[[GRETA]]
ON PLUGGED IN …
PERSEVERANCE HITS ITS MARK.
[[NAT/SOT-CHEERING AFTER THE LANDING]]
THE SIX-WHEELED ROVER ...
LANDS ON MARS ...
WITH HIGH EXPECTATIONS
[[SOT-MATTHEW SMITH 5:55 Perseverance is also carrying a small helicopter called Ingenuity underneath and that will be the first time if it works that we’ll have powered flight on another planet]]
AND AMERICA’S PLACE IN SPACE …
IS BEING CHALLENGED …
WITH A GLOBAL COMPETITION …
FOR TRAVEL AND EXPLORATION.
[[SOT- Jim Green 15:09 Competition from our perspective is always good. 15:12]]
UNLOCKING …
SOME OF THE MYSTERIES ...
OF THE RED PLANET …
ON PLUGGED IN …
EXPLORING MARS AND BEYOND.
[[STOP]]
[[GRETA]]
HELLO AND WELCOME …
TO PLUGGED IN.
I’M GRETA VAN SUSTEREN …
REPORTING FROM WASHINGTON, DC …
AFTER SPEEDING …
HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES ...
THROUGH SPACE …
OVER SEVEN MONTHS ...
AMERICA’S SPACE AGENCY ---
NASA ---
SUCCESSFULLY LANDED ...
A SIX-WHEELED ROVER …
ON THE SURFACE OF MARS …
IN AN EFFORT TO DETERMINE …
IF LIFE EXISTED THERE.
IT IS THE FIRST LEG ...
IN A U.S.-EUROPEAN EFFORT ...
TO BRING SURFACE SAMPLES ...
FROM MARS TO EARTH …
IN THE NEXT TEN YEARS.
VOA’S ARASH ARABASADI ...
REPORTS ON THIS NEXT STEP ...
IN SPACE EXPLORATION.
[[STOP]]
[[PKG/ARABASADI]]
((NARRATOR))
Last week, after seven months hurtling through space, NASA’s six-wheeled Perseverance rover landed on Mars. The U.S. space agency released this video showing the first high-quality images of the spacecraft landing on the Red Planet. Its navigation cameras captured this 360-degree view of the landing site. Scientists also equipped Perseverance with two microphones. One of them was activated for landing and failed but NASA managed to capture this audio of Martian wind just after touchdown.
((NATS POP: WIND))
((mandatory cg NASA/JPL-CALTECH))
((NARRATOR))
Dave Gruel is a team lead ((Descent and Landing Camera Suite Lead)) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He says this latest finding can help sustain the rover and its mission on Mars.
((mandatory cg NASA/JPL-CALTECH)) ((MUST NOT OBSCURE NASA LOGO))
((Dave Gruel, Jet Propulsion Laboratory))
“The noise is an incredible thing that engineers can use to basically detect the health of moving systems… If we get a snapshot of an actuator today, and you can compare over time to another snapshot, another audio file of that actuator in the future, compare the two, and see if there’s anything that can be learned in terms of the health of that device.”
((mandatory cg NASA JPL))
((NARRATOR))
NASA aimed to park its rover at the Jezero ((Jezz-er-O)) Crater that scientists believe was once filled with water - an essential prerequisite for life as we know it.
Perseverance is the biggest vehicle NASA has to rove on Mars. On board is the helicopter, Ingenuity. Together they will survey the Martian surface and collect samples that could answer an age-old question: did life ever exist beyond Earth? But that’s not all, according to NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen.
((end courtesy))
((Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA Science Mission Directorate))
“What’s so exciting about this, it’s not only the landing and the investigations, which is the search for extinct, ancient life from a time where life arose on Earth… if everything goes exactly like we hope, late in the 20s we’re going to go pick up the samples this vehicle is collecting and bringing it back to Earth for the first roundtrip to the planet Mars.”
((mandatory cg NASA JPL))
((NARRATOR))
Perseverance is scheduled to spend at least one Martian year, or two Earth years, exploring the landing site region of the ancient river delta in a lake that once filled the Jezero Crater.
Arash Arabasadi, VOA News.
[[GRETA]]
IT IS AN AMAZING …
FEAT OF ENGINEERING …
TO GET THE ROVER …
AND THE HELICOPTER …
TO MARS …
INTACT.
AND THEN …
THERE IS MORE …
AMAZING ENGINEERING …
TO GET EVERYTHING …
TO WORK PROPERLY …
AND SEND BACK …
THOSE MYSTICAL SOUNDS …
AND PICTURES.
ONE OF THE PEOPLE …
MAKING IT ALL WORK …
IS MATT SMITH …
A SYSTEMS ENGINEER …
ON THE MARS 2020 MISSION …
AT NASA’S JET PROPULSION …
LABORATORY.
I ASKED HIM …
ABOUT HIS ROLE …
IN THE MISSION.
[[STOP]]
[[SOT/SMITH INTERVIEW]]
Matthew Smith: So, during our cruise to Mars, the seven and a half, seven months we went to Mars, I was one of the flight directors. so we had a team of about eight people who are responsible for flying the spacecraft, kind of a combination of pilots and air traffic controller and sort of team coach, I say, you know, imagine, Ed Harris in Apollo 13 but less drama.
Greta: Do you actually control the speed and the direction or is it pre programmed by, by the Perseverance?
Matthew Smith: We actually do have to do what we call a trajectory correction maneuvers, over the course of cruise, to enable us to hit our target for entry, descent, and landing. So we did three trajectory correction maneuvers on this mission. And we also do other activities like we turn the vehicle to make sure that we can maintain communication. We also do a lot of checkouts of all the backup subsystems. You know there's no like triple A on Mars, so we bring backups of everything, we have to check all that out. And we also check out the instruments. so actually cruise is a pretty busy time, and then before launch I was on the team that tested and designed the rover and got it ready.
Greta: Okay it took off in July, it landed in February, you only did three corrections in that time?
Matthew Smith: Yeah that's right. We had an opportunity to do up to six if we needed them. but we have a navigation team that's constantly tracking where we are and they help us determine whether or not we need to do those maneuvers. So it turned out we only needed to do three of them this time around.
Greta: What did you expect is that like average? Or is three is what you sort of expected or is that unusual?
Matthew Smith: the prior mission that we’re based on, the Mars Curiosity, Mars Curiosity, it did four trajectory correction maneuvers. so you know three is one better than we expected we expected we'd probably do four.
