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(uneasy music)

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After traveling nearly 300 million miles

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at warp speed,
(thrusters firing)

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NASA's Perseverance spacecraft is closing in on its target:

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Mars.

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If all goes well, this roving space lab

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and the first ever Martian helicopter

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will touch down on the red planet on February 18th,

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but not before facing the riskiest part of the mission:

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a fiery entry,

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a harrowing high-wire act landing,

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and seven long minutes of silence.

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The rover will have landed or it will have crashed,

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and we will not know until that signal gets back.

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One way or another,

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you're going to be on the ground in seven minutes.

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In search of signs

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that life once existed here long ago.

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Are we alone?

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I don't think so.

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If we find ancient life on Mars,

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it really changes everything.

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Perseverance: Countdown to Impact.

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(wind whistling)

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The desert plains of Isidis Planitia,

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thousands of square miles of sand,

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rocks, and whispering wind.

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The memory of a vast lake haunts this region,

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brooding in undisturbed silence for millions of years.

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Four, engine ignition.

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Two.

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One.

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Zero.

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And liftoff.

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The Perseverance rover

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began its journey seven months ago

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when it was launched atop an Atlas V rocket

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July 30th, 2020, bound for Mars.

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And Mach 1; Atlas V is now supersonic.

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{\an8}Making the launch window was fortuitous.

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{\an8}We always launch it at the optimal time

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{\an8}where Earth and Mars are positioned just right

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{\an8}to make that journey as short as possible.

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Earth and Mars orbits are elliptical

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and rarely align.

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Earth is closer to the sun,

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and Mars takes nearly two Earth years

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to make a full circuit.

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Astronomers call the moment of closest approach

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between the two planets an opposition.

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This is the time to jump from one planet to the next.

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These launch windows happen once every two years.

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We're seizing the opportunity with Perseverance

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and it's going to be then a seven-month trip to Mars.

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Perseverance is not the first rover

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to explore Mars.

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There have been four previous missions,

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which have sent back amazing data and imagery to Earth.

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Everybody knows the story of how we landed on the moon

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and the first steps on the moon,

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{\an8}but a lotta people don't understand

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{\an8}that there were robotic precursors to those Apollo missions,

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and they were very critical in paving the way

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for taking technologies to Mars

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and improving those technologies that are important

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for that future human exploration.

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(balloons inflating)

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The Pathfinder mission is the first.

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It lands in a cocoon of airbags in 1997.

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Its rover, Sojourner,

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is named after Civil War abolitionist Sojourner Truth.

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Its primary mission is to prove

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we can send robotic explorers to Mars safely.

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This first rover mission lasts 83 days.

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Twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity are next.

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These robotic geologists make a startling discovery:

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minerals that form only in the presence of water.

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The news headline captures the world's attention.

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Mars was once a water planet like Earth.

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Curiosity, the largest rover, lands on Mars in 2012

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and is still exploring Gale's Crater,

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searching for evidence of microbial life.

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Mars today is a cold, dry, desert world.

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It's a stark windswept landscape

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of dust, sand, and spectacular rock formations.

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But if we look back in the past,

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Mars was once warmer, wetter, and even had lakes and rivers

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like we would recognize on the surface of Earth today.

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The key ingredients for the recipe of life

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are water, sunlight, and certain organic compounds

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like carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen.

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The revelation about Martian water

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gives new credibility to age-old questions.

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Before Spirit and Opportunity,

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{\an8}the mantra was, "Follow the water,"

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{\an8}and now we've been able to move beyond that.

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{\an8}So, now, instead of just following the water,

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trying to understand what was the chemistry of the water.

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Was that water something that could've given rise to life?

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Why did the environment change so much on Mars

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that we once had liquid water and we don't anymore?

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And Perseverance may just help

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answer these questions,

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as long as the carefully-chosen landing site

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hosted water long ago.

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We have picked the landing site to be on the western edge

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of the Isidis Planitia impact basin,

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and we're going right here,

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to a place called crater Jezero Crater,

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which once, when Mars was warmer and wetter, hosted a lake,

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{\an8}an environment very different from what we're gonna see

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{\an8}when we land today.

