All language subtitles for The universe S06E04 Crash Landing on Mars

Male narrator: In the beginning,
there was darkness,

and then, bang,

giving birth to an endless
expanding existence

of time, space, and matter.

Every day, new discoveries
are unlocking the mysterious,

the mind-blowing,
the deadly secrets

of a place we call
The Universe.

You're lost on an alien planet.

Food is running low.

Oxygen is running out.

Help is 100 million miles away.

- Mars, it's a lethal place.

Narrator. Where can you hide
from blasts of space radiation?

- Charged particles would be
hitting any astronauts

that we had on the surface.

They would not be protected.

Narrator: How can you stand up
to a deadly dust storm?

- The dust on Mars
could eat away at the fabric

of the space suit.

That would be catastrophic.

Narrator: What will you do
when you run out of air?

- You will die a horrible death.

Narrator: How can you survive
crash-landing on Mars?

Humans crash-landing on Mars.

Struggling to survive
on a hostile world.

It's been a favorite theme
of science-fiction movies.

They got a lot of things wrong.

But NASA
and other space agencies

are planning to send people
to the Red Planet

in the next few decades.

So the questions
of crash-landing and survival

have to be taken seriously.

- Well, think about
what you're trying to do.

You're sending
a mission to Mars.

You're sending it
to an unknown location

with an unknown environment.

All it takes is one thing
to go wrong...

then you've lost
the whole mission.

Narrator: This program,

based on recent
scientific information,

presents one possible scenario

of what might happen
in the near future.

Imagine an international crew
has been selected

to explore Mars
and set the stage

for a permanent base.

In old movies, such crews
were brave, skilled,

and resourceful.

Well, the movies got
that part right.

- The bottom line is that
when you're dealing with

a small group of individuals
forming the crew—

Not a large community,
but a small group of people—

The specific individuals
that you end up selecting

is really very important.

Who would you send to Mars?

Not jacks of all trades
who are aces at none.

You want aces at many trades
on your crew.

- The most important skill among
the crew is that of mechanic.

I would have two of the four
members of the crew

selected primarily
for their ability to fix things.

After mechanic, the most
important skill among the crew

is that of field scientist,

people that are qualified
to follow hints in the geology

to find fossils
or to find places

where we can drill for water.

Okay, in Star Trek terminology,
two Scottys and two Spocks.

Narrator: But here's something
old movies got wrong:

the idea that humans
will fly to Mars

in a single
needle-nosed spaceship.

- Unlike the case in many old
science-fiction movies,

it's actually cheaper
and more efficient

to send a bunch of material
to Mars

on different rocket ships.

If you try to put them
on one rocket ship,

it turns out that that ship
has to be enormous

and probably nuclear-powered,

and there's all sorts of dangers

and problems
associated with that.

Narrator:
In most real-life scenarios,

the Mars astronauts will land
and leave in separate crafts.

The habitat module, or hab,
will be their home

during their 18-month mission
on the Martian surface.

They'll take long-range trips
in a pressurized rover

packed along with them
on the hab.

A smaller rover
for shorter trips

has been pre-positioned
at the landing site

along with
the astronauts' ride home:

the Earth Return Vehicle,
or ERV.

The ERV isn't just waiting
for the astronauts;

it's transforming
Martian resources

into rocket fuel
and breathable air.

- The Earth Return Vehicle
runs a pump

which sucks in the Martian air,
which is 95% carbon dioxide gas,

and we can react
that carbon dioxide gas

with a small amount of hydrogen
that we brought from Earth

to produce a large supply
of methane, fuel, and oxygen.

Your crew of four astronauts
land on Mars

near the Earth Return Vehicle.

They use their habitat
as their laboratory,

as their exploration base,

but when they're done,

they get
in the Earth Return Vehicle,

and they fly back to Earth.

They leave the hab behind
on Mars,

so each time we do this,
we add another hab to the base,

and before you know it,
we've got the beginning

of the first human settlement
on a new world.

