[MUSIC PLAYING]
SPEAKER 1: Without further ado,
please help me welcome Joe.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
JOE PARRISH: So thank you, Mary,
for the great introduction.
Thanks to everybody at Google.
And also, I wanted to
thank my longtime colleague
Terry Fong, who kind
of, along with Mary,
manages the NASA-Google
relationship, for inviting
me to give this presentation.
So I'm thrilled to be here.
This is actually my first
time on the Google campus.
And so I've-- obviously,
everybody has read and heard
a lot about it.
Because to actually see it in
action is wonderful for me.
I'm going to talk a little bit
about the Mars sample return
mission.
It's an idea that we've had
at NASA for quite some time.
And we're actually ever
so slowly inching our way
toward executing it.
And I wanted to
talk particularly
about the technologies that
are necessary to do it.
You'll see a few
charts downstream.
I'm going to show
you all a video.
It's kind of an animation
of Mars sample return.
And you're going
to see a few places
where miracles are necessary.
You'll know what I mean when
you see it on the animation.
And that's code for, we need
to develop the technology
to do whatever it is
that we're trying to do.
So when you see that,
you'll see that this mission
is an incredible system
engineering challenge.
It's like doing Apollo
with no astronauts.
It even includes, you know,
going to another planet,
landing, doing some stuff
there, launching into orbit
around that planet,
and coming back.
So it's very analogous to what
we did at the Moon with Apollo.
But there's no humans involved,
at least not directly.
And to imagine
doing all the things
that we did in Apollo with no
humans is quite an undertaking.
So without further ado,
let me launch into charts.
I'm going to try to run till
about 0:45 past the hour.
And Mary will give me
a cue to wrap it up.
And then we can have a little
bit of interaction on Q&A.
And I also understand
there's a number of people
watching this online.
And I'm not sure if there's
a mechanism for them to be
able to ask questions, but--
SPEAKER 1: I would say they
can get in touch with me.
JOE PARRISH: OK.
SPEAKER 1: It's Mary R.
JOE PARRISH: So MaryR@google
if you want to ask a question,
and you're online, you're
not in the room here.
So let me go ahead
and get going.
And we'll work it out as we go.
So a little bit of overview.
And by the way, my
slides are going
to be graphics-heavy
and text-light so we
can talk about the cool stuff.
And I have a number of videos
that I want to show you.
And I'm going to--
in order for me to talk
comprehensively about MSR,
it takes about four hours.
And so we only
have less than one.
And so I've had to be
a little bit selective.
And instead of
trying to give you
a shallow view of
everything, I've
chosen a few things
that I really
want to dive in and talk about.
And I think that's a
better experience for you.
And it's fun to talk about.
And if you're
still interested, I
gave Mary a longer version
of this presentation that
has more information in it.
And you're welcome
to peruse that.
And I have my
contact information.
Anyway, I'll give you
a little bit of context
for what we're
trying to accomplish
with the Mars exploration
program that's
instantiated at NASA now.
And when I talk about
Mars exploration,
I'm going to talk mostly about
the robotic exploration of Mars
using rovers and orbiters.
Obviously, there's
a big effort at NASA
associated with preparing
for humans to go to Mars.
I'll touch on that peripherally
at the end of the presentation.
But most of my talk is about
doing this with rovers,
and orbiters, and so forth.
So talk a little bit about
the context for exploration.
What is it that we're
trying to accomplish
as a blend of
science, technology,
and inspiration, which I
think is a product that we,
at NASA sometimes don't
appreciate how much we're
delivering that along
with delivering science
and technology?
Talk a little bit about this
Mars sample return mission.
And then, talk about some
of the key technologies that
include things like how we get
the samples off the surface
of Mars, how we gobble
up this thing that's
the size of a
basketball in Mars orbit
and bring it back to Earth.
And I want to talk
about, in particular,
a really cool application
for superconductors
to assist us in the trapping of
this basketball in Mars orbit.
It's called flux pinning.
And then I want to
talk a little bit
about the fact that
the Mars samples,
we have a love-hate
relationship with them.
They're our frenemy, I guess.
We want to study them.
We want to bring
them back to Earth
and study in our laboratories.
But we also have to
account for the possibility
that there might be biological
activity in those samples.
And therefore, we
need to treat them
as if they're potentially
hazard and not
release these things into
the Earth's biosphere
until we've made
sure that it's safe.
And this love-hate
relationship with the sample
actually drives the
engineering of the mission.
And I'll talk more about that.
And then at the end,
if we do have any time,
we'll talk about some
of the longer-term stuff
like flying helicopters at
Mars, and landing on a pinpoint,
whereas right now, we land
with miles of uncertainty
of where we land, et cetera.
So that's kind of the outline.
So let me talk a little
bit about context.
And I won't go through
this point by point.
But I just wanted to
make the point that we--
within NASA, there are sort
of four major organizations
that are responsible
for the NASA missions.
There's one that's
responsible for Aeronautics.
So one of A's in NASA
stands for "Aeronautics,"
even though I think NASA
is much better known
for the space side.
Within the Space domain, we
have the human exploration
and operations.
Those are the guys who operate
the International Space Station
and are preparing to
send humans to Mars.
There is a Space Technology
Mission Directorate,
which, as the name implies,
is responsible for developing
new technologies
that can be applied
across the board
at NASA and beyond.
And then, there's what we
call the Science Mission
Directorate.
And the Science
Mission Directorate
is responsible for delivering
science results like you're
seeing from Hubble
Space Telescope,
like you're seeing
from the Mars rovers.
And that's the
mission directorate
that operates the
NASA Mars missions.
So we have countless journal
articles, and papers,
and covers of "Nature"
magazine, and so forth
that have resulted from
the exploration of Mars.
And so we've delivered
a really wide variety
of key science findings.
Like, before the Mars
Exploration Program began,
we didn't really know how
pervasive water was at Mars.
And it turns out that water
has been extremely pervasive
at Mars.
In the ancient times,
it was wet, and warm,
and much more habitable for
the kind of life that we
are familiar with on Earth.
And then something happened.
And all that water went away.
And Mars is now this
dry, cold desert.
And because Earth and Mars
are kind of brother and sister
in the planetary family,
it would be really nice
for us to understand what
happened to all of that water
on Mars.
Why did it escape?
And if you're
selfish and you don't
want it to happen
to you on Earth,
or maybe your grandchildren's
grandchildren's grandchildren
downstream, it would be really
nice to understand that.
So science is a big
aspect of what we do.
Engineering and
technology development
is another big aspect of what
the Mars program delivers
back to not only NASA but
to the world at large.
Many of the autonomous systems
that are now being implemented
in driverless cars
got their start
as NASA tried to figure
out how to operate rovers
on the surface of another
planet where we couldn't
have direct human intervention.
And Terry is one of the
world's experts in that field.
