Humans to mars by 2030 and is currently mapping the planet using a robotic rover on mars named curiosity. This is an hour and 25 minutes. [applause] thank you all for coming. We got the email about 10 30 this morning that said that Charlie Bolden wasnt coming, and that was the bad news. Because we didnt have a replacement then. But when i found out who was coming, i was actually kind of delighted because Charlie Bolden is a great guy, i like talking to him, but hes an administrator, and administrators are, by their nature, rather cautious. And hes also, he knows the science but not like jim green who lives and breathes the science. And when were looking, you know, we watch nasa press conferences, and we wait until he speaks so that we can get a sound bite for our radio program. [laughter] hes the one who says Something Interesting every time. [laughter] so its really a delight to have you with us. Thanks for coming. Pleasure. And, yeah. So were going to talk about planets and planet science, and its gonna be cool. We should start, e guess, just judging by everybodys reaction, how many people here have seen the martian. Ill give you the briefest of outlines. Theres a guy who gets stuck on mars and he has to live because his crew mates take off. They think hes dead, but hes not. I dont know, can i spoil the movie i think you probably could. [laughter] well, what happens the him is quite interesting, but what makes this movie so remarkable is they really engaged people like jim green who had the science right except for one thing. And, jim, why dont you tell them what the one thing is they got wrong. [laughter] well, there are a few [laughter] but the one glaring problem, of course, is the dust storm. The movie opens huge dust storm. Yeah, yeah. So mark watney and his team are deployed, deploying science experiments. Mark is picking up samples on mars, exactly the kind of thing were going to be starting to do with the mars 2020 mission. And as theyre doing that, back in the hab the Weather Report on mars is updated, and a huge dust storm is coming in. Whats great about that is we can actually do that Weather Report right now. We have global circulation models of mars, of the temperature and pressure, distribution over the entire planet that based on the data were getting from our orbiters, we can actually do that in near realtime. So even thats quite accurate. But whats not accurate, of course, is the dust storm is worse than anything you saw on lawrence of arabia. [laughter] but the pressure is so low, its about a percent of our own pressure, atmospheric pressure here on earth. And even though the winds can go 125 miles an hour, can be really brisk, its not enough to straighten an American Flag sitting on its surface. [laughter] sorry. Sorry thats, you know, you may not have realized that. So its very benign in that sense. But what it can be is crippling from an atmospheric perspective. The dust gets lofted very high, can go as high as 2530 kilometers, very high, you know . So at noon it may look like midnight. I mean, it can get very dark. One other thing that we found that i did mention to ridley and his team that wasnt in the book, nor had they planned to put it in the movie, is that recently we have been observing that these really high dust storms where the dust can get charged, can discharge, and it can actually get lightning. So weve seen after the dust storm goes away these Lightning Strikes on the ground. I mean, they are dark, spidery looking things, really neat looking unless youre probably down there at time. [laughter] and also we now are seeing from orbit with our imagers, we catch a little brightness going on as we sweep the camera by and then sweep it again. We saw an area that was bright, it had Lightning Strike at the time xen then as we go the next image, its not there. We know its occurring. We dont know the distribution, we dont know how strong it is, we know virtually nothing about it. But its one of those new things that we actually got into the movie a little bit. But i was wondering, we were speculating about this. So if a dust storm wasnt enough to cause them to abort the mission and thats why they take, everybody else takes off and he gets stuck there, we were trying to think of whether there was anything else that might be severe enough, are there mars quakes . Oh, really good question. We know mars is shaking. We do know that. And how we know that is we have an imager, its called the mars reconnaissance orbiter, that could actually see this table from orbit if it was sitting on mars. Really High Resolution imagery. Fabulous instrument. And weve caught avalanches as theyre occurring. Wow. So we dont know how active mars is, whether those avalanches are because its still a very active planet like the earth is with mars quakes or its from meteoric impacts. We get impacted all the time. We get about ten tons of meteor you can material coming into the earth every day. Mars we dont know exactly how much, but the atmosphere, as i mentioned, is so thin that a lot of it will make it to the surface whereas most of what we receive burns up coming in. Yeah. So we dont know where this source is. Now, were going to know a lot more about that when we launch the mission called insight. Yeah. And that was designed to do a couple things. One was deploy a seismometer thats the most sensitive we have built on this earth. Its more sensitive than anything weve deployed. And its so sensitive its going to be able to not only feel mars and whether it can quake on its own, but the impacts. And it will observe those reflections of sound wave that travel through the rock, and well understand the core size, perhaps whether its molten or not, the mantle size and the size of the crust. And it will be the only other planet besides everett as a terrestrial besides earth that well understand that well. Now, from a human exploration perspective, its going to be important to know, you know, how active mars is for humans Walking Around on the surface. Some of the places they might want to go for protection are collapsed lava tykes. Weve found a number of tubes. Weve found a number of them from orbit. Whats a lava tube . Okay. So like here on earth we have volcanos that spew molten rock out, and that material then works its way through the earth, comes out, its evacuated, and you actually after everything cools can get a vacated tube of material. We have found those on mars. Mars has a huge, several huge volcanos, one of which is is large that if it was on earth, it would talk up the state of missouri. It would take up the state of missouri. The whole state. I mean, its a huge shield volcano. And then theres the tharsus ridge, and those are all really he was city. And in hefty. And in and around there we find lava tubes, and how we see that is we take a variety of our spacecraft and put it on the web, and many kids and High School Students and College Students look at the data. And the first lava tube was found by a high school student. And it was really great. It was a collapsed roof, and the material formed a little ramp. The lighting was perfect. And if i was will and i had a rover, i could drive right down in it. That might be an area where humans would be easily safe from a lot of the problems that exist on mars that we dont have here on earth in terms of its radiation. I want to ask about that, but what about active volcanos . Is that not yeah. We havent found any. You know, were on the look for it. We have imaged mars in, at a certain resolution. Not High Resolution. So as i mentioned even though we could see this table from orbit and the mars reconnaissance orbiter with that instrument, its called highrise, has been operating for ten years, weve only observed about 3 of the surface at that High Resolution, okay . So theres a lot of mars that we havent seen at really High Resolution. And the tremendous discovery that that instrument made just this last year were on these crater walls. We find during the summer streaks of material down these crater walls, and weve known it now for many years, several years. They come and go. They all happen during the summer when the face of the crater and the sun, you know, it gets the maximum energy from the sun during this time period. Then we see the streaks. Fortunately then as we began to see more and more and more of them, we could only see them with the High Resolution imagery because theyre about the length of this room in terms of width. But the length is a couple football fields long, all right . Theyre really long. And we call them reoccurring slope [inaudible] thats a scientific term meaning these long lines that you couldnt see until you had the High Resolution imager. Now were finding them all over the place. Now, the best result that came from that occurred last year when we actually got one big enough that our min, roloy instrument could look at that and say what is that material . Why does it form these streaks . Turns out its water. And and that means liquid water is flowing on mars. These craters are literally weeping during the summer. So there are two basic theories that come out. First theory is from from curiosity were measuring all kinds of humidity. In fact, mark watney could have actually gotten Water Resources a lot easier than blowing himself up [laughter] as he did. But you can extract the water out of the atmosphere, because theres actually a fair amount of humidity in the atmosphere. We know that. Curiosity can tell us that. So thats part of that hydrological cycle. So one of the ideas is, well, the only way you can have liquid water on the surface at these times during the year even though the temperature is high, the pressures really low. You shouldnt have liquid water on the surface unless its brine y water. And, indeed, on the slopes of these craters are a lot of briney material. So the concept is, well, maybe that material is pulling it out of the air. And that was an okay theory for a while until we found more and more and more, and then you do the calculations, you know . Its all about the math x the movie got that right. And you find out, well, theres far more of these than there is total humidity in the atmosphere, so you need to add water somewhere. And so now the prevailing theory, the second theory thats come out is probably the one thats right, and that is theyre coming from underground aquifers. So mars has a water resource underneath its surface, we believe. So whats happening is theres an ice plug in the aquifer. And as the sun heats that, sublimates it so it goes from ice to vapor and eventually breaks through, and water pours down the side of the crater. And a lot of it. So this is really exciting because we had always thought that the water table as you got closer to the equator was much deeper. You know, maybe as low as 15 kilometers below the surface. And now it looks like its within a few meters of the surface at longitudes sorry, latitudes like washington, d. C. , in the 40s and above. Just right at the surface, nice little water layer. And as you get closer to the equator, it might be tens of meters, but not 15 kilometers. So mark watney could have gone to what we would probably do, would be a well. We would have a well. And the challenge with the well is you might have liquid water down there, but as you pull it out, its going to get colder and colder, so how can you keep it liquid. But thats engineering, right . [laughter] what mark watney didnt know is theres a crater closer to him than pathfinder is where it is weeping during the summer. And thats a new discovery. So when i talked to andy were, and i didnt know hes the author. Hes the author of the original book. Andy started it in like 2007, 2008, somewhere around there, maybe 2009. And hes a Computer Programmer that loves to write. Really had an environment at home where he loved Science Fiction. His father had tons of Science Fiction at home. And so he would try a few things. And he wrote a book, got published, didnt do very well. And in that business if you dont go, you know, make the home run with the first book, you dont really get up to bat again. So he started writing this as a serial, put out the first chapter. And he had quite up to 3,000 people, he said, initially