- So where should we land
on Mars?

Well, Mars is
a fascinating planet.

There's a lot
of interesting areas.

It might be better, initially,

to choose a region
near the equator,

especially a flat area,

but also near geologically
interesting features.

Narrator: One thing
that mustn't go wrong

is the hab's landing technique,
called aerobraking.

- Aerobraking is the art
of using the friction

of the Martian atmosphere
to slow down the spacecraft.

- Imagine this ball is
the habitat module

entering the Martian atmosphere.

The pole is Mars,
a very skinny Mars.

Now, I could use rockets
to gently slow this thing down

and land at the desired spot,
where this duct tape is,

but that would require
a lot of energy,

which requires fuel,
and that's heavy and expensive.

Instead, we could let
the Martian atmosphere

slow the hab down.

See that?
It's gently slowing down.

And only near the very end,

when it's getting very close
to the surface,

would we turn on
some retrorockets

and use a balloon parachute
called a ballute

to bring it to
the desired location, like that.

Now, the danger is that
if the angle of entry is wrong

or the speed is too fast,
then, in fact, friction

can overwhelm the heat shield,
the aeroshell,

and the hab can burn up
like a meteor

in the Martian atmosphere.

And even a slight miscalculation
can lead to a landing

that's too rough
or in the wrong place.

- There's about a thousand
things that have to happen.

You come in on a heat shield.

You're going quite fast.

You use the friction
of the atmosphere

to help slow you down.

The heat shield—the heat shield
needs to be jettisoned.

You need to aerobrake
through the atmosphere

as much as you can.

You need to pop out a parachute
to slow yourself down.

You probably then need
retrorockets at the bottom.

You need to cut the parachute
and get it away from you.

This is extremely difficult,

among the most difficult things
there is to do.

Narrator: Then, a few miles
above the surface,

something goes very wrong.

The hab hurtles
into a Martian dust devil

of terrifying proportions.

- Dust devils on Mars are
vortices in the atmosphere,

so rapidly spinning columns
of air,

that lift dust
off of the surface

and loft them
into the atmosphere.

Now, on Earth, dust devils may
only be a few hundred feet high,

but on Mars, they can
be three to four miles high.

So they're
simply immense structures.

Narrator: The dust devil
engulfs the hab,

throwing it
dangerously off course.

Tracking stations
from Texas to Kazakhstan

are following the descent,

but Mars is so far away,

it takes 18 minutes
for the hab's transmissions

to reach Earth.

When the signal comes through

that the hab is headed
for a crash-landing,

the astronauts
have already crashed.

But where?

And are they alive or dead?

- There's only one thing
you can do at launch,

and there's only one thing
you can do at landing,

and that's pray.

Narrator: Somewhere on Mars,
the astronauts are alive,

but communications are out.

They can't talk to Earth.

Worse, the dust devil
has taken them far off course.

- When humans first land
on Mars,

it'll be
a truly magnificent event,

one of the most
historic events ever.

But, you know, our astronauts
crash-landed.

So they're gonna step out
not knowing where they are,

what's going on.

- The Sun would be about half
as bright as it is here.

The intensity of sunlight
at the Martian equator

is about the same as that
in Norway on Earth or Alaska.

- In shadow, everything on Mars
would have this kind of

yellowish-brown-reddish hue,

and only things
in direct sunlight

would show
their more true color,

and that's because the light
is being bounced around

amongst all these
reddish dust particles.

- It'll be a wondrous scene,

but they won't have much time
to enjoy it

"cause they need to figure out
where they are,

how to get themselves
to safety,

and what to do.

Narrator: How do you find out
where you are on Mars

without instruments?

These 21st-century astronauts

fall back
on an ancient technique:

celestial navigation.

- The Martian moons,
Phobos and Deimos,

they're both
in equatorial orbits.

The point at which they rise,
that would be due east.

