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what's the one. Advanced

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now. We're proud to present

0:50

a this is love spotlight and out

0:53

of the world story that's about two

0:55

robots on Mars battling the storm together

0:57

and the people whose job it is

0:59

to check on them every day.

1:02

Who start to think about them. Family.

1:06

What happened one Martian spring the

1:09

skies go dark. The

1:12

story comes to us from the podcast. This

1:14

is love hosted by Phoebe Judge. The

1:16

show tell stories about lots of different

1:18

kinds of love. Sometimes love

1:21

between people. Sometimes not

1:24

from the team behind one of the first true crime

1:26

podcast out there. A show called

1:28

Criminal. We proudly present.

1:31

Tau equals 10 point eight.

1:38

Step judgment. I

1:40

think Mars looks a lot like Colorado. It

1:43

was funny because my daughter feels

1:46

like she grew up, you know, with robot

1:49

siblings. And I remember when

1:51

she was about three years old, we

1:53

went out to Colorado to visit my parents and

1:56

we're driving around Garden of the

1:58

Gods. And my daughter looks

2:00

out the window and I heard her say, wow,

2:04

we're on Mars. Because

2:06

she grew up with the pictures and she's like,

2:09

we're on Mars. And I heard her talking

2:11

to herself and she said, well,

2:13

grandma and grandpa are

2:16

mama's parents and

2:18

mama works on Mars. Oh,

2:20

it makes sense now. This

2:25

is where she goes when she's working. What

2:28

do you do? I work

2:30

at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I've been

2:32

there 27 years. Jennifer

2:38

Herman has known she wanted to work at

2:40

NASA since she was a little girl. I

2:44

was in third grade when I saw

2:46

images from Voyager coming

2:48

back from Saturn. And

2:52

it just amazed me. NASA

2:55

had launched the Voyager spacecraft three

2:57

years earlier to collect

2:59

information about Jupiter, Saturn, and

3:02

their moons. And

3:04

in November 1980, the first

3:07

Voyager spacecraft finally made

3:09

its way past Saturn. My

3:11

father went to

3:13

the store and got a copy

3:15

of Life magazine, you know, the

3:17

really big Time Life magazine. And I had

3:20

images from Voyager on the cover and

3:23

on the inside and he was in the

3:25

military. So we moved, gosh, almost every year.

3:29

And I would tape those

3:31

images on my wall and every time we moved

3:33

to a new base, I'd carefully

3:35

take them down and then

3:37

carefully tape them back up. What

3:40

do you remember seeing and hearing about

3:42

that mission? And why

3:45

were you so interested? Oh

3:48

gosh, it's

3:50

a little bit of a tangle

3:52

in my mind between the Jupiter encounter and the

3:55

Saturn encounter. But Carl Sagan would

3:57

come on the Tonight Show and that's when

3:59

my parents... and so let me stay up late as

4:01

if they heard, you know, Carl Sagan's going to be on

4:03

Johnny Carson. You can stay up late and watch. I'm like,

4:05

yay. And then they would just

4:07

tell us things that, you know, we didn't know.

4:10

You know, like, oh, look at this red spot.

4:12

Look at these clouds. And when we went to

4:14

Saturn, it was like, oh, these

4:16

rings are different than we expected, you know. And

4:18

then the moons,

4:20

like the moons of Jupiter, it's like,

4:22

wow, look at Io. There are volcanoes.

4:24

We didn't know there could be volcanoes

4:26

this far from the sun. And it's

4:29

just so fascinating, all these things and

4:31

that we didn't know. And I think that's

4:33

what amazed me the most when I was

4:35

eight years old is I figured

4:38

the scientists knew everything and everything was in

4:40

the books. But to think that there were

4:42

things that were undiscovered,

4:45

that was so exciting, so

4:47

exciting to me. Dornifer

4:50

told her parents about her plans to

4:52

work at NASA. And no

4:54

one in my family had gone to college. But

4:57

my parents were just like, you can

5:00

do anything. Like my dad said, I

5:02

don't know exactly what you need to

5:04

do to work there. But

5:06

I'm pretty sure you need to do well in

5:08

math and science. So just work hard in school.

5:12

Make sure you get scholarships because college

5:14

is expensive. And

5:17

I found out that Caltech was the

5:21

university that managed JPL.

5:24

And I went, well, maybe it would help me if

5:26

I went to school there. JPL

5:29

is NASA's jet propulsion laboratory. Dornifer

5:34

did get into Caltech. And

5:36

she started studying physics. But

5:38

it turns out physics is really hard. And

5:42

I tried, but I turned

5:44

out to be better at chemistry. When

5:47

Jennifer was about to graduate, she met a

5:49

group of people who worked at JPL.

