeing Mars
through Oppy's eyes...

...but we hadn't seen all of Oppy herself.

Not since she left the planet in 2003.

We've got a bit of data mining
ahead of us.

ELLISON:
So, sol 5,000 planning comes along,

and the science lead pipes up and says,
"So, the engineering team

"have this request.

They'd like to take a selfie."

And you could hear a pin drop,
'cause the entire science team

is like, "Come again."

We could be using up
the remaining life of the robotic arm

on this act of pure robotic vanity.

STROUPE: We tried to sell
this idea to the science team.

But it's tricky because
her shoulder was broken.

So we had to figure out a way to get
all of the different views of the rover

without moving the shoulder.

ELLISON: It wasn't great,
but it was the best we could do.

And I think it was almost
the science team way of saying

thank you to the engineering team.

"This one's on us.

Take the time to take a selfie.
You deserve it."

Like, "Let's have a look at this robot
you've made dance for us."

(whirring)

(beeps, clicks)

And so the engineers are taking pictures
from 17 different angles...

(beeps, clicks)

...based on the little preview picture

of what they thought
the microscope would be seeing.

And with Opportunity's slow,
old computer...

...it takes about a minute

just to take a picture.

We're like, "Refresh.
There's nothing here yet.

"Refresh. There's nothing here yet.

Refresh."
Bang, all the thumbnails showed up.

Little, tiny, 64-pixel thumbnails.

The images were kind of fuzzy
and upside down.

But then we run through it...

...and there's a picture of Opportunity.

Yes, it was little and black and white
and out of focus,

but for the first time in,
at that point, 14-plus years,

we saw our rover.

♪ ♪

(quiet chatter)

SIEGFRIEDT:
Everybody who worked on Opportunity,

we'd get these emails
with our Mars weather data for the day.

So I looked one day,
and it's starting to get really dusty

and cloudy in the Opportunity site.

(typing)

So, this image was taken on sol 5,106,

and you can see
the sun is a big bright spot.

But you can see only three sols later
the sun has completely disappeared.

Yeah.

This is really scary.

♪ ♪

BOYKINS:
There's this dust storm coming for Oppy.

Now, we've survived
other dust storms on Mars.

Opportunity has survived.

But a few days into it, I think, uh,
people began to realize

that it was different
than anything we've ever experienced.

(wind howling)

NARRATOR: The dust storm that is affecting
Opportunity has greatly intensified.

A spacecraft emergency was declared,
anticipating a low-power fault.

(beeping, buzzing)

FRAEMAN:
And then she went dark.

But we all said, "We know what to do.

"We have our little dust storm playbook,

"and we're gonna try everything
we possibly can

to reestablish communication
with Opportunity."

ELLISON: At this point,
wake-up songs had kind of went away.

But we then brought the tradition back
in the hope that maybe singing will help.

♪ Jitterbug... ♪

And we would play them every time
we were trying to wake the rover up.

♪ Wake me up before you go-go ♪

♪ Don't leave me hanging on like a yo-yo ♪

♪ Wake me up before you go-go ♪

♪ I don't wanna miss it
when you hit that high ♪

(faintly over speaker):
♪ You put the boom-boom into my heart... ♪

(wind howling)

NARRATOR:
Sol 5,176.

It has been over 60 sols
since we lost contact with Opportunity.

It may be weeks before the sky is clear.

♪ Don't leave me hanging on like a yo-yo ♪

♪ Wake me up before you go-go ♪

♪ I don't wanna miss it
when you hit that high... ♪

NARRATOR:
Sol 5,210.

After almost 100 sols
without contact,

the team is waiting with anticipation
to hear from Opportunity.

♪ I wanna hit that high ♪

♪ Yeah, yeah ♪

♪ You take the gray skies out of my way ♪

♪ You make the sun shine brighter
than Doris Day... ♪

NARRATOR:
It has now been more than six months

since last contact with Opportunity.

The dust storm is finally over.

MANNING:
So, I had hopes that she would just...

(makes whooshing sound) ...wake up
and say, "Oh, we're-we're alive."

♪ Everything will be all right. ♪

(song ends)

But it just didn't happen.

SIEGFRIEDT:
She has autonomy on board

to wake up at certain times,

and we know when that alarm will go off,

so we earthlings can try
and communicate with her.

So, every day at that time,
we would try and try.

NARRATOR: ...we have begun
commanding more aggressively.

We are listening every day
for Opportunity to talk to us.