And I hope, one day, he mans
up, and comes, and gives a talk
here at Google on all the cool
stuff that he's been working on
with his colleagues at Ames.
That's a-- sorry for a
little internal joke.
Anyway, we're developing a
whole variety of technologies
that not only serve
sort of a localized NASA
interest like landing
more stuff on Mars,
which is a very
specialized application,
but things that help
the world at large.
And then, the last one--
and like I said, some of
my colleagues at NASA,
they want to talk
about the science.
And they want to talk
about the technology
as it applies to missions.
But I think that one of
our greatest products
is inspiration.
And for me, it is unbelievable
to be at JPL the night
that we landed Curiosity and
to see that in Times Square.
Times Square was lit
up with the images that
were coming back from Mars.
And when those first--
the landing itself was sort of
a technological achievement.
But when those first
thumbnail images came back
and we knew we were safe on
Mars, there was a human story.
That was the story of
all the people who,
through their lives-- and you
guys know what this is like,
to work long hours,
nights, weekends,
and feel personally
responsible for the success--
in our case, missions-- in your
case, products or something
that Google is
trying to develop.
But that notion that
you've invested yourself
personally in
something, no machine
can ever, ever take away
that human inspiration.
So I think that's one of the
major products that we deliver.
Coming back to
science, there's kind
of four things that organize our
scientific exploration of Mars.
Number one-- and
you know, these are
written as if they're equals,
but they're actually not.
Finding life is the big one.
It's the first among equals.
That's the one that--
you know, if we
were to find life, even
microbial life, either evidence
of it in the ancient
history of Mars
in a kind of fossilized
context, or extant life, that
would be just an unbelievable
change in the way in which
people on Earth
think of themselves
and think of us as not being
alone in this universe.
Not to be downplayed
are the other goals.
Like you know, I
talked a little bit
about the processes and the
history of the climate on Mars.
So even if you could care less
about this ethereal discussion
about whether or not there's
life on another planet,
maybe if you're a little more
self-centered or thinking
about the future for
your kids, and kids,
and kids, this notion
of, let's not let
happen to Earth what
happened to Mars.
Understanding how the surface
of Mars evolved and the interior
of Mars, that is actually
vastly different from Earth's.
And one advantage that
we have, the Earth
is constantly
reinventing itself.
The Earth's-- we have these
plates, these tectonic plates,
that keep moving around
and changing things.
And there's constant upwellings
in the ocean and on land.
And things get recycled.
So something that's been
on the surface of the Earth
a million years ago is
almost certainly not
on the surface of
the Earth anymore.
It's been somehow
turned underneath.
Mars is not like that.
Mars has been very stable for
millions and millions of years.
So you have things that are
on the Mars surface that
have always been on
the Mars surface.
And from a scientific
standpoint,
that actually makes
it a lot easier
to understand the
history of Mars
than we enjoy here on Earth.
And then the last goal,
from a science standpoint,
is preparing for eventual
human exploration.
And what we mean is, from
a science standpoint,
understand the
processes on Mars that
might affect human exploration.
Understand how the
atmosphere works.
Understand, is the surface of
Mars, is the-- what we call--
regolith, which is
fancy for dirt--
the dirt on Mars, is
that toxic to humans?
That was a big question we
had when the astronauts went
to the Moon.
And it's even more likely
to be an issue at Mars,
that the regolith might actually
include some things that
are not healthy for humans to
come in direct contact with.
So getting ready for human
exploration is a big deal.
You guys probably know even
sending rovers to Mars--
you may not know that
we've kind of had
three styles of these rovers.
The first one was Sojourner,
which flew in 1997.
It lasted about 90 days
on the surface of Mars.
And it operated in an area the
size of this room, never got
outside of that.
It only could talk back to the
base station that was nearby.
So if it ever got
very far away, it
would lose contact
with the base station.
And it was really a technology
demonstration in 1997.
So fast-forward to 2004,
seven years beyond that.
We sent two.
We send twins, Spirit
and Opportunity,
the Mars exploration rovers.
Now, those are about
the size of a table.
And they weigh in the
neighborhood of 300 pounds each
when they land.
And Spirit lasted
for seven years
before it got stuck in sand.
And the winter came.
And its solar panels could
no longer keep it warm.
And we think it froze to death.
However, Opportunity, more
than 10 years later-- in fact,
12 years now--
has gone more than
40 kilometers.
So it's finished a marathon
on the surface of Mars.
It was only supposed
to last for 90 days,
and it only supposed
to go for 600 meters.
And it's now gone well
over 40 kilometers.
So what I say is, oh, we pay too
much for that system, you know?
The thing should have
died a long time ago.
And anyway, that's
how we do it at JPL.
And then finally, Curiosity,
which I think almost all of you
are directly familiar with,
we launched it in 2011.
It landed in 2012.
It's still operating on Mars.
And it's one of the things
that proved that Mars was,
in fact, a habitable place.
Because within its
first 2 kilometers
of roving once it
landed at Mars,
it roved through a stream bed.
And I mean, it's like
absolutely, no questions asked,
a stream bed.
So we knew that there
was flowing water
on the surface of Mars
at some time in the past,
And it was direct
proof when Curiosity
rolled through that stream bed.
Just to give you a
sense-- so we have not
launched these
guys yet, to Mars,
maybe sometime in the future.
But I just wanted to
give you some context
for the size of these systems.
So Sojourner-- size of,
like, a toaster oven.
Opportunity and Spirit--
the size of a table.
And then, Curiosity
is the size of an SUV.
So it weighs 900 kilograms,
weighs about 2,000 pounds.
And if we're going to
ever send humans to Mars,
we now know how to put down
a Curiosity-class payload.
We know how to put down a metric
ton onto the surface of Mars.
If we're going to
put humans on Mars,
we need to learn
how to land, like,
20 tons is what a human
landing system will be.
So we have to increase our
entry descent and landing
capability by 20 times.
OK, so here is sort of a
quickie summary of everything
that's happened since the
turn of the century, the turn
of the Millennium, 2001.
We've started, and we've been
flying a set, of rovers and--
we call-- fixed landers
that stay in one place,
and then, a series
of orbiters that
perform a variety of functions.
They all have
scientific instruments
that are looking down at
Mars and asking questions
about the geology, or
trying to do laser altimetry
so we understand what's
going on in that.
Some of them are looking at
the atmosphere around Mars.
All of our orbiters
also do secondary jobs
that include relaying
communications from the rover.
So if the rover had to talk
directly back to Earth,
that's a very challenging
communication link.
It's a lot easier for the
rover to squirt information up
to an orbiter, which then can
transmit the information back
to Earth, something that we
call comm relay-- communication
relay function.
And also, these orbiters,
many of the recent ones
are equipped with
cameras that look down.
And they look at
places that we might
choose to go in the future.
And they do what we call
landing site reconnaissance.
So they take pictures.
And they say, hey, this--
I mean, it's ironic.