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This ancient lake bed

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is the same size as Lake Tahoe in California.

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It's an excellent place to look for possible Martian life

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because we already know that Jezero has rocks and minerals

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that could only form in water.

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The Jezero Crater site, if you look at it from space,

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is pretty obviously a delta.

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We think that Mars was habitable

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about four billion years ago.

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So, the question is not just where was that life on Mars,

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{\an8}but also where could it be preserved

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{\an8}for four more billion years for us to find it later?

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On Earth, lakes are filled

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with living creatures.

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Evidence of that life is preserved in the mud and sand

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deposited on the bottom of the lake.

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Could the same be true for Mars?

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The rover's instruments will closely examine

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the ancient rocks of the bygone lake.

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The dress rehearsal: a dry lake bed in Death Valley

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and geologic study in Australia,

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places that share an uncanny similarity

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to Martian geologic history.

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One of the most exciting things about the rocks

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that we'll be exploring on Mars is that they date back

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to a period where we have the first evidence

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of fossil life on earth, so about 3.5 billion years ago.

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These are exactly the age of the rocks

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that we'll have accessible to us in Jezero.

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This is where the science team examines geology

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and tests their instruments.

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{\an8}This rock is a sandstone, not unlike a rock

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{\an8}that we might actually find in Jezero Crater.

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{\an8}We would be interested in sampling a rock like this

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to understand what each individual sand grain has to tell us

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about Mars and its evolution.

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But first, the rover must get there safely.

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When Perseverance makes its final approach for landing,

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the most dangerous part of the mission begins: EDL,

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or entry, descent, and landing.

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One of the most exciting parts of getting to Mars

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is the landing sequence.

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It's been said that the Mars atmosphere

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is too thin to be useful, but too thick to ignore,

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meaning it heats the spacecraft up by friction,

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but it doesn't slow it down.

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This is when the spacecraft

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and its protective aeroshell

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will attempt to enter the Martian atmosphere

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and perform a groundbreaking high-wire act landing.

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Entry, descent, and landing

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is all about getting the vehicle

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from the top of the atmosphere down to the bottom safely.

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We hit the atmosphere going 12-13,000 miles per hour.

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Hit the atmosphere too shallow

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and the vehicle skips off into space

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like a stone skipping over water.

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Hit the atmosphere too steep

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and it burns up like a meteor.

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Friction from the air burns the heat shield,

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with temperatures reaching 3,800 degrees Fahrenheit.

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So, it's heating up, heating up, heating up,

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and finally it gets to a portion of the atmosphere

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where the atmosphere actually acts

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to slow down that spacecraft.

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That's when the parachute deploys.

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It's also one of the riskier parts of the mission.

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You don't want that parachute to tear.

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And then what happens is the radar starts to see

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where we are relative to the ground.

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The rover and its descent stage

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detach from the parachute.

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The descent stage is called a sky crane.

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It takes over the landing and fires its engines.

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As it descends under its parachute,

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the rover takes pictures of the ground.

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Its onboard computer rapidly compares the images

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with pictures stored in its database.

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This computer lines up features it sees in the new photos

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with features it sees from the cataloged photos.

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If the rover is descending toward dangerous ground,

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it can change direction

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and move toward a safer place to land.

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Slows, hovers, and then lowers the rover

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on the edge of this tether.

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When contact is sensed with the ground,

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that tether is cut, that descent stage flies away

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and the rover falls what should be no more than a meter

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to hit the surface, but gently.

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For a few minutes,

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the spacecraft will not be able to communicate with Earth.

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But we're gonna have that period

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where it will have happened on Mars.

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The rover will have landed or it will have crashed,

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{\an8}and we will not know until that signal gets back.

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{\an8}Those minutes of blackout

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are some of the most heart-pounding moments

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as you wait to see what happened with the spacecraft.

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For the science and engineering team,

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comprised of hundreds of people, over a decade of work

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comes down to seven nail-biting minutes.

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A lot of things have to go right

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in a space mission to get your spacecraft to Mars.

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One way or another,

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you're going to be on the ground in seven minutes.

