TechStuff Classic: TechStuff Gets Curious About Mars

but now it's time to go back. This classic episode has Chris Polette and I talking about the Curiosity Project, the Curiosity Project that went to Mars, and it was an incredible mission and one that was really inspiring for us, so we had a great time talking about it. We originally published this episode all the way back on August twenty nine, two thousand and twelve. I hope you guys enjoy it. Let's listen in today we are going to

talk about stuff. What beeps? Yes, stuff, what beeps? What we shoot off into space to hit the red planet that is near us sometimes near us? And well it's funny because there there is another science podcast around here somewhere. Yeah, stuff to blow your mind. Yeah, we're not talking about them because we decided, well, occasionally we talked about the same stuff because we're fascinated by it, and we decided that we didn't care if they talk about this. There's

overlap because we wanted to talk about the Mars rover. Yes, and and specifically we're talking about the Curiosity rover, which successfully touched down on the surface of Mars, despite the fact that the way of delivering said rover to the surface of Mars was I think the scientific term is absolutely freaking crazy. I was gonna say nuts, but that'll work. Yeah,

that's that's the short version of the full scientific term. Um. Yeah, And we want to talk about why is it such a big deal, why is it so hard to get to Mars, and sort of talk about some of the historical missions that led up to Curiosity as well as the Curiosity mission itself. So, um, do you let's say that, let's say we're talking about the success failure rate of missions to Mars. Yeah. Um, depending not pleasant to talk about,

depending upon how you define success or failure. Uh. One of the more common statistics I've seen, or are figures I've seen, is that twenty three out of thirty eight missions sent to Mars failed in some way. Yeah, all right, which gives it a pretty dismal success rate. Are you. Are you speaking of all missions to Mars a missions tomorrow? So anybody who's ever shot something at the Red Planet, anyone anyone on Earth. We just we can't just pointing

that out. We can't really talk about anyone from outside of Earth. We don't know. Good point, but I meant not you not it states. Of course we are located in the United States, and why I just wanted to point out that you're not talking You're talking at Earthlings. The United States success failure rate is better. It's thirteen successes out of eighteen tries prior to curiosity, I think

it is. It is important to point out too, that the United States has been later to the let's throw stuff at the Red planet party, and so maybe part of the failures of the Soviet Union is well, part of them is due to the fact that the Soviet Union is no more. But when they were very active at this, they were maybe not so good at it. They were the probably be better at it now they were the only ones doing it at the time. Yes they were. So you might say, well, why is the

why is this success rates so low? Mars is hard it's it's hard to get to and and here's the moon might be a little closer. Yeah, let's I'll give you some figures here. So the average distance between Earth and the Moon is about two thou in nine miles or three four thousand, four hundred kilometers. That's about how far it is from Earth to the Moon. And it takes a few days for us to send something to

go land on the Moon. So for example, astronauts aboard and Apollo Capsule take a few days to get there, and to get there in a few more days to get back. Um, but that's that's doable. We did do it, so clearly it's doable. It's a vacation. Getting someone to Mars. Getting anything to Mars takes a lot more time. Now. Part of that is because the distance between Earth and

Mars is not constant. And the reason for that is that you know, both planets are going around the Sun, right, but they're going at different speeds and their orbits are different sizes. So there are times when Earth and Mars are aligned and they are about as close as they poss can be. And there are other times where Earth is on one side of the Sun and Mars is on the other side of the Sun, and they're about as far apart as they possibly can be, so the

distance varies dramatically. At the closest earthen, Mars are about thirty three million, nine hundred thousand miles apart or fifty four million, six hundred thousand kilometers. So to compare again to the Moon, the Moon was two hundred thirty eight thousand, nine hundred miles away, Mars thirty three million, nine hundred thousand miles away, So that's not a day trip way further,

and that's at its closest. At its furthest away, Mars is about two hundred forty nine million, one hundred sixty thousand miles away or four hundred one million kilometers away. So if you're gonna make a mission to Mars of any kind, um then you need to do a lot of thinking about it and and plan in beforehand, because you need to decide, Okay, well, what are we gonna send there. We're gonna send a rover, um man, how how much is that gonnaway? Well, it's gonna weigh about

this much? How much you know, rocket tuge do we need to throw at it? Okay, so you got your you've got your rocket tude, and your just makesically think like some sort of nineteen eighties side scrolling video game. Rocket. I'm going to write that, um and your rover, you know what, you know what you wanted to do, you know how to get it there? Uh, you start having to think about all sorts of other stuff. Okay, well,