5:52

I told one of them, my dream was

5:54

always to work at JPL. But since I

5:56

majored in chemistry, I guess I can't do

5:59

that now. And

6:01

then one in particular said, no,

6:03

that's crazy. We used to

6:05

just build spacecraft that would fly by planets,

6:08

but now we're going to start landing on

6:10

them and studying, like, the Martian soil and

6:12

things like that. So

6:14

we actually do need people with

6:16

chemistry backgrounds. And I was like,

6:18

really? It

6:21

was the happiest piece of

6:23

news. She applied for

6:25

a job, and they offered her one. She

6:28

remembers driving to pick up her offer letter with

6:30

her mother. And I just

6:32

remember opening the envelope, and my hands were shaking,

6:34

and we, like, cried in the car.

6:36

And my mom's like, wow, I'm so proud of you.

6:43

And just remembering how much

6:47

it meant to me. It's like a dream. She

6:51

started at JPL less than a year

6:53

before they successfully landed the first rover

6:56

on Mars. As part of

6:58

the Mars Pathfinder mission, Jennifer

7:01

was assigned to work on something

7:03

called the polar lander, which

7:06

was also supposed to land on Mars. She

7:10

says for about a year, she spent all her

7:12

time in the lab, sometimes 80 hours

7:14

a week, getting the polar lander

7:16

ready. They launched

7:19

it in January of 1999. But

7:22

they wouldn't know if it would get to

7:24

Mars for 11 months. Finally,

7:28

in December, she went to a

7:30

party to watch it land. I

7:32

was with a whole group of people waiting

7:35

to see it touchdown so

7:38

we could be hugging and crying. It

7:40

was funny. That's what I always told my family.

7:42

You know, like, my dream was

7:44

to be in, you know, on

7:47

a project where we all got to hug and cry because we

7:49

were so happy that it landed

7:51

safely. And so

7:53

what I remember is being in the

7:56

crowd, listening to

7:58

the telemetry from Mission

8:00

Control, and it

8:02

was about to land and we lost contact.

8:06

Everyone went quiet. People

8:09

just started to slowly trickle out. And

8:12

I went from super crowded and excited to

8:14

kind of the sadness you feel when

8:16

your team is maybe in the World Series

8:19

and they lose. And

8:21

everyone's like starting to leave and

8:23

very glum. A coworker

8:25

of mine, the two of us, we were the most in denial.

8:28

We sat at the bar, my friend and I, and

8:30

I think we were the last two people in there.

8:33

I mean, the cameras left and they

8:36

turned off the feed and we just kept

8:38

hoping. I think we stayed there for two hours, not

8:41

ready to say

8:43

goodbye. Later,

8:47

she learned what had probably happened. NASA's

8:51

best guess was this, that

8:54

the engines meant to slow down the polar

8:56

lander as it approached the surface of Mars

8:59

had shut off too early and

9:01

it fell to the ground at 50 miles an

9:03

hour. After

9:06

that happened, I told my supervisor at

9:08

JPL, it's

9:11

like I can't do flight anymore. This is

9:13

too painful. For

9:16

several years, Jennifer worked on

9:18

things that were strictly on earth. Mostly

9:22

she did nuclear power research. Then

9:26

a supervisor approached her and

9:28

asked if she would work on solar power

9:30

for two rovers that were already on Mars.

9:34

Their names were Spirit and

9:36

Opportunity. Then I told them the

9:38

whole story about the polar lander. Oh no, my

9:41

heart is broken. I worked on that for

9:43

80 hours a week and it crashed and

9:45

I can't do flight anymore. And he's like,

9:47

oh, come on, Jennifer. The

9:49

Mars rovers, they're already on the ground. They're

9:52

not gonna crash. And don't worry,

9:54

it's safe. They're already there, they're

9:56

already on the ground. Jennifer

9:59

agreed. Spirit

10:01

and Opportunity had landed on Mars in

10:03

2004. When

10:06

Jennifer joined the team in February 2005,

10:09

they had already lasted more than three

10:11

times what anyone expected them to. No

10:15

one thought the rovers would last much longer.

10:18

But they did. I'm

10:21

Phoebe Judge, and this is us.

10:33

Tell me, what

10:35

did these rovers look like? Oh,

10:38

well, they have

10:41

a camera mask sticking up above

10:43

the solar panel deck. And

10:46

the cameras almost look like eyes. And

10:50

so the solar panels are

10:52

kind of flat on top, and it almost looks like

10:54

the back. And these wheels

10:57

look kind of like legs in there. So

10:59

it's very easy to see like an animal

11:02

in the... Kind

11:04

of like if you watched the movie, Wally. But

11:07

the Mars rovers were first. You

11:10

know, a lot of people think of like RC

11:12

car, you know, little remote control car size. Well,

11:16

Spirit and Opportunity were about as tall as

11:18

a human. This is Carrie Bean. She

11:21

was in high school when the rovers landed on Mars.

11:24

She remembers learning about them in a documentary

11:26

at space camp. Later

11:29

in college, she met a

11:31

professor who studied the weather on Mars.

