All language subtitles for FBE6089D2D120530BFE239C00E78DE56_eng

Mars, the god of war and
the source of man's science

fictional demise. It has fired
our imagination for thousands

of years. We know the dry
barren planet was once flowing

with vast reservoirs of water,
the sky thick and filled with

clouds and the tantalizing
possibility of life. It is the

only other place in our solar
system that man might one day

call home.

We Earthlings have fired
numerous probes and satellites

towards the red planet,
an invasion of sorts not for

conquest but for knowledge.
What happened to Mars? Is there

or has there ever been life
on the planet? A fundamental

question that needs to be
answered is life as we know it on

Earth, is even the simplest
type of microbial life unique?

If we were to go to Mars and
we were to find evidence of

early microbial life or maybe
even present life that somehow

survived in the near surface,
would it be the same as

the early life that developed
on Earth? That's a very

fundamental question. Does
life emerge generally in planets

where the conditions for
life are favorable if we find out

that they were favorable
on Mars or might life take its

own unique path in different
environments and turn out

differently?

We have bombarded Mars
with satellites and landers, but

there have been more failures
than successes. The Soviets

established two Mars
orbiters, while NASA landed two

Viking landers carrying complex
analytical laboratories and

searched for signs of microbial
life. Their findings were inconclusive.

Further missions to Mars
still had a high mortality rate,

but the successes were
outstanding, with robotic probes

operating for years
beyond their initial missions.

In fact, Mars is a planet
occupied solely by robots

on the surface and satellites
peering down from above.

All these instruments perform
admirably in their specified

fields of endeavor, giving us
a much clearer picture of the

planet and its history. The
science was following the water.

What happened to it and
where it is now? Thanks to the

specific instrumentation on
board the mission, we were able

to tell us what kind of ice
did we find. And the result is

that there is a mix of CO2
ice or carbon dioxide ice and

water ice. And it's very
important to characterize it,

especially for the water ice or
frozen water, because one of

the main objectives of any
mission to Mars is to trace the

water on Mars in every
form. Liquid, if possible, solid

water vapor. So it's very
important to study the ice because

it's one of the reservoirs
of water on the planet. The

science was conclusive. There
was water on Mars. There were

ancient lakes and rivers,
even an ocean. We needed to

learn more. With the advancement
of analytical technology,

computer power and robotics,
a new rover was constructed.

Big, complex and heavy, it
required a new way to land on

Mars safely. Engineers
came up with a system

that couldn't be fully
tested here on Earth.

It required a lot of things to
happen correctly on time and

in order. This was the sky
crane, and the rover Curiosity

was the first to try it out. A
controlled reentry with heat

shield, aero braking with a
parachute, all pretty standard.

Then a rocket-powered sky
crane drops from the aeroshell and

gently descends toward the
surface, spooling out the rover

below on cables. The rover
touches down, cuts the cables,

and releases the sky crane
to fly off and crash harmlessly.

The Curiosity rover has
been an astounding success,

traversing the terrain for
over 10 years, taking samples,

drilling and studying rock
formations, zapping samples with

a powerful laser, and
photographing its progress. Now in the

belly of that rover is an
instrument called SAM. It's an

instrument suite that has a
couple different instruments in

it that allow us to look at
different types of gases.

It helps us understand the
chemical composition of the

atmosphere and the end of
minerals that might be found in

the rocks and the soils on
the surface. In particular, it

helps us identify organic
molecules that might be present.

So the sort of evidence
we're looking for, the sort of

signatures of past life
that we would be looking

for would be signatures
of microbial life.

Orbiters including Mars
Odyssey and Mars Express

have been hunting down
life as well from orbit.

