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[slate]

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[slate]

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[slate]

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[slate] Hi I’m Keith Comeaux. I am

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the launch, cruise, EDL mission manager for the 

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Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover. [slate]

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[slate]

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This rover is really special because it really

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begins our journey to bring samples back from Mars

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back to Earth for scientists to study here. 

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and that really gives us the capability to bring to bear

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all of the science, scientific instruments and

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knowledge that we have not just today but in the future to look at

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those rocks and to study them and to really get to know Mars

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better than we have ever in the past. [slate]

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[slate]

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[slate] Perseverance is scheduled to land in Jezero Crater.

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Um Jezero Crater is a very intriguing place. 

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It’s a small crater that was actually on Curiosity’s landing site list

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but it didn’t make it because it was too dangerous to land there. And the reason

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is its because it’s a small crater which used to host a lake, and we

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can clearly see an inlet channel and an exit channel from that crater,

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as well as a very well preserved river delta,

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if you will, at the bottom of the crater. Several billion years ago

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this was, this crater was the host to a lake with

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running water through it, and that’s very intriguing, very 

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enticing for scientists to go look and study and see what

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if that particular area was habitable at some time

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in the past on Mars. And whether or not there could be evidence of

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past organisms that are preserved in the rock. [slate]

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[slate]

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[slate]

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Well I think the holy grail of astrobiology is has life originated elsewhere other than

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on planet Earth. And that is 

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one of the prime themes of our mission on Perseverance and the subsequent mission on the sample 

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return mission that will go there and fetch those samples

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to bring them back to Earth. You know if we are able to 

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conclusively demonstrate that there’s evidence of past life on Mars, I think

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that will really open up a lot of people’s minds about 

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you know what our role is in the universe. [slate]

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[slate]

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[slate] Great question. 

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So what will be going through my mind during landing? So landing

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is one of the most dangerous things that we do in spaceflight. 

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Landing on another planet or the moon or an asteroid.

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It’s very dangerous, it’s very intricate, many, many things have to go right. 

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Clearly we did this before with Curiosity,

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and we’ve inherited a lot of the technical designs from Curiosity and we’re using them 

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again on Perseverance. But there’s a couple of new things we have as well

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[slate]

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[slate]

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The centerpiece of our rover design this time around is what we call the sample-caching

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system. it’s a very intricate system that’s built inside

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the rover and it works in concert with the robotic arm and the drill

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that we have at the end of the robotic arm. And that

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drill will take rock samples, cores out of

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the rock and it will transfer them into the

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sample-caching system which has another robot arm

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which takes that sample and then processes it to the point where we seal it

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inside of a titanium tube. And we’ll 

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take many collections of rock samples and soil samples in such a fashion

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and then we will place those samples on the surface of Mars.

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We cache them at a place that, where a future fetch rover 

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will be able to find them, pick them and bring them to a

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Mars ascent vehicle which will take them into orbit around Mars, to another

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orbiter which will be waiting and bring them back to Earth. 

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[slate]

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[slate]

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Well I think the question i would like to see answered is,

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has life ever originated anywhere else but Earth?

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Mars seems like it could have been one of those places in the distant past that

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could have hosted life and you know Perseverance is built with the tools

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to help find the evidence of that past life.

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And so I think that would be the real icing on the cake if we were to actually

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find fossilized microbes

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buried in the rocks somewhere in Jezero Crater.. [slate]

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[slate]

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[slate] Well landing anything

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on any other celestial body is super difficult.

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Typically it’s never been done before.

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Hundreds of thousands of parts and software lines of code

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all have to be designed and built just right, and tested

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to make sure they’ll work. They have to do the job.

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And the testing is hard to do because we can’t really replicate

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the conditions that these devices will see in space

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here on Earth. Gravity is different, the atmosphere is different.

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Temperatures are different. And so we do

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the best we can to simulate all the effects that we expect to see once we get to

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to Mars and other places. But it really is um

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a difficult thing to do. A lot of things have to go right. And we see that

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in the evidence of all the past missions that have attempted to go to Mars.

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[slate]

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[slate]

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If you are interested in following us all the way to Mars there’s a website out there - mars

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dot-nasa-dot-gov. And you can 

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look at all the Mars missions from there but just look for Perseverance

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and click on through there are many different things that you can explore on that website. 

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Including our team, the instruments, the science, Jezero Crater

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You can look at our landing site. Um so there’s lots

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to explore there. [slate]

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[slate]

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Very excited! Looking forward to a great landing and you know

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in about a decade hopefully rocks coming back from Mars

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to Earth.