From a safety of
landing standpoint,
you want to land this thing in
a nice, flat, rock-free parking
lot.
But that's not where
the cool science is.
The science is up
in the mountains.
And so you have to
find these areas
on Mars that have both
a safe place to land,
but also have good
science nearby.
So what you want to
find-- what you want to do
is you want to land
in the foothills.
So these reconnaissance
orbiter are kind of
trying to find the
foothills where
you have a nice,
safe place to land,
but cool stuff very
nearby is the idea.
And so we've been
flying these things
in this context since 2001,
a variety of orbiters.
Most of them are NASA, but there
are some from other countries,
and including places like
the European Space Agency,
which is collections
of countries.
And then, here are the rovers.
And then, we start to
get into the future.
Next year, we're going to launch
one of our fixed landers called
Insight, which is
going to explore
the interior geology of Mars.
And then, I imagine
that you all,
by virtue of being
interested in space,
know that SpaceX, which
is a private company,
is talking about
going to Mars with one
of their unmanned systems that
they call Red Dragon, which
is an adaptation of the capsule
that they are delivering
to the Space Station now
to deliver crew and cargo.
So they were thinking--
when this was made,
thinking-- about going in 2018.
Just recently, they've
adjusted their plan
to now targeting 2020 as
their first mission to Mars.
And they, as you
probably also know,
operate at a different--
in a different risk
posture and a different
mission cadence than NASA does.
They're much more
risk-tolerant, and they're
able to execute things more
quickly than we are at NASA.
And so they're actually talking
about going every opportunity
to Mars, which comes
along every 26 months.
We can launch missions to Mars.
So I can't wait
to see what SpaceX
is able to accomplish when
they're in the position
to be able to land on a
routine basis at every Mars
opportunity.
Now I want to
transition to the future
and what's going to happen
in the 2020s and beyond.
We have a next
Mars rover mission.
We call it Mars 2020.
It'll get an
inspirational name soon.
Please send in your
entries for that.
But for the time being,
we call it Mars 2020,
which is also to
pressure ourselves
to launch the darn thing
in 2020 and not in 2022.
And then, we're thinking
about what's next.
And then, what's next is
clearly and unequivocally Mars
sample return.
And I'll talk, in the
next set of slides,
about the fact that we
need an orbiter to do that.
And we need another lander
that includes that rocket
that I was talking about
that launches the samples off
the surface of Mars.
And that's the
decade of the 2020s.
And then, downstream from the
2020s is a lot more uncertain.
We're not clear whether
we'll have developed
enough infrastructure to be
serious about sending humans
to Mars in the 2030s.
And so we're
hedging a little bit
and thinking about ideas for
either more robotic missions
that are continuing the
science exploration of Mars,
or if it would transition more,
to supporting human missions
to Mars, which would
also do science,
but in a different context.
So we kind of have
a number of pathways
that we could go in the '30s.
But for the 2020s, it's all
about Mars sample return.
Mars sample return is
not a new idea at all.
We've been thinking
about it since the 1970s,
this notion of not only going to
Mars and doing in situ science
with instruments that are
carried on some thing--
orbiter, rover, lander--
but actually bringing
samples back,
and of wide variety
of ways of doing that.
I mean, if you defocus
your eyes on what you're
trying to accomplish,
and you just say, listen,
I want to get a bag of
rocks back from Mars,
you can think about ones that
have much more elaborate roving
systems.
Or you can think
about what we call
a grab sample, where
you would land,
and you wouldn't rove at all.
You just reach down from
wherever you land, and then
pick up a handful of this
stuff, and put it in the MAV.
And you launch.
The scientists don't like
that idea, by the way.
They want a diverse
set of samples
that they have
selected, not just
whatever happened to be
underneath the rocket
when it touches down.
But the thing I really
love about the slide
is, number one, back
in the day, when
they were doing these
things as paintings,
they actually still
reused things.
So when you look
at this one up here
and this one down here--
totally different concepts.
But it's got the
same background.
So somebody copied
the background.
The other thing I really
love about this one is,
if you see right here, here's
the rover with all the samples.
And then, there's
the MAV over there.
And there's this big
valley in between.
And you can almost see this
question mark coming out
of the head of the rover,
going, oh no, you're
on the other side of the valley.
How am I ever
going to get there?
So I don't know who
made that painting,
but they were not a
Mars system engineer.
They were a pure artist.
But I love that picture.
And as I said, a variety
of different ways
of doing Mars sample return.
But it turns out that when
you do defocus your eyes
and think about what it
would take to bring back
a sample from Mars,
there's kind of four things
that you've got to do.
You've got to get the samples.
You've got to get them off Mars.
We got to somehow get them
from that vicinity of Mars
back to Earth.
And then once you
get them down here,
you have to safely,
and without--
while maintaining scientific
integrity, you know,
you have to study them.
So these four
functions are totally
independent of any
particular architecture.
And then, as we
like to do at NASA,
we like to split big
problems into small problems.
You start thinking
about functions.
And you start thinking
about what elements
might be able to execute.
So in the color
coding before, we
had these four different
things, blue, orange, green,
and purple.
And then, you start to decompose
these things into their various
and sundry functions.
And you start to think
about specific systems that
might be able to do that-- so
for instance, this whole thing
about getting the samples.
And by the way, here's--
and I'll pass it around.
Here's a model of
the tube that we're
going to use to stick
the rock cores in.
And we will collect
some 30-ish of these.
It depends on how
the mission goes.
We might collect as few as
20 and can still consider
it to be a mission success.
But they go into this thing.
So it's about the
size of a cigar tube.
The model I have here
is a purely solid model.
They're hollow for the
real flight implementation.
And they got all kinds of
gizmos and stuff in here.
But this is roughly
the size of the sample.
And the sample goes in the
shank here, in the shaft.
So in this context,
we envision a rover
that would collect the
samples, that would leave them
on the surface of Mars.
We're kind of like
a drunken sailor.
And we collect a sample, and
we throw it over our shoulder,
and we just trundle away.
Actually, we don't.
We put it down really carefully.
And we take a bunch
of pictures of it
from all kinds of
different directions
so we know exactly
where it is to go back
and pick up those tubes.
And we pick up those
tubes from another mission
that flies later
than this caching
system that will fly in 2020 as
part of the 2020 rover system.
And that actually contains
two major elements.
One is another rover to go
out, and pick up those samples,
and return them to the
MAV, the Mars Ascent
Vehicle, which is the rocket
that flies on that mission.
So that mission
carries a fetch rover
and carries the MAV rocket.
And then, we have
this thing that--
so you've executed
the blue stuff.
You've acquired a
cache of samples.
You execute the orange stuff.
You've launched the
samples into Mars orbit.
Then you come and you capture
that sample container.
We call it the OS, and it's
this basketball-sized thing.
And you return it
and land it on Earth.
And we have a variety
of different ideas
on how you might land at Earth.
