Aliens of the Deep Page #5

"Aha! There's evidence

of life over there. "

Lights out,

OK, I'm going to start

the measurement now, Ready...

Go,

OK, Lasers firing,

We got a lot of signal here,

Whoo, this is good, We've got,

like, 14,000 counts in ultraviolet,

Very interesting, Doctor, But is it life?

There's definitely organic stuff there,

It's so important

to study what you can

about extreme environments

on the Earth

before you go out

into the solar system and look for life.

MIR Two, do you copy?

Go for it, Ares.

My name is Kelly Snook.

I work at NASA. I'm a planetary scientist.

Copy that,

I study the process of exploration.

Rover Two and MIR Two...

What I do in my day-to-day work

is learn how to use the Earth as a training

ground for going to another planet.

So here

I was looking for the analogs.

Baboom! You did it,

- It's in the basket,

- Slam dunk,

Slam dunk from the center line,

These, I thought these were bacterial,

so I told Anatoly to pick some up,

Most people were on a ship,

in the middle of the ocean,

studying the hydrothermal vents

or making a film.

I was on Mars.

And the people that were

down at the bottom of the ocean,

they were out on

the surface of Mars.

Everything that we do in the ocean is ten

times harder than you think it's going to be,

and you go in thinking

it's gonna be really hard, you know?

- So I don't see Mars surface ops...

- Same with space,

...being any different,

Yeah, hopefully we'll have time in that day

to sort of debug our comm protocols

and the way we're interacting...

My team included

astronaut Megan McArthur

from NASA Johnson Space Center,

and astrobiologist Tori Hoehler

from NASA Ames Research Center.

We worked together to explore ways

in which humans and technologies

can improve the science and discoveries

we'll make on the Moon and Mars.

This combination

of science and technology,

especially in an environment

like under the ocean,

it's very similar to space exploration.

The submersible is like

a pressurized rover on Mars,

and so we were using this as an

opportunity to learn lessons about space.

Go ahead, Roberto,

If you can find any

microbial mats right near the chimney...

Uh, I guess that depends on how we're

able to configure the MIRs, and how...

I would talk to

the remote scientists at NASA,

and I would get their requests

for particular rocks,

and I would process the rocks

and prepare to take them back to Earth.

I think it's probably

loaded with bacteria,

I think the white stuff is most likely,

like I say, sulfur oxidizers,

Analogs like this

are key to understanding

how we'll do scientific exploration

on the Moon and Mars.

Will we need manipulators,

like we have on the MIR? Probably.

And how will we handle

the problems and technical glitches

that no doubt we will have

on an extended planetary mission?

Whatever you just switched off

you better switch back on,

Right,

Rover One and MIR One,

be advised we have lost

our starboard horizontal thruster,

Uh, we've lost AC

and we have lost pan and tilt,

so we're probably

gonna have to abort,

Every event here,

both planned and unplanned,

generates data

we can apply to the future.

Much of what I study is

how humans interact with the technology

that allows them

to accomplish their tasks.

Some of the technology

is very simple,

but in space and at the bottom

of the ocean, nothing is simple.

Yes!

Oh...

Is it gonna go? No!

Ay...

- You can't rotate the scoop more?

- It's on the edge of this carousel,

You can put it in,

- Can you rotate the scoop?

- I did, I did,

- It's in?

- One piece has gone inside,

Yeah? OK, good, All right, you got it,

You got it, One is out, one is in,

The better we can integrate

technology like this, and robotics,

into our human exploration systems,

the more effectively we'll be able

to explore the solar system.

- I feel like I'm in a spacecraft,

- I'm sorry?

- I said, I feel like I'm in a spacecraft,

- You are,

- That's right,

- You are in...

- Inner space,

- ...the world's best spacecraft,

to explore this planet,

You're in it,

The experience of human beings

inside the submersible

is what we're most interested in.

It's Marge,

It's Marge Simpson's hairdo,

It's not only

the hardware in the process,

but the communications

between the people and the robots,

because the scientist is

the interface between the technology

and what we're trying to study.

OK, guys, what I'd like you

to do is come to your right

when you've had a look at that, 'cause

we're not getting much of an image here.

And the current

is of course not favorable,

That's OK,

It wouldn't be fun if it was easy, right?

- What's that fish?

- It's a big fish. Don't be scared.

If you want to take a sample

of any of these small sulfide rocks

down here at the bottom,

that would be fine.

It's a very

technologically difficult thing to do,

to pick up a rock

at the bottom of the ocean

and put it into

a sample collection device.

That's really at the core

of what we're interested in.

How are humans going to do these small,

easy tasks in a difficult environment?

Whoa, we got currents,

Come on, gripper, Grip,

It's got it.

Oh! Hang onto it, baby,

All right, you got it,

Barely got it, but you got it,

OK, try to get it over to the carousel,

Well, a task

that would take a person in the field

a couple of minutes on Earth

can take hours on Mars.

Every step is a new challenge.

Now translate right just a little bit.

About another two inches.

We can't send 150 people to Mars

right away. We would send probably six.

These few people will be responsible

for all the science

and exploration on the surface.

Kind of like proxies for

the thousands of people back on Earth

interested in the mission.

Mars is the obvious first place

to look for life in the solar system,

because there's evidence

that the Earth and Mars

share a similar history

of abundant water.

And one of the most important key

elements of life as we know it is water.

Now, the Mars you see today

is dry, dusty, cold, apparently dead.

But if you set the way-back machine,

it didn't look like that.

If you could imagine

if life was evolving on Mars,

and there was an impact great enough...

based on what we know now

about extremophiles,

we think that life could survive

a trip from Mars to Earth in a rock.

It's possible that life

could be viable after that long of a trip.

We might all be Martians. We might all

be from another solar system entirely.

All right, Put up your hand if you would

sacrifice ten years of your life to go to Mars,

- I'm going,

- Sure,

How would you talk your husband

into letting you go to Mars?

Say, "All right, honey, Now,

it's only gonna be for five years, OK?"

"And I'm gonna write every day,

we'll have email,"

Whoa,

That's a loaded question there,

It's funny, 'cause when you asked me

the question, "Would I go to Mars?"

I raised my hand without even thinking

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