Greta: when it took off from July, till the time it landed, were you, was it being watched 24/7 by humans?
Matthew Smith: Yeah. So at the very beginning we did have a 24/7 what we called coverage. So there's a network of antennas called the Deep Space Network that's managed by NASA and there's antennas in California, Spain and Australia. And the idea is that as the Earth rotates, you always can see any spot in the solar system with these antennas. So at the beginning of the mission, the first couple weeks we did have 24 seven coverage. And then in the middle of the mission in the middle of cruise, we had around eight hours a day, where we could talk to the spacecraft. and then near the very end for about the past the last month of cruise, we had 24 seven coverage so that if anything came up we had, you know, an ability to talk to the spacecraft and get it ready for landing.
Greta: Alright, so you've outlined very careful control Perseverance and what what you can do to correct and everything, but the last 11 minutes before it landed, you had no ability to control it. Isn't that right?
Matthew Smith: yeah, that's right. So, you know, at landing, Perseverance was, I think, over, 126 million miles away from Earth. So the the time it takes radio signals traveling at the speed of light to get from perseverance to Earth is as you say 11 minutes. So we really didn't have any ability to in real time you know joystick that landing and the spacecraft had to do it all entirely on its own.
Greta: it must be a tough 11 minutes. I mean when you realize that you were at that point that 11 minutes you thought okay well we can't do anything and we don't know what's happening.
Matthew Smith: Yeah, well, and the way it works is we you know, as we approach landing, we're getting data from the vehicle the whole time, so we know that it's approaching Mars and we can see from the data that it's entering the atmosphere. And so we actually can see it going through all the steps of landing. It's just that that information is 11 minutes, old by the time it reaches us. So it's already happened by the time we received the signal back that landing was was good.
Greta: Okay, it's first job Perseverance is to get, get some samples get some rocks get some cores that's first job?
Matthew Smith: Yeah, so it's gonna do a few things. It's going to, as you say, collect samples and this is kind of a first leg of a round trip from Mars back to Earth.
Also, Perseverance has a couple other what we call technology demonstrations to kind of lead the way for other missions. So, so one of those is an experiment called Moxie, which will actually generate oxygen from the Martian atmosphere it's mostly carbon dioxide, and that's to pave the way for potential human exploration of Mars. Obviously we need oxygen to breathe and also it can be used for rocket fuel and Perseverance is also carrying a small helicopter called Ingenuity underneath and that will be the first time if it works that we’ll have powered flight on another planet which could maybe pave the way for larger flying vehicles in the future to do more exploration.
Greta: But one of the goals of the mission is to find out life ever existed on Mars, will you be able to tell that from the pictures, it sends back or do you have to wait for it collected samples and we send some other vehicle up to get those samples whenever that happens, or can you tell that from the pictures that can be sent back or information you get?
Matthew Smith: my sense talking to the scientists, is that we will, we'll have a good indication from from the payload and the pictures and the spectra that we get there. but you know this is saying that, you know, exceptional claims require exceptional proof. and and really to get you know absolutely definitive proof of ancient microbial life, say for example, an image of a microbe or something, we likely would have to return the samples to earth, and use your really large and sophisticated equipment that we could never fit on a rover to do that final confirmation so I think really, because it's because finding life on Mars would be such an incredible thing and in such an important discovery you really want to be super sure and that would require, bringing the samples back to earth and analyzing them here.
Greta: Alright the rovers who've already sent up to perseverance, they stay so somewhat something's got to go and get the samples that have been collected, we've never done that before send something to pick up samples and come back. When is that likely to happen? how far are we from developing the technology or do we already have it? is that, that seems like a more difficult task to me just to land something collect something, and also be able to leave?
Matthew Smith: Yeah, you're totally right it is it is a huge challenge, um, good news is the technology demonstrations are already the technology development is already in work at NASA and our partners and the European Space Agency.
And the idea is that we would send a mission in the kind of latter half of the 2020s, they would land a rover, another rover on Mars and a small rocket. That rover would go then and fetch the samples bring them to the rocket that's on the surface of Mars, blast them into Mars orbit. And then we would have a third spacecraft that would go grab those samples from Mars orbit and bring them back to earth. so a lot of moving pieces but but we're already starting on those.
Greta: But that's going to be eight or nine years from now right but we that we collect them.
Matthew Smith: That's right. Yep.
Greta: All right, now let me turn to ingenuity the helicopter that's been sent up. And what why what is what is first the difficulty or the uncertainty about whether or not, it'll fly that's the first thing. And secondly, why did you want to send a helicopter if we've got the rover, you can take pictures, it can gather things?
Matthew Smith: yea, is really good, really good question. So one of the things that makes flying a helicopter on more so difficult is that the atmosphere Mars is extremely thin compared to earth so it's only about 1% of the density of earth.
And we've tested the helicopter on earth in a vacuum chamber that has been pumped down to simulate the environment of Mars. and it worked pretty well but there's a lot of unknowns, like, how will wind affect the helicopter? To make it fly on Mars the rotors have to spin extremely fast, and also has to be very light so this is a really big challenge to fly on Mars. And one of the reasons we're doing this is, I sort of think of it as analogous to a mission NASA sent in 1997. They landed a mission called Pathfinder and there was a small rover called Sojourner on it. it was about the size of a microwave. And it was the first rover on another planet.
And now we have a big SUV sized rover that's rolling Mars. So if the, if you think about the helicopters maybe analogous to that, hopefully in the future we can have much larger helicopters exploring, and that would let us cover a lot more area, a lot more quickly. The rover itself, only travels it like a little less than walking speed, if you can believe it, so we can get you know a lot of places, but it's it's relatively slow and a flying vehicle would let us explore, so much more quickly.
Greta: Do you expect to find some evidence of life on Mars man, what's your sort of expert opinion and hypothesis?
Matthew Smith: My own personal opinion, the scientists tell me that the, we know that this location that we're sitting, Jesereau crater, was an ancient lake bed. We know that there was water there. And this was billions of years ago, around the same time that microbial life was getting a foothold on Earth. So we really are in the best position possible almost on the entire planet to find ancient microbial life, if it existed.
Greta: How do you know there was water there. I mean it looks like to me nicely that pictures, you know doesn't look, it looks like a desert to me but we'd How do you know there was water there?