so how much gravity? Uh does Mars have? How much difference in the weight is there going to be once this this rover gets there? How are you know how much atmospheric interference is going to be there? Okay, so you're gonna have to plan how long it's gonna take for you to shoot this thing into space and get to Mars, and how it's gonna stop when it gets there. Oh, and then you have to take a new account. If you know roughly how long it's gonna take. Where are

the two planets going to be? Yeah, you have to figure out when you're from there and go, Okay, they're going to be at their closest here, so we have to launch it then can make that happen. Technically, you even have to launch it before then, because you have to do what's called a transfer orbit. So so by the let's let's say let's say we've got to the point.

By the way, it takes about two years for Earth and Mars to line up so that they are at their closest, and then it will take another two years before they are at that same position relative to one another. So there's a two year gap between when uh your closest when you're not and close is important because that determines how much fuel you're going to need to get

whatever it is you're sending to Mars there. And fuel is heavy because we depend on you know, uh, these these chemical fuels that are you know, these solid chemical fuels that that weigh a lot, They give off a lot of energy and they are about as a fish sent as we possibly can be with chemical uh fuel. But um, yeah, their weight factors into the whole calculation. So you want to use as as little fuel as possible to get your your spacecraft to Mars to be

as efficient as you possibly can be. This is also why it's really difficult to talk about a manned mission to Mars. I'll get to that in a second. But um, so you when you when Earth and Mars are closest together, if you were to launch at that point, Well, you know, you can't just point the rocket at Mars where Mars is right now, because it is not gonna be there by the time the the spacecraft would have made its

way to that point. You know, both planets are still moving around the Sun, so your spacecraft would be going to where Mars used to be, not to wear Mars is going to be. So you actually have to planet out ahead of time to make sure you are being as economic as possible with your fuel use. So, yeah, a paraphrase the great one, you have to launch the rocket at where the planet's gonna be. Yeah, you gotta shoot for where it will be, not for where it is.

So I'm sorry, go ahead, I was just gonna say so. Essentially, there is a lot of thought that has to go into this before before you even build the rocket, before you even build the rover. You really have to think about what you need to do to make it happen. And so, you know, when you shoot something at the Moon, the factors are lessened somewhat by the distance and and

the proximity of the Moon. You know what, you that the orbit and all those things are are are lesser and the more complex a project gets you know, the more factors you have to deal with, and it's just that that's going to make it more difficult to reach Mars than it is to reach the Moon. And if you were trying to reach Pluto, for example, the factors get even more difficult. And Pluto's got such an odd orbit anyway. So I mean, this is this is know,

this isn't rockets, so it's it's complex. It's not brain surgery, so the yeah, so it takes about it takes about between seven and eight months to get from Earth to Mars using the methods that we have available to us today. There are scientists who have suggested that we look into using a nuclear powered propulsion system in order to get from Earth to Mars, which would significantly reduce the weight of your vehicle because you wouldn't have to have so

much chemical fuel aboard. But then there are other problems, of course with the idea of the nuclear propulsion system, especially if you're going to use some sort of chemical propulsion to get you off the the surface of the Earth into lower Earth orbit before you engage the nuclear propulsion system. Having explosives next to a nuclear device makes

people nervous. I don't know why. There's also the possibility that people have said of of building the spacecraft in lowerth orbit, So you would have space missions that would go out build this craft and lowerth orbit, and then you solve the problem of having to escape Earth's gravity. Uh. You engage the nuclear propulsion system then and that also gets around it at any rate. So you've got about seven to eight months to get to Mars, depending on

you exactly what you're sending there and and the timing involved. Uh. This is and here's the reason why a manned mission to Mars would be really really difficult. Let's say that we sent let's say we we built the spacecraft that that is capable of carrying a party of about six astronauts to Mars. That tends to be about the number

of crew members that is considered ideal. Uh. This comes from NASA, and NASA says that ideal number is somewhat reached by You want to have enough of a mix of people so that you can balance out any personality issues. You also want to have enough so that you can represent multiple nationalities because you have to have a lot of partnerships with other countries in order for these projects to come through, so there's a political element to it

as well. Um so let's say we've built the ship that could hold six people, uh, that can hold all the supplies they would need to get to Mars and back. It would still take thirty two months from the time you launch to the time you touched down back on Earth to do a Mars mission. And the reason for that is that because it takes seven to eight months. You know, assuming that you're going for pure fuel economy again to limit the weight of your spacecraft, takes seven