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All we can do is cross our fingers,

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hope for the best, and cheer on the crew

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that's making the launch happen.

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Perseverance is armed

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with a battery of seven instruments and 23 cameras

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that address questions about life in the past,

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in the present, and the future.

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And with two microphones onboard,

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we will actually hear the first true sounds of Mars.

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(wind whistling)

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For the first time,

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we're gonna have that human sense on another planet.

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We've never really heard our environment on Mars,

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and I think it's gonna be exciting

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to hear the entry, descent, and landing,

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the wheels turning on the surface of Mars.

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The rover will identify chemical elements

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in the Martian soil, as well as organics and minerals

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that may be signs of past microbial life.

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The latest in camera technology

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can capture features as small as a grain of salt.

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The Mars 2020 instruments are really well-suited

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to look for things that we call biosignatures,

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which are signs that ancient life

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might've been there in the past.

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If something ever lived here,

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Perseverance can find evidence of it.

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You can't prove it until you actually can get down

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and get your nose in the dirt.

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(drill whirring)

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{\an8}A drill shares the turret

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{\an8}with the scientific instruments.

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{\an8}The drill bores holes and extracts core samples.

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This is a system that allows us to take core samples

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of rocky material on the surface of Mars,

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{\an8}carefully seal them in very sterile, clean vessels

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{\an8}for eventual return to Earth.

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Once the sample is collected,

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Perseverance stores the sample in a revolving chamber

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located inside the rover.

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This chamber is called the sample cache,

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and it has storage for 47 empty tubes.

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Here, the samples are hermetically sealed.

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No contaminants from the rover will ever enter the tubes,

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and nothing can escape them.

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And in a mission first, these collection tubes

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will be the cleanest ever sent into space

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to ensure whatever microbes come back

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are Martian and not from Earth.

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The last thing NASA scientists want to do

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is contaminate Mars.

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And at some point in the future, a site will be chosen

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where the sample cache will be deposited.

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This will become a depot.

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Perseverance will spend the rest of its mission

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bringing sample tubes to the depot.

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A future mission will collect the cash

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and bring the samples back to Earth.

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This makes Perseverance part one of a sample-return mission.

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I think we have a lot to learn, life or no life,

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about the evolution of our solar system, about our planet,

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by looking in-depth at rocks brought back from Mars.

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The array of cameras on Perseverance

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serve a multitude of purposes.

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The Mastcam-Z instrument

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consists of two fixed-focus but zoomable cameras

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that are mounted on either side of the rover mast,

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so they let us get a stereo view of the landscape,

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just as our eyes do.

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The Mastcam-Z is used for long-distance driving

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and infrared science,

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and the nav cams used for autonomous navigation.

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Temperatures are well within our limits,

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so we're ready to go.

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We are going to come up and do Mastcam.

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The cameras work the same way as human eyes,

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giving us a stereoscopic view of the landscape.

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Mastcam-Z is effectively our eyes on Mars

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in terms of recon and assessing what the terrain is doing.

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The Mastcam-Z is used

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to choose targets for a closer look

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and to get a sense of the terrain surrounding the rover.

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What's special, though, about the Mastcam camera

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is that in addition to imaging invisible light,

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they image out into the near-infrared wavelength ranges,

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and this near-infrared lets us get a compositional picture

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of when chemistry and mineralogy are changing in the rocks.

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The rover's extensive camera package

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are not the only eyes on the mission.

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Probably the most exciting experiment of all

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is Perseverance's companion, dubbed Ingenuity,

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the first ever Martian helicopter.

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Within 30 days of landing,

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the rover will deploy an experimental new craft.

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What we're then hoping to do

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is a series of flight tests.

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First, maybe just up and hover, then maybe up and a meter,

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then maybe up and to a couple tens of meters away.

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The helicopter has a camera, has two rotors,

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and we're hoping to prove out this new technology

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that we can fly other spacecraft on Mars,

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collecting pictures from above.

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(camera shutter snapping)

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From day one, this was the unwavering dream of our team,

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to get our helicopter launched to Mars

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so that we can get the opportunity

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{\an8}to do the first rotarcraft flight test

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{\an8}in the actual environment of Mars.