(static droning)

♪ ♪

SIEGFRIEDT: So, NASA declared
we were gonna try one last time

to try and communicate with Opportunity
and wake her up.

ELLISON: We were just staring out onto
the floor of what's called the Dark Room.

That's where we...
you know, for a decade and a half,

all the commands
had been sent to both rovers.

♪ ♪

It's like, "Just wake up.

"We'll make it all better.

And we'll get back to exploring."

(static droning)

SIEGFRIEDT:
Seconds go by,

a minute goes by,
and at that point, we know.

FRAEMAN:
And I just had the most vivid flashback

to landing night,

standing there
as a 16-year-old in that same room

and just realizing
what I wanted to do with my life.

-(Fraeman chuckles)
-(cheering)

But the journey was over.

And it all just kind of hit me at once.

SQUYRES: The operations team said, "Hey,
we wanted to give you the opportunity

to pick the final rover wake-up song."

I had never picked a rover wake-up song,

and I really wanted to pick
something that felt right.

And in the end, the song that I picked was

about the ending of a relationship.

And it's... (stifled sobs)

("I'll Be Seeing You" by Billie Holiday
playing)

It's this feeling of gratitude
for the relationship that we had.

(indistinct chatter over phone)

MER project off the net.

♪ ♪

♪ I'll be seeing you ♪

♪ In all the old familiar places... ♪

SQUYRES:
I don't have to tell you guys we get...

emotionally attached
to these vehicles, right?

I... You know, you use a word
like "love" advisedly, but... (sighs)

we love these rovers.

BOYKINS:
As a parent, I'm proud.

We rewrote the history books.

But as a human being, I'm really sad.

Because she was a friend.

♪ I'll find you ♪

♪ In the morning sun ♪

SQUYRES: The whole project was
bound together by that feeling of love.

♪ And when the night is new... ♪

You're loving the rover,

and you're loving the people
who you built it with.

You're loving the people
who you operated it with

and tended it with you so lovingly
for so many years.

ELLISON:
To each and every one of us,

it has been the privilege of a lifetime.

And, uh...

you-you don't... you don't get
an adventure like that twice.

♪ I'll be seeing you... ♪

NARRATOR:
Sol 5,352.

15 years into the mission.

Since the very first day,

when she rolled herself
into a hole in one at Eagle Crater,

Opportunity has affectionately
been called the lucky rover.

And now, after receiving
13,744 command files

and lasting 5,262 sols

past her original retirement age
of 90 sols,

Opportunity's incredible journey
has come to its end.

Good night, Opportunity.

Well done.

♪ I'll be looking at the moon ♪

♪ But I'll be ♪

♪ Seeing you. ♪

(song ends)

BOYKINS:
This arc of exploration,

which is anchored
in Spirit and Opportunity...

...now leads to the next rover.

♪ ♪

Perseverance will be the granddaughter
of Spirit and Opportunity.

Her essence is built on the backbone
of those rovers in front of her.

SIEGFRIEDT:
Milo, you ready to launch the rocket?

(giggling)

♪ ♪

I became pregnant with my second child
when Perseverance was getting built.

And it was almost like
the rover was in a little NICU.

And we were all looking over her--
our next baby.

DERROL NAIL: What a beautiful morning
here on the Space Coast.

-I'm Derrol Nail.
-And I'm Moogega Cooper.

In the 50 minutes leading up to launch,

we will show you
how this mission will reach

and search for ancient microscopic life
on Mars

and test new technologies
critical to the ultimate goal:

future human missions to Mars.

MANNING:
It's part of our tradition.

Is open up peanuts.

Do you want some?

(indistinct chatter)

TREBI-OLLENNU: Some people think
planetary exploration is very foreign,

but I always remind them, you know,
when your forefathers walked the planet,

the first thing they did is
they looked to the heavens.

And what did they see?

Constellations and stars,
wonderful things.

What did they do with that?

They use the heavens...

to come up with a calendar,

to know when to plant
and to know when to harvest.

MAN (over speaker):
Flight mission, copy. It's go time.

TREBI-OLLENNU: And they did it
from the confines of Earth.

So, planetary exploration
has been with us from the beginning,

and we're using it the same way

that our forefathers have done
for generations--

to make life better on Earth.

MAN:
Two, one, zero.

(rumbling)

Release and liftoff.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Milo, look.

-What is it?
-Rocket.

-That's right.
-(laughing)

And the rover.

SIEGFRIEDT:
The rover. That's right.

The rover's inside.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

(music fades)