Narrator: Mars, earth's cosmic neighbor,
More than 40 spacecraft have been launched to the red planet
Seeking to unlock its secrets.
Now, nasa's new perseverance rover
Is on a quest to crack the planet's biggest mystery --
Was there ever life on mars?
Ever since the very first mission to land on mars,
We've been looking for signs of life.
We've seen tantalizing clues.
This could be the mission that finally answers the question.
Narrator: How will perseverance succeed where others have failed?
Could this mission discover that living things exist today
On the red planet?
If the perseverance rover finds life on mars,
That will change science and philosophy forever.
Narrator: And how will perseverance lay the groundwork
For humanity's next giant leap in space exploration?
Thaller: Someday there will be humans who no longer
Identify themselves as earthlings,
But they will call themselves martians.
To find out, we will venture to the red planet,
Voyage beneath its mysterious, dusty surface,
And explore its alien underworld to reveal the secrets
Of this pioneering mission to mars.
♪♪
-- Captions by vitac -- www.Vitac.Com
Captions paid for by discovery communications
Mars...
From orbit, the planet looks barren,
Temperatures here plummet to minus 220 degrees fahrenheit.
Its thin atmosphere is 95% carbon dioxide.
Cosmic radiation over 30,000 times stronger than
On earth blast the surface.
Probes and rovers sent to mars confirm that it appears
To be a lifeless desert world. -When you look at the images
The rovers and landers have sent back from mars,
It looks dry, dead, but that's mars now.
What was it like a long time ago?
Well, the evidence for that shows a very different world.
Narrator: Many space scientists believe that life could have
Once thrived on the red planet.
Mars just squeaks in on the edge of what we like
To call the habitable zone.
Now, that means the region in a solar system
Where liquid water could form
And could exist for long periods of time.
We know that water is the source of life on earth,
And it might have been the case on mars.
Narrator: Nasa has sent four rover missions
To explore mars since 1996.
Nasa's fifth rover mission called "mars 2020,"
Is the first task to seek out evidence of life on mars.
This is perseverance.
It's a six-wheeled
Robotic vehicle about the size of an suv.
Perseverance is the most ambitious rover
We've ever flown into space and that has ever gone to mars.
Narrator: Perseverance carries a suite of super sensitive instruments,
Ground penetrating radar, onboard chemical analysis,
And x-ray detectors
To sniff out the signs of ancient life.
Every single inch of the rover has been carefully
Thought through and designed.
All of this effort is in support of a chance
To really ask the question,
"has life ever existed beyond earth?"
Narrator: July 30, 2020. An atlas five rocket blasts off
From nasa's kennedy space center.
One hour after launch,
The capsule carrying perseverance rover
Separates and heads out into space.
Destination -- mars.
Launching a rover into space
And traveling more than 130 million miles to mars
Is the easy part of this mission.
The bigger challenge is how
To land a one-ton rover on the martian surface.
Nasa engineers borrow the multi-stage system
Used to land the curiosity rover in 2012.
It's a proven platform for getting robotic vehicles
From space onto the surface of mars.
The heat shield comes into the top of the atmosphere
That starts to slow us down a bit,
But not nearly enough.
We have to release the parachute,
But the mars atmosphere is thin,
So the parachute is not good enough on its own.
It doesn't slow us down enough to get to the surface safely.
Narrator: Now falling at 180 miles per hour,
Perseverance is ready to make a controlled touchdown.
Williford: We come down on retrorockets,
Hover, lower the rover down on the skycrane,
And then once it touches the surface and releases
That tension on the bridle,
Pyros fire, cutting those cables.
The descent stage flies away to a safe distance and crashes,
And the rover is just there ready to go.
It's tremendously exciting and nerve wracking.
♪♪
Narrator: With perseverance now landed safely on the martian surface,
The rover's mission begins.
Mars is just over half the size of earth,
Where within this huge area
Should perseverance look for life?
If you're looking for life on mars,
Finding evidence of this life or past life
Isn't going to be equal in all places.
For example, if you land in the sahara
On earth versus the amazon,
You're going to have a very different outcome.
The planet is big.
The rover is small.
So it's key that you put the rover in the right spot.
Narrator: The key to finding traces of ancient life on mars
Is finding signs of water.