11:35

First week of college, he brought me into his

11:37

office and sat me down. And

11:39

I got to listen in to the planning meetings

11:41

for Spirit and Opportunity for the day. And I

11:43

had no idea what was going on. There was

11:45

a bazillion acronyms, but I thought it

11:47

was the coolest thing on the planet. And I needed to be a

11:49

part of it. And so my very first week

11:51

of college, I started working on the rovers. How

11:55

would you describe what Mars looks like? Being

11:59

a Star Wars nerd? I'd say it looks like Tatooine.

12:03

Um, sometimes they're sand

12:05

dunes. Sometimes it's really rocky and really

12:07

hard to drive because there's no real

12:09

good safe path or there's giant

12:12

cliff faces that we're driving up to

12:14

or cliff edges to look over the

12:17

vista. Do you have a favorite

12:19

part of Mars? Oh

12:22

goodness. I guess here's where my meteorology

12:24

is showing and I'll say it's the

12:26

atmosphere. It's so different than Earth's and

12:28

yet there's a lot of similarities. Like

12:30

it actually snows on Mars. Even

12:34

though the atmosphere is so different, it's so

12:36

thin, it's completely made of different stuff. It

12:39

still has a lot of the same aspects that apply

12:41

here on Earth. How

12:44

cold does it get on Mars in winter? Very

12:48

cold. We're talking

12:51

like minus 100 degrees Celsius. It's

12:53

very cold. And what about in the summer? In

12:57

the summer, humans could

12:59

walk around with a little jacket on. It

13:01

gets up maybe into like 70s Fahrenheit. I

13:04

know I'm switching units here. That's just what I'm

13:06

thinking of. But yeah, in the

13:08

summer, it gets pretty warm.

13:12

Walk around with a nice jacket and some oxygen. That

13:14

might be important as well. Are

13:16

there certain jobs on the rover team

13:18

that are more sought after, thought

13:21

to be the cool jobs? I

13:24

think definitely the Mars rover driver job is

13:26

the most sought after. So

13:29

rover drivers are considered like

13:31

the coolest in

13:34

the hierarchy. So

13:36

I don't, you know, you're asking a rover

13:38

driver what is the coolest? And

13:42

I would definitely say it's a rover driver. This

13:45

is Vandy Verma. She says

13:47

her twin four-year-olds don't think

13:49

rover driving is particularly special.

13:53

Me and my husband drive robots on

13:55

Mars. They think everybody's parents are

13:58

rover drivers. So

14:01

I think they just, for them, it's

14:03

just like that's how it's always been. So

14:05

you know when I'm leaving for work, they'll

14:07

be like, bye mom! Are

14:09

you going to drive the rover? So

14:12

your husband also drives rovers? Yes

14:14

he does. Who's the better driver in

14:16

real life? You

14:20

know, I don't. It's an interesting

14:23

question. Roads

14:25

on Earth are very different. So

14:29

what is to say? Between

14:31

spirit and opportunity, which

14:34

rover was your favorite? The

14:38

first robot I drove on

14:40

Mars was Opportunity. And

14:43

that always has a special place

14:45

in your heart. But

14:47

spirit took us on

14:50

such a journey. Even

14:52

though technically on the engineering side they

14:55

are identical, they very much had their

14:57

own personalities. Spirit

14:59

landed in this just nasty

15:01

lava rock field and

15:03

had to work really hard for

15:05

everything. And she had to drive

15:08

a really long way to finally start getting

15:10

to some really interesting scientific spots. Whereas

15:12

Opportunity decided to make an interplanetary hole-in-one,

15:14

land into a small crater, immediately in

15:17

front of some interesting rocks that confirmed

15:19

that there had been liquid water there.

15:22

The first images that came down,

15:24

there was exposed outcrop, which is

15:27

essentially like a

15:29

cross-section like you might see at the Grand Canyon.

15:32

And Opportunity literally landed

15:35

right in front of it. So you know, drives

15:37

I did. I remember doing this drive with Opportunity.

15:40

And it was just kilometers

15:43

of sand. And then right

15:45

there in the middle you'll find and encounter a

15:47

meteorite. And it happened

15:49

to go right by it but didn't bump

15:51

into it. So there were a lot of

15:53

these situations where we

15:56

always thought of Opportunity as a lucky

15:59

rover. Two

16:01

years in, Spirit's front wheel got

16:04

stuck, so it could only drive

16:06

backwards. I remember

16:08

thinking to myself, I tried not to

16:10

say it out loud too much, but I remember

16:12

thinking back then, oh, Spirit's

16:15

my favorite. And

16:17

one time my daughter heard me and she got mad.

