All language subtitles for Astronomy-A Traveller Guide to Mars-EN

[Music]

have you ever fantasized about going
somewhere special somewhere far from

crowds off the beaten track somewhere out
of this world is it time to catch a

rocket to the red planet Mars is filled
with mysteries volcanoes seventy-five

thousand feet tall huge canyons three thousand
miles across and six miles deep all kinds of

interesting features awaiting you is
some of the greatest scenery in our

solar system on a world where water once
ruled then vanished into thin air we're

lost microbe empires may still survive
underground we've seen the postcards and

we do wish we were there just the
thought of being in this new world

casino landscape that no other person had
seen before I think there are a lot of
astronauts that would sign up to that

but don't be fooled nothing about going
to Mars will be easy danger awaits you

on this desolate beauty and perhaps Martians
too if we find on Mars evidence

of a second independent origin of life that's
hugely profound because it tells us right
away that life is common in the

universe Mars invaded by a robot and perhaps soon

by an earthling like you what I like to go to
Mars oh and a heartbeat absolutely there was

any way for me to be going Mars I wouldn't be screwing
around with robots you know I'd want to go myself

there has never been a better time to
boldly go where no human has gone before

to follow in the footsteps of our robot
pioneers and visit the planets of the

solar system [Music]

[Music]
Mars

it's been said that the first person on
Mars is alive somewhere on earth today

imagine it's you what do you need to
know how might you get there and what

should you pack what are some of the must-see
sites and what should you avoid

think of this as your personal travel
guide to exploring the red planet Mars

has always had a mystique

it's one of the easier planets to spot
in the night sky a constant dot of red

light moving through the heavens and
now we know for sure that of all the

planets this red rocky one
is the most similar to home

here are polar caps and sun-baked
deserts giant volcanoes and mighty

canyons Mars even spins at about the
same speed as Earth making a Martian day

only about 40 minutes longer than ours
although it's further out from the Sun
and takes twice as long to circle it the

long Martian year has identifiable seasons
and what's more our two planets

share a common childhood in many ways
it's a sister of the earth it was formed

at roughly the same time about 4.5 billion
years ago with a little change here and there

it also was formed to the same sorts
of materials bombarded by comets and

asteroids so it has the same delivery system we

have

could life have been forged in the same
way on both planets when we sent the

first probes to investigate in the
1960s almost anything was possible

originally in the popular imagination we
thought that Mars might be inhabited by
whole civilizations building canals and

so on and then the Mariner flyby missions
really painted a very grim

black and white view of Mars is being
barren the pictures and data recorded by

Mariner 4 reviewed Mars to be a cold
barren planet still NASA was eager to

look for signs of life in 1976 the Viking
spacecraft arrives from Earth for

our first close encounter and there
are still hopes of a welcoming

committee [Music]

but both Viking spacecraft send back
photos of nothing but rocks and sand we

had cameras so obviously if there was a
yucca plant or I was hoping there'd be a

freeway in the distance but what the main
thrust of Viking was actually was some
chemical laboratories and they

looked for the chemical signs of life
even the dirt seems devoid of life there

was always a chance that when they were so
busy looking for microbes there could be a
large organism looking over their

shoulder that they completely missed but
now we have enormous amount of imagery
that shows nothing like a large organism

there are no cats running around there no
Bisons there no palm trees it seems
Mars is not the kind of planet

that gives up its secrets easily but if

you dig a little deeper you soon find that
this is a world worthy of a closer

look

[Music]
Mars Facts

there are some basic things you should
know about Mars before leaving home

most days will be clear and sunny and
cold the average temperature on Mars is

as bitter as midwinter in Antarctica at
about half the diameter of the earth

Mars is a handy size but it's much less
dense than Earth with about a third of

the gravity surprisingly the actual
surface area is almost exactly the same

as all the dry land on Earth shrunk together
without the oceans build a few

freeways and you could drive around Mars
in a couple of weeks and driving around

Mars is exactly what planetary scientist
Steve Squyres has been doing since 2004

not in person but via NASA's two off-road
robot Rovers Spirit and

Opportunity [Music]