But the most common one
is that it goes splat
on the desert in Utah.
And protecting that sample so
we don't break the egg open
and let the samples out is
one of the major engineering
challenges associated with this.
And then, there's all
the stuff associated
with opening up the egg,
and getting the samples out,
and studying them.
So let's back up for a second.
And it would be complete-- this
was the first question that I
asked when I first encountered
the notion of Mars sample
return over a decade ago in
my career is, wait a second,
why are we doing this.
I mean, this is a very expensive
way to study these samples.
Why don't we just-- if we're
going to sink a lot of money
into this, why don't
we just sink that money
into making better
instruments that
can get the same
science that we're
trying to get from
our laboratories,
but we do it at Mars?
Well, it turns out that
that's not really possible.
Number one, the way that
we do simple science
involves very complex
sample preparation
that involves either hands-on
or direct human-guided slicing
and dicing of things
and preparing specimens
for spectroscopy or microscopy
that we just don't have
the technology, today, to do.
So we would not be able to
study them as well using
an in situ instrument as
we would back on Earth.
Some of these instruments
are still the size of rooms.
And I mean, I know
this analogous
to room-size computers that
now slip into your pocket.
But the reality is, in
terms of space exploration,
we're still back in the--
or laboratory science for
analyzing the samples--
we're still back in those days
where the stuff that you need
is the size of a room.
It's not the size of a
iPhone or a Google phone.
Lastly, you don't always
know what you want to study.
And when you do it in
situ, the investigations
that you can do with
your in situ robot
is only as good
as that instrument
that you put on the
system, whereas if you
bring a sample back, it can sit
in containment for 20 years.
And all of a sudden,
you've got a new instrument
that's able to do analysis that
we never could do when we first
flew the mission.
And that's the case with
the Apollo moon rocks.
They're housed largely
at the Johnson Space
Center in Houston, Texas.
And then, they're distributed
out to investigators.
And one of the motivations
for the distribution
of these things are new
instrument capabilities
that have come along long past
when those samples came back
from the Moon.
So there's ample motivation
to not try to do sample--
you know, to not try to replace
the sample return mission
with just in situ exploration.
Here's a trying to summarize
this three-mission context.
But actually, the
next video animation
I'm going to show you guys is
much better at doing this job.
We call this a bat chart,
because Earth is on the bottom,
Mars is on the top.
And if really did
this correctly,
we would be hanging
the rover upside down,
showing that it's all
being done on Mars.
But you see the three-mission
thing, Mars 2020,
collect sample tubes.
You can fly the orbiter and the
lander mission in either order.
It doesn't much matter.
But you have to
retrieve the tubes,
launch them into Mars orbit,
collect them, and then bring
them back to Earth.
And hopefully, if
this video works--
I think it will.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
- If we want to understand
the potential for life
elsewhere in the Solar System,
our neighboring planet Mars
is a great place to go.
Waiting on Mars are rock
samples that hold clues
to whether Mars ever
had an environment
suitable for small
lifeforms called microbes.
Scientists would love to
collect these special rocks
and bring them back to study
up close in laboratories here
on Earth.
However you tackle it,
returning samples from Mars
is definitely a
complicated problem,
but mission planners are
already testing technologies
to make the future possible.
So how could we actually
get a sample from Mars?
Mission planners
have several ideas.
One is to build three different
spacecraft, which would work
together like a relay team.
The first rover could touch
down on the Martian surface
and collect samples
by drilling into rocks
and then stashing the
samples in sealed tubes.
Once collected, the samples
would be placed on the surface
to wait for pickup by a
second rover sent later.
This follow-on rover would
go fetch the samples,
load them into a container,
and bring it back to a lander
with a small rocket on board.
Once the container
was loaded on board,
the rocket would lift off,
carrying the samples up
into Mars orbit.
Waiting in orbit would be a
third spacecraft, an orbiter,
that could capture the container
and bring it back to Earth.
With Mars samples
safely back on Earth,
scientists around the world
will be able to study them
in state-of-the-art laboratories
for decades to come.
The payoff of a sample return
is learning about the potential
for life beyond our home
planet, and even whether Mars
has the right environment and
resources for human explorers
to survive there one day.
[END PLAYBACK]
JOE PARRISH: OK, so
that's MSR in a nutshell
with a few miracles mixed in.
So you guys may think
you have cool jobs.
I got the coolest job, OK?
They pay me to develop
the technologies to be
able to do Mars simple return.
Like, I find myself, on
a daily basis, going,
I just got paid all day to
think about Mars rovers.
And they asked me to
come back tomorrow.
And they're going to
pay me again tomorrow.
I'm so lucky.
We've had sort of three domains
in a technology development
program--
and so on I'm going to delve
much more down into the details
now--
of technologies to enable
Mars sample return.
In the 2012 to
2014 time frame, we
were really trying to get
that 2020 rover enabled to be
able to collect the samples.
So we were working hard
to develop the drill that
was going to drill the sample
and not turn it into powder,
but keep it an integral core.
We wanted to do what we
call fast traverse, which
is making it so that the rover
can cover hundreds of meters
per day instead of
the tens of meters
that we typically do with
our Mars rovers today.
And we also wanted to be
able to land more precisely.
Right now, the MSL mission,
the Curiosity mission,
what we call the landing
error ellipse for that
was about 10 kilometers
by 8 kilometers.
And we want to get down
to much closer ones.
Because as I was
saying before, we
want to land close to
where the good science is.
So we had to--
in the case of MSL, we had
to rove for a couple of years
before we really got
to the good science.
And we were fortunate
to encounter that stream
bed on the way.
But the actual intention
for that mission,
we didn't achieve that until
we had roved for two years.
So we're trying to be able to
reduce the size of that landing
error ellipse and land
much more precisely.
The reason that
this is green here
is that those technologies
were developed to the level
that they were able to be
infused into the flight
mission.
And they're are all being
integrated into the Mars 2020
mission.
And so we'll have all
those capabilities
that we didn't have for MSL.
The stuff that's in yellow
is in development now.
I'm not going to talk much,
much more extensively about that
in the remaining minutes that we
have left, to develop the math,
to develop
containment assurance.
And then eventually,
we're going to have
to develop whatever that
system is that comes and lands
the samples back on Earth and
doesn't let the egg break open.
And then way downstream, we'll
start developing technologies
that are not related to MSR.
But I'm really going to
talk about MSR today.
So there's a variety of
technologies necessary.
I've touched on a
few of them already.
So I won't spend too
much time on this slide.
But just realize, many
of them sort of serve
more than one mission,
and particularly,
the sense that there's two
rovers involved in the sample
return architecture.
Here's what 2020 is all about.
It's highly based on
the Curiosity platform,
so it actually looks very
similar to Curiosity.
And it, in fact, was made
from some of the spares
from the Curiosity mission.
That's one of the ways we
kept the mission cost down.
