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so in 2003 we launched a pair of twin

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rovers

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to get the mars program back to the

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surface we intended them to last 90 days

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today uh basically five and three

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quarters years later they're still going

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pretty good design by our engineers at

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jpl these rovers in moving at the pace

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of a giant tortoise about an hour a day

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that's their pace

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have uncovered things about mars that

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you can only see from the surface

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first thing they learned

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crawling along the edges of things like

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craters there's the opportunity rover

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is that there is a history of water on

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mars in all of the rocks

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while it looks as dry as a bone actually

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if you look closer this is the victoria

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crater that we spent a year at um as

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seen as we started to drive around and

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went into the crater we realized in the

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layers exposed in this crater and in

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some of these rocks our history of

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minerals that can only be made in the

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presence of water

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we have no physical way good old

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chemistry doesn't lie to make them so

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while mars may looked as parched as

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anything we'd ever want to think about

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today the history of water is there in

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the rocks and if we could go to places

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more interesting than these flat parking

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lots with a few craters we could get to

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places where the history of water in the

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rocks could lead to preservational

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environments the kind of which on earth

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preserve evidence of life so our next

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mission to mars i'll show you in a

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second is actually after that can we go

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to places better than this that expose

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mars

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and if it was what are the signatures

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i mean imagine that

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are we alone no there were the martians

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whatever the martians look like so here

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you see odyssey crawling down into

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victoria crater today it's heading far

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south um

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this is one of the great success stories

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of robotic exploration although it took

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five years to go as far as a couple of

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men and women could go in a couple of

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days

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we did it for the cost of a james

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cameron movie not for the cost of

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something bigger so robotic exploration

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is important now this funny view

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you might say is about as boring as you

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can see this is the real mars swales of

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dust like dunes and patches of we think

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sulfate-rich rocks covering about 10 or

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15 of the planet

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this is the real mars the mars the

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humans would interact with problem is

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these little dunes of fine talcum powder

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stuff aren't too good for driving robots

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in they can get stuck we got stuck for

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40 days in this stuff with opportunity

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we backed ourselves out and escaped but

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we have to build better mobility systems

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so we don't get stuck on the real mars

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now this funny picture is one of my

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favorites i thought i'd share with you

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for a minute

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after driving around mars in one place

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for a while

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spirit dug around its wheels they're

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about this big

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about a year ago and discovered lots of

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basically silica in the soil the white

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stuff is basically pure silica leached

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out of rocks by the action of water so

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in this dry place

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perhaps less interesting than where

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opportunity's been in meridiani we've

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uncovered the signature of water we

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found minerals like gertite for those

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either like minerals again made in the

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presence of water typically on earth we

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think on mars so the dry mars we see

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from remote sensing from orbit is

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actually telling us a history of water

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on a planet that i would call a water

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planet today the history of water on

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mars is masked by rocks like these that

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are typical volcanic rocks these are

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basaltic rocks we think um and so it's

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it's it's beguiling as shakespeare once

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said so it's important to remember every

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time we've gone to mars we thought we

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got it yep viking going tomorrow's gonna

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find life nope not there

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go back to mars

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again with other missions and this is

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the launch of our mars reconnaissance

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orbiter and we thought we'd see

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something and we got something else so

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in 2005 we launched the mro the mars

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reconnaissance orbiter and this was one

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of my dreams to go to mars with the kind

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of eyes and spectrometers that could see

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mars as if we were walking on the

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surface

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an mro got to mars it has a big 65

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centimeter optic flying right down it

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there

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and it arrived at mars and it changed

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the way we see the planet typically we

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see mars at this scale craters then

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thanks to the mars global surveyor we

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saw mars at this scale

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now we see mars if you look in at the

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next frame at for now 20 000 places not

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at this scale this is the typical scale

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that we get from them from the mro but

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at that scale we can now fly over the

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surface of mars for tens of thousands of

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places as if you were in a helicopter

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zipping over at that scale geology can

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become definitive and this happens to be

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a gully site where these gullies once

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erupted

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fluids newtonian fluids probably water

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we don't absolutely know they're stained

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by dust

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but we've discovered more than six

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thousand of these kinds of gullies some

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of which have changed in the course of

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the last couple years this is the polar

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ice cap of marsh showing the chocolate

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block terrain and this white thing you

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see here is a little patch of ice

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exposed we do this routinely so mro has

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changed the way we see the planet the

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other thing we've done with mro is used

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a radar sounding method to slice right