for all of us here on earth the snapshots
sent back by these forward

Scouts are the next best thing to standing
on Mars in a spacesuit we very

consciously gave these robots some human-like
qualities the cameras are

about this high off the ground they're
the same height as human eyes it's the

visual experience that you get from looking
at the rover's pictures are in is intentionally
like what you would get

if you were looking at the visor of
your your helmet in a spacesuit on Mars I

really think that if you put somebody on
my team who's been part of this mission

for so long down at Eagle crater or on the summit of

husband Hill you'd look around and say yeah
that's about that's about right that's what
I expected in the four

decades since our robots first arrived
the once fuzzy ball at the end of our

telescopes has steadily focused into
a red planet we can understand

and it's not a welcoming place the

problem is the atmosphere is so thin and
cold that water exists only as solid ice

in the ground or vapor in the air not as
a liquid on the surface you might see

some fine wispy clouds high in the sky
but don't bother bringing an umbrella

the whole planet is drier than the dustiest
desert on earth and there hasn't been
a drop of rain here for

millions perhaps billions of years the

thing that fascinated me was that we could
see valleys snaking across the

surface that had clearly been carved by
flowing water so this is telling us that

in the past it was different and not only
that it was different in a way that would
have made it more suitable for

life than it is today and that I found
truly compelling we are very convinced

that at one time was a very hospitable
planet with liquid water and enough

atmosphere to sustain a climate and
so now we're trying to understand

how did it change why did it change
and what still might be on Mars

these are deep Martian mysteries if Mars
and Earth started as sister planets did

life once festoon the Martian surface
might it still be there and where did

all the atmosphere and water go solving

these puzzles has challenged our planetary
explorers from the moment the first Martian
postcards were sent back

to earth it's the fact that it is so
much like Earth that kind of makes Mars

such a special place
Mars Hill

Steve Squyres Martian Odyssey has taken
him from pole to pole visiting those

places on earth that share at least some
of the same characteristics they are
extremely dry extremely cold or

extremely dead Death Valley is one of
his favorites this is actually a really

important place it's a place we call Mars
Hill we first found this place about
20 years ago in those days the

only successful landings that had taken place
on Mars were the two Viking landers and they
landed in places that

looked very much like this in order to

plan for the current Mars mission and to test
the cameras and other equipment NASA needed a
good Mars look-alike they

found it at Mars Hill to your eyes the
main way in which Mars would look

different from this scene would be the
color the color of the sky and the color
of the rocks and the color of the soil

the colors on Mars are painted from a
very narrow palette the color palette

here is based on rust rich in iron oxides
the rocks and soil and the rusty

dust are always blowing around and
the freeze-dried atmosphere

you won't see any blue skies in the tourist
brochures for Mars instead their

amber not only do the dust particles add
a rosy blush to the sky they also

scatter sunlight in a way that turns the
color of the Martian sky upside down to
human eyes red by day and blue at dawn

and dusk this is a sunset as seen by

spirit a cold blue Sun dropping over a
distant alien horizon looking up into

the clear starry skies from the surface you
would see Mars as two tiny moons Phobos and
the smaller damos with all

the grace of a space potato and barely 17 miles
long Phobos has been targeted

as a potential stepping-stone for the
first human mission to Mars a test run

before attempting the fuel hungry and
risky trip to the planet below

[Music] dreaming about Mars and actually going

there are two very different things Mars
may be our neighbor but 35 million

miles to the closest point is still
a very long way from home
Getting to Mars

to put humans on the surface of Mars someone
watched joke there are only three issues
getting them there keeping

him alive while they're there and getting
him back our space-age dreams of

offworld colonies on the Moon and Mars faded
with the cancellation of the Apollo program
and the last trip to the

lunar surface in 1972 it didn't
stop us from traveling

we simply switched from astronauts to
lower cost lower risk robotic explorers

and when it comes to Mars it's
probably just as well

getting to Mars is just unbelievably
hard we've learned that the hard way

before certainly gives you go back to the days
before the rover has launched 2/3 and the
missions that have been

falling to Mars had failed and they failed
for all kinds of reasons rockets that blew
up and and spacecraft that