to eight months for you to get to Mars. By the time you land on Mars, the Mars and the Earth are no longer in that ideal situation where you can easily get from one to the other. In fact, at that point, by the time the Curiosity rover landed on the surface of Mars, Mars was further away from the Earth than the Earth was to the Sun. So by the time you land, the Earth is further away from you than the Sun would be if you were

still on Earth. So you have to wait for that timing to be right again so that you can launch from Mars and get back to Earth. That takes almost two years, So from the time you leave to the time you get back thirty two months past, so that's

a that's a very long mission. And during that whole time you would also have to be able to to not only provide all the resources your astronauts would need to stay alive on the surface of Mars, which not a very friendly planet for us, not too terribly accommodating. It's it's not the worst, but it's not it's not the best either. You would also have to figure out

how to protect them from things like radiation. The longer you're out in space, the more likely you are to encounter various forms of radiation that we are protected from here on Earth due to factors like their's atmosphere and its magnetic field. So you have to figure out how do you protect the astronauts from things like I'm a radiation out in space, so that they don't turn into incredible incredible hulk or a cosmic race, so they don't come back as the Fantastic six, because there would be

two more than the four UM. I also thought you were going to point out that there need to be enough people aboard so that when the aliens do start bursting out of them that you know there's somebody left at the end of Yeah, you have to have that dramatic person at the end so they can come back and tell the story and and and blame the corporation

from the documentary alien um the Yes. So there there are a lot of factors that make it really really hard for us to send amanned mission to Mars, which is why the missions that we've sent to Mars so far have been unmanned missions. And uh, even those have not had a great success rate, although again the United States success rate is significantly higher than if you were to to think of the entire world UM, which is mainly the USSR or SO Union at the time, UM

now would be Russia in the various countries around Russia. Uh. The Japan also has attempted to send missions to Mars, and there was I think a European mission as well. So the the first attempt to send a mission to Mars, an unmanned mission to Mars was in nineteen sixty by the Soviet Union and it was called corrobl four KO R A B L and R in the B in

our alphabet. I don't read cilic, so I couldn't tell you the other version but um, yeah, that was in nineteen sixty It did not even it didn't reach Earth orbit, so that was a failure early on it did not um even make it into lower th orbit, much less out into Mars. I actually saw that one listed as Mars Nick Mars Nick interested. Uh, so this is the

information I got was from NASA. Okay, so I was going from an article and Wired, so yeah, this is this is from NASA, so they had to Actually that went around the same time CORRABL four and five according to NASA, but I'm sure I had different names in the Wired article. The first attempt by the United States was in nineteen sixty four with the Mariner three UM, which was it was supposed to be a fly by mission. So this is a spacecraft that's supposed to pass by

Mars and take photos as it goes by. Uh. That one was also a failure. The the shroud failed to jettison, so it did not make it to Mars. But shortly thereafter, the Mariner four was a successful fly by mission and it returned twenty one images of Mars to Earth. So uh, the United States first attempt was a failure, but the second attempt succeeded. UM. There were a lot of attempts since then. Uh. Some of them, many of them were flybys, UM.

Some of them were meant to be orbit ters. Uh. A lot of launch failures, a lot of orbits that were obtained, but then the device failed before it could really retrieve a lot of information. The first success really for the Soviet Union UM was the Mars five which was in nineteen seventy three, and that was that returned sixty images of the planet and it but it only lasted nine days. Yeah, Mars to actually attempted to put a lander on the surface, but not so much with

the success. Yeah, the orbiter actually arrived into the orbit of Mars, but yeah, the lander did not did not land successfully. Chris and I have more to say about the Curiosity ander over on Mars, but before we get to that, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. One of the challenges again that I had read about, especially with the recent coverage on Curiosity again recent as of the time we're recording this UM, is that the the atmosphere of Mars is very very unlike that of Earth.