The point at which they set
would be due west.

At their zenith,
to the extent they deviated

from being directly overhead,

that would tell you how far
you were from the equator.

The time of rise and set,

if you compared that
to an almanac,

which you might have
in your computer,

would tell you your longitude.

Narrator:
The results are shocking.

They have crashed
in the eastern half

of the largest canyon
in the solar system.

Discovered in 1971
by the Mariner 9 probe

and named for it,

the Valles Marineris is just
south of the Martian equator,

several times as deep
as the Grand Canyon

and as long as
the continental United States.

The astronauts
are hundreds of miles

from the Earth Return Vehicle,

and there's worse news.

The damaged hab is leaking
oxygen at a critical rate.

It can't be repaired.

The crew could be dead
within days.

It's a near-future scenario
that might happen.

The first humans on Mars are
hundreds of miles off course,

stranded deep in the gigantic
Valles Marineris.

They can't communicate
with Earth,

and their damaged habitat module
is leaking air.

Almost every Mars movie imagines
a breathable atmosphere

in at least one section of Mars

so the actors
can take off their helmets.

But, in fact, Mars' atmosphere
is 95% carbon dioxide

and as thin as Earth's
atmosphere at 100,000 feet.

- I'm often surprised
by how caught up we can be

by sort of this romantic vision
of Mars.

It looks like Utah
or California here.

But the truth is,
it's a lethal place.

Narrator: The astronauts
have one chance,

and they take it.

They assemble the rover,

which has
a three-week air supply.

- A pressurized rover is
sort of your RV.

You are living inside the rover.

It's pressurized,
You're in short sleeves.

You don't have to be wearing
a space suit

while you're driving it
or living or working inside.

Narrator:
The rover is functional,

and Sois
its communication system.

The astronauts radio home
that they're alive.

- If some component
or something goes wrong on it,

there's a backup
that wouldn't lose the mission.

So redundancy can be
a very good thing

or at least the ability
to design for a failure,

if you will.

Narrator: But the conversations
are not like

the constant back and forth
of the Apollo moon missions.

- It's going to fall down
the hill.

You'd better stomp off a good...

- Imagine this ball represents
a message,

a conversation between
an astronaut on the Moon,

me, and Mission Control
in Houston, Texas.

Now, I'm standing a few inches
away from Houston,

but, in reality, the Moon is
240,000 miles away.

Now, radio waves travel
at the speed of light,

186,000 miles per second,

so it's only about three seconds
between "How are you?"

And "I'm fine."

Pretty easy to hold
a conversation.

But Mars is, at minimum,

about 150 times farther away
than the Moon,

so I have to go
all the way over to here.

We can still communicate,
but there's a longer delay.

In reality, the distance
between Earth and Mars

is between 35 million
and 240 million miles.

So the time lag
between "How are you?"

And "I'm fine" can be
between about 6 and 44 minutes.

That's for a complete exchange.

So if there's an emergency,

it can't be dealt with
in real time.

But there's a bigger problem.

Like visible light, radio waves
travel only in a straight line,

and both Earth and Mars rotate
on their axes,

so there are times
when people on the two planets

can't communicate
with each other.

We can solve this with two
properly positioned satellites.

If there's a satellite
orbiting Mars,

a message can be sent from Mars
to Mission Control in Houston.

It gets sent to that satellite
orbiting Mars,

then to the Earth-orbiting
satellite,

then to Mission Control,
and back again.

Now, there's still a time delay
of up to 44 minutes

between question and answer,

but at least the Mars astronaut
and Mission Control

can formulate a survival plan.

Narrator: Working through
the communication lag,

the plan takes shape.

Load the fuel-cell powered rover
with food and equipment,

and drive it east to where
the Valles Marineris empties

into an outflow valley,

probably carved out
billion of years ago,

when Mars had
a thicker atmosphere

and liquid water
still flowed on its surface.

