NOVA - Official Website ? To find out, we might look no farther than the planet next door. Mars may be our best hope for resolving the ultimate mystery of creation. STEVE GOREVAN (Honeybee Robotics): It is the one planet out there that is Earth- like enough that we can imagine that life might have taken hold on that world. CHRIS MCKAY (NASA Ames Research Center): If we go to Mars, will we find that, yes, the same events that led to life on Earth, happened independently on this other planet? PETER SMITH (University of Arizona): And if we find evidence on our very next planet, Mars, then you have to say that has to be so common across the Milky Way, across the universe, you know, that we are not alone. NARRATOR: Mars has more in common with our world than any place we know of in the universe, but it's still a world away. Getting an astronaut there to search for life is beyond us. So, for now, we must resort to the next best thing, robots. Mars today is a busy place. Three satellites orbit it, three Landers ponder its surface. They're finding a wealth of clues. STEVE SQUYRES (Cornell University): Holy smokes! I'm just blown away by this. MICHAEL HECHT (Jet Propulsion Laboratory): When that first data comes down, the sense of astonishment is indescribable. Oh wow! JOHN COATES (University of California, Berkeley): We would never have thought of looking for organisms like this on Mars. NARRATOR: But they're also discovering that, in its past, Mars had some dark secrets. SAMUEL KOUNAVES (Tufts University): Life can survive, survive in pretty harsh conditions, but there are limits. ANDY KNOLL (Harvard University): Around four billion years ago, there was a cataclysmic event. DAN Mc. CLEESE (Jet Propulsion Laboratory): And this was big. This thing went, wham, right into the planet. NARRATOR: Four and a half billion years ago, two young planets emerged, both brimming with promise, but something went very wrong with Earth's twin. Is There Life on Mars?, up next on NOVA. Major funding for NOVA is provided by the following: One of the factors impacting energy prices is growing global demand. The Mars Science Laboratory and its rover, Curiosity, will seek out signs that Mars could have once supported life. NASA's Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission is an ongoing robotic space mission involving two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, exploring the planet Mars. It began in 2003 with the sending of the two rovers: MER-A Spirit. Provides up to date information on NASA's two Mars Exploration Rovers -- Spirit and Opportunity -- as they investigate the Martian surface. Even with the development of increasingly precise landers, we don't want to be stuck in just one spot on Mars since we never know what exciting discovery might be just around the next bend. Rovers give us the ability to. Now that NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is settled in on the arctic plains of Mars, taking pictures and starting to gather samples, space agencies all over the world are planning and building the next robots and gadgets they plan. NASA.gov brings you the latest images, videos and news from America's space agency. Get the latest updates on NASA missions, watch NASA TV live, and learn about our quest to reveal the unknown and benefit all humankind. Schiaparelli readied for Mars landing 07 October 2016 This week, the commands that will govern the Schiaparelli lander's descent and touchdown on Mars were uploaded to ESA's ExoMars spacecraft, en route to the Red Planet. Latest Flight Director Update Near-daily video updates on rover status, given by rover flight directors. 9/7/07 - Video: Rover Flight Director Report The Mars rovers have weathered dust storms and are now back in action. Is There Life on Mars? PBS Airdate: December 30, 2008. NARRATOR: Is there life beyond Earth? To find out, we might look no farther than the planet next door. Mars may be our best hope for resolving the ultimate mystery of. And one way to put downward pressure on prices is to make more supply available. Exxon. Mobil has invented a breakthrough technology that we've just begun using here in the U. S. We could produce enough gas from one U. S. And.. Discover new knowledge: HHMI. And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. NARRATOR: Mars eludes us. Even as this planet surrenders its secrets, it remains stubbornly guarded about one, the question we have come in pursuit of, above all others. CHRIS MCKAY: The geology is fascinating, the climate is interesting atmospheric science. There is any number of things that you can study about the planet, but, to me, what makes Mars special is its potential as an abode for life. NARRATOR: If there's life on Mars, there could be life throughout the universe. CHRIS MCKAY: If it happened twice, right here in our own solar system, then we would have, for the first time, a good answer to the question, ? Did it evolve in a totally different way than Earth life did? NARRATOR: Peter Smith has been involved with seven missions to Mars. Each has only driven home how difficult it is to get there. MISSION CONTROL: This is the Mars Polar Lander Mission Control at the Jet Propulsion Center. NARRATOR: 1. 99. 