Matthew Smith: That's actually a big question from the, from the scientific community we knew Mars was a lot warmer and wetter. Mars doesn't have the same magnetic field, that the earth does. So there are some hypotheses about interaction with solar wind. But I think that that is still one of the big questions is you know what happened to the Martian, the water on Mars? Perhaps it's frozen under the surface, perhaps it got lost into space over billions of years, that that's something that planetary scientists are still trying to unwrap.
Greta: is NASA preparing for human exploration we've sent these rovers but what about humans?
Matthew Smith: Yeah. Mars is definitely on the roadmap for NASA's Human Exploration Program so the the Artemis project is is NASA's current effort to return the next man in the in the first woman to the moon, and eventually that would lay the groundwork for sending humans to Mars you know later in this in the century and it's definitely the the long term goal of NASA human exploration to put humans on Mars.
Greta: What are you most excited to learn about with this, with perseverance with its mission?
Matthew Smith: Well I think some of the questions we talked about, like, you know, was Mars habitable. Is there evidence of ancient microbial life? I mean, that to me that's incredible science that's the type of thing that you know rewrites our textbooks and would really change our understanding of where we fit in the universe and maybe where life could exist elsewhere on other planets or around other stars. So to me that's really exciting. I'm also just, you know as an engineer super excited to see the Ingenuity helicopter, take off I mean that's that's pretty amazing. So a lot of really cool things going on with this mission.
Greta: What's your wish list what would you like to do beyond this in terms of space exploration?
Matthew Smith: Well, one of my sort of pet interests, is a field called exoplanets, so exoplanets are planets that orbit stars, other than our Sun. And you know 25 or 30 years ago this was, we didn't know of any exoplanets it was sort of a pie in the sky dream, but a few missions recently have have shown us that essentially almost any almost every star in the universe has at least one planet around us. And we're just adopting the technologies now to be able to detect those planets, image them it's a really hard problem because it's like looking like it's like looking for a firefly next to a lighthouse in terms of the brightness of the planet, and the brightness of the star,
But I mean, imagine if you found a sunlight star and were able to detect an earth like planet around it, that could really, you know, increase our chances of finding habitable location, besides our Earth elsewhere in the galaxy.
Greta: well it’s so exciting and I appreciate you talking to me today.
Matthew Smith: Thanks so much. Great to be here.
[[GRETA]]
SPACE X THE COMPANY
FOUNDED BY ELON MUSK
IS PLANNING TO LAUNCH THE
FIRST SPACE FLIGHT
WITH AN ALL CIVILIAN CREW
THE SPACE CRAFT WILL ORBIT
THE EARTH FOR SEVERAL DAYS
SOMETIME IN THE FALL.
IT WILL BE A 4 PERSON CREW LED BY
AMERICAN BILLIONAIRE AND PILOT
JARED ISAACMAN WHO IS PAYING
SPACE X AN UNDISCLOSED SUM
OF MONEY FOR THE FLIGHT.
ALSO SELECTED FOR THE FLIGHT,
A YOUNG WOMAN WHO BEAT THE ODDS
AGAINST BONE CANCER.
WHEN IT LIFTS OFF SHE WILL BECOME
THE YOUNGEST AMERICAN IN SPACE.
PLUGGED IN’S ELIZABETH CHERNOFF
HAS HER STORY.
(SOUNDBITE) (English) HAYLEY ARCENEAUX: "So, I'm going to space!"
Hayley Arceneaux is 29, a cancer survivor, and now she could become the youngest American person ever to fly into space.
"Getting this call to go to space came out of completely nowhere. I think that's the beauty of life, that sometimes it surprises you."
The opportunity has come her way through her workplace – St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
It was where she was treated as a child battling bone cancer.
"So when I was 10 years old, I was working my way towards my black belt, and I had actually just gotten my black belt in Tae Kwon Do before I was diagnosed with cancer, but I started having knee pain. And the thought it was from overuse from the Tae Kwon Do but then I started limping. And my mom noticed a big knot above my left knee. She took me to the doctor who did an x-ray and I'll never forget she, she came in the room with me and my parents and just said, 'This is bone cancer."
"I spent a year at St. Jude undergoing intense chemo and then also surgery to save my leg. And as difficult as that year was physically, it it was the most meaningful year of my life"
Arceneaux now works at St. Jude as a physician assistant.
She was chosen by the hospital and billionaire philanthropist Jared Isaacman to fly on the private Inspiration4 SpaceX mission later in 2021.
It will be the first space flight without an astronaut aboard.
But before lift-off there’s training to be done.
"It'll start with the centrifuge training, like going around really fast to feel all the G-forces. And then we're going to prepare for any possible situation. We're going to spend a lot of time in the Dragon simulator and then I'll get some additional preparation as I'm the medical officer of this flight."
Unlike the NASA and SpaceX flights that go to the International Space Station, this one will travel around Earth for several days, during which time Arceneaux said she expects to participate in science experiments…
and also make time to video call kids at the hospital.
"I really hope to inspire these kids by going on this mission to dream big, that they can do anything. I was talking to this little girl yesterday and she was saying that she's upset that she can't run or jump. And I said, "You know, I can't run or jump either because I have a prosthesis in my leg but that's not stopping me from going to space.' This mission is opening up space travel to anyone and I think that in itself is going to motivate people and give them so much hope."
"Kids are so visual and I hope that them being able to see me in space really shows them what their future can look like. I'm the first St. Jude patient to go to space, the first pediatric cancer survivor, but I know I'm not going to be the last."
[[GRETA]]
THE UNITED STATES …
IS NOT ALONE …
WITH A MISSION …
TO THE RED PLANET.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES …
AND CHINA ...
HAVE MISSIONS TO MARS.
THE UAE SAYS ...
SPACE HAS OPENED ...
A BROAD RANGE ...
OF POSSIBITIES FOR EVERYONE ...
IN THE ARAB WORLD.
[[STOP]]
[[PKG/ARABASADI]]
((NARRATOR))
The Martian surface has never been so popular for Earthling vessels. In July 2020, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, and China launched missions to the Red Planet. At the time, Earth and Mars had the type of ideal alignment that only happens every 26 months.
((NARRATOR))
Sarah al-Amiri is chair of the UAE Space Agency. She says the years-long journey to build and launch a craft could inspire other Arab nations.
((Sarah al-Amiri, Chair of UAE Space Agency))
“Today you have households of every single age group passionate about space, understanding a lot of science that happens in there, it has opened a broad realm for possibilities for everyone within the UAE and also, I truly hope, within the Arab world.”