16:20

She's like, you're not supposed to choose favorite children. You're

16:22

supposed to love them all the same. And I'm like,

16:24

no, no, no. I

16:26

love them the same. I love them the same. But

16:30

I used to kind of favor Spirit a

16:32

little bit. Part

16:35

of Jennifer's job was to check how

16:37

much power the Rovers had. She

16:40

would look at how dusty the sky was, how

16:42

dusty the Rovers solar panels were,

16:45

and predict how charged the batteries would

16:47

be. It's almost like a

16:49

budget. It's kind of

16:52

giving the science team a

16:54

spending allowance of how

16:56

much energy they're going to have for

16:59

the next day's activities. The

17:01

team never let the batteries get close to

17:03

empty. It would be dangerous for

17:05

the Rovers. The Rovers

17:08

needed power to run heaters. Even

17:11

on the warmest summer days on Mars, temperatures can

17:13

drop 170 degrees at night. At

17:18

the beginning of the mission, everyone had

17:20

expected that the Rovers batteries would die

17:22

after 90 days on Mars, or

17:25

SAWS, because their solar

17:27

panels would get too covered with dust.

17:30

A SAW is longer than a day on Earth.

17:34

It's 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35 seconds. Mars

17:39

is a very, very dusty place. And

17:41

the solar panels were

17:43

expected to start accumulating

17:46

more and more dust. And they did. The

17:50

estimates were that by around

17:52

SAW 90, we wouldn't

17:55

have enough power to

17:57

be able to do anything useful. But

18:00

that's not what happened. Instead,

18:02

there would be these funnels of wind on

18:05

Mars. Dust devils. You

18:07

know, it's sort of an enormous whirl

18:09

of wind that you can see moving

18:12

across the plane. It's

18:14

very interesting because I would

18:16

say it's almost like a dancer with,

18:18

you know, a very whirling sort

18:21

of movement moving across. Dust

18:24

devils would sometimes clean off the solar panels

18:27

so the rovers could keep charging. Spring

18:31

and summer were always the dustiest

18:33

seasons. There were usually

18:35

dust storms every year, but

18:38

in 2007, a group

18:40

of storms started to cover the

18:42

entire southern hemisphere of Mars. Then

18:46

the entire planet. What

18:49

does a dust storm on Mars look like?

18:52

Oh gosh, um... I

18:55

don't know if you've seen pictures of the old, like, Dust

18:58

Bowl days in the US.

19:01

Yeah. The dust on Mars is

19:03

very fine. And so

19:05

once it's lofted up into the air, it

19:09

just stays there for a little while and it, you know,

19:11

does a really good job of blocking out the Sun. For

19:14

a solar-powered rover, you can imagine not seeing

19:16

the Sun. It's pretty bad. They

19:19

measure how dusty the sky is with

19:21

a number called the Tau. The

19:24

lower the Tau, the clearer the sky.

19:27

Our typical Taos were around

19:29

one and a half. And

19:32

if it got kind of high in the summer, it might

19:34

be like a Tau of two. But

19:37

we had never seen anything really high. And

19:39

then in 2007, so

19:42

much dust got into the atmosphere. We

19:45

measured it to be, we think, around a

19:47

Tau of five. We

19:50

didn't think we would survive anything higher than

19:53

that, or even that, to be

19:55

honest. Because it,

19:59

you know, when you block that, much to the sun,

20:01

you can't generate enough energy to like

20:03

run the heaters and

20:05

so you'd freeze to death. Will

20:11

the

20:17

dust on

20:20

Mars settle? Will

20:28

the rovers ever see the sun again? When

20:31

Sam Judgment returns. Support

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snap. Welcome

21:41

back to Snap Judgment. The tau equals

21:43

10.8 episode. The

21:46

last we left, a space storm had

21:48

just hit, completely blocking the Mars rovers

21:51

from the sun. Snap

21:54

Judgment. During

22:01

the dust storm in 2007,

22:03

one NASA scientist told a reporter,

22:06

the sun is a hundred times fainter than

22:08

normal. He said, we're

22:11

hoping for a big break in the storm soon, but

22:14

that's just a hope. Another

22:17

said, if Mars wants to

22:19

kill the rovers, it can. It

22:22

hit opportunity much harder than it hit

22:25

spirit, and I remember

22:28

telling myself, oh no, don't

22:31

die, opportunity, I love you too. Please

22:34

don't die. And so

22:37

we were so, so scared for it. It

22:39

was very tricky. We had to pretty much turn

22:42

off everything we could. And

22:45

after two weeks of really low

22:47

energy operations, the

22:50

sky started to clear. The

22:53

rovers made it through the storm. An

22:55

opportunity moved on to explore a

22:58

crater called Victoria. Jennifer

23:01

Herman remembers talking with scientists who

23:04

told her it was unlikely that

23:06

Mars would get another big dust storm for a

23:09

few years. She

23:11

started thinking about having a baby. At

23:13

this point, I was the lead

23:15

power engineer for both rovers. And

23:18

so I felt a lot of responsibility. You

23:21

know, the rovers are so vulnerable in the

23:23

winter, and they're

23:26

vulnerable in the summer if there's a

23:28

dust storm. Ah, but if there's not

23:30

going to be a dust storm in 2009, then

23:33

that's a really safe time to have a baby. So

23:36

I told my husband, there's this window

23:38

of four or five months in

23:41

early 2009, which is

23:43

Martian summer after

23:46

a dust storm in Earth winter. Let's

23:49

target those dates. And

23:51

he's like, okay. So

23:54

our daughter was born in

23:56

March of 2009. It was just perfect

23:58

timing. When

24:00

Jennifer came back from maternity leave, she

24:03

learned Spirit had gotten sick. They

24:06

showed me pictures. The surface of

24:08

Mars just looked like it always did.