From this exit point,
it's less than a day's drive

to the Earth Return Vehicle
at the original landing site.

- So you can imagine having
a desperate trip

across the Martian landscape

to get back
to the return vehicle

and, perhaps, do a little bit
of scientific research,

but most importantly,
save yourself

and get back to Earth.

Narrator: Everything depends on
some very cold equations.

Each astronaut has a daily need
for 3 gallons of water,

2,000 calories of food,
and 2 pounds of oxygen.

Survival technology can help.

They can extract water
from Mars itself

using equipment
on board the rover.

- The Mars Odyssey spacecraft
has shown

that average Martian dirt
in the equatorial regions

is 6% water by weight.

So if you want to get water
out of that,

you can just take some of it
and throw it into a pot

like a pressure cooker
with a lid

and heat it to, you know,
150 Centigrade,

and you'd get out the water.

And if you put in
about 2 gallons of dirt,

you'll get out
about a pint of water.

Narrator:
But other human needs

are not so easily supplied
on Mars.

- Certainly
on a two-week journey,

if you had to make it across
the desolate Martian landscape,

you could cut down on food.

You could have
starvation rations.

You can even cut down on water.

But the one thing
that you absolutely need,

minute by minute, is air.

You have no flexibility
in the amount of air

that you need to make it
for a specific amount of time.

Narrator: Despite the need
to get to the ERV,

there is enough air
for several brief EVAS,

or extravehicular activities.

- Part of the reason
for sending people to Mars

would be to do
some compelling science,

so we would imagine them
taking samples, analyzing them,

trying to understand
the environment

when those rocks formed,
things like that.

Astronauts could use
a whole variety of tools:

hammers, hand lenses,
spectrometers of various sorts,

chemical analysis machines.

There'd be probably some
mobile laboratory on the rover

that would use the materials
that they gathered

to look at the composition
and so on.

- There's a number of theories

as to how the Valles Marineris
was created.

It's still not fully clear
how the structure came to be,

but, in most likelihood,

quite a few processes
were involved.

I think that being on the ground
and doing field geology

is essential to really
understanding the processes

that have scoped
a complex land form

like the Valles Marineris.

It's not a simple story.

It wasn't just a crack
in the Earth.

It wasn't just fluid flowed
and formed that.

There were different processes
acting at different times

layering on top of each other,
forming a complex book.

And in order to read that book,

you really need to be there
to turn the pages.

- Valles Marineris has a whole
variety of different segments.

There's places in the middle
that there's one, two, three,

or even four parallel canyons

where you go down and up
and down and up

and down and up.

And then,
at the very eastern end,

it looks like water
came flushing out

through what would be
a chaos zone,

catastrophic floods of water
that might have come out.

Narrator: Was there life
in that water?

Could some of the rock samples
they dig up have enough evidence

of fossilized bacteria?

- Mars was once
a warm and wet planet,

and we know that for a fact

because there are
water erosion features

all over the surface of Mars.

To look for fossils of life,

you want to look
for places where water

has flown or accumulated,

and the Valles Marineris
might be one of those places.

Narrator: Is it even possible
that they will find evidence

of liquid water
under the surface;

and in that water,
living organisms?

- Will life form anywhere
that liquid water is stable?

Or is there a one-in-a-trillion
chance occurrence

that leads to life?

Was there a second genesis
on Mars?

- I think
it's certainly possible

that there's bacterial activity
on Mars now,

but that's by no means certain.

Its—it's a very interesting
current scientific question.

I think it's one of the sort
of most intriguing questions

in solar system science.

Narrator. Suddenly,
the search for life pauses

as the fight
for survival resumes.

Mission Control signals
that a high-risk solar flare

is headed for Mars.

- A solar flare is
a tremendous outburst

from a relatively small region
of the Sun.

A huge amount of energy
goes pouring out explosively,

and a bunch of energetic
charged particles go zooming

through the solar system.

They can interact
with cells and harm them.