Liquid water is a super solvent.
It allows lifeless chemicals to mix
And transform into biological systems.
If there's one thing that earth teaches is about life,
It's follow the water. Where you find water,
We found life on earth.
Narrator: There are no obvious signs of liquid water on mars today.
How can scientists locate where liquid water on mars
Once used to be?
In 2004, the twin mars rovers,
Opportunity and spirit, beam images back to earth
That could unlock the answer.
The cameras on board both rovers photographed
These strange martian objects.
Each one is roughly 1/5 of an inch across.
Nasa scientists call these objects blueberries
Because of their shape and color in these photographs.
Analysis reveals that these blueberries
Are made from iron oxide.
And one theory claims there's only one way
That these rusty balls can form.
Blueberries start life as tiny specks of crystals
That exist inside waterlogged rocks.
Iron oxides from the rocks
Wrap around the crystal spheres like rust,
Turning them into small iron balls -- blueberries.
Thousands of these can form near each other,
But to grow, they need huge amounts of water
To flush more minerals onto them.
Over millennia, strong winds erode the soft stone
Around the hard blueberries, releasing them onto the surface.
The blueberries are evidence
That mars once had rivers and lakes.
It's even possible that the red planet
Had oceans of liquid water 4 billion years ago.
With all this evidence and all this data over all these years,
The story is clear.
Mars had rivers and river channels.
This means that the probability
That mars harbored life is very high.
Narrator: Nasa research finds evidence that water covered
1/5 of mars for over a billion years.
That's an area almost 40 times the size of texas,
Too large for one small rover to explore in detail.
Where on mars should perseverance focus its search
For ancient life, and what will it look like?
Narrator: Nasa's perseverance rover is on a mission
To find evidence of ancient life on mars.
The perseverance rover and all of its subsystems,
Everything about it is really this concentrated effort
In support of exploration and discovery, scientific discovery.
A chance to really ask the question,
"has life ever existed beyond earth?"
Narrator: Scientists believe these traces could exist
Where water covered the red planet four billion years ago.
This area could make up as much as 20% of the surface of mars.
So where in this vast area should the rover target?
♪♪
When you're trying to find the perfect spot on mars
To look for the evidence of life,
One of the things you need is standing water
For a long period of time,
Something that wasn't just wet for a few days
And then dried up.
Narrator: A clue to where to search for ancient life
Lies in photographs taken from 180 miles above mars.
Mars reconnaissance orbiter, or m.R.O.,
Is a satellite that orbits the red planet.
Its camera captures images of the martian surface
In stunning detail.
Plait: The mars reconnaissance orbiter
Is essentially a spy satellite in orbit,
But instead of spying on the planet,
It's mapping it so that we can better understand it.
Narrator: Nasa scientists searched the m.R.O.'s photographs
For the traces that ancient rivers and lakes leave behind.
They find an intriguing feature in jezero crater --
A deep depression close to the martian equator.
It's likely that mars had lakes and rivers
4 billion years ago.
An asteroid or comet strike
Explodes a mega crater 28 miles across.
Over time, two rivers break through its rim.
They create a deep body of water the size of lake tahoe.
On its shore, the rivers form fan-shaped deltas
That are still visible today...
...Long after the water the lake held for millennia dried up.
♪♪
Thaller: So in jezero crater, we find not one,
But two beautiful river deltas. Now deltas are formed
Over a long period of time
As a river enters a larger area like a lake,
Slows down, and drops its sediment.
We know this had to be wet for perhaps millions of years --
A perfect place to look for life.
Narrator: Nasa scientists use a powerful camera on the m.R.O. To analyze
The rocks in jezero crater in more detail.
Images from the camera reveal that the rim of the crater
Is made from different types of carbonate rock.
Carbonates on earth form when the shells and bones
Of microscopic animals build up in layers
On the floors of lakes and oceans.
These photographs point a giant marker
At where the perseverance rover
Should concentrate its search for martian life.
Oluseyi: In addition to being filled with water at one time,
Jezero crater is also ideal
Because it has this carbonate rock
Lining the inside rim of the crater,
And these carbonates on earth create fossils.
If perseverance is able to study these carbonates,
Then that gives us the opportunity
To maybe find fossilized life.