24:10

It just looked like the ground, and there were rocks here

24:13

and there. It looked completely

24:15

safe. This was in

24:17

April, just after Jennifer's daughter was

24:19

born. Spirit

24:22

drove onto a hidden patch of soft

24:24

ground, and its wheels sank into

24:26

a layer of dust, spinning

24:29

its wheels, only made things worse.

24:33

Engineers tried for eight months to

24:35

get Spirit unstuck. We

24:37

would get all these letters from kids

24:40

who would tell us all the ways in which

24:42

we could try to

24:44

get it out. They'd come up with all these

24:47

creative ideas and how we could use the arm

24:49

to push up against and

24:51

try to kind of wedge it out, or

24:53

how we could try a different maneuver. Martian

24:57

winter was approaching. During

24:59

the winter, we actually had to find

25:01

parking spaces to tilt the rover to

25:03

point the solar panels towards the sun,

25:06

and that way

25:08

we could actually survive the winter. But

25:11

they couldn't tilt Spirit's solar panels toward the

25:13

sun from the spot it was stuck in,

25:17

and Spirit's battery was getting lower. We

25:20

would just communicate in beeps because

25:22

you want to really

25:25

make it succinct and

25:27

just know that the rover is still alive.

25:31

By the time I came back from maternity

25:33

leave, looking

25:37

at the energy forecast, they

25:39

had less and less energy to try to get

25:41

out each day. She was just stuck,

25:43

and we couldn't tilt her solar panels enough, and

25:45

so one day she just didn't get enough power

25:47

to keep herself warm. Eventually,

25:50

we have to

25:52

say, if it was alive

25:54

and could have talked to us, I would have by now.

26:01

NASA lost contact with Spirit on

26:03

March 22, 2010, after six years on Mars. When

26:11

Spirit died, did you start thinking

26:14

opportunity might be next? Uh,

26:18

no. No. Um,

26:21

I, I felt like opportunity was

26:23

a tough girl. She

26:26

had, you know, opportunity

26:28

had survived that big

26:31

dust storm. And so I

26:34

almost felt like it was

26:37

hard to imagine what could kill opportunity. When

26:41

we would start our planning meetings for the day,

26:43

it wasn't what are we going to do with the rover

26:45

for the day? It's what are we going to do today?

26:48

You know, the rover was just a member of the

26:50

team. You know, you're constantly

26:52

checking in on them, seeing how they're doing. Sometimes

26:55

they throw temper tantrums and you have to come in and

26:57

fix it. Or, you know,

26:59

sometimes things are smooth sailing and they find a

27:01

really cool thing and you feel just as, you

27:03

know, proud and as accomplished if you had your

27:05

own kid, you know, getting a good grade in school.

27:07

So it's, we definitely

27:09

got very attached. They

27:11

would send commands to the rover at the

27:13

beginning of the Martian day. Sometimes

27:16

it'll give us a little beep like, got it. The

27:18

rover would spend its day taking pictures

27:21

or looking at rocks or

27:23

driving towards a new closer. And

27:25

then before it went to sleep at night,

27:28

it would call Earth back. It

27:30

would go, hey, this is what I did

27:32

today and I'm going to go to

27:34

sleep now. Usually

27:36

on new Mars missions, for

27:38

the first few months, everyone works on

27:40

Mars time. And so

27:42

because Earth and Mars are spinning at different

27:44

speeds, the days can be really

27:47

out of sync. One day you come

27:49

in at 8 a.m. The next day you come in around 840 a.m.

27:52

The next time, 920. It goes

27:54

all the way around the clock. And

27:56

a lot of people describe it as constantly being

27:58

jet lagged because your jump is essentially

28:00

when time zone every day. I

28:03

personally liked it. I guess that means I'm a Martian

28:06

at heart. I don't know. When

28:08

we were doing Mars time operations, we'd

28:11

walk out and you look at

28:13

this thing and it's a small red

28:16

dot in the sky and you're like in

28:18

a few hours the commands I'm sending there's

28:21

a rover up there that

28:23

is going to be doing things based

28:26

on these instructions and that I think really

28:28

feels very unreal. You

28:30

let your brain kick

28:32

in and it's like well this is Mars

28:34

but you're so used to looking at

28:36

it and you're so familiar with everything.