Also, high-energy
electromagnetic radiation

like X-rays gets produced,

and those can harm us as well.

So it's wham and then wham again
sometime later.

Narrator: Earth's magnetic field
shields us

from the worst effects
of solar flares.

But Mars lost its magnetic field
4 billion years ago.

- After a solar flare is seen
by people on Earth,

we want to warn
the astronauts on Mars.

Now, we can't warn them
about the electromagnetic flash

because our warning signal
would travel at the same speed

as that flash from the Sun,

but we can warn them about the
onslaught of charged particles.

The high-energy
charged particles can travel,

perhaps, at half the speed
of light.

Narrator. The hab has
a radiation-proof chamber,

but it's now too far away.

While the astronauts'
space suits shielded them

from the solar flare's X-rays,

they have only minutes
to seek shelter

before the flare's high-energy
second wave slams into Mars.

If a future human mission
to Mars crash-lands,

the astronauts
will have to contend

with even more than
the harsh Martian landscape.

A solar flare of charged protons

would be far more dangerous here
than on Earth.

- Well, Mars doesn't have
a magnetic field

like the Earth does,

so all of these
high-energetic particles

and these charged particles

would be hitting
the surface directly

and hitting any astronauts
that we had on the surface.

They would not be protected
from all of these dangerous rays

and these dangerous particles,

whereas on Earth,
we're comfortably protected

by our magnetic field.

There are a number
of bad effects

that would come about
from the energetic particles

hitting an astronaut
on the surface.

Increased rates of cancer,
for example, or other diseases,

radiation sickness,
and radiation poisoning.

- In fact, astronauts aboard
the space station

have occasionally been told
to hide in special chambers

that protect them against
the charged particles

and radiation coming
from a solar flare.

Narrator:
For the astronauts

in the middle
of the Valles Marineris,

the only shelter is
their pressurized rover.

The rover's primary radiation
shielding isn't lead.

It's the food packets
lining the walls,

along with the astronauts'
own waste material.

- Feces contain hydrocarbons,

and hydrocarbons
contain hydrogen,

and hydrogen is a very good
absorber of radiation.

Hydrogen that you have
in the form of food

before it's consumed
will help shield you

from some portion
of this radiation.

And certainly,
once you've consumed the food,

you want to put your feces
in these little seal able Ziplocs

and back on the wall
of your vehicle

to shield you from radiation.

Narrator: If you're going to
survive in space,

almost nothing can go to waste,

not even waste.

With the immediate crisis over,

the journey to the Earth
Return Vehicle continues.

Then something unexpected
happens.

The astronauts take a vote
and change the plan.

Rather than using the ERV to fly
home 500 days ahead of schedule,

they will stay
and complete the mission.

- The team back
at Johnson Space Center

is gonna have
much less knowledge

of the circumstance of the crew

and the real options
open to them

than the crew themselves have.

So I think that a Mars mission

is gonna have to be commanded
from the front

and that, rather than having
a mission control,

we need to have
a mission support.

Narrator:
The astronauts' new plan

is to make it
to the Earth Return Vehicle

and use it in place of the hab
as their base of operations.

- It's much smaller
than the hab,

but it has a power supply,

and it has the ability
to make extra oxygen.

So the crew could, in fact,
go to the Earth Return Vehicle

and live in it
and work out of it.

Narrator: The astronauts'
confidence in their survival

shoots up as they reach
the outflow channel

at the eastern edge
of Valles Marineris.

There's enough food, water,
and air

to make an easy drive
to the ERV.

Then an astronaut sees
something unusual...

An exposed layer of rock
that looks like it might contain

something called stromatolites.

- On Earth, we had bacteria,
and not just individual bacteria

but bacteria
that formed colonies,

which created rocks
known as stromatolites.

These are, you might call,
the bacterial equivalent

of coral reefs,
where tiny organisms

build up something big.

This would be a logical thing
to look for on Mars.