just vanished it's partly without a trace
in fact landing on Mars has always

been hit or miss but so has blasting off

from Earth at exactly the right time the

right time to go to Mars basically the only
time to go to Mars is when Earth and Mars
are properly aligned with one

another you have to wait for them to get into
just the right position to go from point A to
point B and you've got to be

on the launch pad ready to go when that launch
window is open and if you miss your opportunity
you don't get the

chance try again for 26 months for

one engine start [Music]

if you are ever lucky enough to book a flight
on the first rocket to the Red Planet you'd
better be sure you've packed

everything the one-way trip is at least
six months with no turning back if

you've forgotten something we can go to
the moon and get back in a week it takes

about three years go to Mars and come
back you have to carry your food you

have to recycle your breathing oxygen
and your water so it's a very very major

undertaking [Music] within about
three days the earth looks

very small and within a week it's just
another star and you suddenly are going

to realize you're in very deep space and
it's gonna be a long time before you can
go back before we take this giant leap
Landing on Mars

we need to be able to carry everything
needed for a three year round trip with

us this is a much larger effort than

getting to the moon it's the Apollo
mission on steroids at this point we

know at least as much as the engineers knew at
the time if they agreed to land on the moon

and they had only nine years so I think
once the nation decides they really want

to land humans on Mars the system can
be designed and developed and built

fast forward to the future after six
months crossing the blackness of space

things suddenly get a lot more interesting
the combination of a high

approach speed a thin atmosphere and twice
the gravity of the moon makes Mars

one of the hardest places to land in the
solar system even for robots you hit the

top the Martian atmosphere you go unmarked
27 times the speed of sound

and for our vehicles between when we hit
the top the Martian atmosphere and when
we were bouncing on the surface with the

airbags with six minutes it's a hell of a
racket you use a heat shield to slow

you down to a leisurely Mach to twice the
speed of sound and we threw out a supersonic
parachute everything is

complex and everything has to
happen precisely on time

the worst part is when you come into contact
with the Martian surface there's no runway
okay there's no nice place to

land and you can't control very well where
you're going to come down so you're gonna
come down in a field of

rocks like this how do you guarantee that
you're a billion-dollar spacecraft

is actually going to survive that the
approach that worked for us with our

Rovers was great big airbags bounce bounce
bounce bounce bounce finally the vehicle
comes to rest Vikings used

rocket motors and they just touched down gently
on the surface and they were fortunate it was
just good luck they

landed in a field of boulders like this but they
didn't land with one that was poking through the
belly and it all worked you have to be good and

you have to be lucky a safe arrival is your

passport to a dangerous new world this is a
planet where the atmosphere is your

enemy and even the dust is dangerous

[Music]
Exploring on Mars

want to step outside to take in the scenery or pick
up some rocks as familiar as it might look beyond the

porthole Mars is dangerously alien the
upside is that the low gravity will give

you super jumping abilities the down the
almost complete lack of an atmosphere

this is not home there is nothing here to breathe

to find similar conditions of low temperature
and pressure on earth you have to travel
three times higher than a

commercial airplane to the very edge of space [Music]

planetary scientist Bob Brown shows
why you should keep your helmet on when

visiting Mars we have this just a beaker
full of water we're going to put it in

this little chamber and attach a vacuum

hose to the chamber and all the air out of the chamber

as the pressure drops two Martian levels
the water boils at room temperature

so if you were to take your helmet off on Mars the
liquid in your face especially it would start to boil

and much the same as this liquid water started to boil
and I guess I don't have to describe what that might

feel like or what it might look like a medical
travel advisory might say to keep your suit

tightly fitted but so far no one's built
a suit that'll work on Mars existing

spacesuits are simply too bulky too
heavy and too complicated to wear for

the sort of regular activity required
on the unforgiving surface of Mars

[Music]

like Steve Squyres planetary scientist
Chris McKay roams the remote Mars like

regions of Earth here in Australia's arid
Flinders Ranges he hunts for the

extreme ways of living that we might find
on Mars organisms like the bacteria

that makes the green smudge inside these
white desert stones if I was trying to

do on Mars what I'm doing here the biggest
problem would be a suit that I could use
to go outside something we