28:40

It starts to feel like a place like

28:43

you're there. You look at

28:45

a picture that might be published somewhere

28:48

off of rock and you know exactly where it

28:50

is. You know exactly where it is

28:52

and I think that kind of thing both

28:55

feels very grounding

28:58

because you know these details and yet at

29:00

the same time it's a little surreal. Like

29:04

Vandy, Carrie wanted to be a driver

29:06

but her degree was

29:08

in meteorology and it

29:11

seemed like all the rover drivers had PhDs in

29:13

computer science or robotics. NASA

29:18

had landed another rover called Curiosity

29:21

and they had scientists working on an

29:24

even newer fancier one getting

29:26

it ready for launch. The

29:28

rover driver leads for opportunity came up to

29:30

me and said hey we're

29:33

having trouble finding new rover drivers for

29:35

opportunity. No one wants to come work

29:38

on the old half-broken rover so

29:40

do you want to learn how to drive a Mars

29:42

rover? I said well are you sure you really

29:44

want me? And they said yeah. Carrie

29:47

trained for about a year. We're

29:49

one of the few roles that can actually physically

29:51

break the rover so we

29:55

have to build that intuition of what are

29:57

safe rocks to be able to drive over. What

30:00

kind of terrain, you know, flip are

30:02

you going to get driving over this

30:04

terrain? Finally, she got

30:06

to send her first set of instructions

30:08

to Opportunity. She

30:10

remembers the day. It was Saul

30:12

5097. I

30:15

still think it was one of the coolest days. You know,

30:17

I got to move a robotic arm on

30:19

the surface of another planet. Opportunity

30:22

had traveled 28 miles and

30:24

broken the record for distance driven on

30:27

another planet. But

30:29

it was getting older. It had

30:31

been on Mars for more than 14 years. One

30:36

journalist wrote that Opportunity's team

30:39

was able to recognize the signs of

30:41

gray hairs, a failing

30:43

memory, the desire to nap, arthritis

30:46

in the robotic arm. Summer

30:50

was approaching and several years had passed

30:52

since the last big dust storm. We

30:55

don't know for certainty, but we are often

30:57

able to predict when there will be very

30:59

large massive dust storms. We

31:01

felt like we were due. Jennifer

31:04

Herman started worrying about storm season.

31:08

She watched the weather forecast closely. It

31:11

was late May. We had never seen

31:13

a big dust storm that early. We

31:15

had never seen even that little dust storms start

31:17

that early. That's really early. She

31:21

tried to meet with the team's dust

31:23

storm preparation lead, but

31:25

he was out of town. I was

31:27

like, oh, I'm sure it's fine. We'll

31:30

talk when you get back. There's

31:33

no way we'll have a storm that early. Famous

31:36

last words. On

31:40

May 30th, a Mars orbiter

31:42

spotted a dust storm forming near

31:45

Opportunity. It grew fast.

31:48

In a week, the newer rover on the other side

31:50

of the planet was seeing signs of it

31:52

too. I Was

31:54

driving curiosity and we too were impacted

31:57

by the dust storm and we could

31:59

see it. In our images. There

32:02

were a couple big dust storms and I

32:04

think they like merged and they were coming

32:06

and straight for opportunity. This. Was

32:08

the worst one we had ever seen and the

32:10

recorded history. Of Mars and.

32:13

It just completely blacked. Out the

32:15

sky you could not see the sun.

32:18

All we could really do is try

32:21

to. Ride. It out

32:23

likely did in two thousand and

32:25

seven you know, turn everything we

32:28

can. oss try to use the

32:30

battery as little as possible and

32:32

hope the. Storm's going to clear up

32:34

in a week or two. The. Problem

32:36

is the store and. Seems.

32:39

Is is kinda hang. Out over opportunity

32:42

when I talked. To one of

32:44

the Atmosphere scientists about it, six hundred

32:46

described it as a truck running over

32:48

opportunity and then backing up and running

32:50

over it again. And this is. Like sitting

32:52

on it. The. Storm

32:54

didn't clear up. Almost two

32:57

weeks went by. On

32:59

June tenth, the numbers. To a new

33:01

record. When. Opportunity Mister the

33:03

tell from the ground that day. It

33:06

was ten point eight

33:08

And that's crazy. Ten

33:10

point Eight. They'd.

33:12

Never seen the school just as dear. That.

33:16

Was a terrifying number. For me, I'm

33:18

I remember feeling sick to my

33:20

stomach when I heard that lists

33:23

and number. Jennifer.

33:26

Needed to calculate how much power

33:28

the Rover head. But

33:30

our tools weren't working because

33:33

just. The power coming off the solar.