It's very thin. Yes, So I mean, you know, if you think about Uh, for example, the Space Shuttle coming back in or the Mercury and Geminy missions. I love doing that because Jonathan wins Is every time I see Geminy. Some of the astronauts called it that though. Uh, you know, using the heat shields and coming in and having the heat shield you know, burning as it comes through the Earth's atmosphere. Uh, Mars's atmosphere does not act as a slower downer, not not as much. It does. It does

slow down the vehicle, but not as much. Yeah, I think I was going to say that. Okay, well you said and as you said that, you said it wasn't a slower downer. I wanted to correct, well, not as I was going to say, not as much as it does here, and with gravity being so different there too. Um it is those are our factors that the scientists have to take into account. Um I if I am

not mistaken. You know there have been times when we tried to use a big cushiony bouncy ball to try to protect something and and it didn't work out to what we But we have had Rover's Land using that approach. Um. It's an air air bag approach, is really what it is. A's airbags. Uh. Well, yes, the the atmosphere on Mars is thinner than it is on Earth, and it does not slow entry vehicles down to the same extent as

we would have here on Earth. So you have to come up with other ways of slowing your entry vehicle entry vehicle down, uh, if you don't want to go boom on the surface of the planet. And there have been a lot of different attempts to do that. So previous attempts involved using parachutes, which can slow you down a little bit, but even then the atmosphere is so thin that you're going Uh. They, for example, the Curiosity rover deployed the largest supersonic parachute NASA has ever built,

which way I think a hundred pounds total. That was that was able to slow down the vehicle to two miles per hour. Uh. And I don't have the kilometers perer conversion. They're right in front of me, so I apologized for that. But anyway, even at that speed, there was no way the rover could land and maintain integrity. It would have smashed to little tiny pieces. So they had to find another way of slowing down. Uh. There are other elements literally on Mars that make this difficult.

One of the potential things you could do is use rockets to slow down your your entry vehicle. But the closer you get to the surface of the planet, the more those rockets are going to disturb the dust that's on the surface. That dust can cause lots of problems. If you have sensitive scientific equipment. This equipment might get

gummed up by dust. The dust could damage it so that it's unusable, which means that you might land successfully, but you can't actually retrieve any data because your instruments are fouled by dust. Um the dust itself could also

be corrosive, so there's some real problems there. So you have to figure out, well, if you can't just use rockets, then you have to find some other balancing features so that you can lower the rover itself onto the surface without getting the rockets so close to the surface that they start to disturb the dust about kilometers per hour. Thank you so uh in some cases the way that

the rovers we have landed. Now, we we've also launched orbiters that just orbit Mars and take uh scientific measurements from orbit. So we've got some of those in orbit already. UM. In fact, we've got a couple that we launched not too long ago, we being the United States. UM. The the there's the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which was launched in two thousand five and uh it's already returned more than

twenty six terra bits of data about the planet. There's also the Odyssey Mars Odyssey, which was launched in two thousand one UM and both of those have contributed a lot to our scientific knowledge. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has a boarded a special camera called the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment or high RISE, and the high RISE actually caught a great photo of the Curiosity rover as it

was landing with the parachute deployed. So you can actually see the parachute, you can see the capsule that contained the rover. You can if you look really carefully, you can even see the heat shield that was jettisoned off the bottom of the rover. We'll talk more about that whole procedure in just a minute. UM. So, one of the things you could do is you use rockets to slow yourself down further from the parachute, so the parachute

gets you down to a certain speed. The rockets can slow you down a little bit more, and then as you get closer to the surface, you need to find a way of lowering the rover itself so that the rockets don't disturb the dust too much. One way of doing that is to lower the rover, uh to essentially drop it with all these air bags around it, which cushioned the blow, and it lands and then it retrieves the air bags and or or emerges from the air

bags and continues on submission. That's how the smaller rovers um landed from the smaller ones being things like the Spirit and the Opportunity, uh, the Phoenix Lander, things like that used those sort of approaches because um they were they were small enough where it wasn't that it wasn't

as huge a challenge. With the Curiosity Rover. You're talking about a one ton vehicle, and at that size, the size of the air bags you would need are so huge that you would really run the risk of even if everything worked properly, you would run the risk of fouling the drive system of the Curiosity Rover because it has to get out of this enormous air bag. So

that was considered too risky. Another approach is to put uh these so pretty much like stilts, like landing stilts, so that when the the rockets lower the the descent vehicle down, the the stilts touch ground and keep the rockets at an elevation high enough so that they aren't disturbing the dust too much, and then the rover can drop down from there. Again. With the Curiosity rover, it was so large and heavy, the stilts would have had to have been way too tall to do this in

a way that would have been easy to do. And also it would have really made it difficult to ensure that the Curiosity would be undamaged as it came down. So they had to come up with a different way to get the Curiosity Rover onto the surface of Earth. And it was insane. A sky crane. Sky crane. Yeah, so that sounds that sounds like some kind of strange, other worldly company. And so we'll walk you through how how this unfolded. And it's still incredible to me that

this worked well. I think, um, and I don't mean this in any way to be a slight to the scientists behind this. I think they were a little astonished. Well, the reaction that we saw at the and as we learned that the Curiosity had in fact landed successfully. And by the way, by the time we knew that the Curiosity was successful in its landing, it had been on

the surface of Mars for several minutes. Because again Mars is further away at the point of the Curiosity landing from Earth than the Earth is to the Sun. It takes it takes about eight minutes for light from the Sun to get to Earth. It takes fourteen minutes for electromagnetic communication to get from Mars to the Earth Internet now fourteen minutes for that information to get to us.