((NARRATOR))
The UAE’s orbiter fired its main engines for 27-minutes to enter the Martian atmosphere in what’s being called “the Hope maneuver.” It took another 17-minutes for nervous scientists on Earth to learn the good news.
((NARRATOR))
((Reuters/CCTV))
The following footage comes from Chinese state television, and VOA cannot independently verify its content. It claims to show scientists at the moment China’s Tianwen-1 probe entered orbit around Mars. The Chinese craft executed a similar slowdown technique to the UAE’s Hope maneuver. Tianwen-1 will stay in a so-called “parking orbit” to survey the surface looking for potential landing sites in May or June.
[[GRETA]]
THE COMPETITION ...
FOR NATURAL RESOURCES ...
IS MAKING SPACE ...
THE NEXT FRONTIER ...
TO MINE FOR MINERALS ...
NEEDED FOR …
THE NEXT GENERATION ...
OF BATTERIES ...
ELECTRONICS ...
AND MILITARY EQUIPMENT.
JIM GREEN ...
IS CHIEF SCIENTIST ...
AT NASA.
AMONG HIS ACHIEVEMENTS:
LEADING THE 2012 MISSION ...
LANDING THE ROVER …
“CURIOSITY” ON MARS.
I ASKED HIM ...
ABOUT THE BENEFITS ...
OF SPACE EXPLORATION ...
PROGRAMS.
[[STOP]]
[[SOT/JIM GREEN INTERVIEW]]
JG: Well what's happening in many ways is humans are leaving low Earth orbit. Our plans are then to trek to the moon, learn to live and work on a planetary surface, and then investigate Mars into the future. Mars is a pretty spectacular place. I mean it is a planet that we can actually live and work on like none other. So we're interested from a scientific point of view, its history. How did it come together? What is it made of? Are there resources there? Can and how would we live there? And it tells us a lot about the potential for maybe a place where life could have started, when life started here on Earth. We've got to learn to live and work on a planetary surface. We want to be able to tease out the resources that are on the moon. We believe there's actually a significant amount of water in frozen form trapped in permanently shadowed craters in the south and north pole of the moon, which is why we're going to the South Pole. And once we learn how to extract that, and begin to use that because we can breathe the oxygen that comes from water we can of course drink the water. We also can create rocket fuel. That's actually some of the first things that we want to do when we go to Mars.
GVS: Have we learned anything in space so far that has been an asset here on Earth has made our lives better for whatever reason?
JG: Oh, there's been an enormous number of discoveries that have occurred on space station that we're using here on Earth. We're learning that in space with or without gravity of certain types of things like crystals can grow. We also learn that changes in the body. That, that are not related to the gravity, then can be really looked at more carefully. And therefore, we've seen a variety of medical advances that have occurred from space station astronauts.
GVS: We had a space race with the Soviet Union, which led to the man on the moon we got there first. Are we in a space race for instance now with China? I mean is there competition, and good competition I don't necessarily mean a bad competition?
JG: Competition from our perspective is always good. We're excited to see what the Chinese are doing, you know they have plans also to land on the moon they have several rovers there now. We're turning our attention to do that. They've started to build the space station. That's exciting. So they're discovering some of the major scientific activities that we have been working in for several decades. So this kind of work is very healthy between these nations.
GVS: What are other nations doing?
JG: Some nations are getting into this concept of getting more commercial companies going. I know the Japanese are and, and a couple are starting out in in Europe, too. So it's a model I think that's going to leave the US and go into many of these other countries to be followed.
GVS: Is NASA now working with private companies that said something a little bit different?
JG: It is different and it's really a very important part of the whole plan and, and the concept is, of course, getting more companies having the ability to get into space. Because we have the space station. SpaceX and Blue Origin and a number of others can allow transportation back and forth that enables us to turn our attention to these grander plans about going to the moon.
GVS: Are the private companies and NASA working well together or is there some stepping on feet and duplication of what the private enterprise is doing and what NASA is doing?
JG: While the private companies together form a competitive network as we always like to have you know we always are looking for the best price for the best product. So that's going on, but from our perspective it's a really healthy environment because we have a number of companies and groups to work with some nations are getting into this concept of getting more commercial companies going.
GVS: What are you most interested in seeing in this it perseverance, but what's the one sort of thing like you know you want to see if it can do?
JG: Well, what we'll be doing that we really want is it will coring rock. And in fact, here's an example of one of the cores. It looks like a piece of chalkboard chalk or Crayola crayon depending on what era you're born in. We don't use chalkboards anymore these days. But we want to core rock and, in certain places where there's sediments in these deltas where life may have really come down these rivers and then deposited in created the rock that we see today. And then we want to bring those sediments back, just like the Apollo rocks we want to be able to interrogate these in our laboratory and really tease out the history of Mars through the rock record.
GVS: Well Perseverance gotta core and gather those rocks. Does it deposit them someplace? And how do we get those rocks back to Earth?
JG: The plan is that we will go to a location and create several cores, and we put those cores in a metal sleeve. Alright. And then that is sealed, and then we lay that on the surface and then move on to other areas. So we will be leaving these samples on the surface for later pickup.
GVS: All right, so we have the moon, we have Mars. Looking beyond that what what do you see NASA doing?
JG: Well, the Moon and Mars is going to be enough for in terms of human exploration for sure for the next several 100 years. But you know, NASA is doing a lot in many other ways we have missions that are currently at Jupiter we have one that's a way out in the outer part of the solar system the Voyagers are still working and we've gone into the Kuiper belt with new horizons. So we have quite a spectacular program all over the solar system.
GVS: Jim, thank you for talking to me and thank you for your work I gotta tell you I'm a big fan of NASA it's very inspirational it's very exciting, and I would have loved to have been part of the space program in some way I chose the wrong career.
JG: Well, there's always room for you Greta, come on, you can come help us anytime you'd like. Thank you so much for inviting me.
[[GRETA]]
THAT’S ALL THE TIME …
WE HAVE FOR NOW.
THANKS TO MY GUESTS …
NASA CHIEF SCIENTIST …
JIM GREEN ...
MATT SMITH …
SYSTEMS ENGINEER …
FOR THE MARS ROVER …
“PERSERVERENCE.”
KEEP UP …
WITH THE LATEST NEWS …
AT VOANEWS.COM.
AND DO FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER
AT GRETA.
[[VO]]
WE LEAVE YOU …
WITH MORE …
OF THE AMAZING IMAGES ...
FROM MARS.
THANK YOU FOR BEING …
PLUGGED IN.
[[STOP]]
ON PLUGGED IN …
PERSEVERANCE HITS ITS MARK.
[[NAT/SOT-CHEERING AFTER THE LANDING]]
THE SIX-WHEELED ROVER ...
LANDS ON MARS ...
WITH HIGH EXPECTATIONS
[[SOT-MATTHEW SMITH 5:55 Perseverance is also carrying a small helicopter called Ingenuity underneath and that will be the first time if it works that we’ll have powered flight on another planet]]
AND AMERICA’S PLACE IN SPACE …
IS BEING CHALLENGED …
WITH A GLOBAL COMPETITION …
FOR TRAVEL AND EXPLORATION.
[[SOT- Jim Green 15:09 Competition from our perspective is always good. 15:12]]
UNLOCKING …
SOME OF THE MYSTERIES ...
OF THE RED PLANET …
ON PLUGGED IN …
EXPLORING MARS AND BEYOND.
[[STOP]]
[[GRETA]]
HELLO AND WELCOME …
TO PLUGGED IN.
I’M GRETA VAN SUSTEREN …
REPORTING FROM WASHINGTON, DC …
AFTER SPEEDING …
HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES ...
THROUGH SPACE …
OVER SEVEN MONTHS ...
AMERICA’S SPACE AGENCY ---
NASA ---
SUCCESSFULLY LANDED ...
A SIX-WHEELED ROVER …
ON THE SURFACE OF MARS …
IN AN EFFORT TO DETERMINE …
IF LIFE EXISTED THERE.
IT IS THE FIRST LEG ...
IN A U.S.-EUROPEAN EFFORT ...
TO BRING SURFACE SAMPLES ...
FROM MARS TO EARTH …
IN THE NEXT TEN YEARS.
VOA’S ARASH ARABASADI ...
REPORTS ON THIS NEXT STEP ...
IN SPACE EXPLORATION.
[[STOP]]
[[PKG/ARABASADI]]
((NARRATOR))
Last week, after seven months hurtling through space, NASA’s six-wheeled Perseverance rover landed on Mars. The U.S. space agency released this video showing the first high-quality images of the spacecraft landing on the Red Planet. Its navigation cameras captured this 360-degree view of the landing site. Scientists also equipped Perseverance with two microphones. One of them was activated for landing and failed but NASA managed to capture this audio of Martian wind just after touchdown.
((NATS POP: WIND))
((mandatory cg NASA/JPL-CALTECH))
((NARRATOR))
Dave Gruel is a team lead ((Descent and Landing Camera Suite Lead)) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He says this latest finding can help sustain the rover and its mission on Mars.
((mandatory cg NASA/JPL-CALTECH)) ((MUST NOT OBSCURE NASA LOGO))
((Dave Gruel, Jet Propulsion Laboratory))
“The noise is an incredible thing that engineers can use to basically detect the health of moving systems… If we get a snapshot of an actuator today, and you can compare over time to another snapshot, another audio file of that actuator in the future, compare the two, and see if there’s anything that can be learned in terms of the health of that device.”
((mandatory cg NASA JPL))
((NARRATOR))
NASA aimed to park its rover at the Jezero ((Jezz-er-O)) Crater that scientists believe was once filled with water - an essential prerequisite for life as we know it.
Perseverance is the biggest vehicle NASA has to rove on Mars. On board is the helicopter, Ingenuity. Together they will survey the Martian surface and collect samples that could answer an age-old question: did life ever exist beyond Earth? But that’s not all, according to NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen.
((end courtesy))
((Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA Science Mission Directorate))
“What’s so exciting about this, it’s not only the landing and the investigations, which is the search for extinct, ancient life from a time where life arose on Earth… if everything goes exactly like we hope, late in the 20s we’re going to go pick up the samples this vehicle is collecting and bringing it back to Earth for the first roundtrip to the planet Mars.”
((mandatory cg NASA JPL))
((NARRATOR))
Perseverance is scheduled to spend at least one Martian year, or two Earth years, exploring the landing site region of the ancient river delta in a lake that once filled the Jezero Crater.
Arash Arabasadi, VOA News.
[[GRETA]]
IT IS AN AMAZING …
FEAT OF ENGINEERING …
TO GET THE ROVER …
AND THE HELICOPTER …
TO MARS …
INTACT.
AND THEN …
THERE IS MORE …
AMAZING ENGINEERING …
TO GET EVERYTHING …
TO WORK PROPERLY …
AND SEND BACK …
THOSE MYSTICAL SOUNDS …
AND PICTURES.
ONE OF THE PEOPLE …
MAKING IT ALL WORK …
IS MATT SMITH …
A SYSTEMS ENGINEER …
ON THE MARS 2020 MISSION …
AT NASA’S JET PROPULSION …
LABORATORY.
I ASKED HIM …
ABOUT HIS ROLE …
IN THE MISSION.
[[STOP]]
[[SOT/SMITH INTERVIEW]]
Matthew Smith: So, during our cruise to Mars, the seven and a half, seven months we went to Mars, I was one of the flight directors. so we had a team of about eight people who are responsible for flying the spacecraft, kind of a combination of pilots and air traffic controller and sort of team coach, I say, you know, imagine, Ed Harris in Apollo 13 but less drama.
Greta: Do you actually control the speed and the direction or is it pre programmed by, by the Perseverance?
Matthew Smith: We actually do have to do what we call a trajectory correction maneuvers, over the course of cruise, to enable us to hit our target for entry, descent, and landing. So we did three trajectory correction maneuvers on this mission. And we also do other activities like we turn the vehicle to make sure that we can maintain communication. We also do a lot of checkouts of all the backup subsystems. You know there's no like triple A on Mars, so we bring backups of everything, we have to check all that out. And we also check out the instruments. so actually cruise is a pretty busy time, and then before launch I was on the team that tested and designed the rover and got it ready.
Greta: Okay it took off in July, it landed in February, you only did three corrections in that time?
Matthew Smith: Yeah that's right. We had an opportunity to do up to six if we needed them. but we have a navigation team that's constantly tracking where we are and they help us determine whether or not we need to do those maneuvers. So it turned out we only needed to do three of them this time around.
Greta: What did you expect is that like average? Or is three is what you sort of expected or is that unusual?
Matthew Smith: the prior mission that we’re based on, the Mars Curiosity, Mars Curiosity, it did four trajectory correction maneuvers. so you know three is one better than we expected we expected we'd probably do four.