But it has a completely
different science package on it
that's more oriented toward
trying to find evidence of life
on Mars and collect
those samples.
It looks identical.
And certainly, the architecture
of the flight system
is the same.
We have this cruise
stage that shepherds
the vehicle from Earth to Mars.
We have a back
shell, which is kind
of a cover that covers the
good stuff inside the payload
during the entry into Mars.
Then, we have this
descent stage that you all
have seen that that lowers
the rover down to the surface
and then flies away, the rover
itself kind of collapsed down
into its flat condition before
the wheels are deployed.
And then, the bottom
is the heat shield.
That's all the same
between MSL and 2020.
And it's really just
the payload that's
on the rover that's
dramatically different.
That's what it looks like
when it's all put together
in the clean room at JPL.
And then, as I
mentioned before, we
have these key technologies
that we infuse into the mission.
So we have this model for
technology development--
I mean, it's really common
across NASA technology
development-- then infusion into
a target mission application.
As I said before, we're trying
to narrow that landing error
ellipse.
And the way that we do it for
2020 that's different from MSL
is we have this thing that's
called Terrain Relative
Navigation.
This didn't come
up, really, in any
of the sort of public
discussions about Curiosity,
but Curiosity really
didn't know very much
about where it was landing.
We targeted a
particular location,
and we did our best-- the
navigators did our best--
to put the spacecraft there.
And it landed very close,
landed within a kilometer
of where we were targeting,
which is fantastic.
But we didn't have any
ability to fly the vehicle
in a particular direction
once we actually had it
underneath the parachute.
It's like, you pop
the chute, and you're
going to land wherever you land.
This is it is intending to
allow you to at least adjust
the direction that we go.
So we come down, we take 10
quick pictures on the way down,
and then we decide
what direction we're
going to ask the vehicle to go.
And we have a divert
capability that's
measured in the hundreds
of meters for this.
So this is exaggerating
the situation.
It won't keep us from
landing in the mountains,
but it will land us in a
direction that's more safe.
And then, I've been
alluding to this notion
that we have a variety
of these sample tubes
we're going to lay down.
We're going to fly
about 40 of them.
We're going to lay them in
a few different locations,
probably, if things
go out the way we're
thinking about it now.
And we'll have what we
called depots of tubes
where we have, maybe,
10 tubes in a--
not a stack-- but in a line
that the rover, the fetch rover,
would then go and collect.
I think you guys have had a
chance to see the sample tubes.
This is kind of what it
looks-- the sample looks
like inside the tube.
And then, we have
two plugs and seals
that are intended to keep the
sample from rattling around
during the re-entry, and
then also hermetically sealed
to make sure that any of
the gases or things that
might be entrained in
that sample don't get out.
So the engineering
of the sample tubes
themselves, you have a very
simple version of it there.
But the actual sample tube was
quite a complex engineering
endeavor.
Here are some ideas for
the architecture of that--
we call-- SRL,
Sample Return Lander.
It could be something that looks
like the curiosity platform,
and it carries the
rocket on its back.
The rocket is a little bit
larger than a human size.
It's about 3 meters in length.
And it weighs-- different
ones have different masses.
But it's in the 200-
to 300-kilo range.
So it's a little heavier than
a human and a little taller
than a human, but it's
roughly that size.
You could have it on your
back, which is great.
Because you're picking
up tubes, and you
don't have to go back anywhere.
When you decide you
have enough tubes,
you finish loading them into
the MAV, and you launch it.
Or we can have one that
has a fixed platform where
the MAV stays on that platform
and a smaller rover that's more
the size of Spirit
or Opportunity
that would go out, collect
the tubes, and then come back.
And it's that come back part
of it that has us worried
and led us to think
about this thing we
call a mobile MAV, which
is the Curiosity class.
There's a variety of different
autonomy and visualization
technologies that
are being applied.
This one is a 3D
augmented reality strategy
that we're using, not
just to put ourselves,
the operators of the mission and
the scientists for the mission,
on the surface of Mars so that
they can look around and say,
hey, I really care
about this rock,
but I'd love to see it
from the other direction--
and using orbital imagery,
we synthesize full 3D imagery
of the system so that the
operators and the mission
planners can really have a good
situational awareness of what's
happening on Mars.
But we've even
thought about doing
that for, like,
spacecraft assembly,
where, when you put the
spacecraft together,
it's really tightly packaged.
And sometimes you wish that you
could just look inside and see
what was going on inside there.
And this is a way to synthesize
the spacecraft in 3D that
will allow you to literally
walk through the spacecraft
and see what's going on there.
The other one-- and Terry, this
is that two-minute elevator
pitch.
The other one is that,
right now, the Mars rovers,
they actually roll quite slowly.
We've gotten 100
meters in a day,
but that's a very
good day of driving.
And more frequently, we're
getting tens of meters per day.
To do this fetch
operation, we're
going to need a lot better
performance out of the rover.
It's going to--
some of the driving
distance is a matter of
power and thermal capability
of the rover to survive
the cold night at Mars.
But a lot of it is
that we're just not
smart enough to process the
information quickly enough
to allow the rover to drive
at even a walking pace.
And it would be
wonderful-- right now,
we're getting 9 meters per
day out of both MER and MSL.
So it's not a
matter of size even.
The rovers, even though one
is much larger than the other,
they're both rolling along at
10 meters per day on average.
We need about four or five
times that level of performance.
And we could get it through
better automation, better
autonomy, better decision-making
on board the rover
so it can rove and not
have to stop, you know,
when there's a
pebble in its way.
And that's a
fantastic application
for new technology
development in the AI domain
that I think will be
great for this system.
I talked a little bit
about this basketball.
We call it the OS,
the Orbiting Sample.
And what you see are
those sample tubes
that I passed around.
We cluster them.
And it turns out that when
you kind of package them
like a honeycomb--
and you can package either 19
of them in, I think, four rings,
or add a fifth ring,
and you get up to 31.
And that's what we're
showing here, 31 tubes.
And then, that canister
gets slid inside.
And it makes up a sphere.
And you'll see, in a minute,
why we want it to be spherical,
because it makes it easier
to catch it on orbit.
But just-- sorry, just
know that it weigh-- it's
about the size of a basketball.
A basketball's 24
centimeters in diameter.
This is 27.
And it weighs about 25 pounds.
So it's pretty
massive, actually.
And it's almost all metal
of some sort, titanium
and stainless steel.
This is just one
concept for a MAV launch
where we have the
platform and fetch.
One of the benefits of doing
this versus the mobile MAV
is the fetch rover can kind of
back away and watch the launch.
So we get some fantastic video.
And also, you wouldn't
kill your rover, right?
If the thing launches off
the back of the rover,
the rover's not likely
to survive that event.
So this is one advantage to
the fetch and fix platform.
And speaking of MAVs,
we've been looking
at a variety of different
rocket technologies
to make this possible.
There's solid rockets, which are
like the little Estes rockets
that, as a kid, I
hope you played with.