It takes seven minutes from the time the landing capsule enters the Martian atmosphere to the point where Curiosity would touch down. That means there's a seven minute gap where things have already happened and we do not know what they were. Yes, so it was seven minutes of terror,

which is I think brilliant. There was a wonderful video NASA put out that was very dramatic, almost almost comedically so, because it was like it was like a thriller movie, right, but it was all about the seven minutes of terror. The fact that you have to build a vehicle that's operating autonomously for for you know, there's nothing you can do.

You can't make any adjustments because it's going to take fourteen minutes for that information to get to you, and then any information you send back it's going to take fourteen minutes for it to get there. So by the time you send any sort of information, by the time you react to a changing condition, it doesn't matter. Things

have changed too much for that to have any effect. So, uh, the capsule enters the Martian atmosphere, there's seven minutes until it touches down, and then seven more minutes before we find out that anything about it. The first thing that happens is the atmosphere starts to slow down the capsule, and like we said, it's a thin atmosphere, so it doesn't slow it down that much. It is, however, thick

enough to cause lots of heat from friction. So it's it's a double whammy for NASA right on the breaks exactly, all the heat none of a break. So you have to build a device that's capable with standing the heat. But I have to make you have to take into account the fact that the atmosphere is not going to slow it down sufficiently enough for it to make a

safe landing. What a headache. So that's already tough. Capsule enters the atmosphere, starts to heat up, has to have a heat shield to protect the innerds because electronics don't react well to heat. Said a billion times uh, not literally. The once it reaches a certain altitude, uh, it deploys the parachute, which slows down the the vehicle even more. And so it started to slow down once it hits the atmosphere. Actually takes a little while before it starts

to slow down, but it does slow down. Hitting the atmosphere, the parachute slows it down further. Once it slows down as much as it possibly can with the parachute, it jettison the parachute, which is important because then it activates rockets. So if it activated the rockets first, then there's the danger of actually colliding with the parachute and fouling the

whole system. So jettison's the parachute, parachute flies off, and then the rockets make a horizontal adjustment so that the descent vehicle is not going to be in the same path as the parachute. Uh. It eject the it detaches the the heat shield as well. Actually I think that even detaches while the parachutes deployed. Uh. And there are sensors on the bottom of the rover which can help

guide the whole system, so it lands in the best spot. Now, they were aiming for the Gael Crater, which is was It's a crater that was created on Mars about three billion years ago with a meteor impact, So they wanted to land the rover in there. So the the sensors on the bottom of the rover detect where the right landing area is. The rockets position it properly and start the descent, continuing to slow that that the scent so

that you're not plummeting to the surface. At about twenty meters above the surface of the planet, the rover descends on a on a set of cables from a crane that's in that descent vehicle. So you've got a crane essentially mounted on rockets lowering a one ton vehicle. The cables I think we're about seven meters long, and so it would then the rockets would then slowly allowed this entire thing to descend until the wheels of the rover

made contact with the Martian soil. At that point, the bridles holding the cables to the rover were jettisoned, and then the the the descent vehicle with the rockets would then launch itself about four away to crash on the surface of the planet so that it would not um cause any problems to the rover because you don't want it. Tell just we've gently set the rover down. Oh and then our descent vehicle landed on our rover. That's a bummer. That would have been a bad thing. So the descent

vehicle went about four away and crash landed. Uh, and the rover was safe on the planet. And we found out about it seven minutes after it happened. And everyone did a little dance and cheered and jumped and hugged each other. I don't think they did a little dance. I think they did a big dance. They did do a big dance. And there are gifts out there that show this that were very very popular. As soon I mean like seconds after the footage at the Internet, there

were already memes about it. Yeah. Yeah, well, um, like I said, I think they were a little surprised, but in a in a positive way, Like they came up with an excellent solution, but without ever you know, trying it in practice. Um, you know it on Mars. They weren't certain, especially with their past success rate, whether it would work for sure or not, or would it deliver the rover in excellent condition, which it did, so they