We're extremely excited about jezero crater.
We have an incredible landing site
That's the result of many years of scientific debate
And really gives us everything we're looking for
In a landing site for mars.
So we are all systems go for jezero crater.
Narrator: The perseverance rover has its target,
But what should perseverance search for?
What could the remains of martian life look like?
The only place in the universe that we know
For sure life exists is earth, so we can only use earth
As our best possible guide in the search for life.
The best way to search for past evidence of life on mars
Is to assume that it evolved in a way
Similar to that on the earth.
Narrator: Around 3.8 billion years ago,
Oceans of liquid water start forming on earth,
Triggering the beginning of life on our planet.
In the warm seas,
Simple chemicals combine into complex biomolecules
And the first single celled organisms.
Some of these organisms develop photosynthesis.
And for over 2 billion years,
They fill earth's atmosphere with oxygen.
Only in the last 600 million years does life evolve
Into a vast array of complex animals and plants.
Oluseyi: And when we look at mars,
Clearly there aren't giraffes walking around, right?
There are no alligators.
So I doubt that there are large lifeforms on mars.
The highest probability is that it's microbial life.
Narrator: Bacteria and other microbes are single celled organisms.
Most of them measure only a tiny fraction of an inch across.
What will the remains of this microbial life look like today,
And how can perseverance find them on mars?
♪♪
Narrator: Nasa's perseverance rover is hunting for evidence
Of ancient microbial life on mars.
What do these remains of living things
Look like after 4 billion years on the martian surface?
Ancient shorelines in jezero crater could hold the answer.
♪♪
These shallow waters may have been an ideal place
For life to flourish.
On earth, microbes can group together on lakebeds
To form patches of sticky microbial mats.
In time, these turn to stone and new layers of microbes
Grow over the top.
After many thousands of years,
They grow into layered pillars called microbialites.
Finding remains of such structures on mars
Could be evidence that life once thrived here.
Plait: Billions of years ago, mars was warmer and wetter,
Much like earth is now.
Well, life on earth arose billions of years ago
And we find evidence of that.
So by investigating that, we're learning about ways
We can look for that same sort of life
That may have existed once on mars.
Narrator: A clue can be found
In the pilbara region of western australia.
This is one of the most ancient landscapes on earth.
Here, nasa scientists investigate
Fossilized microbialites
That are 3.4 billion years old.
It's in these rocks that we find these first clear traces
Of microbial life fossilized in the geologic record.
And the traces are clear.
There are some shapes that are complex enough
That we find it impossible to imagine a mechanism
Other than biology that could build them.
It's possible that we could observe
Something similar on mars.
♪♪
Narrator: The high resolution cameras on board perseverance
Could photograph the fossilized remains
Of microbialites on mars.
If the mast cam turns around and takes a picture
And sends it down to earth,
You know, my heart would leap for joy.
The implications are so large
That we really would need to confirm it
With follow-up observations.
If perseverance
Were to actually take an image of a fossil on mars,
And if we could verify that that fossil is actually evidence
Of past life on the planet, that would be
One of the greatest discoveries in human history.
Narrator: Finding fossils of tiny microbes on a world
Hundreds of millions of miles away is a long shot.
The conditions on the surface of mars make it unlikely
That intact microbialites exist.
Millennia of exposure to harsh radiation
Breaks down biological remains and turns them to dust.
It's likely that all obvious traces of organic life
Have been destroyed.
So how can perseverance
Identify the remains of long-dead life
Amongst the dust and stones on the surface of mars?
The solution lies in detecting the ancient chemical traces
That living things leave behind in the rock.
Thaller: You're looking for a chemical signature
That life was once there.
That life somehow processed the material around it.
And the word that we use for this is bio signature,
That the chemistry was changed in a way that we can say,
"it must have been life that did this."
Narrator: Nasa scientists pioneer technique
To identify the bio signatures
That ancient living things leave behind in their environment.
X-ray fluorescence zaps rock samples with radiation
To unlock evidence of the organic fingerprint
Hidden inside stone.
The technology is an ingenious way to find life on mars.
Fitting an entire x-ray fluorescence laboratory
Into the chassis of perseverance is a big challenge,
So nasa scientists develop a special scaled-down version
For the rover to use on mars.