Greta: when it took off from July, till the time it landed, were you, was it being watched 24/7 by humans?
Matthew Smith: Yeah. So at the very beginning we did have a 24/7 what we called coverage. So there's a network of antennas called the Deep Space Network that's managed by NASA and there's antennas in California, Spain and Australia. And the idea is that as the Earth rotates, you always can see any spot in the solar system with these antennas. So at the beginning of the mission, the first couple weeks we did have 24 seven coverage. And then in the middle of the mission in the middle of cruise, we had around eight hours a day, where we could talk to the spacecraft. and then near the very end for about the past the last month of cruise, we had 24 seven coverage so that if anything came up we had, you know, an ability to talk to the spacecraft and get it ready for landing.
Greta: Alright, so you've outlined very careful control Perseverance and what what you can do to correct and everything, but the last 11 minutes before it landed, you had no ability to control it. Isn't that right?
Matthew Smith: yeah, that's right. So, you know, at landing, Perseverance was, I think, over, 126 million miles away from Earth. So the the time it takes radio signals traveling at the speed of light to get from perseverance to Earth is as you say 11 minutes. So we really didn't have any ability to in real time you know joystick that landing and the spacecraft had to do it all entirely on its own.
Greta: it must be a tough 11 minutes. I mean when you realize that you were at that point that 11 minutes you thought okay well we can't do anything and we don't know what's happening.
Matthew Smith: Yeah, well, and the way it works is we you know, as we approach landing, we're getting data from the vehicle the whole time, so we know that it's approaching Mars and we can see from the data that it's entering the atmosphere. And so we actually can see it going through all the steps of landing. It's just that that information is 11 minutes, old by the time it reaches us. So it's already happened by the time we received the signal back that landing was was good.
Greta: Okay, it's first job Perseverance is to get, get some samples get some rocks get some cores that's first job?
Matthew Smith: Yeah, so it's gonna do a few things. It's going to, as you say, collect samples and this is kind of a first leg of a round trip from Mars back to Earth.
Also, Perseverance has a couple other what we call technology demonstrations to kind of lead the way for other missions. So, so one of those is an experiment called Moxie, which will actually generate oxygen from the Martian atmosphere it's mostly carbon dioxide, and that's to pave the way for potential human exploration of Mars. Obviously we need oxygen to breathe and also it can be used for rocket fuel and Perseverance is also carrying a small helicopter called Ingenuity underneath and that will be the first time if it works that we’ll have powered flight on another planet which could maybe pave the way for larger flying vehicles in the future to do more exploration.
Greta: But one of the goals of the mission is to find out life ever existed on Mars, will you be able to tell that from the pictures, it sends back or do you have to wait for it collected samples and we send some other vehicle up to get those samples whenever that happens, or can you tell that from the pictures that can be sent back or information you get?
Matthew Smith: my sense talking to the scientists, is that we will, we'll have a good indication from from the payload and the pictures and the spectra that we get there. but you know this is saying that, you know, exceptional claims require exceptional proof. and and really to get you know absolutely definitive proof of ancient microbial life, say for example, an image of a microbe or something, we likely would have to return the samples to earth, and use your really large and sophisticated equipment that we could never fit on a rover to do that final confirmation so I think really, because it's because finding life on Mars would be such an incredible thing and in such an important discovery you really want to be super sure and that would require, bringing the samples back to earth and analyzing them here.
Greta: Alright the rovers who've already sent up to perseverance, they stay so somewhat something's got to go and get the samples that have been collected, we've never done that before send something to pick up samples and come back. When is that likely to happen? how far are we from developing the technology or do we already have it? is that, that seems like a more difficult task to me just to land something collect something, and also be able to leave?
Matthew Smith: Yeah, you're totally right it is it is a huge challenge, um, good news is the technology demonstrations are already the technology development is already in work at NASA and our partners and the European Space Agency.
And the idea is that we would send a mission in the kind of latter half of the 2020s, they would land a rover, another rover on Mars and a small rocket. That rover would go then and fetch the samples bring them to the rocket that's on the surface of Mars, blast them into Mars orbit. And then we would have a third spacecraft that would go grab those samples from Mars orbit and bring them back to earth. so a lot of moving pieces but but we're already starting on those.
Greta: But that's going to be eight or nine years from now right but we that we collect them.
Matthew Smith: That's right. Yep.
Greta: All right, now let me turn to ingenuity the helicopter that's been sent up. And what why what is what is first the difficulty or the uncertainty about whether or not, it'll fly that's the first thing. And secondly, why did you want to send a helicopter if we've got the rover, you can take pictures, it can gather things?
Matthew Smith: yea, is really good, really good question. So one of the things that makes flying a helicopter on more so difficult is that the atmosphere Mars is extremely thin compared to earth so it's only about 1% of the density of earth.
And we've tested the helicopter on earth in a vacuum chamber that has been pumped down to simulate the environment of Mars. and it worked pretty well but there's a lot of unknowns, like, how will wind affect the helicopter? To make it fly on Mars the rotors have to spin extremely fast, and also has to be very light so this is a really big challenge to fly on Mars. And one of the reasons we're doing this is, I sort of think of it as analogous to a mission NASA sent in 1997. They landed a mission called Pathfinder and there was a small rover called Sojourner on it. it was about the size of a microwave. And it was the first rover on another planet.
And now we have a big SUV sized rover that's rolling Mars. So if the, if you think about the helicopters maybe analogous to that, hopefully in the future we can have much larger helicopters exploring, and that would let us cover a lot more area, a lot more quickly. The rover itself, only travels it like a little less than walking speed, if you can believe it, so we can get you know a lot of places, but it's it's relatively slow and a flying vehicle would let us explore, so much more quickly.
Greta: Do you expect to find some evidence of life on Mars man, what's your sort of expert opinion and hypothesis?
Matthew Smith: My own personal opinion, the scientists tell me that the, we know that this location that we're sitting, Jesereau crater, was an ancient lake bed. We know that there was water there. And this was billions of years ago, around the same time that microbial life was getting a foothold on Earth. So we really are in the best position possible almost on the entire planet to find ancient microbial life, if it existed.
Greta: How do you know there was water there. I mean it looks like to me nicely that pictures, you know doesn't look, it looks like a desert to me but we'd How do you know there was water there?