take for granted here and we get up in the
morning I put on a shirt and a pair of jeans
and out I go so it's got to be

routine easy to use many times I've been
working out in the field in the

Antarctic or the Arctic and I just have to take the
gloves off if I'm doing something that requires that

quintessential human capability of touch
and feel and whole so my request to the

engineers is give me a spacesuit with
gloves that'll keep me warm and keep me

pressurized but still allow me to use my hands

not only will you want to move your
fingers you'll want to move around

NASA's Lunar electric Rover is a prototype
for future missions to the Moon and Mars
it's part vehicle and part

spacesuit I can just picture being there
and in a vehicle of this type and looking
back at Earth in the distance

deciding to go a VA and being boots on the
surface in ten minutes which should just
be a remarkable breakthrough

astronauts can cover more ground by living
in the vehicle for weeks at a time stepping
outside when they want to

and back inside at the first sign of
danger Mars does not have a powerful
Dangers on Mars

magnetic field the way earth does so there's
radiation from the Sun also cosmic rays that
are gonna penetrate

through space suits an astronaut might
get a 30 minute warning of an incoming

solar storm but less predictable is the
risk of being hit by a meteorite recent

estimates based on fresh crater counts
suggest that up to 200 new holes are

blasted into the surface of Mars each
year and even the Martian moons are not

guaranteed to stay in place the days of
Phobos are numbered possibly

an asteroid that once strayed too close the moon is
trapped in a fatal gravitational embrace every passing

century sees it dropped six feet closer
to death in about 50 million years its

fall is expected to be complete the

aftermath if anyone is around to see it
could be Mars with a bright ring of moon

dust to rival Saturn's but events like

this are not your real danger it's the
day-to-day exposure to the cold dry

Martian environment that will make a
long stay tricky it was a hundred and

nineteen degrees Fahrenheit here yesterday really really
really hot day on Mars that would get up to about 30

degrees Fahrenheit and at night it goes
to more than hundred below Martian

deserts are both frozen and sun-baked
with no ozone layer UV levels are so

high that any unprotected organism even
a Martian microbe will be burnt to a

crisp within minutes a good hat
is just not going to cut it

so why not leave all the dirty work of
exploring Mars to robots one thing about

humans is that they have a capability to
improvise on the spot even if you don't
have the right tools

with you that robots lack in Death
Valley this stuff was wet it got dry

when it dried a crack we're investigating
the idea that something

similar happened on Mars you know I'd
love to be able to do this on Mars and

we can't but you know human on the scene
can improvise pretty well getting down

and dirty on Mars will mean exactly that
moon dust caused enough problems for the

Apollo astronauts without an atmosphere
to blow it around on Mars dust is going

to be a serious problem Mars is a dusty
place in fact it's a lot worse than this

when you think Martian dust you shouldn't
think sand it's more like cigarette smoke
very very fine-grained

stuff and he gets everywhere coats everything
people are gonna breathe it in it's gonna get
into the habitats it's

gonna get on people's spacesuits and their
clothing it's gonna be a real challenge
and I think they're gonna have

to devote a lot of effort to to finding ways
to deal with that dust because it's it's a
it's it's horrible stuff

[Music]

when an ill wind blows on the red planet
dust really does go everywhere about

once every three years local storms go global and
the dust can block your view for months it happened

the very first time we sent a probe into
orbit in 1971 when Mariner 9 got to the

planet there was a giant dust storm that had
completely shrouded the surface from it they
could see nothing nothing just

dust and as the dust started to recede all
sudden these dots appeared there's

three of them lined up what the heck are
those turned out to be the peaks of the
three great volcanoes on Mars

and that's when we can to realize just
help bury the terrain in topography of

Mars was this was the moment that Mars
began to reveal itself a world with a

secret history and the spectacular
scenery to match tired of the earth

scenic sites the Himalaya is not high
enough the Grand Canyon too small try
the red planet for