It's called p.I.X.L.,
The planetary instrument for x-ray lithography.
On the end of the rover's 6 1/2-foot long robotic arm,
The instrument focuses an x-ray beam
Onto a tiny spot of martian rock.
The rock releases a radiation signature
That reveals its chemical composition
By mapping the chemistry of the martian rocks
To sub-millimeter accuracy,
P.I.X.L. Can identify the chemical fingerprints
That living things leave behind.
Williford: The search for ancient life on another planet
Is not really a smoking gun type of situation.
We don't expect to find one piece of evidence
That so striking, make one observation that's so incredible
That we just all agree and pack up and go home
And say, "yeah, there's life on other planets."
You have to collect many different observations,
Many different pieces of evidence,
And they all need to point in one direction.
We built the payload to give us the best chance
We absolutely can of answering that question.
Narrator: P.I.X.L. Promises to unlock the hiding places of
Long-dead martian life.
But is it possible that living things thrive today
On the red planet?
If so, how do they survive and where could we find them?
♪♪
Narrator: Perseverance is nasa's first rover to search
For evidence of ancient life on mars.
It carries a special x-ray instrument
That scans rocks for the chemical signatures
That long-dead life leaves behind.
But is it possible that the rover
Could find living things on the red planet today?
The surface of mars today is extremely inhospitable.
It's hard for us to imagine any life as we know it
Surviving for any real amount of time on the surface of mars.
As far as we know, all life on earth needs water to survive.
So if we want to look for life on mars,
It makes sense to go with what you know,
And we want to look for the water there.
The problem is mars is incredibly dry.
If we want to look for life,
We're going to have to find the water.
Narrator: The planet's polar ice caps
Are the only obvious signs of water on mars today.
They contain the same volume of frozen water
As the greenland ice sheet on earth.
Photographs taken by mars reconnaissance orbiter
Reveal the traces of ancient rivers, lakes,
And possibly oceans etched into the surface of the red planet.
But the liquid water that once filled these features
Is long gone.
Why did it disappear?
Billions of years ago, mars was warm and wet, very earth-like.
In fact, it looked more like earth does today
Than earth did back then. But today, mars is dry and cold
And the paths of these two planets
Moved in two very different directions.
If mars was habitable in the past
And is in the current condition it is today,
Then something big and something bad must have happened to it.
Narrator: Planetary scientists believe that something was mars
Losing its protection against the sun.
The churning molten core inside the young mars
Generates a powerful magnetic field.
This magnetic field
Deflects away the sun's harmful radiation.
It protects the fragile atmosphere of mars
And preserves its liquid water.
Around 4 billion years ago, the core cools and solidifies.
The magnetic field turns off, and mars loses its protection.
Radiation from the sun strips away the martian atmosphere.
The atmospheric pressure plummets,
The planet's water evaporates into space.
The planet turns into the red desert we see today.
At the surface, mars has the air pressure
Of about 1% of the earth's atmosphere,
And that's almost like being in a vacuum chamber.
What that means is that if you poured out a bottle
Of liquid water on mars,
It would immediately boil away and become vapor.
The low atmospheric pressure on mars means it's very unlikely
For water to exist as a liquid on its surface.
But that doesn't mean it's impossible.
Narrator: In 2008, nasa's phoenix lander makes a discovery
That reveals how it is possible for liquid water
To exist on mars.
Phoenix beams back to earth
Images of strange beads of liquid
Attached to the legs of the lander.
What stops this water from fizzing away
In the low atmospheric pressure on mars?
Phoenix discovers a clue in a soil sample.
It contains perchlorate, a type of salt.
What do you do when your sidewalk is frozen?
Well, you throw salt on it. When you mix salt in water,
It lowers the freezing point of water
So that it can exist as a liquid,
Even though technically
It's below the freezing point of water.
So it's possible that if water is salty enough on mars,
That it could be in a liquid state there.
Narrator: Martian water, if it exists,
Will be a lot saltier than the oceans on earth,
But that doesn't mean that it cannot sustain life.
These are the hot springs at yellowstone national park.
The temperature of the water in these pools is close to boiling.
The pools are as acidic as lemon juice,
But microbial life thrives here despite the hostile conditions.