9: The Mars Polar Lander is about to touch down on the surface. Smith and his team should get word any moment. They wait.. PETER SMITH: There's nothing worse than no signal. NARRATOR: .. and wait, for a signal that never comes. PETER SMITH: I was trying to hold out a little hope that maybe it landed and the communication link hadn't quite set up yet, but I had the worst sinking feeling. Doesn't look too good over there. NARRATOR: During its descent, the Polar Lander disappeared. PETER SMITH: You felt like somebody very close to you in your life, someone you love very dearly, had died through some tragic accident. NARRATOR: At the time, Smith was already preparing his next mission, another lander called Mars Surveyor. But after the failure of Polar Lander, NASA cancelled the mission. PETER SMITH: It was just miserable.. All my house of cards just collapsed. NARRATOR: Smith didn't give up. His plan: to take the technology from those failed missions out of mothballs, and repurpose it for another Lander. Every precaution would be taken to make sure this one would make it. He christens the new mission with a name apropos: Phoenix. PETER SMITH: We are rising from the ashes and we're going back to Mars, and so, Phoenix it is. Sending a mission to Mars is somewhat like hitting a golf ball across the solar system. We'll see if we got our hole in one. NARRATOR: Nine months later, Smith is back on track to search for signs of life on Mars. Mission Control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory: If Phoenix lands, it'll be thanks to the engineers here, today, who made it happen. But no one knows better than Smith what could go wrong. MISSION CONTROL: .. You're standing by for touchdown. Touchdown signal detected. NARRATOR: Finally, Peter Smith has arrived on Mars. PETER SMITH: By gosh, we are going and doing it. We have a great chance of making a new discovery on Mars. It's the thrill of my life. NARRATOR: Now that Phoenix has landed, NASA is sharing supervision of the mission with scientists at the University of Arizona, where Smith is based. Phoenix is in the far north of Mars. So it has just three months before the polar sun will begin to set for the long winter, and with it will go the Lander's power supply. Time is already running out. This is the 3. 9th time we've tried to reach Mars, and only the seventh time we've actually landed there. It is a quest years in the making. The first to attempt it were the Soviets. During the 1. 96. It wasn't until the late '7. Martian surface, with the two Viking Landers. Each bears a $6. 0 million box, packed with three biology experiments that are, in their day, state of the art. They're designed to test the soil for the presence of organisms. MISSION CONTROL: Touch down! We have touch down! NARRATOR: Hopes are running high. But when the pictures come in, there are no signs of life on Mars. As the experiments proceed, the news gets bleaker. PETER SMITH: .. that this was devoid of life, that Mars was just a barren desert, that it may have been interesting four billion years ago, but today it's lacking in those ingredients that would allow life to flourish. NARRATOR: Those ingredients for life are common on Earth. Billions of years ago, life, as we know it, needed three things to begin: one is an energy source, like heat from the volcanic fury of the Earth below and the Sun's rays from above; two are organics, carbon- based molecules, not living things, but the building blocks of life; but the third is scarce in our solar system, the medium that helps the chemicals intermingle. CHRIS MCKAY: The most important requirement for life is liquid water, and that's the defining requirement for life in terms of our solar system. There's plenty of energy, there's plenty of carbon, there's plenty of other elements on all the planets in our solar system. What's rare is liquid water. NARRATOR: Not only did Viking find no life, but no water, either. Mars was pronounced a wasteland. DAN Mc. CLEESE: It was really a bummer. That was kind of the outcome, in the newspapers. And so we had a hiatus of missions to Mars of 2. NARRATOR: Mars slipped away from the limelight. Then, in 1. 99. 6, NASA scientists unveil a Martian rock, a meteorite that had landed in Antarctica, which appears to hold the fossilized traces of microscopic life, or so they think. It turns out, the formations they found could have been produced by volcanic activity. Instead, another strategy replaces it. ANDY KNOLL: Certainly life, as we understand it, requires water. So NASA's explorational mantra has been . The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have landed and are ready to roam the planet. The hunt for signs of water, present or past, is on. Opportunity is at a spot called Meridiani Planum, and right away, the first pictures it sends home are stunning. Previous missions had sent photos of sheer desolation. But now, not far from the Lander is bedrock, the first ever seen on Mars. STEVE SQUYRES: Holy smokes! I'm sorry, I'm just, I'm just blown away by this. NARRATOR: Bedrock is a record of ancient environments and a dream come true for mission leader Steve Squyres. STEVE SQUYRES: This is the sweetest spot I've ever seen. That outcrop in the distance is just out of this world. I can't wait to get there. Most of the rock on Mars is volcanic lava flow. This is something else. This is an unusual Martian rock, at least compared to what we've seen everywhere else. The fact that these rocks are layered says that one possible origin for these is that they were laid down in liquid water. We do not know what's going on here, but the beauty of it is we have preserved, in front of us, a record that will answer that. And we have on our rover a toolkit of gizmos that will tell us that answer. NARRATOR: One gizmo is a camera on the end of the robotic arm. It finds a puzzle never before seen on Mars: tiny, smooth spheres, like so many blueberries. Could they be the product of water? The pellets probably formed in the cavities of wet soil, perhaps in a salty ocean floor. If the team can find certain salts in the rock, it will clinch the ancient presence of water. The place to find those chemical clues isn't on the surface. They would have seeped underground. If only the team could look there! They can. The rovers come equipped with a drill, the Rock Abrasion Tool, or RAT, as shown in this NASA animation. But the man in charge of the RAT is worried. STEVE GOREVAN: I thought that before landing we had roughly been able to approximate anything that Mars was going to throw at us. Of course, what I neglected to think about was a rock that would be spitting out blueberries.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |