Dayton and jeff johnson and hannah nicollet. Thursday night at 8 00 p. M. On cspan, live coverage of the oklahoma governors debate between joe dorman and mary fallin. Also on cspan 2, the nebraska governors debate between Democrat Chuck hassebrook and pete rickets. Between john lewis and ryan zinke. Cspan campaign 2014, more than 100 debates for the control of congress. Now we go back to the George Washington university forrum on Mars Exploration. This portion includes nasa chief scientist jame garvin. He spoke about the Robotic Missions taking place on mars and what theyve revealed about the planet. This is 35 minutes. [ applause ]. Thanks. Thank you very much. Can everyone hear me . Thank you very much. I want to take you on a tour really kind of like the ice lan dick sagas of what the science discoveries from mars especially in the last 14 years of our program of exploration known as the Mars Exploration program which is implemented at our jet Propulsion Lab has given us. I would like to leave you a thought that the science discoveries that i hope to convince you are real, they come from a Large Community of scientists across universities, nasa centers and private industry are really the impetus for human exploration of this planet. And many of us have been working these missions all the way back to viking, believe this. I hope i can give you that sense. I want to remind you of where we are. We are a long way today from mars, even though were in a very close approach geometry right now. Very good for telecommunication. Its really, really striking that mars is not our mother earth. Its a profoundly different world. It does not read our textbooks. In fact, the mode were in today for mars scientifically is one of rapid massive discovery. Our ideas are changing with a Large Community of scientists working with missions like curiosity, mars reconnaissance orb tor, the landscape is changing. We dont totally know what we have. Thats important as we look forward to the era of human exploration. In fact, mars is an everchanging frontier. Were just realizing the questions we have to ask to allow us as that situational awareness. This is just a view we see of where were going with curiosity over the next 100s of souls literally as we drive everyday, we see elements of the new mars. So le me paint that picture for you by reminding you that science organizes itself in different ways. For the last almost 20 years, weve looked at mars science thematically, through four primary themes. Obviously we would like to know whether were alone in this universe, this is a profound question that goes back farther than we can record in history. But getting at the question of life, active biological systems, were there ever there, could they be there . It took humanity a long time on earth to understand the past history on our planet. That was a joke. So to get at the question of life, we need to look through the record books, recording elements of Climate Change, change of environment, the rock record, you know, the pages in stone that dont lie but are not always available to us. And through the preparation for having us be there to make these discoveries. Weve organized our program through these themes following different threads, understanding the role of water, mars is a water planet, we know that now. Understanding whether theres places that if they were here on earth could be inhabited by organisms. Could they be preserved if they were there and theyre not preserved because they cant be, what good does that do us . We need to parse those through our program. So what weve done for the last 14 years with the restructured program that some of us were so fortunate to work on was develop a robotic science exploration program. Every step is driven by questions weve had, high high pott these were testing. New approaches, new measurements. The mars weve seen during the course of this program as you see all the way back to around 2,000 all the way to present and moving forward is about questions, measurements, the same way we people would attack programs in science. This is all about stem. It puts together the engineering, the science questions, the math and the technology to solve problems. Weve been doing that remarkably effective. Our batting average is literally 1,000. Many teams would love to have it. Weve done it very well since this program came about. Its a partnership with engineering. I want you to understand, we cant do all of this without engineers helping us do that. The fact that many of these missions survive today, way beyond design life, opportunity being a good example is really testament to that. So let me explain the discoveries weve been making. This will be the movie version. Many of my colleagues would like to tell it and would tell it much better than i with more time. Let me try to do that. First, let me remind you the mars we see is rather foreboding. Its not really waiting for us. Its extremely cold. Oxidizing, cant breathe the air, lost its Magnetic Field, dont understand why the surface deposits of dust that are very inconvenient, sub micron scale, not good for space suits or rovers or actuators or camera lenses, this is not the place you would go for your summer vacation. Scientifically, though, it is. And weve learned that since the first voyages of the 60s and into the viking era that it really is impressive. Are really, if you will, a misnomer for what really mars has done. We have to look at the mars today and project back in time to a planet that really we think records in its record books some things that really actually help us understand our planet earth. So lets look at it. Mars has an extremely rarefied atmosphere today. In fact, weve often talked about the temperature at our toes for a short guy like me in my head would go through a gradient of tens of degrees. The difficult to do here on earth, common on mars. The kinds of surface liquid water we like here on earth necessary for the kind of microbial life thats rampant, cant exist today. Water on the short term human life scale, days, weeks is unstable. But that could change. Mars, in fact, does Climate Change really well. The record of water on mars in the minerals and the landscapes pretty much wherever we look is there. Weve learned that. So if someone says we discouverd water on mars, well rk, we kind knew that. Thank you. What does that mean . How much was there . Where did it go . How would that have affected the geological history the eternal evolution the climate and the looking for signs of life . Many of us believe that the mars we see today at one point reflected a history where water was a prominent surface feature, lakes and sees if not oceans covered the lowlands. I should point out, the reason we can do this kind of study is because way back in the 90s we had the forethought to make measures of the very fine scale topography and character of the landscape so we can literally flood mars and play the tape back in time and ask what would it have been like . Does that make sense . Physics and chemistry. And thats what weve done. This also allows us of course to figure out where to land in an engineering sense. We flood mars and the lowlands and the Northern Plains often covered with dust, large basins, the biggest impact site weve discovered in the solar system. These systems would be under water. Some of the signs gee morphically that tell us this may have been the case. Were still looking for the shorelines and how that would be reflected in the shape of the planet, but nonetheless, we see that. And then theres the question of the record of life. And on earth, we sort of know or at least we think we do. And we look back in time to the earliest times of our planet, coming out of late heavy bombardment. The planet became inhabitable by the single cell world into the world we know with primitive dna, a few billion years ago. Thats recorded in the rock records, things got a little better in terms of the atmosphere and the more complicated organisms us came about. Thats where we think we know very sim plisically on earth. The question is we see records of these things recorded in the rock record on our planet, which is extremely dynamic. The question is, well, could this have happened on mars and could it have been preserved . This is a key question. If it happened and its not preserved, we cant tell. How do we find snout how do we ask is the mars of today reflecting a history like this or a flatline history or even a history of extent life . What we did about 14 years ago after some setbacks in Mars Exploration in the late 90s, we restructured an entire program. The best women and men in the country together working with our team at jpl. First, well do the reconnaissance. Where do you go . Its a big planet. 150 mile square kilometers, you cant go everywhere. Lets understand where the action is from orbit. Lets land where the actions is and move around as if we were there. Sort of apollo without the astronauts with reasonably smart robots and then eventually get to a point where we can do analysis and return stuff from mars to earth. By the way, while we were doing this we realized that there are meteorites delivered to us from mars rather favorably by mother nature. We can also study and put that together to understand the planet and we have been remarkably successful. Since the orbitors known as odyssey and through two rovers like spirit and opportunities landers like phoenix and currently curiosity and of course moving on to maven which is on the way, we have rewritten the textbooks. The kids of 2,000, the young mill len yal stemmers would see a new mars in their textbooks 2014. Things we didnt know about the Magnetic Field back then. But these are just some of the balls reflecting the data sets we produced. Some of them have huge science value. The Magnetic Field. The topography which is good enough to land things on as well as to follow the water. Understanding of the minerals and context of dust. We have seen a diverse planet with complexity over time. Let me just fill in the tape. Over those years what weve been able to do through our missions is increase the resolution and the detail across the wavelengths of electro magnetic radiation to see the planet. We actually have a mini mars observing system in place now on the surface in orbit to study this world, this fourth planet. And some of them tell us about the character of what the surface is like compositionally. Others tell us the character on the scale we would walk on. By the way, when we first put together the road map to have cameras that could see things the size of beach balls on the planet, many colleagues said, we dont need that. Why would one want to see those things . Engineers kind of did want it, i must add. But lot of scientists said lets do other things. But i can say now with some confidence that the team that were able to build these amazing instruments for orbit, the success of those have allowed us to watch ourselves drive on the planet and make choices strategically that help us with where we are. What did we learn from this . We started to see exposures at the scale we can imagine ourselves exploring. Relationships between rock layers that tell us of the history of water and wind evolved on the surface and even the detail to pick places to go. And so we went from an era of first landing viking this is viking ii in september of 76. Theres the flag, of course, color balanced though mars atmosphere is not quite so blue. Amazing site, the probability of landing safely in this bolder field was about 40 to 50 . We didnt know it was a bolder field and so we landed any way. Pretty heroic. We landed then with new Delivery Systems with the air bag assisted pathfinder, moving on to the era of the rovers which basically gave our program the vision at the surface to ask the tough questions that begot curiosity where we are today 606 days into our exploration. But the Surface Missions starting with the first lander on another planet from viking have painted a continuously changing picture. Viking, cold, sterile desert, nothing would survive that would be related to modern biology. Transitions into the rock world mars that we saw with pathfinder. Into the history of water world. We saw and still see with the Mars Exploration rover such as opportunity, 36plus kilometers and driving into this world that were now probing with new instruments with curiosity. So, what have we learned . A lot. And we still have not assembled the jigsaw puzzle. Mars has lots of interesting variations and composition. Dust storms, active surface change on hourly scales, dust avalanch avalanches. Explosive faces. Impact craters that expose the surface like natural drill rigs. All this together with areas where weve actually seen the water. Theres a little trench from our phoenix Scout Mission in 2078. We have seen sub surface layering with radars that have been partnered with italy to show us the way that climate record on mars is put together. All this paints a picture for a blan et that is really profoundly interesting, alluring and compelling to get ourselves there. But, wait, theres still theres still problems. First, on our nice convenient earth we have mother natures Natural Force field with our great Magnetic Field protecting fr us from all that nasty stuff. Mars does not obviously have bumps on it, it has relic magnetic signatures. Magnetic electron experiment. And we think then that mars inside versus earth is very different. Were a dynamic planet exchanging energy from the inside out with dynamically rotating core. Producing all this cool stuff, encompasses work, all this. Mars, that story changed. Maybe it wasnt quite big enough to retain the con vektive energy to do that. Were still working on that. Insight will contribute to understanding. This picture, as it launches in 2016. But again, a different world. We also know that theres a diversity of kind of places on mars. The things you see here in terms of all these strange names of mineral phases and stuff i wont go through them ad nauseam with you, but every one of them has a baring on how you record the history of water and sediments that could preserve potentially the history of life. If it is preserved as organic chemicals, weve seen all these things since we began reagan our program in 2000. All this gives us, if you will, the impetus to want to be there, to want to touch the rocks that contain carbon phase molecules. To be able to go to the place with chlorides that might reserve records of life. Why not on mars . These become questions for biologists not geologists like myself. Weve been able to organize the landscapes of mars in time. All the way to the present through the different landscapes weve measured from orbit with these powerf fuful reconnaissan steps. We put it in there in 2,000 against many colleagues saying do you really want that to be able to give us a vision to do this. Hutten and smith put together in the 19th century for earth and weve done that. We have we have fosle river deltas on mars. Places that reflect the layering history of the role of water and wind working together and weve seen that mars is pummelled by the stuff of space, our atmosphere shields us but mars isnt and every one of these blemishes now on the order of 250, 300 of them tell us basically about the shallow interior of the planet as it is affected by the exogenic world of space. You all remember february 2013 and other events like that. This is common. All the meteor showers, well on mars, theyre not showers. They produce impact events. Other events craters the size of football stadiums and small cities and they expose the shallow sub surface. What you see on the surface is not always what ewe want to see when you measure things on mars about some of these very tough questions were asking. Little far there. Were also weve also discovered that mars has gone through major changes in the way its geology is reflected in the rocks from a time when it was wetter. This is a paper by banfield and others. When it was wetter and the kinds of volcanos erupted that were explosives, st. Helens. To the dhiend are today oozing lava. This is a very important step. We have also seen with our Mars Exploration rovers an amazing history of water in the rocks at two different sites, thousands of kilometers apart. We renamed things, blueberries and newberries. And then we transitions. When we reagan this program in 2001, we looked at the idea of putting the best instrumentation with the most powerful Vantage Point we could get on the surface, we did that through a mission known as the Mars Science Laboratory today with the rover called curiosity and this behee mouth the size of a mini cooper or vw bus carries with it 14 different experiments including ones that deal with weather and radiation, for decent images, for chemistry in different ways and shes been a beauty. Ill give you a brief synopsis now. Weve mae made more measurements that this slide shows. Nearly almost 500 gigabytes of data has been released. Everything ranging from our own little self portrait which is an interesting piece of engineering to use an arm and photograph a w job by curiosity to the measurementeds weve made by not actually touching rocks. A partnership with france. To the instrument known as sam that can actually measure things on mars as good as the labs that measured the rocks that buzz brought back from the moon, we can now do that on mars without bringing them home. Talk about engineering, vision, science can now measure parts per billion at the level of detection where we can actually see that we contaminated aspect of our experiment with florida air we can do that on mars. And so, let me just remind you again, were a long way from home. You know, at closest approach, 35, 36 million miles once every 15 years, but earth and moon are small dots relative to this view from curiosity. So, this mobile laboratory, even though she sometimes moves at the pace of a giant tortuous is an amazing feat. She is seeing things to me as a geologist are spectacular. These conglomerated rocks with bits of rocks made of other rocks are what we expect to see when streams and rivers leave deposit its that are baked into stone. This is gio one. Thats good. Water flowed. Shallow water. We now know what it was made of. Weve drilled mars. These drill holes are the size of a dime, but we have drilled the surface. Measured down centimeters, collected it and made mea