Matthew Smith: That's actually a big question from the, from the scientific community we knew Mars was a lot warmer and wetter. Mars doesn't have the same magnetic field, that the earth does. So there are some hypotheses about interaction with solar wind. But I think that that is still one of the big questions is you know what happened to the Martian, the water on Mars? Perhaps it's frozen under the surface, perhaps it got lost into space over billions of years, that that's something that planetary scientists are still trying to unwrap.
Greta: is NASA preparing for human exploration we've sent these rovers but what about humans?
Matthew Smith: Yeah. Mars is definitely on the roadmap for NASA's Human Exploration Program so the the Artemis project is is NASA's current effort to return the next man in the in the first woman to the moon, and eventually that would lay the groundwork for sending humans to Mars you know later in this in the century and it's definitely the the long term goal of NASA human exploration to put humans on Mars.
Greta: What are you most excited to learn about with this, with perseverance with its mission?
Matthew Smith: Well I think some of the questions we talked about, like, you know, was Mars habitable. Is there evidence of ancient microbial life? I mean, that to me that's incredible science that's the type of thing that you know rewrites our textbooks and would really change our understanding of where we fit in the universe and maybe where life could exist elsewhere on other planets or around other stars. So to me that's really exciting. I'm also just, you know as an engineer super excited to see the Ingenuity helicopter, take off I mean that's that's pretty amazing. So a lot of really cool things going on with this mission.
Greta: What's your wish list what would you like to do beyond this in terms of space exploration?
Matthew Smith: Well, one of my sort of pet interests, is a field called exoplanets, so exoplanets are planets that orbit stars, other than our Sun. And you know 25 or 30 years ago this was, we didn't know of any exoplanets it was sort of a pie in the sky dream, but a few missions recently have have shown us that essentially almost any almost every star in the universe has at least one planet around us. And we're just adopting the technologies now to be able to detect those planets, image them it's a really hard problem because it's like looking like it's like looking for a firefly next to a lighthouse in terms of the brightness of the planet, and the brightness of the star,
But I mean, imagine if you found a sunlight star and were able to detect an earth like planet around it, that could really, you know, increase our chances of finding habitable location, besides our Earth elsewhere in the galaxy.
Greta: well it’s so exciting and I appreciate you talking to me today.
Matthew Smith: Thanks so much. Great to be here.
[[GRETA]]
SPACE X THE COMPANY
FOUNDED BY ELON MUSK
IS PLANNING TO LAUNCH THE
FIRST SPACE FLIGHT
WITH AN ALL CIVILIAN CREW
THE SPACE CRAFT WILL ORBIT
THE EARTH FOR SEVERAL DAYS
SOMETIME IN THE FALL.
IT WILL BE A 4 PERSON CREW LED BY
AMERICAN BILLIONAIRE AND PILOT
JARED ISAACMAN WHO IS PAYING
SPACE X AN UNDISCLOSED SUM
OF MONEY FOR THE FLIGHT.
ALSO SELECTED FOR THE FLIGHT,
A YOUNG WOMAN WHO BEAT THE ODDS
AGAINST BONE CANCER.
WHEN IT LIFTS OFF SHE WILL BECOME
THE YOUNGEST AMERICAN IN SPACE.
PLUGGED IN’S ELIZABETH CHERNOFF
HAS HER STORY.
(SOUNDBITE) (English) HAYLEY ARCENEAUX: "So, I'm going to space!"
Hayley Arceneaux is 29, a cancer survivor, and now she could become the youngest American person ever to fly into space.
"Getting this call to go to space came out of completely nowhere. I think that's the beauty of life, that sometimes it surprises you."
The opportunity has come her way through her workplace – St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
It was where she was treated as a child battling bone cancer.
"So when I was 10 years old, I was working my way towards my black belt, and I had actually just gotten my black belt in Tae Kwon Do before I was diagnosed with cancer, but I started having knee pain. And the thought it was from overuse from the Tae Kwon Do but then I started limping. And my mom noticed a big knot above my left knee. She took me to the doctor who did an x-ray and I'll never forget she, she came in the room with me and my parents and just said, 'This is bone cancer."
"I spent a year at St. Jude undergoing intense chemo and then also surgery to save my leg. And as difficult as that year was physically, it it was the most meaningful year of my life"
Arceneaux now works at St. Jude as a physician assistant.
She was chosen by the hospital and billionaire philanthropist Jared Isaacman to fly on the private Inspiration4 SpaceX mission later in 2021.
It will be the first space flight without an astronaut aboard.
But before lift-off there’s training to be done.
"It'll start with the centrifuge training, like going around really fast to feel all the G-forces. And then we're going to prepare for any possible situation. We're going to spend a lot of time in the Dragon simulator and then I'll get some additional preparation as I'm the medical officer of this flight."
Unlike the NASA and SpaceX flights that go to the International Space Station, this one will travel around Earth for several days, during which time Arceneaux said she expects to participate in science experiments…
and also make time to video call kids at the hospital.
"I really hope to inspire these kids by going on this mission to dream big, that they can do anything. I was talking to this little girl yesterday and she was saying that she's upset that she can't run or jump. And I said, "You know, I can't run or jump either because I have a prosthesis in my leg but that's not stopping me from going to space.' This mission is opening up space travel to anyone and I think that in itself is going to motivate people and give them so much hope."
"Kids are so visual and I hope that them being able to see me in space really shows them what their future can look like. I'm the first St. Jude patient to go to space, the first pediatric cancer survivor, but I know I'm not going to be the last."
[[GRETA]]
THE UNITED STATES …
IS NOT ALONE …
WITH A MISSION …
TO THE RED PLANET.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES …
AND CHINA ...
HAVE MISSIONS TO MARS.
THE UAE SAYS ...
SPACE HAS OPENED ...
A BROAD RANGE ...
OF POSSIBITIES FOR EVERYONE ...
IN THE ARAB WORLD.
[[STOP]]
[[PKG/ARABASADI]]
((NARRATOR))
The Martian surface has never been so popular for Earthling vessels. In July 2020, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, and China launched missions to the Red Planet. At the time, Earth and Mars had the type of ideal alignment that only happens every 26 months.
((NARRATOR))
Sarah al-Amiri is chair of the UAE Space Agency. She says the years-long journey to build and launch a craft could inspire other Arab nations.
((Sarah al-Amiri, Chair of UAE Space Agency))
“Today you have households of every single age group passionate about space, understanding a lot of science that happens in there, it has opened a broad realm for possibilities for everyone within the UAE and also, I truly hope, within the Arab world.”