There are the-- what we call--
bipropellant rockets, which
are analogous to
the space shuttle,
or what SpaceX is launching now,
where you're mixing together
a fuel and an oxidizer.
The hybrid is kind of
halfway in between.
It has a solid fuel, but either
a liquid or a gaseous oxidizer.
And it turns out, for
the Mars application,
this hybrid is just right.
Because we have
problems with the solids
cracking when they
descend and they
have to encounter the landing
environment that we have.
It's also, they're not very
good at cycling thermally,
hot to cold, during the day.
And the hybrid fuels
don't have that problem.
So we're looking at a hybrid
implementation for the MAV.
That was the landed system.
Here is the orbiter system
that would collect the sample.
It has big solar arrays,
because it actually
uses what we called solar
electric propulsion rather
than using chemical
rockets to propel itself.
We use solar power to heat
up an ionized gas that
then gets ejected out the back
and is a much more efficient
power source.
And this thing called
ROCS is the package that
captures the sample.
And I want to talk a
little more about that.
So the ROCS system, this
basketball, is in Mars orbit.
And it's inert, OK?
It has no propulsion system.
So what we do is, with the
orbiter, we chase it down,
and we close in on
it, and we actually
finally rendezvous with it.
In the last sort of 100
meters, we close down.
And that basketball gets put
into some sort of a system that
captures it and contains it.
And I'm leading you
to another technology
that I wanted to show you.
We have to then either
encapsulate it--
because it might have Mars
material on the outside.
And remember, we have to
treat that Mars material
as potentially hazardous.
And then, because
we're so afraid of it,
we actually do it twice.
And we do two
encapsulation exercises.
And then we release that
encapsulated system somehow,
either in the form of
a re-entry capsule that
lands on the surface,
or there's other ideas.
And we've been looking
at a whole variety
of different
alternatives to how we
do this rendezvous and capture.
Some are very sort
of-- let's call them--
conventional mechanical things,
where you fly this thing
into a basketball net.
That's this one here.
And then you close a lid, and
you drive it through system.
There's another one
that I want to show you
in a second that's really cool.
There's the OS coming
into the system.
This one actually
uses mechanical arms
to come and trap the OS.
This is all still attached
to the spacecraft.
We just deleted it so you
could see what's going on.
We re-oriented, because we care
what orientation those samples
land on.
We don't want them to
land with the seal down
and be driven through the seal.
So we want them to
kind of lay flat
when they land on
the Earth's surface.
Here, we're brazing.
Brazing is like soldering.
It's kind of welding the
two halves of the container
that the OS is in.
Then it moves into
this thing that we call
the EEV, Earth Entry Vehicle.
And we do one other layer
of containment there.
So we have a second layer.
And you'll see this sort of
hangar door thing flip open.
And then, the EEV gets ejected.
And that's the whole sequence
of everything that happens.
Punch it off, and there you go.
So I wanted to talk about a
really neat technology called
flux pinning.
The scenario that
I just showed you
before, we capture that
OS with mechanical arms.
This one uses
superconductors and magnets.
And it turns out that there
is a style of superconductor,
type-II superconductor,
that, if you take it
through its transition
temperature-- you know,
at higher temperatures,
these things just
are sort of inert
pieces of metal stuff.
And then, if you
cool them down--
in this particular class,
it's below 80 degrees Kelvin--
they become superconductors.
And it turns out that if you do
these type-II superconductors--
if you take them
through a transition
temperature in the presence
of a permanent magnet,
they set up flux fields.
And these flux fields are what
allow you to levitate this.
This is just a regular
permanent magnet.
Nothing special about this one.
It wants to stay in place there.
As long as you hold
that superconductor
below its critical
temperature, in the presence
of the magnetic field, it wants
to pin that magnet in place.
And that turns out
to be extremely
valuable for what we're trying
to do on the Mars sample
return.
So we have an idea that we could
try to characterize this well
in order to be able to
use it to capture the OS,
and hold it, and orient
it in proper position.
So in this context, the OS would
have these permanent magnets
on the outside of the thing.
And it would fly
into the spacecraft.
And then, using
superconducting magnets
arrayed in this pattern,
we could actually
control the
orientation of the OS.
So we not only would capture
it using the superconductors,
we actually could turn it into
a preferential orientation
and then trap it down.
And I wanted to show you
just a couple of videos
from a flight--
here is in an operation at
Cornell on a flat table--
but also show you a operation
we just did in March
on a microgravity aircraft.
We flew this thing.
Because on the flat table, you
only get 3 degrees of freedom,
right?
It goes x, and y,
and you can get yaw.
But you're not getting all
six degrees, z, pitch, yaw,
and roll.
So we actually flew this on the
micro-gravity airplane, where--
Let's see.
There we go.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- Two, one, go.
Keep going.
Keep Going.
JOE PARRISH: That was day
one, before the guy learned,
don't try to swim.
- [INAUDIBLE], shake it out.
There you go.
JOE PARRISH: So you get--
on one of these parabolas,
you get about 20 seconds
of hang time.
But you really only get about
3 or 4 seconds of good 0G.
So let me just show you.
- [INAUDIBLE].
Shake it out.
There you go.
[END PLAYBACK]
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
JOE PARRISH: This
is from a camera
that's mounted on the frame.
That's my hand there.
- Let go.
[SCREAMING]
JOE PARRISH: So you see how,
just for a couple seconds,
got it in the air.
Everybody was really jazzed.
- All right, bring it up.
[END PLAYBACK]
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- Two, one--
JOE PARRISH: Here's a
particularly good run.
- --release.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Good job.
[INAUDIBLE]
[END PLAYBACK]
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- All right, guys.
Up.
Hold it.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- Hold it down.
Three, two, one, release.
Keep your hand away.
Keep you hand away.
Yeah.
JOE PARRISH: So it
turns out that--
- [INAUDIBLE]
[END PLAYBACK]
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
JOE PARRISH: --if anything
happens, if you touch anything
in the plane, you're
no longer together,
and the OS goes flying out.
So you'll see how
far we actually
translate in a plane in 0G.
- Move.
Move.
We've got them coming.
- [INAUDIBLE]
[END PLAYBACK]
JOE PARRISH: So we do get
to have some fun every once
in a while.
And we're thinking about flying
this on the Space Station
in a couple of years, and
then eventually, in Mars.
This is simulating the landing
of that Earth Entry Vehicle
on the desert floor at 3,000 Gs.
And that's on a muddy--
it could rain in the desert.
And we're testing on what
happens when it lands in mud.
And what it does is it just--
phh-- creates this
huge splatter of mud.
So I'm showing you
the fun stuff, right?
I'm not showing you me
sitting in meetings all day
long and developing
budgets and schedules.
I'm showing you when we get to
fly on the microgravity plane,
or when we get to
make the mud go splat.