33:35

I was so low because it was so

33:37

dusty. That I

33:39

couldn't calculate. To

33:42

Memphis people asking her sell

33:44

it looked and if opportunity

33:46

was okay so thanks So

33:48

eager to calculators. She

33:50

searched to improvise, doing the

33:52

calculations by hand, normally

33:56

it's opportunity head around four hundred

33:58

watt hours of energy In

34:01

the 2007 dust storm, the

34:03

lowest the energy from opportunities solar panels had

34:05

gotten was 128 watt hours. But

34:11

that day she calculated there were only

34:13

22 watt hours. That

34:18

number was part of Opportunity's

34:20

last message to NASA, which

34:23

basically translated as, my

34:25

battery is low and it's getting

34:27

dark. I

34:32

was just so proud of Opportunity,

34:34

just so amazed that

34:37

she was still able to call home. You

34:40

know, after a horrible day like that on Mars,

34:43

22 watt hours,

34:46

and then still call home and go, hey Earth, this

34:48

is what happened today. The

34:51

next day they didn't hear anything. We

34:55

started really trying hard to send commands

34:57

to the rover to hear back, but

35:00

we didn't hear anything. I

35:02

definitely had dreams that I could just go

35:04

there and brush the dust off the solar

35:06

panel myself. NASA

35:08

and JPL gave us a

35:10

little more time to listen

35:13

for her, hoping,

35:15

you know, just to go, hey,

35:17

this tough rover has been through a

35:19

lot and survived. Let's

35:22

give her the chance. You know, let's

35:25

have the respect for what she's done. As

35:28

we were coming up with it, what are all the ways that

35:30

we could wake up the rover? We

35:32

became a little superstitious. Maybe the rover wanted a

35:35

wake up song. It's

35:37

a great tradition that started because

35:39

of Mars time. As

35:41

the team would come in, of course you're on Mars

35:43

time, you're kind of groggy. Mars

35:46

would start the day with playing a wake

35:48

up song. And so

35:50

with Spirit and Opportunity having gone on

35:52

for so long, the tradition kind of

35:55

faded out. So we had this

35:57

big white board at JPL where...

36:00

Everybody would write down their recommendations for

36:02

wake-up songs. Like, almost like,

36:04

good luck. Like, hey, happy talk to us.

36:06

We played heavy metal. We played classical

36:09

music. We played Backstreet Boys. Dust

36:11

in the Wind by Kansas. You

36:13

know, we tried everything. We don't know what kind

36:16

of genre the group likes. Will

36:34

the Rovers wake up? Will

36:37

they ever communicate with Earth again? They

36:39

don't. The

36:52

towel equals 10.8 episode. My

36:56

name is Ben Washington. And last we

36:59

left, NASA and

37:01

JPL were trying everything to reach the

37:03

Rovers. The clock

37:05

is ticking. It

37:12

had been eight months since the last

37:14

time NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory had

37:16

heard from the rover Opportunity. By

37:19

February, we knew, February

37:22

2019, if we hadn't heard from her

37:25

going into winter now, then

37:27

we knew we weren't going to hear from her. NASA

37:30

kind of came back and said, all right, we're going to give you

37:32

two more weeks. You can do

37:34

whatever you want. Try and do what you

37:36

can. And this is

37:38

going to be the final ball. To

37:41

communicate with the Rovers, they had

37:43

to use NASA's antennas. Usually,

37:46

they could only use the antennas for an hour

37:48

a day for Opportunity. But

37:51

they started getting messages from other NASA

37:54

missions, offering to give up

37:56

time that they would use to talk to their

37:58

own spacecraft. We

38:03

would just send commands all morning

38:05

long through the early afternoon saying,

38:07

should have enough sunlight now, you

38:10

know, maybe 9 a.m., maybe 10

38:12

a.m., maybe 11 a.m., 1

38:15

p.m., let's just keep trying. We'd sit there and smash that

38:17

button every eight minutes.