After 10 years of mission, we
have achieved a global view of

Mars, and then we know at
every location on the surface if

you find some special minerals
or not. So we have really the

global view that tells us the
history of Mars. Mars Express

has for the first time
detected methane, and also the

concentration in the
atmosphere vary from a place to

another, from a season to
another. And this discovery has

been very debated in the
scientific community because in

fact methane should not
be there because it's being

destroyed in the atmosphere
by the ultraviolet radiation. So

if methane is there, there
must be a source of methane,

and for the time being the
origin of this source is largely

unknown. However, with
curiosity prowling around Gale

Crater, it too detected seasonal
methane. Methane has been

found previously in the Martian
atmosphere by both Earth

-based telescopes and
space-borne orbiters. But this is the

first time that we've actually
seen a sharp increase and

decrease in the abundance of
methane in the atmosphere in

Gale Crater. What this really
means is that present-day Mars

is an active environment.
The big question is what is the

origin of this methane now
being released? The two principal

areas are first by analogy
with the Earth. It could be

released and produced
initially primarily by biology. This

would be microbial activity
acting on certain chemicals

below the surface and then
producing methane as a byproduct.

But of course we can't
state with certitude that it is

biologically produced, and so
we also consider geochemical

mechanisms in which carbon
dioxide is actually combining

with water and producing
methane under very high

temperatures and pressures.
And that methane can then be

released in the atmosphere
separately. Now at this point

we don't have enough evidence
to tell us whether or not the

organics we're finding are
biological or non-biological in

origin. There are several
viable non-biological explanations

including this organic material
could have come down from

space, from meteorites or
comets, or organics can be formed

by geological reactions in
the rock itself. Now what's

exciting about this discovery
is it gives us new hope in the

search for chemical evidence
of life. We found the organic

material. Now the next step
is trying to figure out what its

origin is. Main engine
start, ignition and liftoff of the

Atlas V with MAVEN, looking
for clues about the evolution of

Mars through its atmosphere.
The latest NASA orbiter mission

is MAVEN. Launched in
November 2013, it made orbit ten

months later.

MAVEN is the Mars Atmosphere
and Volatile Evolution Mission.

Our goal is to study the role
that loss to space has played

in the history of the
atmosphere. Where did the water

go? Where did the CO2 go
from the early planet? These are

important questions to
understand how Mars went from an

early warm, wet environment
to the cold, dry environment we

see today. There's evidence
of water flowing on Mars at

one point in time, perhaps
even oceans on Mars. And what

happened that is so barren
at this point in time? And a

key part of that is the
atmosphere, and it's a much thinner

atmosphere than what scientists
believe it was at one point

in time. So the stripping
away of that upper atmosphere,

that's what MAVEN is going
after, the climate change at Mars.

One of these processes is
called sputtering, where atoms

are knocked away from the
atmosphere due to impacts from

energetic particles. The sun
constantly emits high-energy

photons. When these enter
a planet's atmosphere, it can

crash into a molecule,
knocking loose an electron and

turning it into an ion. When
this happens in the presence of

a magnetic field, the ions
are captured and spin around

the field. Conveniently, the
sun generates a giant magnetic

field that is carried by the
solar wind. As the magnetic

field sweeps past the planet,
these ions are carried away.

Depending on where they
form, other ions will not be carried

away but will hit the top of
the atmosphere. These ions

crash into other molecules
and fling atoms everywhere.

Some of these atoms can be
knocked or sputtered into space,

causing atmospheric loss.

As this process continues
over billions of years, Mars'

atmosphere has disappeared,
and along with it, the water.

How much water has Mars lost this way?

We used the world's three
major telescopes for infrared

astronomy. From the ground,
we could actually take a

snapshot of the whole
hemisphere of the planet on a single

night. Water naturally carries
a heavy isotope of hydrogen,

deuterium, which remains
trapped in the water cycle while

normal hydrogen is lost to
space. Detecting the amount of

deuterium enrichment tells us
how much water has been lost.