- Stromatolites on Earth provide
the kind of evidence

that we would expect to see
on Mars, not in that exact form,

but it's the basic idea.

Stromatolites were sort of
mats of algae

and then silicate-like material
that built up

and formed
macroscopic structures,

which were then preserved.

If something like that
was going on on Mars,

that would provide an easy way
of determining

that life did indeed
exist there.

Narrator: Many science-fiction
films are based on the idea

that we'll find evidence of
advanced civilizations on Mars.

Mars has no cities
or grand structures.

But astronauts may yet find
evidence of life on Mars...

Even if it's only fossils
of bacteria.

With the rock samples loaded in,
the rover tries to head off...

but goes nowhere.

One wheel is stuck.

The astronauts cannot free it.

- Sand is sort of
the death trap of Mars,

and I wouldn't be surprised if,
you know, in future expeditions,

we end up losing some crews

that are on these long
pressurized rover traverses

to sand traps.

Narrator: They calculate the
remaining distance to the ERV.

Could they walk to safety?

A space suit's full tank of air
will only last 12 hours.

It would take 30 hours
of continuous walking.

- On the Earth, you can get
stuck when you are doing

all-terraining in sandy areas,

but, of course, on the Earth,

you can just step outside
the vehicle and breathe.

On Mars,
you won't have that option,

so if your vehicle is stuck,

and there's no way to get it out
of its predicament,

you're gonna watch yourself die.

Narrator: In our scenario
of what might go wrong

for the first human mission
to Mars,

the astronauts' rover is trapped
in the Martian sand.

The Earth Return Vehicle is
100 miles away.

Are the astronauts facing
certain death,

or can they save themselves
once again

with pre-industrial technology?

- So let's say the crew
was stranded,

and they need to get
at least one person

a considerable distance
to secure another vehicle

and come back and rescue
the rest.

Could they do this
with balloons?

It's just possible.

Narrator: Engineers on Earth
run tests to see if a balloon

could carry
at least one astronaut

over the desert to the ERV.

- You could do this by
stretching a synthetic membrane

of some sort around a pocket
of the surrounding air,

just carbon dioxide.

And then you'd have to heat
the air inside

in order to give it
some buoyancy.

Now, one way of doing that is
having solar heating,

effectively have the membrane
absorb solar energy,

heat the carbon dioxide inside.

It then expands,
becomes buoyant,

and lifts the balloon up.

- Any balloon that you would
construct or fabricate on Mars

would have to be very large
to compensate

for the very low-density
atmosphere.

- The Martian atmosphere is
very thin.

It's less than 1%
of Earth's atmospheric pressure

at sea level.

That means that to get
substantial lift,

you need an enormous balloon.

- A balloon that is 10 meters
in radius is probably enough

for one astronaut
in a space suit.

Why would a crew on Mars have
a balloon that big?

They probably wouldn't,

but they might have
a large number of balloons

used for scientific purposes
that were smaller than that.

Narrator: The risky plan is
put into action.

In a makeshift harness,

one astronaut rises
into the Martian sky.

A mile up, winds blow her
towards the ERV

at 60 miles an hour.

- On Mars, the prevailing winds
near the surface

blow from west to east,

and we want to go
from west to east.

So that's good for us.

- One of the big problems with
this scenario is the precision

at which you could hope to reach
your destination.

But if you could then come down
within hiking distance

of your destination...

it'd take some luck,
but it's possible.

Narrator: Mars has only 38%
of Earth's gravity.

Science-fiction movies
usually forget that fact

and have astronauts operate
in normal Hollywood gravity.

The truth is, even with
the heavy space suits

worn during
extra vehicular activity,

hiking on Mars will be easier
than on Earth.

- Let's say you're
a 150-pound person

and you put
on a 200-pound suit.

That's 350 pounds.

But then, if you only weigh
38% of that, okay,

then your weight is maybe
120 pounds with the suit.