38:19

And unfortunately never heard

38:22

anything. When

38:25

you think about it, there's three

38:27

ways you can go on Mars. You

38:30

could make a mistake, send

38:32

a bad command or drive off a cliff or

38:34

something, and that's not satisfying. You don't want to

38:36

be killing it because you made

38:39

a mistake. And another

38:41

way you could die is something breaks, you

38:43

know. And even though

38:46

they were only designed to last 90 sols, engineers

38:50

don't like to be responsible for it

38:52

breaking. And

38:54

then the third way is Mars could decide

38:56

it's your time to go. And

38:59

I think a Tau 10.8 death storm that

39:01

hangs out over you for six weeks is

39:04

Mars saying, you know, good job opportunity, but

39:06

you're done. I

39:11

think it was like a week before we

39:13

officially declared the end of mission. I

39:15

actually wouldn't got a tattoo on

39:18

my arm. So I have Tau equals 10.8 tattooed

39:21

to my arm as a memorial

39:23

for opportunity. There's

39:26

no one else walking around with Tau equals 10.8 on

39:29

their arm. The

39:34

last day they tried to wake up opportunity, dozens

39:37

of scientists that used to work with the

39:39

rovers came back and

39:41

gathered in the control room. The

39:44

very last time we tried to talk to

39:46

it, Steve

39:49

Squires chose the song. And it was important to

39:51

all of us that he chose

39:53

the song. Steve Squires had

39:56

been principal scientist for the entire

39:58

mission. And he picked them up. I'll

40:00

be seeing you and

40:04

oh there wasn't a dry eye It's

40:09

a beautiful song and a nice way to

40:11

say goodbye to Opie This

40:30

heart of mine is

40:32

amazing Before

40:42

either rover existed, Steve Squires had

40:44

spent 10 years trying to convince

40:47

NASA to build them He's

40:50

talked about what it was like when they

40:52

first launched them Quote,

40:56

you pour so much of yourself into these

40:58

machines, your hopes, your

41:00

aspirations, your dreams, your ambitions

41:03

You work with them and you bring them to

41:05

life slowly, laboriously And

41:08

you turn them from a concept into

41:11

these functioning, almost living sorts

41:13

of things And you

41:15

baby them, they're so important to

41:17

you Then

41:19

man, you strap it on top of a rocket

41:21

and you shoot it off into space And

41:24

it's as gone as anything's ever going

41:26

to be I

41:29

felt this emptiness,

41:31

this really powerful

41:34

loss when we

41:38

lost contact from opportunity And my

41:43

job is to check on opportunities health and

41:45

see how is the batteries, how

41:48

is the energy, what's the projection And

41:51

it's kind of like a blend of

41:54

feeling like you're feeding your pet in a

41:56

way You know, like having power almost

41:59

feels like having power food. And so

42:03

I checked on this

42:05

robot, you

42:08

know, millions of miles away. It was

42:13

far away, but it was part of my daily life.

42:17

And so, well, it wasn't there to

42:19

check on anymore. I

42:22

missed it. On

42:26

February 13, 2019,

42:29

NASA announced that the mission was over.

42:33

People started sending flower arrangements. There

42:36

were so many deliveries, Carrie Bean

42:38

says, the whole operations floor was

42:41

covered in flowers. It

42:43

was 14 years, which is still quite incredible

42:46

to think of. I don't

42:48

think I ever thought of any drive

42:51

as the last. And maybe it's something

42:53

like, you

42:55

know, even if you know somebody who

42:58

might be getting up there in their years,

43:03

unless it's a situation like

43:05

a dire situation, you

43:07

rarely ever think it's the last. I

43:09

think we always hope

43:11

for the next soul. They

43:19

still don't know what it was that killed

43:22

Opportunity. People say it was

43:24

probably the cold, maybe a broken

43:26

antenna. And we just will never really know

43:29

until we send astronauts there to take a look at her.

43:33

What did we learn about Mars

43:35

that we didn't know before

43:38

Spirit and Opportunity? Yeah,

43:43

with Spirit and Opportunity, they left

43:45

a legacy of showing that Mars

43:47

used to be a habitable planet.

43:49

We still don't know if life actually existed there or

43:51

not, but Spirit and Opportunity has

43:54

set the stage of we may

43:56

not be the only life that's existed in our

43:58

solar system. Do you

44:01

think that it's true that someday,

44:04

maybe it's not 10 years from now, but

44:06

that people will be living on Mars?

44:10

I sure hope so. I think it'd

44:12

be really cool to expand beyond our

44:14

planet. What I really hope

44:17

happens is that when we finally send humans

44:19

to Mars, that we

44:21

make essentially a national park

44:24

for the rovers that a

44:26

lot of people are like, oh, you know, can't wait

44:28

to bring them home. This is not their home.

44:30

Mars is their home. And so

44:32

what I would love to see is a memorial

44:34

park, you know, where the rovers finally

44:36

are in like a nice little museum

44:38

dome in their final position right

44:41

there. Don't move them. And

44:43

actually make a walking trail of

44:46

where all they explore on Mars with little

44:48

plaques of like this particular rock is where

44:50

they found evidence of this. I

44:53

think that would be the best way to honor

44:55

the legacy of Mars exploration. Today,

44:58

Carrie Bean is working on a commercial

45:00

space plane that looks like a space

45:02

shuttle. Vandy Verma is

45:04

working on the Mars 2020 mission,

45:07

which consists of the newest rover on Mars

45:10

and a Mars helicopter. Jennifer

45:13

Herman is working on the new rovers too

45:16

and the Voyager spacecraft, which

45:19

are now farther into space than anything

45:21

has ever gone before. It's

45:24

a childhood dream. You

45:28

probably won't believe me when I tell you I actually don't

45:30

cry that much. But

45:34

yeah, I can't tell you how lucky I feel to

45:37

be part of the Voyager team.

45:40

Just the last question. How old

45:43

is your daughter now? Oh,

45:45

she's 14. She just started high school. Is

45:48

she into Mars? Oh,

45:50

yeah, it's home. Her

45:54

dream is to learn more about black holes

45:56

and dark matter and energy. She,

45:58

uh, I remember. she was maybe a

46:01

third or fourth grader and she

46:03

came downstairs for breakfast and she looks really

46:05

tired and I'm like you didn't sleep

46:07

well are you feeling okay and

46:10

she said I couldn't sleep because it

46:12

just bothered me to learn

46:15

that the universe is made up of

46:17

all this dark matter and energy and

46:19

we know almost nothing about it how

46:21

can that be and I'm like well

46:24

there's unknown things that maybe you can work on

46:26

she's like hmm I should do that that

46:47

story tau equals 10.8 from the

46:50

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48:05

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