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There are unusual challenges

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to powered flight on Mars.

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The air on Mars is indescribably thin,

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just 1% of the thickness of the atmosphere here on Earth.

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And Mars has a much lower gravity,

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just one-third that of Earth's, meaning less lift is needed.

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So, the first and foremost challenge

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is to make a vehicle that's light enough to be lifted,

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and then the second is to generate lift.

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The rotor system has to spin very fast.

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You'll also see that the blades themselves

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are much longer and their configuration is different,

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and that's because to take advantage

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of the minimal amount of lift

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that's provided through Mars's atmosphere,

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you have to have a much larger blade size

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for any given payload than you do on Earth.

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Our experiment window is 30 Martian days,

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so we have planned up to five flights

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of incremental difficulty.

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Most of our flights will be

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at the three-to-five-meter height.

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{\an8}We will be going horizontally

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{\an8}again at a few meters per second.

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So, our priority will be to get back engineering telemetry

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and not so much images, but I'm sure we'll return a few,

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because they'll all just look cool.

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But there's one more challenge.

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With no human assistance and a lag in communication,

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Ingenuity will have to fly on its own, autonomously.

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(spacecraft humming)

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Ingenuity is gonna scout ahead of the rover,

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hopefully demonstrating powered flight on another planet,

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which would be awesome and cool

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and open up a whole new suite of reconnaissance.

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The rover not only sees like a human,

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it's designed to test new tools

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for future human exploration.

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Mounted on the body of the rover

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is the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment,

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also known as MOXIE.

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MOXIE will synthesize oxygen out of the Martian atmosphere

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to create a gas that would be breathable

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by future humans on the surface,

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and MOXIE is a demonstration of this technology.

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The Martian atmosphere

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is about 96% carbon dioxide.

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MOXIE is a test to see if we can process Martian air

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to make liquid oxygen for rocket fuel and for breathing.

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The idea comes from an exploration strategy

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of living off the land.

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If we make some of our supplies in situ,

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rather than bringing everything from Earth,

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then we can reduce the cost of a human mission to Mars,

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paving the way for future missions.

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But MOXIE's not the last engineering test

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Perseverance has in store.

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The rover has a weather station

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that'll keep track of wind, humidity,

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dust levels, and temperature.

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By studying the ways dust and water ice

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interact with solar radiation,

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this weather station analyzes conditions on the ground

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that help predict the weather on Mars.

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Perseverance also has sample fabric swatches

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mounted on one of its instruments,

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a critical test to see which fabrics hold up

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in the harsh Martian environment so that NASA can develop

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the safest spacesuits for future human explorers.

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Thanks to Perseverance,

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future explorers will wear the outfit

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best suited for prevailing weather conditions.

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(soft piano music)

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In spite of a pandemic, the challenges of getting to Mars,

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communicating with Earth, flying in Martian air,

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gives a whole new meaning to perseverance.

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Boy, you couldn't have named this thing any better,

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(laughing) since we've had to deal with the pandemic.

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And as I said before,

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when it hit,

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it was kind of like walking into a dark blind alley;

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you just didn't know what was out there in front of you.

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And so, it took some faith

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to go forward and the determination

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to deal with whatever came your way.

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And I think that's the definition of perseverance, right?

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Mars beckons us, knowing that in the deep past,

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Mars may have once been an Earth-like world.

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I mean, I think if we find ancient life on Mars,

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it really changes everything.

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We have suddenly then learned

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that the universe does not just have one planet with life,

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that it had two.

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That's tremendous!

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What are the implications of that?

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Did life on Mars somehow come from Earth

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or is it an independent second genesis of life?

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Are we alone?

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00:23:07,050 --> 00:23:08,550
I don't think so, probably not.

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00:23:08,550 --> 00:23:10,760
There are a lot of stars and planets out there.

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But finding life on Mars

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would be one of the first steps in that direction

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to really understanding how much life is out there

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in our universe.

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00:23:20,310 --> 00:23:24,220
(reverent orchestral music)

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With Ingenuity and Perseverance,

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we may soon unlock the secrets of the red planet

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and a glimpse into our future.