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through the polar ice caps what do they

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look like and so using 20 megahertz

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wavelength radar built in this case for

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us by the by our friends in italy we've

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been able to slice through sort of the

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way mris do our body and see the

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layering structure of the polar ice caps

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of mars they're about three kilometers

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thick they have layers hundreds of

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meters thick they run a scale the length

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of half the united states

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this shows what we thought was happening

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that in fact these these ice caps are

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built up episodically

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and

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um that's a really important discovery

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within these layers could be lenses of

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preserved liquid water

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those could be the places where you'd

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want to go to seek signs of active life

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finally we've also found in equatorial

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areas near the equator of mars with

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imaging and radar that under the dust

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cover there are buried glaciers

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tropical mountain glaciers near the

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equator on mars

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so

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mro the mars express the mars

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exploration rovers the mars global

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surveyor they have changed how we see

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the planet we would now describe mars as

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a water planet

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a water plant that could have preserved

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the biological signatures in rocks of

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life

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let me turn to phoenix in 2003 nasa said

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okay world community all of you could

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have bid we're going to have a

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competition like the olympics to pick

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the next mission to mars mars scout and

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after a year and a half of competition a

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landed spacecraft developed at at

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lockheed martin and jet propulsion lab

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in arizona went to mars to ask what is

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the ice really like up near the north

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polar cap

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why would we care about it so it landed

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it popped up its uh cameras and it

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observed mars for a period of 150 days

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from the edge of the north polar ice cap

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and during descent

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we watched the descent through the eyes

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of mro and there's the there is the

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parachute with the lander seen from

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another spacecraft as it descended the

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geometry of that was rather challenging

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but we actually managed to pull it off

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we landed this is the foot pad and right

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underneath the lander after the landing

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rockets settled we found a patch of ice

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now this is what the north polar region

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of mars looks like in the far distance

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you can see the sun setting during 150

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days as we went from summer to to fall

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we watched the wind blow we tracked the

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star with lasers i mean the stars the

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sky with lasers um and we saw patches of

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ice exposed and evaporate as part of our

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measurements we ingested materials and

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detected for the first time definitively

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the molecule water on mars with a

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chemistry lab

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there's a patch of ice under the lander

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so mars where we thought there would be

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ice we've validated it's there if you

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start to look at the little white tinge

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here that's frost forming on the surface

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as we come out of mars northern summer

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so the winter sun set it got cold the

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solar panels got no light the batteries

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died and the mission essentially froze

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but we generated 100 gigabytes of data

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in 150 day mission for the price of a

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small blockbuster movie there's the

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wally like camera eyes saying goodbye to

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you from mars our next mission to mars

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is the one i'm most excited about and i

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get excited pretty easily as you can

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probably tell

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we've been dreaming of this since 2000

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when we broke the program for mars we

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dreamt of sending an astrobiological

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rover to mars in this case that we will

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land in the summer of 2012 with a

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rocket-powered helicopter system known

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as a skycrane developed at our jet

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propulsion lab

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this rover is as massive as a mini

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cooper car how many of you have ever

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been in a mini cooper no yes few hands

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okay they're not tiny right i mean

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football players might not prefer them

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but anyway we will not even land the

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spacecraft that gets us there we will

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drop the rover down on a on a winch and

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then we will measure rocks without even

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going to them by firing a laser beam and

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ionizing the surface of a rock we will

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measure what they're made of

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this is you know like star trek does

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mars um that will help us not have to

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drive everywhere we will drill up to

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this deep into rocks and then bring the

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samples sort of with this crazy looking

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extrusion process

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reminds me of my dog but anyway bring

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materials into the into the vehicle and

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inside the vehicle here at goddard we've

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built something called sam and everyone

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asked me why paul named it sam could

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have been sue

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could have been jim but sam is the

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service analysis of mars package that

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will allow us to measure

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chemically

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whether there are the biological

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building locks of life we can actually

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measure the carbon hydrogen oxygen

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nitrogen phosphorus and sulfur in soils

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and in the air at levels that are better

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than those we could measure in labs when

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i was in graduate school and now we have

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a robot lab we've developed right here

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that does all this stuff you see flying

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by this is the x-ray diffraction part of

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it that tells how rocks are put together

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this vehicle will launch next november

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it weighs about 700 kilograms 1400

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pounds we will land it with the most

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powerful system and the imaging system

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at the top i'll just point to it up

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there is inspired by james cameron 3d