There are locations on earth that we found life,
But we didn't expect to find a life,
And these are extreme locations
Where we call the life forms that live there extremophiles.
Narrator: Some scientists believe that if life exists on mars today,
It will likely share characteristics
With extremophiles that live in yellowstone.
Perseverance will collect and store samples
Taken from the surface of mars.
Future missions will return them to earth.
Scientists will test the samples for evidence of martian life.
But where are the hidden bodies of salty liquid water
In which living things could exist now?
And how can perseverance find them?
♪♪
Narrator: Some scientists believe that liquid water on mars today
Could harbor life on the red planet.
Where could nasa's perseverance rover
Find this liquid hidden beneath the surface?
♪♪
In 2011, nasa's mars reconnaissance orbiter
Makes a discovery that could unlock the mystery.
These images show dark streaks on the slopes of martian craters
Facing the sun.
The streaks grow in spring, widen in late summer,
And then fade away in the fall.
Scientists struggle to explain these mysterious features.
Is it possible these streaks are evidence
Of large reservoirs of liquid water
Locked away inside the martian crust?
And if they are,
What mysterious process drives them to the surface?
A clue lies here in death valley, california.
This is the driest spot in the u.S.A...
Almost as dry as mars.
If you want to look for life on mars,
It helps to look for places on earth
That are very much like mars.
And one place like that is death valley in california.
It's very, very dry there.
And so you can go there and look around and get a feel
For what it would be like to be on mars.
Narrator: But even with virtually no rainfall,
Life still thrives in this inhospitable environment.
Death valley is one of the hottest
And driest places on the earth.
And yet, as you drive around, there are still places
Where you see little clumps of vegetation.
There are even some oases that have water on the surface.
Narrator: Some scientists believe that the unique geology
Of death valley not only unlocks the mystery
Of how this air desert supports life...
...But also offers a clue to how on mars,
Liquid water could seep from below the ground
Up onto the surface.
Death valley sits on a branch
Of the infamous san andreas fault
Called the garlock fault.
As the rocks here crunch pass each other
At up to 3-feet every century, they fracture,
Creating fissures deep beneath the valley floor.
Groundwater can collect in the voids,
Building up pressure
That can force water through cracks to the surface.
That's how water hidden deep underground
Can turn even the hottest place on earth into a green oasis.
Nasa's insite spacecraft discovers
That mars likely has fewer
And less active tectonic plates than earth.
Scientists think that these plates don't grind together
As frequently.
So the crust of mars is less fractured than that on earth.
But there is another way to create a subterranean pipeline
That will allow water to escape to the surface of mars.
Tremblay: Over its multi-billion-year life,
Mars has been pelted continually by asteroids
And meteorite impacts.
So as these asteroids impacted the surface of mars,
They crushed and fractured the crust of the planet beneath it.
And these could create channels or conduits for salty water
To travel up to the surface.
The water is trapped inside the structure of the rock itself
In tiny little bits, but now what can happen
Is if a crack finds its way down into that rock,
All of that rock is underground under a lot of pressure.
So the water is pressurized, too.
That means it can burst up all the way to the surface.
Narrator: Today, mars is a frozen desert.
But the rocks beneath its surface are so salty
That they could melt the ice
And form pockets of liquid water.
Some scientists believe that in summer,
High pressure forces water up through cracks in the rock.
The water seeps across the martian soil,
Causing dark streaks visible from space.
In winter, the cracks freeze shut and the streaks disappear.
♪♪
The perseverance rover carries technology
That can reveal hidden sources of martian water.
On board perseverance is a special type of ground
Penetrating radar called rimfax.
Underneath the rover, an antenna probes the ground
With radar waves.
They can detect ice, water, or salty brine 30 feet
Beneath the martian surface.
Where there's water, there could be life.
It is possible that deep in the subsurface of mars,
Where liquid water is stable for long periods of time,
There could be life today and there could be habitats
That are refuges of these ancient habitable environments
That were once in the surface
Where microbial organisms survived and thrived.
And then as the planet globally dried out,
These organisms retreated along with the water
Into the sub-surface, and it's possible.
It's exciting to think about that they could survive today.
Narrator: Advanced radar on board perseverance promises
To unlock the secrets of the geology of mars.