Now we know that Mars' water
is much more enriched than

terrestrial ocean water in
the heavy form of water, the

deuterated form. Immediately,
that permits us to estimate

the amount of water Mars has
lost since it was young. So in

the ancient past, we have
some indications that water was

flowing on the surface, but how
much water was there? We're

talking about oceans, we're
talking about small rivers,

little rain. So these definitions
of how much water was on

the planet was very undefined.
A major question has been how

much water didn't Mars actually
have when it was young, and

how did it lose that water?
The findings indicate that only

13% of an ancient ocean
remains on the planet today, now

stored in the polar ice caps.
87% of this ocean has been

lost to space. This means that
early Mars would have looked

much different than it
does today, with a significant

portion of its surface
covered by water. So the really

interesting question is, could
it form a sea or an ocean?

And indeed, it would. In the
Northern Plains, which is a

relatively flat region but
depressed from the rest of the

planet, it would form an ocean
that was approximately 20%

of the planet's surface area,
and so that is a respectable

ocean. This ocean had a
maximum depth of around 5,000 feet

or around one mile deep.
It's deep, not as deep as the

deepest points of our oceans,
but comparable to the average

depth of the Mediterranean
Sea. By combining Martian

topography with a new
estimate for water loss, the

researchers were able to
simulate Mars' ancient ocean and

its escape to space. As
Mars lost its atmosphere over

billions of years, it lost the
pressure and heat needed to

keep water liquid, causing
the ocean to shrink and recede

northward. The remaining
water eventually condensed and

froze over the north and
south poles, giving Mars the ice

caps that we see today. We
now know that Mars was wet for a

much longer time than we
thought before. Curiosity shows

it was wet for one and a half
billion years, already much

longer than the period of
time needed for life to develop

on Earth. And now we see that
Mars must have been wet for a

period even longer. It's
fascinating that we can learn so

much about 4.5 billion years
ago when measurements are taken

right now. And ultimately we
can conclude this idea of an

ocean covering 20% of the
planet, which opens the idea of

habitability and the
evolution of life on the planet.

Building on this knowledge,
scientists are developing the

next series of robotic probes
to be sent to Mars in the

coming years. This time, NASA
is building on its successes,

utilizing hardware and
systems that they know will work.

We've been to Mars before with
the JPL Lockheed Martin team.

We've been to the surface of
Mars before successfully with

Phoenix. We know how to
operate the arm. The surface

operations are much, much
simpler than Phoenix. We're

putting two instruments on
the surface and then we're

leaving them there. With no
ground-in-the-loop interaction,

repetitive weekly uplink-downlink
sessions, we're just made

to do this mission. The
InSight mission is a geophysical

mission to Mars. It's going
to go to Mars and take its

vital signs. It's going to
take its heartbeat, the seismic

activity of the planet. So
we're going to be doing that

using a seismometer, a very
high-precision seismometer,

using techniques that have
been well-developed on Earth to

get the understanding of the
crust, mantle, and core, and

sort of the relationship
between those. It's going to take

its temperature by measuring
the thermal gradient of the

surface, which tells how much
heat is coming out. We also

have a heat flow probe. We
call it HP cubed. And what that

does is it's going to basically
take the temperature of Mars

and from that it will be able
to understand what the thermal

flux is over the course of
a full Martian year. And it's

going to sort of measure its
reflexes by looking at how the

rotation wobbles with the
tile effects of the sun. Our final

experiment is called RISE,
and that's going to be looking at

basically the wobble of
Mars to help understand

what the core size
may be in composition.

The European Space Agency
is also well along with ExoMars,

a rover with advanced drilling
capability due to be launched

by 2018. Its principal goal? To drill
down deep in search of microorganisms.

What is new with ExoMars,
with the rover in particular, is

what we call the mobility.
Mobility not only horizontal, but

also vertical. And this is a
peculiar thing that we have

on board the ExoMars mission.
So we will be able to sample

material from below the
surface that is quite important to

understand if there is any
sign of past life activity on

Mars. We will be looking
for the first time in the third

dimension, the third dimension
being depth. And we think

that is where we have the
highest chance of making an

interesting discovery regarding
the presence of organic

molecules in Mars.