((NARRATOR))
The UAE’s orbiter fired its main engines for 27-minutes to enter the Martian atmosphere in what’s being called “the Hope maneuver.” It took another 17-minutes for nervous scientists on Earth to learn the good news.
((NARRATOR))
((Reuters/CCTV))
The following footage comes from Chinese state television, and VOA cannot independently verify its content. It claims to show scientists at the moment China’s Tianwen-1 probe entered orbit around Mars. The Chinese craft executed a similar slowdown technique to the UAE’s Hope maneuver. Tianwen-1 will stay in a so-called “parking orbit” to survey the surface looking for potential landing sites in May or June.
[[GRETA]]
THE COMPETITION ...
FOR NATURAL RESOURCES ...
IS MAKING SPACE ...
THE NEXT FRONTIER ...
TO MINE FOR MINERALS ...
NEEDED FOR …
THE NEXT GENERATION ...
OF BATTERIES ...
ELECTRONICS ...
AND MILITARY EQUIPMENT.
JIM GREEN ...
IS CHIEF SCIENTIST ...
AT NASA.
AMONG HIS ACHIEVEMENTS:
LEADING THE 2012 MISSION ...
LANDING THE ROVER …
“CURIOSITY” ON MARS.
I ASKED HIM ...
ABOUT THE BENEFITS ...
OF SPACE EXPLORATION ...
PROGRAMS.
[[STOP]]
[[SOT/JIM GREEN INTERVIEW]]
JG: Well what's happening in many ways is humans are leaving low Earth orbit. Our plans are then to trek to the moon, learn to live and work on a planetary surface, and then investigate Mars into the future. Mars is a pretty spectacular place. I mean it is a planet that we can actually live and work on like none other. So we're interested from a scientific point of view, its history. How did it come together? What is it made of? Are there resources there? Can and how would we live there? And it tells us a lot about the potential for maybe a place where life could have started, when life started here on Earth. We've got to learn to live and work on a planetary surface. We want to be able to tease out the resources that are on the moon. We believe there's actually a significant amount of water in frozen form trapped in permanently shadowed craters in the south and north pole of the moon, which is why we're going to the South Pole. And once we learn how to extract that, and begin to use that because we can breathe the oxygen that comes from water we can of course drink the water. We also can create rocket fuel. That's actually some of the first things that we want to do when we go to Mars.
GVS: Have we learned anything in space so far that has been an asset here on Earth has made our lives better for whatever reason?
JG: Oh, there's been an enormous number of discoveries that have occurred on space station that we're using here on Earth. We're learning that in space with or without gravity of certain types of things like crystals can grow. We also learn that changes in the body. That, that are not related to the gravity, then can be really looked at more carefully. And therefore, we've seen a variety of medical advances that have occurred from space station astronauts.
GVS: We had a space race with the Soviet Union, which led to the man on the moon we got there first. Are we in a space race for instance now with China? I mean is there competition, and good competition I don't necessarily mean a bad competition?
JG: Competition from our perspective is always good. We're excited to see what the Chinese are doing, you know they have plans also to land on the moon they have several rovers there now. We're turning our attention to do that. They've started to build the space station. That's exciting. So they're discovering some of the major scientific activities that we have been working in for several decades. So this kind of work is very healthy between these nations.
GVS: What are other nations doing?
JG: Some nations are getting into this concept of getting more commercial companies going. I know the Japanese are and, and a couple are starting out in in Europe, too. So it's a model I think that's going to leave the US and go into many of these other countries to be followed.
GVS: Is NASA now working with private companies that said something a little bit different?
JG: It is different and it's really a very important part of the whole plan and, and the concept is, of course, getting more companies having the ability to get into space. Because we have the space station. SpaceX and Blue Origin and a number of others can allow transportation back and forth that enables us to turn our attention to these grander plans about going to the moon.
GVS: Are the private companies and NASA working well together or is there some stepping on feet and duplication of what the private enterprise is doing and what NASA is doing?
JG: While the private companies together form a competitive network as we always like to have you know we always are looking for the best price for the best product. So that's going on, but from our perspective it's a really healthy environment because we have a number of companies and groups to work with some nations are getting into this concept of getting more commercial companies going.
GVS: What are you most interested in seeing in this it perseverance, but what's the one sort of thing like you know you want to see if it can do?
JG: Well, what we'll be doing that we really want is it will coring rock. And in fact, here's an example of one of the cores. It looks like a piece of chalkboard chalk or Crayola crayon depending on what era you're born in. We don't use chalkboards anymore these days. But we want to core rock and, in certain places where there's sediments in these deltas where life may have really come down these rivers and then deposited in created the rock that we see today. And then we want to bring those sediments back, just like the Apollo rocks we want to be able to interrogate these in our laboratory and really tease out the history of Mars through the rock record.
GVS: Well Perseverance gotta core and gather those rocks. Does it deposit them someplace? And how do we get those rocks back to Earth?
JG: The plan is that we will go to a location and create several cores, and we put those cores in a metal sleeve. Alright. And then that is sealed, and then we lay that on the surface and then move on to other areas. So we will be leaving these samples on the surface for later pickup.
GVS: All right, so we have the moon, we have Mars. Looking beyond that what what do you see NASA doing?
JG: Well, the Moon and Mars is going to be enough for in terms of human exploration for sure for the next several 100 years. But you know, NASA is doing a lot in many other ways we have missions that are currently at Jupiter we have one that's a way out in the outer part of the solar system the Voyagers are still working and we've gone into the Kuiper belt with new horizons. So we have quite a spectacular program all over the solar system.
GVS: Jim, thank you for talking to me and thank you for your work I gotta tell you I'm a big fan of NASA it's very inspirational it's very exciting, and I would have loved to have been part of the space program in some way I chose the wrong career.
JG: Well, there's always room for you Greta, come on, you can come help us anytime you'd like. Thank you so much for inviting me.
[[GRETA]]
THAT’S ALL THE TIME …
WE HAVE FOR NOW.
THANKS TO MY GUESTS …
NASA CHIEF SCIENTIST …
JIM GREEN ...
MATT SMITH …
SYSTEMS ENGINEER …
FOR THE MARS ROVER …
“PERSERVERENCE.”
KEEP UP …
WITH THE LATEST NEWS …
AT VOANEWS.COM.
AND DO FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER
AT GRETA.
[[VO]]
WE LEAVE YOU …
WITH MORE …
OF THE AMAZING IMAGES ...
FROM MARS.
THANK YOU FOR BEING …
PLUGGED IN.
[[STOP]]