were they were very very happy about about that. And it's it's something that you can't really test here on Earth because the conditions here on Earth are so different from on Mars that even if you were to build something that works well on on here on our planet, you cannot be certain that the same thing is going to apply on Mars because the conditions are too different. Yeah, so you know, it wasn't just engineered well on paper,

it actually in practice did did very very well. And there's quite a lot of equipment on on Curiosity as well. I mean there's seventeen cameras alone, uh, and most most of those are navigational and hazard cameras, but there is a mast. Uh. You know what my favorite piece of equipment aboard the Curiosity is, or do I have to ask what what? What is your favorite piece of equipment?

It's a lazier, which the laser is used to concentrate a very focused beam of of light on rocks in the Martian soil, and UH they it does listen very very short bursts, like five ninosecond long bursts, and after about seventy bursts of this high powered, intense laser, it starts to a blate or evaporate the rock that it's

focused on. And then what happens is a special camera, actually three different cameras will get information from our three different sensors will get information from a telescopic camera that will analyze the plasma this rock gives off, and by analyzing the plasma through UH spectroscopes, they can determine what chemical elements made up the rock itself. So essentially, what

you're doing is you're burning something. Looking at burning is an oversimplification, but you're burning something, looking at the fumes it gives off, and based upon those you determine what the stuff is made of. The reason for this is one so we can learn more about the composition of Mars, but to also look for things that could be foundational building blocks to support life. Now, curiosity is not looking

for evidence of life itself. It is not looking for microscopic life because it doesn't have any equipment aboard the rover itself capable of seeing things that that result Lucian. So it's not looking for evidence of microscopic life that's currently there on Mars. It's really looking for all the elements that would need to be in place for life to have at least one at one time been supported

on Mars. That, however, has not stopped all the other memes that have gone around where there have been pictures circulated from curiosity and of course uh these pictures of curiosities. Uh, from curiosity's point of view, across the surface of Mars

is it's big and flat. However, duty so far, the life forms I have seen superimposed over that landscape on social media include Marvin the Martian from this Q thirty two Space modul tour from uh, the Looney Tunes cartoons, uh, the Muppets from uh that that that go yep yep up. And I did see a couple of days ago some ad apts walking across the surface. So the empire is apparently they're already um, very very amusing all terrain attack

transports or something like that. That's what it means. Yes, yes, So from Star Wars UM documentary Star Wars. Yeah, but but yeah, they there are several different cameras. They're they're taking photos three d um. So the James Cameron contingent is there, black and white colorful avatars are running around of there. Yep, yep. Um. So basically they're they're doing all kinds of of imaging and analysis of the planet's surface. Um. And you know they're it's it's pretty awesome to be

able to do this kind of work. Yeah, this is a this is an evolutionary step from what the previous rovers we've seen up there, like Phoenix and Spirit and Opportunity, where they were all very much geologic, uh, instruments, geological instruments really, so the geological formation of Mars and it's geological features. We have a bit more to say about the Curiosity project over on Mars, but I'm gonna go get myself a Mars bar and you guys can take

a quick break and listen to our sponsor. Curiosity is more of like a fully fledged scientific laboratory that is on wheels and moves very very slowly. Uh. It's got but it's got a lot of sophisticated equipment like you said, it has that mast that projects above the rover itself self. Gun arm Um. You mentioned the KEM CAM, which is the laser. It's got a chemistry and mineralogy experiment or instrument called KEMEN. They remember we talked about the different

parts of the Space Shuttle group. They love love love acronyms. So the CAM in instrument looks at minerals to identify whether water could have been there. Then there's the rover Environmental Environmental Monitoring Station or MS, which will give you the weather report. Yes it's not raining again. Uh. There

there's so much aboard and um. One of the other things I think has been really remarkable about the past few missions to Mars is NASA's ability to communicate this information in a way that is really exciting to people

who otherwise might not really have cared that much. The space exploration history in the in the entire world has really gone through sort of a roller coaster of as far as the public interest is concerned, right, because you had the space race for the Moon, which was politically motivated, I mean that was that was really all a few old, not literally but metaphorically by the political opposition of the United States and the Soviet Union, And so once we

landed men on the Moon and got them back safely, uh, the political uh motivation to push people out into space really diminished, which is part of the reason why we didn't start immediately looking at Mars as being the next step, because a lot of the excitement and enthusiasm and funding had gone away because we already achieved this other amazing and insanely amazing goal of landing people on the Moon. Um. Then, like we had the Space Shuttle era, which started off