OK, so downstream,
after this, we
have big ideas
about other systems
that could explore Mars,
helicopters, balloons,
landing more things,
and eventually,
getting ready for humans.
So sorry for the
fast close there.
But if you're really
interested, please
ask Mary for the slide package.
And you can look at
it in more detail.
And I'm happy to talk
with you offline.
All right, thank you very much.
I know I hit you with the fire
hose, but thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
AUDIENCE: I'm
wondering, with the idea
of the magnetic capture,
firstly, what are the--
does that have a
long enough range
to be practically
useful in orbit?
It feels like it would
be range-constrained more
than a basket.
And secondly, what
were the reasons
to use superconducting methods
instead of active control
with a regular electromagnet
to accomplish that task?
JOE PARRISH: Sure.
So, two fantastic questions.
Number one, it
would be beautiful
if this tractor beam acted
over kilometers, and you know,
it was just like in "Star Trek."
But it acts over centimeters.
The good news is, we can
control the spacecraft
to single-digit centimeters.
So I can fly that
retrieval system up
to the OS within
about 5 centimeters.
So I only need that
tractor beam quality
to actuate over single-digit
centimeters, and it does.
That aspect, the
really important thing
is that we do it
without contacting,
and without getting a lot of
dust flying off of, the OS
and contaminating
the spacecraft.
That's the big advantage over
the conventional mechanical
means is we never actually
touch the OS in this scenario.
It comes in, and it pins in
that equilibrium condition
with no contact
to the spacecraft.
And we're able to orient
the OS without touching it.
And it turns out that this
orientation function is
winding up being a big design--
I didn't think it
would be when we first
embarked on this
thing, but it turns out
that orientation is
a big design driver
for the mechanical systems.
The second one is,
why do we do it
with superconductors
rather than just
regular conventional magnets.
You could.
But that potential well
and that pinning capability
in the equilibrium
position is a lot more
difficult to synthesize
with electromagnets.
It wants to drive right
into contact with the magnet
and stick in contact.
Now, you can levitate
electromagnetically,
but it's a lot harder than
this, which does it passively.
So as long as you keep
that superconductor
below its critical
temperature, as long
as you're keeping
it that cold, you
don't have to do anything else.
You don't need an
elaborate control system.
It just operates
that way as long
as you pin the magnet in place.
So yes, you can do it
with electromagnets.
But the superconductors
have a number
of characteristics
that are beneficial,
that passive equilibrium
position, the non-contact case,
et cetera.
Those things make
it advantageous.
The downside is it's a low
technology maturity right now.
And so we're inventing
the technology as we go,
whereas people have much
more experience, obviously,
with electromagnets and
conventional permanent magnets.
So those things are in
tension in our development.
Thank you.
That's a super question.
AUDIENCE: I actually
had a similar question.
But I'll go with
a different one,
because you answered
my first one.
I'd like to know a little
bit about the relationship
between NASA and SpaceX, and
how much coordination there
is between the
two organizations,
and how much competition
there might be.
JOE PARRISH: Yeah,
another great question.
And I'm going to
do my best to be
candid, but with a
little bit of diplomacy.
So number one, as
I mentioned to you,
I'm really, really impressed
with all the things
that SpaceX has been
able to accomplish.
We, especially at JPL--
but NASA Ames also has a
relationship with SpaceX.
We're helping them
do some of the things
that they really can't
do for themselves.
Like for instance,
we're talking with them
about some of the really
technical aspects of the entry,
descent, and landing environment
so that they understand
some of the lessons that
we learned the hard way
without having to repeat them.
And so we're providing them
with some engineering support
as they develop their system.
And there's other
areas where they're not
looking for that support.
They think they have the answer.
And they may even
have the personnel
that have the experience that
are able to give them that.
So we're supporting them in
some very particular engineering
domains in areas where NASA
has clear expertise that SpaceX
does not have.
In return, there are discussions
between SpaceX and NASA
about returning the favor in the
form of landing things for us.
Because we're really
getting opportunities
to land on the Mars surface
every half a decade or so.
If they're going on
every opportunity,
it would be wonderful
if we could put payloads
onto their system.
So there's a bit
of an interchange.
And there are
motivations on both sides
for that relationship.
One thing I can say is that
I think SpaceX is really
changing the paradigm.
They certainly have done it
in the launch vehicle game.
And I anticipate that, as they
spread into other domains,
like spacecraft satellites,
like for Mars applications,
they're going to
change the paradigm.
In the way that they
did for launch vehicles,
they're going to
change the paradigm
in those other domains.
I happen to be
somebody who thinks
that those paradigm changes
are good for the ecosystem
as a whole.
So I'm really a
huge fan of SpaceX.
And I think most people
that you talk to at JPL,
Ames have sort of a
similar perspective.
AUDIENCE: So I'm somewhat
curious if there's
been any lessons
learned from rover
attempts of other countries.
Because most of what we see
is coming from NASA, or maybe
SpaceX.
But we don't see much
coming, at least publicized,
from the other countries.
JOE PARRISH: Right.
In the domain of
Mars exploration,
particularly when we talk
about landing things on Mars
and using them on
Mars, the US is
kind of the only player
that's been successful.
We actually have a very--
one of the slides that I
didn't show you guys today
is we have a scorecard
of successful--
of attempts versus successes.
And it's, like, 39
attempts and 15 successes.
And almost all of
those successes are US.
No one-- no other
country-- has successfully
landed something
on Mars that lasted
for more than a few seconds.
The Russians landed
something that
died in a matter of seconds.
The only country that's ever had
anything that really delivered
science back from the surface
of Mars is the United States.
Now, that's not to
say that we don't
have wonderful collaborations
with other international
partners like the
European Space Agency
that are providing things
on the instrument level.
And they're now getting
to the point of trying
to do things like rovers.
The Europeans are planning to
launch a rover mission in 2020
that would sort of look
like Spirit and Opportunity
in terms of its ambitions for
size, and roving distance,
and so forth.
But no one's really yet
been successful at the--
let's call it-- the mission
level other than NASA.
So right now, the collaborations
are at the instrument level.
But the mission
level, we're still
waiting for them to catch up.
AUDIENCE: I'm wondering why you
have the second rover at all.
I mean, if you just kept all
the things on the first rover--
and you say the
rocket that's coming
is going to be able
to land on a dime--
why not just land next to it?
JOE PARRISH: Yeah,
I guess I'm never
going to get an easy
question from you guys.
Very insightful question.
And yes, you could do this with
one single landing element.
But let me explain
technical motivations
and also allude to some
programmatic motivations.
Technically, the
mission that it's
going to take to
collect those samples
is going to take a couple of
years on the Mars surface.
And while we've
had great success--
Spirit lasted seven years.
Opportunity is 12 years.
Curiosity is now in
its, what, fifth year,
sixth year of
operation-- we can't
count on those super long
mission durations, particularly
the solar power systems.