sightseeing on an enormous scale [Music]
Scenery on Mars

thanks to our sharp-eyed spacecraft Mars
is opening up like never before

these are real landscapes that humans
will one day marvel at in person you

know if you're going to Mars you'd want to go
for the scenery right I mean you're not going
for the culture you're not going for the climate
so you definitely want to go for the scenery

one thing that people forget is that when
we've landed on Mars we have to go

to places that are safe and safe equals
pretty smooth and flat there are places

where the scenery on Mars is just breathtaking [Music]

here's a bit of Mars that's anything but
smooth and flat the Magnificent valleys

Marineris this titanic canyon system
over two and a half thousand miles long

and six miles beep is probably the
grandest geological feature in the solar

system it's clearly the red planet's
must-see destination as a human being

it's the sheer gigantism of Mars that
is amazing the Valles Marineris is beats

the Grand Canyon Hollow and if you've
ever seen the Grand Canyon you will

never forget it it's so colossal the
Grand Canyon would be easily swallowed

by one of the smaller side branches we're
talking about something here that's the
width the United States or of

Australia crossed here so I think
the Valles Marineris would be

the place to go I mean build a lodge right on
the rim so you can look in the attraction goes

beyond sheer scenic splendor deeper
than the canyon itself is the mystery

surrounding its formation this giant
fissure once filled by mighty

lakes has been scoured by floods
of biblical proportions

you can make estimates of how much water
had to have been flowing to carve these

things and you get numbers like a hundred
two hundred Amazon rivers all cut loose at
once big big amounts of water flowing across

the surface the other big attraction on

Mars is the largest volcano and highest
mountain in the solar system Olympus

Mons towers at an astounding 17 miles
three times higher than Everest its base

covers more ground than the United Kingdom
and the massive caldera at its summit could
easily swallow Greater

London Paris and New York so things
tend to be big on Mars I think

in part that's because the planet has
lower gravity and so when you pile up

lafi you can pile it three times higher because
the gravity is three times less before it'll
start to collapse under its

own weight [Music] Mars is a
far more active world than

previously thought we see landslides
of dust and gullies freshly carved by

outflows of mysterious fluid and
this peculiar region has been

claimed as a flash-frozen seed
complete with fossil icebergs

likewise there are glaciers geologically
recent but now buried beneath a

protective blanket of dust later for the
next change in climate still most of the

defining surface features of Mars were
carved way back in the good old days

certainly something happened in the early
history of Mars that led to great

releases of water and of course people wonder
with that much water could there have been
ancient oceans could there

have been environments that were very much like
life environments on the early earth early Mars
was a different world a

world with a thicker atmosphere with
weather and water possibly a vast

shallow northern ocean this was really the
time to go to Mars when you didn't

need a spacesuit perhaps just an oxygen
tank and some warm clothes

when we reconstruct in our imaginations
Mars of three billion years ago we tend

to make it like Earth warm and cozy and
but it wasn't Mars back in its wettest

warmest phase was probably like Earth
today in its coldest regions so I'm

imagining a place where the snow and ice
is melting in the summer to form transient
ponds and streams and

ice-covered lakes it's cold it's wet but
it could be rich with life this is the

Mars that we want our astronauts to get
their hands on to bring back and study

the wet Mars of old where we might
find the evidence of life

[Music] [Applause] [Music]

the fourth Rock from the Sun has always
had a special card to play the chance of

needing Martians and in recent years the
odds of a close encounter have been

steadily improving [Music]
Life on Mars

if you want to find life on Mars
first you need to find water

and not all of the planets water story is ancient
history there's been plenty of frozen

underground evidence detected from orbit
but scientists needed to touch and taste

it to be sure in 2008 they finally got
their opportunity when NASA's Phoenix

lander made a daring approach to
the high Martian Arctic [Music]

there was not ever more excitement in
my life than landing safely on Mars I've

been through the opposite I've been through
a landing that was not successful cams I
did not want that to

happen again the landing was not only

perfect but the engines exposed suspicious white patches
directly underneath the spacecraft water ice was

just a few scrapes away we did find
water ice and we found that the soil in

connection to it has calcium carbonate a
compound that forms in the presence of

liquid water if it had been wet then we
wanted to look for nutrients and food

sources that could support microbes the

water ice is proof of a valuable resource for any
life-forms still clinging beneath the surface and for