with incredible interest. I mean, it was this amazing program, but then Shuttle mission after Shuttle mission, people started to think of it more as something that just happens and less as something amazing and special because it was you know, it just seemed like, oh, yeah, another Shuttle mission is going up, which is, when you think about it, that's a crazy, crazy thing to just take for granted because the amount of work it takes to get people into

space is phenomenal. But it did happen. Uh, once we started sending missions to Mars and have them be a success, you know, there were science fans who really thought was interesting, but the general public, I don't know that necessarily cut their attention. I think what really turned things around was when NASA started to leverage social media and began to use social media to to communicate scientific facts, figures, discoveries

to the general public. That got people excited, and beyond that, they began to give almost a personality to some of the equipment they sent out. That's that's funny. I don't know if Jonathan heard this. This morning, UM, as I was driving to the train station to come in for this podcast, I was listening to National Public Radio NPR here in the United States, and there was an interview

UM with Veronica McGregor now Veronica McGregor. She was the person who was in charge of updating a Twitter account for the Phoenix Mars Rover, and the Phoenix Mars Rover ended up getting an enormous number of fans following it, and it was able to know through the Phoenix Twitter feed, NASA was able to communicate a lot of interesting scientific information. But Veronica went a little step further and gave the Phoenix sort of again a personality. And I'll never forget.

I mean, I remember I followed the Phoenix rover and it was truly an emotional moment. When the second to last tweet the Phoenix sent out during its official mission was It's very unlikely I'll wake up next spring, but if I do, I'll call home. Go luck with your project. And people thought about that, like, there's this little robot all alone, not really all alone. There are other robots

on Mars too, but they're really far away. So more or less, there's this little robot all alone on the surface of this planet, uh, you know, miles and miles and miles away from Earth, and it is doing science for us, and it's doing it selflessly, and it's about to die because it's solar circuits aren't going to get enough juice to keep it going, and there's and by the time it comes out of that that essentially Martian Winter, for lack of a better term, by the time it

comes out, it will not be able to reboot it system and it will be a dead piece of technology. It impacted people, I mean, people got teary eyed over the idea because they, yeah, people had had humanized this inanimate well animated but on a live object and has no actual feelings or personality. But Veronica had really imbued this thing with that kind of sense of purpose and and personality that people identified with, and it made a powerful statement and I think people connected to the space

mission in a way they hadn't in many years. And NASA has continued that trend. And uh the last Twitter post it posted was all in binary and it's spelled out triumph all making a note here. Huge success. Well, they talked to Veronica McGregor this morning. She is the

social media manager UM and is at it again. There there's a team of three women who, according to NPR, who work on the Curiosity rovers Twitter account, which has according to this uh UM Chicago Tribune, I couldn't remember Veronica's last name, so I looked it up and and this article posted earlier today. As of right now, more than eight hundred thousand followers UM already for Curiosity, so they will be following through the mission just in case

you're curious. According to Veronica McGregor, the Curiosity as as she it has a female, she said. According to them, they had sort of talked about it and they they feel they get this feeling that it's a her. So I don't know, you go girl, it's interesting. But well, if if you put yourself in the shoes of someone who is talking about this. Um, you know you you kind of have to make a personality as you're building your personality, like you know what, I think, I think

it's a woman, but I do. I do remember listening to or watching videos of the engineers talked about the Curiosity and they referred to the entire vehicle as a she, which at the time I didn't think unusual because I like the votes ships not boats. Well, some boats I think of. I think of ships or hurricanes. Um, the Enterprise, Yeah, the Star Trek, that's as she. Well. People have talked about the expense of the mission, and I'm sure there were people who are going, why on Earth were Mars?

Do you care if it's a male or a female? Were? Over All, these things personalize it somewhat, and they do make it more accessible to us, and they also get us inspired to to try new things, to find ways to grow better crops or pure diseases, or launch the next mission to space. They make us want to try something that we haven't been able to do before, and it's valuable. The the effects that come out of this are across so many different disciplines, so not only one.