looking at his web site. So when he put it out, these people would read it, theyd comment on it, and hed say, okay, this is kind of cool, this is going well. And he put out another one and another one and another one. And at the end of that process after about 32 chapters, he had the book. Its all right there. But he had people that wanted to read it on their kindle, okay . And they didnt know how to download a pdf, and it was different chapters and, you know, andy, what can you do about it . So andy contacted amazon, you know, read the material that he needed to the take these chapters in pdf form which is the typical file format and create a book in kindle form that you then could read, and then he put it on amazon, okay . The problem is he had to sell it. Couldnt give it away, he wanted to give it away. And so they forced him to sell it for 99 cents, and amazon got 70, and he got 29 cents, and that was okay. But all these people could download it. Well, it just wildfire, word of mouth, put it in the top ten Science Fiction ebooks, and thats when it was noticed by a publisher, and they contacted andy. And then they said i think you need an agent, let me be your agent [laughter] you know, well get you a book deal, you know . Well go from electronic to hard copy. That sounds backwards, doesnt it . [laughter] but thats how it went. And then audio book and then was translated in, you know, chinese or whatever other languages they had in mind. He said, okay, sure. And then the very next week fox called him because they also noticed it and wanted to buy the rights, the movie rights to the book. And with that, you know, Everything Else happened rapidly. And now andy is no longer a Computer Programmer. [laughter] a great story. So that was, thats, actually, that was my disaster scenario, is that they parked the lander at the base of a hill where theres one of these plugs, and they can tell that its warming up, and it could blow any second because i have been to whats the name of that volcano in scotland, i mean, in iceland that nobody can pronounce the name of . Oh, yeah, yeah. I still cant say it. Right, right. And when it blows the lid off, not just lava, but water comes flowing down and washes out bridges now. And because im going to help andy on this next book because its so acidic or salty, it could be very caustic. And so it could come down and really wreak havoc with the hab, and so thats why they have to get out of there, because they dont know how far the waters going to come down before it hits, and theyve got the leave, and hes out actually, we dont know enough about mars at that level to say thats not, that that would be ruled out. Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] you might be able to make it after all. Right. So you said something actually a few minutes ago that i want to pursue about these High School Students who are looking at pictures of mars. Now, happily my children are no longer in high school, so they wont be doing this, but im still curious how you, how you connect student with the picture and the knowledge to know that might be a lava tube. This data, i mean, that nasa puts out there, but minutes telling somebody how to look at it. Somebodys telling somebody how to look at it. So we have in this country and other countries too highly motivated kids where their knowledge more science is almost insatiable. We work very hard to be a able to put a variety of material out on the web for them to get access to. We have some really fabulous web sites where they can actually look at the latest images. Steve squires, who is the project scientist, our top scientist for the opportunity rover, this is the one that has been now on mars roaming around for more than 11 years, loves to come in, he loves to tell this story. He loves to come in first thing in the morning and see what the kids have done. He almost says it that way. Because what they will do is when that data comes down, therell be an image here and an image there and separate images here, different resolutions, etc. , etc. And these kids will take those and create a mosaic and put and stitch it together. And they know the attitudes and the resolutions and how to match them well as the descriptions are there. And they have the tools to do that now. Very easily. So when he comes in, its just like, you know, hes got it on huge screens and its a movie theater, and he just walks onto mars, okay . And thats when they start, wow, lets investigate more of this area and get higher resolution of that. And, you know . So thats just now part of what they do. And we put it on the web as fast as we can. So i actually have talked to a high school student, just barely a high school student, whos in the running to pick the next landing site for mars 2020 which i think is pretty you know this kid . I do. Alex. Thats right. 15, i think he is now. When he started, he was 14. [laughter] i mean, he was hes going to anal out of this age out of this pretty soon. [laughter] hes amazing. Hes got a very thorough explanation of why we should go back to the landing site of was it opportunity . Spirit. The crater. Thats just amazing. I mean, you can do it. Yeah. So heres what we did. Our mars 2020, we have a set of objectives. And we want to go to a geologically diverse but ancient region on mars that has, that hasnt changed in 3. 5 billion years. Thats an area where curiosity is right now, the kind of area we want to go to. And thats when mars actually was much more like earth. It had a deep ocean, twothirds of Northern Hemisphere was under water as much as a mile or more. It had rains, cloud, ice, snow, the works. Okay . And here on earth when you have that kind of water, there could be life. And so were looking at regions that havent changed in 3. 5 billion years that we could actually go to on mars to see how perhaps life started on mars. Life started on earth about that same time. But we cant find those rocks anymore. Weve buried all those with our plate tectonics and the biosphere. But mars we can go back and find it. So we put out those requirements to everyone in the community, and thats typicall