future travelers we now know that these
planes that you see stretching behind me

are underlying only two or three inches
deep by a sheet of ice all the way as

far as you can see great hockey rink if
you had a hockey team on Mars all you

need is a broom

the possibility of running into Martians
received another boost from a very Mars

like part of our own planet chilles
extraordinary Atacama Desert

the Atacama is special because it is
just so profoundly dry speaking roughly

50 times drier than Death Valley it is
deader than Death Valley it's the only

place on earth where Viking could have landed
and searched for life and dirt on earth and
not found it and instead found

a reactive mixture of chemicals the only place
we can take a small step into Mars

we can test ourselves if we can't find the
life in the dry core of the Atacama Desert
we're not ready to go to Mars

perhaps we are ready because even here
in the driest corner of the driest

desert on earth life has confounded scientists
cyanobacteria have been found

living inside the rock-hard salt of a
long-gone lake this is a halide is a

this sodium chloride salt which is
colonized by cyanobacteria it's dark

green because they have this particular
pigment protecting them from the excess

of UV light once in a blue moon a fleeting
early-morning ground fog delivers some

rare humidity to the air above the
desert this precious moisture is

greedily sucked into the microscopic
pores of the water hungry rock salt this

is a very rare event so these bacteria
are living in an environment where

liquid water is available a few hours
during one year very very hard if we're

looking for Martian bugs we should search for
life-forms at least as tough and alien as this
I'm looking at Mars

from the point of view of a microbe and as a
microbe I really need a very very tiny amount
of water I could probably

live my entire life happily in a tiny drop of
water about the size of the point of a pen now
we've shown over the

years that organisms that live in salt
crusts on the earth have enough sunlight

coming in so that they can go through their
day-to-day activities but still be protected
from the radiation and we know

their salt crusts on Mars [Music]
Habitability on Mars

scientists are gathering clues about where on
the Martian surface you should land to have
the best chance of meeting

the neighbors [Music]

in terms of current habitability I think
the most interesting place on Mars is

right where the Phoenix lander sat that

ice will be warmed when Mars just tilted toward
the Sun which occurred as recently as five
million years ago that

ice would have been warmed and wet maybe
even swampy Mars has a long-term wobble

to its orbit and every 5 million years or
so the poles end up tilting 45

degrees toward the Sun a way of thinking
about the Phoenix landing site is think

about the polar regions on earth imagine you're
there in winter it's very inhospitable very
cold very alien you

think how can anything survive you come
back six months later and it's like a
different world the sun is shining it's

wet it's warm things are live and
scurrying around so we may be being

misled seeing this frozen cold site and
in fact we're just there at the wrong

season we know that on earth some
bacteria can survive being frozen for

millions of years they can also eat perchlorate
the highly reactive chemical

Phoenix found in the Martian soil presumably
if there was life at the

Phoenix site it had learned the same trick and
so there might be organisms that are literally
eating the rocks and

reacting with perchlorate below the surface
shielded from the ultraviolet light just
having a great old time five

million years ago the party is over because
everybody froze but another five million years
the party will start up

again as the Martian summer comes to the
north polar regions and the ice turns to

water the party might not be over everywhere

the gas methane has been found both by
spacecraft in orbit and by telescopes

from Earth it's chemically impossible for
methane to survive for long in the

Martian atmosphere so it must have been
released recently now what makes methane

cows make methane it's probably not cows

microbes various sorts can release methane
they're a variety of geologic

processes volcanoes can release methane so
the mere fact that there's methane

doesn't say life but either way the

methane says that Mars is an active planet
it's either biologically active or it's
geologically active or both the

methane release appears to be seasonal and
linked to areas of suspected subsurface ice
ice found exposed in

fresh craters has proven that water lurks
not only near the poles but also

much closer to the equator it's pretty clear
that if the Viking landers had dug

just four inches deeper they would have
reached this ice and perhaps a totally

different conclusion about life on the Red Planet [Music]