It's a whole planet out there
with a complicated history.

It's that history is a story
that's stored in the rocks, and

our job is to figure out that
story and what that story of

that planet tells us about
this planet that we live on. So

where Curiosity takes rocks
and grinds them up into powder

and looks at their bulk
constituents, what this mission

would need to do is be able
to look in a microscopic level

and examine the rocks for
these very tiny and detailed

messages that they would
be sending to us about the past

life that could have lived
there. This that I'm holding up

here is a classic biosignature
from the Earth. It's a

fossil. We're not actually
expecting to see a fossil of

shells or other components.
But what we want to be able to

see are with this instrumentation
or the fine scale layering

that one might see in a rock
in which we can see dark and

light toned layers and those
dark and light toned layers are

telling a story. When will
NASA send astronauts to Mars?

Five, four, three, two, one,
and liftoff at dawn, the dawn

of Orion and a new era of
American space exploration. The

first test flight of the Orion
crew capsule is complete. The

hardware and systems are
ready for mass production. The

components, the engineering,
the manufacturing are all

underway, with NASA
looking back to what worked

in the past and
utilizing it for the future.

The solid rocket booster
technology straight from the space

shuttle has been extended
and tested. NASA's new Space

Launch System, or SLS,
is coming closer to fruition,

reusing the space shuttle's
main engines as the new system's

workhorses, saving billions of dollars
and years in research and development.

The Europeans are teaming
up with NASA to provide the

service model for Orion,
allowing for long duration deep

space flights.

Autonomous Martian landing
systems are well advanced and

being tested. Software and
hardware are fully integrated for

both manned and unmanned
Martian landings. And when they

get there... The NASA RATS
stands for Desert Research and

Technology Studies. This
is a group of engineers and

scientists. We're looking
to test out new concepts,

procedures, equipment, like
rover concepts, to see how

they work in the field environment.
So the team tests these

technologies to make sure
that in future human space flight

missions we'll be able to
do science as best as we can.

That's something that NASA's
never done to human rovers at

the same time. So we're really
trying to develop how do you

use these assets at the same
time. And interesting things

that you might not think about
are your communications. So

you potentially have four
astronauts talking all at the same

time to mission control or science
communication background.

It's just like running a real
mission, say, like the Apollo

mission to the moon. You had
the astronauts on the moon, you

had the people mission
control, but there was a science

background you didn't hear
about, but the astronauts were

getting information from
you. Arizona has a very good

climate for these types of
analog studies. You have pretty

much open planes and you
have a lot of geological features

that are analogous to places
on the moon and on Mars.

Long term space voyages are
being replicated on the ground

and in orbit with the ISS.
Surface habitats, power systems,

food and oxygen supply manufacturing
are also on the drawing board.

The human flight component
would like to see an experiment

where resources on the surface
of Mars from the rocks or the

atmosphere could be used
to generate fuel or other parts

that would enable future
exploration in cutting the ties, so

to speak, to Earth. So you
wouldn't necessarily have to

bring everything with you.
You can actually manufacture it

on the planet. And that's
a really exciting additional

component that we've been
exploring or analyzing in this

work.

NASA isn't the only one with
its eye on this prize. ESA and

now the Indian Space Research
Organization have a spacecraft

orbiting Mars, and they
did it on their first attempt.

Private enterprises hard at
work as well. Mars 500, Mars 1,

the Mars Society, Mars
Foundation and the Mars Initiative to

name a few. And they have
volunteers lining up already for a

one-way trip to Mars. It is
inevitable that we will set foot

on Mars in the very near
future. We will stay and learn her

secrets.

Perhaps in the future
we will be able to alter the

atmospheric density through
terraforming and return Mars to

the world that it once was
awash with oceans and rivers,

clouds and rain. Maybe
some of us could call it home.