If they ever get
themselves in a condition
where they're sort of stuck and
they can't point their arrays
at the sun over the
winter, the Mars winter,
they freeze to death.
So we're very reluctant to
bake into our mission planning
multi-year missions.
And we think that that
collection process is going
to take a couple of years.
And so it kind of eats
up the amount of time
that we're willing to
allocate to a single mission.
The collection operation
actually takes less time
than the sample--
when I say collection, I
mean the fetching operation
of collecting the sample
tubes from the surface--
takes much less time than
the drilling of the cores
and laying those samples
down on the surface.
And we're just
nervous that that's
too much to pack into
one single mission.
That's the technical
explanation.
There's a programmatic
explanation that says,
we're sending the Mars
2020 mission to Mars
to do a fantastic in situ
mission, which, by the way,
stands on its own.
We would send that system,
I believe, regardless of
whether or not there was
a sampling package on it.
But it's great that we
have the sampling package
and we get started on
Mars sample return.
And we build some momentum
that says, hey, Congress
and the Congressional
Budget Office,
we have 33 sample tubes
lying on the surface of Mars.
They have unbelievable
science locked inside them.
Please, let's go get
them and bring them home.
That's a compelling
story that gets
to be told starting in 2021,
when the 2020 rover lands,
rather than betting on
the come, and sending
that mission in 2027,
2028, and hoping
that you have good samples.
So the opportunity
to get started soon,
have something that's
compelling to bring back
helps to motivate the
rest of the missions.
So I told you a
technical story, and I
told you a programmatic story.
Both of those combined are
why we have separate missions
for caching and return.
We could conceivably
do it on one mission,
but it makes more
sense to do it in two.
Yeah, so the question-- for
those of you who couldn't hear,
the question was, do these two
rovers that are participating
in sample return, do
they have a mission
after they've completed their
sampling responsibilities.
And the answer-- certainly
in the case of 2020,
the answer is an emphatic yes.
As I said before, it has
an instrument package
that's doing in situ
science in addition
to the sampling operation.
That in situ science can happen
before you collect samples,
while you're collecting samples,
after you collect samples.
And after I just told
this story that we're
afraid the rovers aren't
going to last very long,
the reality is they do.
In practice, they
last for a long time.
And we anticipate, after we
finish that sample caching
mission, if the rover
is still going strong,
we would continue
the science mission.
The one that's a little bit more
sort of not clear at this point
is the fetch rover.
And as I showed you on that
one image that showed the MAV
launch where we had a
small fetch rover that
could stand off
from the MAV launch
and observe it from a safe
distance, that one we expect
that, hopefully, the rover
would survive that MAV launch
and go on to do more science.
The mobile MAV, where you're
carrying the MAV on your back,
and you and you put it into
its launch orientation,
and off it goes, that one
probably trashes the rover.
And we've been thinking about
ways to maybe, you know,
put the rocket off
the back of the rover
so it's not thrusting
directly down onto it.
But that fetching mission--
also, the amount of
science instrumentation
that we would be able to put on
that system, which is already
doing the MAV roll
and everything-- it's
a much more questionable thing.
So I think 2020 is going to do
a good ancillary science mission
irregardless of the
sampling operation.
The ability of the fetch rover
to continue to do more science
is questionable.
So that's playing into the
architecture of the missions.
SPEAKER 1: OK, so Brian
wants to know, how are you
planning to get the necessary
amount of maneuvering
capability to rendezvous
with the OS given
that the vehicle
uses an ion drive?
JOE PARRISH: Great.
Five for five.
Someone ask me, like, why Mars
is red or something like that,
please.
Send me a softball that I
could smash out of the field.
No, we'll actually augment
that ion thrusting system
with a cold gas thrusting
system specifically
for the purpose of doing
the rendezvous function.
We could not execute
the rendezvous purely
with the low-thrust
engines that you have
when you're doing ion thrusting.
So it'll be cold gas, either
hydrazine or maybe even xenon,
that was the pressure-- that was
the gas that we're blowing out
of the ion thruster.
We might be able to use some
spare xenon for that function.
It turns out, in practice,
hydrazine has a much more--
packs a much more
powerful punch.
And so it's better for us to
use hydrazine as the fluid.
But we would not try to do
it with the ion engines.
We'd do the rendezvous with a
cold gas or hydrazine system.
AUDIENCE: Is there any
consideration to having
more than one sample return?
The returning
vehicle, for example,
collecting more samples
opportunistically,
and if we were able
to collect more,
then, send an another mission,
like, in the next five years?
JOE PARRISH: Right,
so the question was,
is there perhaps some motivation
to have multiple sample
returns, either from
the sample set--
I'm going to extend a little
bit on your question--
either from the
samples that we take
from 2020 or multiple sample
return missions themselves.
The answer is yes.
We're going to carry--
right now the plan is to
carry a little more than 40
of these sample tubes.
And we'll collect
as many as we can.
And we'll lay as many on
the surface as possible.
My guess is that
none of them are
going to be such duds
that we would not
want to bring them back, right?
There's going to be a fantastic
scientific debate on whether we
bring back sample 2,
4, 6, 9 et cetera,
which ones we bring back.
But we're most likely
not going to be
able to bring back every
single tube that we collect.
So there would be
a strong motivation
to want to return
all of those tubes.
Furthermore, we're only going
to be able to land at one site
and do science in
that one location.
And while we're trying to
pick landing sites that
have a diversity of
potential scientific return,
it is only one place.
And then, just like on
Earth, you know, if you can--
it's not the same thing
to vacation in Hawaii
as it is to vacation in Finland.
And so we would want to
go to other places on Mars
and return samples from
multiple locations.
That, of course, would
require a different mission
to do a sample
collection and caching.
Also, as you can tell from what
I've described to you so far,
we're making a rather
large investment
in the technology for this.
And it would be great
to see it amortized
over multiple missions rather
than just one singular one.
So we can envision multiple
sample return missions,
either to finish the
job if there are still
good samples left from
the first mission,
or to have multiple
sample returns flown
from different landing sites,
different samples suites.
AUDIENCE: So now that we
have pretty strong evidence
that there was historical
flowing, liquid water on Mars,
would that have
potentially impacted
the coloration of
the planet such
that the Red Planet was
not historically red?
JOE PARRISH: [LAUGHING] .
That's a hard question
masked as a easy question.
So I'm not kidding,
you've stumped me
more with that question than
with all the previous ones
that have come.
You know, the Red Planet's
red because its iron
oxide in the soil.
That's why it's red.
The presence of liquid
water didn't really
affect the fact that this
iron oxide exists on Mars.
I think that that's
not necessarily--
the water's not necessary--
for that iron oxide to form.
So the connection between
color and presence of water--
I may have a
scientific colleague
who's going to make my
phone buzz in a second,
saying, oh no, you're wrong.
But I think that those are
relatively disconnected
phenomena.
Thanks.
So thank you again.
[APPLAUSE]