The rover could even find evidence
Of living things in the martian soil.
But is it possible for life from earth
To survive long term on the red planet?
And how will perseverance lay the groundwork
For humanity's next step in space exploration?
Narrator: Nasa's perseverance rover is searching for evidence
Of ancient life on mars.
The mission is also a crucial stepping stone on the path
To human exploration of the red planet.
Nasa plans to send astronauts to mars in the 2030s.
Private companies have ambitions to visit even sooner.
The long-term goal is to make the dream
Of living on mars a reality.
Oluseyi: As you watch this program,
Starship's are being built in south texas
At this very moment for going to mars,
For taking humans to mars.
It's getting real, really real.
♪♪
Narrator: But establishing a martian base is a huge engineering challenge.
Up to 250 million miles separates earth
From the red planet.
A spacecraft carrying humans to mars
Doesn't have enough room on board
To carry fuel for a return journey.
Plait: The thing about rockets is that most of the rocket is fuel
And the people and the payload, the instruments,
That's at the very tippy top,
You can't bring enough fuel to go to mars to also come back.
So if you go the way things stand right now,
It's a one-way trip.
Narrator: How can astronauts make fuel on mars
For their journey back to earth?
Perseverance carries technology that could unlock the answer.
The atmosphere of mars is 100 times thinner
Than the atmosphere of earth.
What gas does exist here is almost all carbon dioxide.
It is possible to break down carbon dioxide
To manufacture oxygen from the martian atmosphere.
And oxygen is essential for burning rocket fuel.
Nasa engineers fit inside the perseverance rover,
An instrument that promises
To unlock the oxygen reserves on mars.
It's called moxie.
It zaps carbon dioxide with electricity
To extract the oxygen from the martian atmosphere.
What moxie will do is live inside the rover
And act as a small chemical plant pumping in carbon dioxide
And split that into carbon monoxide and oxygen.
In our case, we'll just get rid of the oxygen.
We're just trying to demonstrate that chemical process
In the dusty surface environment of mars.
Narrator: Moxie activates soon after the perseverance rover
Touches down on mars.
Nasa scientists plan to run the experiment
At different times during the two-year mission.
The results from moxie could spawn future technologies
That turn thin martian air
Into the critical component of rocket fuel.
Imagine you land a much larger version of moxie and
It sits there on the surface of mars
And pumps away and pumps away, pulling in co2,
Generating oxygen, filling up a big tank of oxygen.
Now, this oxygen can obviously be used
By the astronauts to breathe.
But of course, it could be very important
As an oxidizer for their rocket to oxidize the fuel
To get them back off the surface and home safe.
♪♪
Narrator: Oxygen generators will form the heart of any colony on mars.
A community of 1,000 people will need about 40 generators,
Each the size of a shipping container.
The generators will produce around two pounds of oxygen
An hour from the carbon dioxide in the martian atmosphere.
Huge storage tanks will hold liquid oxygen
To supply the base with air to breathe...
...And for refueling rockets, for the return flights to earth.
♪♪
This future could be just around the corner,
Thanks to the pioneering technologies
Aboard the perseverance rover.
Williford: I think it's possible, very possible
That humans could be on their way to mars in my lifetime,
And I'm extremely excited about that.
And I just so badly want to hear those stories
Of what that trip is like, and what it looked like,
And what it felt like to stand on another planet.
Narrator: Perseverance rover is part
Of nasa's most ambitious mission to mars.
It carries a suite of instruments
Designed to sniff out the traces of ancient life
That died out billions of years ago,
As well as detect where life on mars might exist today.
Thaller: Finding life anywhere outside the earth, I think,
Would change how we all view ourselves in a very basic way.
In the past we've been this impossible thing,
This rare thing.
And if we find life on mars, it means we truly are not alone.
Narrator: Perseverance will also lay the groundwork
For the next stage of the human exploration of space,
Testing the technologies
That will make a permanent settlement on mars possible.
Oluseyi: Once upon a time, humans were confined to one continent
And they spread out.
They discovered new lands and new worlds here on planet earth.
This is another new land and a new opportunity.
And who knows where that could end up.
We've seen the vision of science fiction,
But now it's becoming science reality.
♪♪