So you actually have less
of a burden

walking with that suit on Mars

than you have walking
in your stockings on Earth.

Narrator: The astronaut
lands successfully

and manages to hike
to the ERV

and the two-person rover.

Everything's in working order.

- So one of the astronauts gets
into a dune buggy rover,

comes back
to the pressurized rover,

takes one of the astronauts,

brings that astronaut
to the Earth Return Vehicle,

then goes back and forth
a couple more times

to get all the astronauts
over to safety.

Narrator: That's the plan.

But then a new danger arises:

a storm of red dust.

- The Sun would get dimmer
in the sky,

and it would continue
to build and build,

and you'd see,
from horizon to horizon,

this very thick dusty,
swirly mass in the atmosphere.

Narrator: But what causes
dust storms on Mars?

That's what Lisa Abdelfatah

of Anaheim, California,
emailed...

- Lisa, you might be surprised
to learn

that dust storms on Mars
are actually caused

by energy from the Sun.

The Sun heats the dust
in the surface of Mars

and also the atmosphere,
causing it to expand

and causing convection currents
to occur,

and there are differences
in pressure

between one pocket of air
and another.

That leads to winds.

Then more dust gets kicked up
and more heating

and more of these
pressure differences,

$0 you get
these violent dust storms.

- The dust on Mars could be
very hazardous to astronauts

for a number of reasons.

Because there's no water
on Mars,

the individual grains are
not smooth and rounded like—

like you would see on a beach
here on Earth.

They're actually very sharp
and jagged.

As that dust gets kicked up

as the astronaut's walking
or moving,

it gets caught
on the space suit.

And, over time,
due to friction—

let's say the astronaut's
moving arms or his legs—

It begins to eat away
at the fabric of the space suit.

So you could easily get a tear
or a rip in the space suit,

and that would be catastrophic.

Narrator:
Despite the dangers,

the astronaut takes
the small rover,

loaded with extra oxygen,
out into the storm.

And one by one,
she brings her crew mates

back to
the Earth Return Vehicle.

But just a few feet
from safety...

the abrasive dust

tears a section
of the commander's suit,

exposing him to the near vacuum
of the Martian atmosphere.

- If—if your space suit
springs a leak,

or if it's
a violent decompression,

where your suit is ripped open,

you might not have
more than a few seconds

to remain conscious

and see what's going
to happen to you.

- You would be
in a very bad way.

It would be not dissimilar to
coming up from a very deep dive

on the Earth.

It would be
a very painful experience.

- If you have
a decompression problem,

then—then it can be
very serious and lethal.

You will die a horrible death
and very quickly as well.

Narrator: Unless his crew mates
can do something immediately,

the commander will be the first
human corpse on Mars.

In our scenario
of the near future,

the first explorers on Mars
have survived a near-fatal crash

and a dangerous trek
across a hostile planet.

But now,
a storm of abrasive dust

has torn a hole in the mission
commander's space suit.

It's the one thing
the astronauts fear

above everything else.

- You've got 10 or 12 seconds
before you lose consciousness.

You'd better exhale right away,

empty your lungs,
'cause otherwise

they'll quickly expand
and rupture.

Narrator: 12 seconds
after his suit tore,

the commander is unconscious.

His skin is turning blue.

His crew mates have
less than 90 seconds

to get him
through the ERV's airlock

and administer emergency oxygen

before his blood circulation
ceases

and his organs
shut down forever.

- After you've lost
consciousness,

you hope that someone will hook
you up to pressurized oxygen

within the next minute
and a half.

If you don't get hooked up,
you'll die for sure.

If you do get hooked up,

and you start
breathing oxygen again,

it turns out that,
when you come to,

there's usually
not much permanent damage.

Narrator: The commander survives
with seconds to spare.

Despite his injuries,
he will make a full recovery.

Soon, the crew is back
to full strength,

working
and performing experiments.

The exploration of Mars
has begun in earnest.

