Roving Mars Page #2

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but it still takes seven months to get there,

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Trying to hit our landing sites

from that distance

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is like shooting a basketball

from Los Angeles to New York

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and having it go through the hoop

without touching the rim,

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The smallest mistake on our part

could put the whole mission in jeopardy,

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Two of the last three missions to Mars

were failures,

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One spacecraft burned in the atmosphere,

the other one crashed on the surface,

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This time, NASA decided to

send two identical spacecraft

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to double our chances of success,

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The two rovers are named

''Spirit'' and ''Opportunity,''

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They have very different personalities,

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They did when they were babies,

back when we were first building them,

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''Spirit'' was our troublesome firstborn,

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Every test we ran,

it seemed we ran on ''Spirit'' first,

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and the first time you try,

it usually doesn't work,

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We'd run tests on ''Spirit'' and they'd fail,

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and we'd try to fix things, run

another test, and that would fail, too,

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By the time we got to ''Opportunity,''

we'd learned stuff,

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and things went much more smoothly,

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The biggest problem was underestimating

the size and weight of the rovers,

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Once we realized

how big they really had to be,

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we also realized that

the landing system we planned to use

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couldn't get them to the ground

in one piece,

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As the rover got heavier, the lander

got heavier, the aeroshell got heavier,

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The whole thing got heavier

and heavier and heavier,

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From the very beginning, on this mission,

it seemed like nothing was going right,

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i( Squyres)/i The air bags are like the air

bags in your car, but way more expensive,

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They inflate explosively around the vehicle

and they cushion the landing,

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The first time we tested them,

they tore open and deflated,

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Setbacks - we know

they are going to happen,

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l always tell people,

when you start these projects,

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the same thing probably happened

to Lewis and Clark

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and Captain Cook in their exploration -

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what is guaranteed

is there will be setbacks,

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i( man over radio) 3, 2, 1.../i

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i( Squyres)/i These rovers have to land

using a supersonic parachute,

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The parachute design we thought

would work ripped to shreds,

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The lander had gotten so heavy

that the chute just couldn't handle it,

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We were practically out of time,

and all we had was a chute design

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that would destroy the spacecraft

when we tried to land,

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i( Manning)/i We had to build

a whole nother set of new designs -

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no less than three or four designs

we had to test

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in the three months that followed in

our mad rush to make it to the launch pad,

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We were running out of money,

we were running out of time,

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The drop was successful, The fact that

the parachute exploded - not a good thing,

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- l'd rather have it happen here thani,,,/i

- Mars, That's right,

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Unfortunately, strictly speaking,

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that chute that just exploded was the chute

that we were planning on taking to Mars,

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i( Squyres)/i Mars is a tough place

to send a spacecraft,

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The average temperature

is 60 degrees below zero,

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lt goes down to 1 00 below zero at night,

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There can be dust storms that darken

the skies for months at a time,

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But if the rovers make it,

they'll give us the experience

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of what it would be like to be on Mars,

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We'll be able to look off into the distance

and say, ''Yeah, l'd like to go there,''

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and then actually go

and see what we find,

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The rover's arm has the same

dimensions of a human arm -

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with a shoulder, an elbow and a wrist,

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The arm tucks up tight under the front

of the vehicle for when we drive around,

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but when we get to a rock

that we want to examine,

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the arm unstows and reaches out,

using all of its joints

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to place the instruments on a rock

and to begin to study them,

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The hand has four fingers,

One is a microscope,

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two are spectrometers to tell us

in detail what the rocks are made of,

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and the fourth one is called the RAT -

the Rock Abrasion Tool,

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To examine the rocks, we've got to

get to them, and Mars is very bumpy,

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So to deal with bumps, engineers came up

with a ''rocker-bogie'' suspension system,

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lt's a very clever design

that allows each of the six wheels

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to go up and over a rock independently

while the rover itself hardly tilts at all,

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OK, come on in, guys,

Now, stay clear, Watch it, watch it,

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Stay clear of this, 'cause it's gonna move,

Watch the wheelsi,,,/i

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i( Squyres)/i lt goes way beyond

this single mission,

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The eventual goal

is to send humans to Mars,

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