so if Mars has any life at all whether
it is so small you can only see it with

a microscope or if they had a mammoth it
wouldn't matter to me it's the whole
question of is there life at all on Mars

either way there certainly will be life
on Mars the moment the first human

traveler arrives

the fact that there are no scheduled flights
to Mars hasn't stopped people from preparing
for the trip and for a

flight like this planning is everything

[Music] in 2009 six men walked into a series of

connected rooms inside a warehouse in
the Moscow suburbs and shut the door
behind them for three months they took

all their food with them and drank recycled water the
only communication with the outside world was electronic

with a 20-minute delay they were trying

to simulate a flight to Mars you got to
think about what its gonna do to a crew

to be cooped up in a small environment but for
that huge period of time they're gonna be the
first people in the history

of their species to travel that great distance
to be so far from home where they can't even
have a normal telephone

conversation with their families of
their friends so we should underestimate
what psychology what psychological

problems might see there is no room to

screw up on a trip like this mental or
otherwise once on Mars you are likely to

be stuck there for a year or more waiting for a window
of opportunity to ride home and unlike a robot the hopes

and fears of the whole planet will be riding
with you I think the humans are gonna do a better

job of exploring Mars ultimately than
robots ever can robots move really

slowly okay what what Spirit and Opportunity
have done in five years on Mars two astronauts
could probably have

done in a week [Music] as fast and
as smart as we are we still

need mechanical help to scout the course
for Mars the next robot rolling on to

red dirt will be aptly named curiosity as
the size of a small car and it has a

nuclear power source so you don't have to
worry about dust accumulating on solar
arrays or anything like that and

most importantly it has the capability
to look for trace quantities of organic

molecules so we've gone beyond now
looking for evidence of habitability to

actually looking for evidence of the
building blocks of life whether it's

alive or dead a trip to this red planet
has a lot to teach us about our lonely

blue one and the universe beyond now if
you have two planets that are next to

each other in the same solar system that
both had independent origins of life you

would have to conclude that the chance of
having life all over the universe indeed
even in other places in our solar

system would be very high I think you know you
could basically go to the bank and bet on it

we're not going to Mars just to search for
life we're going to Mars to search for a
second genesis of life what we'd

like to find something that's different from
us it doesn't have the same genetic history
and genetic code that we have

and from my point of view two more alien
the better now the second possibility is

that we find life on Mars but my goodness
it has a genetic code exactly

like us it uses DNA it's too coincidental
this is representing our

cousin's life either arose on earth and
went to Mars or actually more likely

that life originated on Mars and it was
transported on a meteorite or a comet to

the earth early on and in fact
our home planet is Mars

so in some ways a voyage to Mars could be
a voyage home our ancestors have made

such bold trips before when we walked
out of Africa when we sailed over the

horizon if it's technically possible our ships

will head out again

we've always wanted to see what's over the next
hill and Mars is that next over the hill sure
you're gonna have to be in

a suit if you're gonna have to have a habitat
but it's a solid planet it's got a surface
you can see you can work you

can explore I've thought for about
thirty years now that we could go to

Mars and usually when people ask me how
long it would take I say fifteen years

because we've been saying fifteen years
for the last about four decades Oh a

human mission to Mars can't happen soon
enough for me I'm you know I'm I'm a
robot guy okay that's what I do with my

career is build robots and send them
to Mars but I also think that we send

things to Mars for reasons other than
science our Rovers Spirit and

Opportunity were built by people who
like me grew up in the 60s watching

Mercury Gemini Apollo on TV as little
kids and dreaming of sending spaceships
tomorrow someday and now we do and I

think as people watch the first human
explorers on the surface of Mars they

are going to be similarly inspired to do
things that I can't even imagine at this
point it's gonna be very costly it's

going to be dangerous but I think it's
something that I'd certainly like to see

happen I'd love to see boot prints in

our wheel tracks I would love to
see boot prints on Mars

when the first human footprint is made on
Mars it will represent more than a

giant stride into space this one small
impression will be proof that humanity

is once again on the move travelers once
more moving beyond our comfort zone to
explore new lands and

new opportunities and have no doubt there
are many worlds out there ripe for

exploration [Music]