- Mars, to me, will challenge,

all the expeditionary
experiences that we've had

throughout our history.

It will take
all the best lessons learned

from all past expeditions,

the polar ones,
the ones through the jungles,

the ones through North America.

Mars is
a super-challenging place.

It's very unforgiving.

- Here on Earth,
if things go wrong,

we can rely on there being air
to breathe and water to drink.

On Mars,
if something goes wrong,

then the situation is
automatically much more serious.

Narrator: But the astronauts
have proven that they can adapt

to the Martian environment.

Like polar explorers,
they protect themselves

from the frigid temperatures.

Like desert explorers,

they learn to live
with the ever-present dust.

- In our own desert station
that the Mars society runs,

we brought out
a really superb microscope,

but it was disabled by dust

within a few weeks
of its arrival.

On the other hand,

some much cruder kind
of microscopes,

similar to the kind that
college students use routinely,

have proved very robust.

In a frontier environment,

you don't want to bring
a racehorse.

You want to bring a mule.

Narrator: Not everything on Mars
is more difficult than on Earth.

The surface winds,
for instance, are mild,

too weak to threaten the
astronauts or their instruments.

- The Martian atmosphere
is only 1% as thick

as Earth's atmosphere,
and so if you're on the ground

and a 60-mile-an-hour wind
kicked up,

you would only feel the force
of a 6-mile-an-hour wind.

- We have here an anemometer,
or wind gauge,

which helps us measure
the wind speed.

It's a very simple design,
really.

You've got these cups on top

that capture the wind
as it blows by

and causes the cups to spin.

You simply count the number
of rotations of the cups,

and it gives you the wind speed.

It's a very simple design,

very much the same as the one
that was invented

back in the 1800s,

except, of course,
with this digital readout.

- Well, let's see if we can get
some wind here.

Oh, there we got some.

Oh, here comes a gust.

- Because the atmosphere is
so much less dense

and you have
far fewer molecules of air

sort of blowing
on the anemometer,

you would need
a 20-mile-an-hour wind on Mars

to feel
what a 2-mile-an-hour wind

would feel like on Earth.

So you can see the wind
that's blowing at that speed

is sort of lightly mussing
your hair.

If you were to have this
on Mars,

a similar wind speed
that would give you

the same sort of effect
would be

about a 70-mile-an-hour wind.

So that's hurricane speed.

Narrator: The astronauts do more
than adapt to Mars.

They extract water
from the surface

and use Martian soil
to grow food.

- Now, in terms of growing food,

the things that can be grown
most easily

are leafy things like lettuce.

At a certain point, you're gonna
want to grow potatoes,

which can create
a great deal of starch

per square meter of farmland.

Narrator: A year ago on Mars,

four humans struggled
to survive.

Now they are beginning to make
a planet bloom.

But it's only a beginning.

For over a century,

movies have perpetuated
the idea

and the hope

that there's intelligent life
on Mars.

There isn't.. .yet.

But sometime
late in this century,

two people from Earth
might give birth

to the first Martian...

who may be the first
of many more.

We will be the Martians.

But that's the future.

For this first mission,
time is running short.

Earth and Mars are at the right
alignment for the journey home.

The astronauts look forward
to splashing down

in the warm waters
of the Pacific Ocean.

As they head back
to that bright, blue ball

in the star-sprinkled blackness,

another streak of light
heads the other way.

It's the second manned mission,

heading for a rendezvous
with another pre-positioned ERV.

- There's plenty of risks

associated with
a human Mars mission.

But if you look at
human history,

you know, one thing is clear.

Nothing great has ever been
accomplished without risk,

and nothing great has ever been
accomplished without courage.

If we sent humans to Mars
in our time,

if we establish that little
Plymouth Rock settlement

on Mars in our time, which is
what is within our capability,

then 500 years from now,
there will be new branches

of the human civilization
on Mars

and on many worlds beyond.

It's the birth of the future.