We're learning about Mars. Two, we're learning more about our solar system. Three, we're learning more about the Earth as we learn what things are similar versus dissimilar between Mars and Earth. And and go ahead. Four we're inspiring future generations of scientists and engineers because this is genuinely exciting and people, little kids will think that is amazing. Look at what can be accomplished. I want to do that. And and five you're promoting science in general to the

general public. And again, you know, promoting science, I think it's an incredibly important thing. It's not the easiest thing in the world to do, especially you know, some scientists are so focused on their field they may not be the best at communicating that that passion and enthusiasm to the general public. Even though they possess it themselves, they might not be able to communicate it effectively. So bridging that gap is really important so that the public understands

why this is important and gets excited. It also helps with funding. Um it might inspire the next private company to try and go into something that they wouldn't have done before. So yeah, the the this is really a true domino effect, right. It's amazing the sort of stuff that can come out of a mission like this that may not even be obvious at first glance. Yep, and eventually we're gonna have to get off this rock. Well yeah,

and we should mention also. NASA currently only has one other Mars mission planned, which is a launch in of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution um SO or MAVEN this name of that, and don't really have a creative acronym for that. I'm who would have thunk it. Maven's

purpose is to study the atmosphere of Mars. So again, the rovers we are sending are mostly looking at the composition of the soil and the geological formations that are on Mars, and to really look at the various layers that someone of the reasons why we landed uh, the curiosity of a crater is because they can look at different layers on the surface of Mars and see how it's how it has changed over time. But this will

be more to look at the atmosphere. We do not have any manned missions to Mars planned, at least not NASA UM and there are other nations in the world that are also planning missions to Mars. NASA has only got the one and then after that, who knows. Um, we don't have any planned missions to Mars. There are some companies. There are some companies that have talked about it, uh,

and some of the plans are kind of insane. But if you really want to hear a pretty crazy idea about landing on Mars, my favorite is the first one that I could come across, the first published um plan or calculation of what it would take to to send a manned mission to Mars, and it comes from Verna Magnus, Maximilian Friar von Brown or Verna von Brown as most people would know, who was a rocket scientist rocket scientists

during World War Two built rockets for the Germans. After the end of World War Two, the United States UM essentially took him and put him to work for the U S Rocket program. Uh, it was That's a political story that is fascinating, and you should all write to stuff you missed in history class to talk about that. Actually, that'd be a fascinat fascinating podcast. But anyway, Van Brown first made rockets for the Germans and then began to

make rockets for the United States. And one of the things he thought of back in nineteen was what it would take to send a manned mission to Mars. It wasn't published till nineteen fifty two. Eventually became an appendix in a novel he wrote, which was a fictional account of what that mission would be like. The novel, from what I understand, is not UM terribly good, I did

not publish until two thousand and six. But anyway, in his in his version, it was going to be a ten spacecraft mission where these ten spacecrafts would carry about seventy crew members total, and the spacecraft would go into orbit around Ours and then the mission the the ground mission crews would detach from the orbiting UM spacecraft in winged vehicles that had skis at the bottom of them and would land at the polar caps on Mars. The thought being that the polar caps would be flat and

so that would be the best place to land. Then they would take Mars crawlers to the equator on Mars, which would take about eighty days I think, and then build base camp there and then would come back to Earth when the those orbits would line up properly. Again. So that was his idea. UM didn't happen. It was It was an incredibly um Uh, I don't know difficult, I have difficult project. I mean it would have. It would have been much harder than anything else we have

attempted so far. So but that that was my favorite of the proposed Martian expeditions, although there are some other ones there's been. There was one that was more like a reality television show, um which was a private endeavor and I won't go into it, but it did sound pretty crazy. So there have been some interesting proposals for

trips to Mars. Mostly it looks like for the foreseeable future it's going to be unmanned missions from most of the world unless some crazy person with lots of money gets behind it and and and does what we think is think of as the impossible, which after the Curiosity ro overlanding, I'm not sure my my definition of the impossible needs to be adjusted. It was certainly not a mission impossible, that's true. That wraps up this classic episode of text stuff. I hope you guys enjoyed it. It

was fun to revisit this. I remember actually following the progress of the Curiosity as it was happening, or really, you know, several minutes after it had happened because of the communications delay between Mars and Earth, and it was absolutely thrilling. I always find anything to do with space and space exploration to be really interesting and exciting, pushing back the boundaries of our ignorance, incredible engineering achievement of getting stuff into space. So I hope you guys enjoyed

this classic episode. If you have any suggestions for future topics for tech Stuff episodes, send me an email the addresses tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com. If you want some of your very own tech stuff merchandise, like a tech stuff coffee mug, which I have and trust me, coffee just taste better in it, you can go check that out at t public dot com slash tech stuff. That's t E e Public dot com slash tech stuff, or drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter.

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