Episode 1 Stargazing Live

Welcome to a rainy Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire on the day

we discovered we are only one of the 17 billion Earth-like planets

in our Milky Way galaxy which is one of 350 billion galaxies. Of all

those, we will be focusing much closer to home. We will take you on

a journey to the surface of Mars, to join one of the biggest quest in

all of science - the hunt for life. I'm Brian Cox. He is Dara O Briain.

We may be insignificant... And wet! Yes, welcome to a damp night here

in Cheshire. Come with us inside, into the control room of Jodrell

Bank. It's the jewel in the crown of British astronomy. Scientists

tracked Sputnik from this site. They also performed the early

detection of the first extragalactic radio signals. And

were instrumental in discovering Pulsars. 2012 was a huge year for

astronomy. We had the transit of Venus. And also we celebrated the

lives of three men - Neil Armstrong, Sir Patrick Moore and Sir Bernard

Lovell. Tim O'Brien is here, the associate director of Jodrell Bank.

A sad year for Jodrell. But in other ways a great year. I have

noticed new buildings? This is the global design headquarters for the

Square Kilometre Array. How big is that? The Square Kilometre bit is

the overall area of this telescope. It is 220 times the area of that

dish. It is thousands of individual receivers spread over hundreds or

thousands of kilometres. This is the base for - the British design

base is here. Yes. So many exciting things are happening. What we want

you to do is to prepare to journey with us to the stars. This is what

is coming up this series: We will be exploring some of the

biggest questions in science. We will be investigating the entire

history of the universe, the formation of the Solar System and

the origin of life itself. We will be looking at our own crowded

corner of the Cosmos. We are live from NASA this year.

The birthplace of scores of space probes that are scattered across

the Solar System. We will watch the next space

missions being prepared and we will be communicating with the Curiosity

Rover which is exploring Mars as we speak.

Closer to home, we are building our own version of one of the most

important telescopes in the history of astronomy. We will find out how

photography helped us to plot our position in the universe.

As ever, we will be telling you what to look out for in the skies

above your head. We don't want you to be passive

consumers. If you have a question, then e-mail it to us at

[email protected]. Or tweet us - @bbcstargazing. We want to see your

best astro photographs. The website is bbc.co.uk/stargazing. You will

also be able to join in our live webchat. Last year, you, the

viewers, discovered a brand-new candidate planet. Amazing

achievement so we thought we would ask you once again for your help.

This time we are going to search on the surface of Mars. Join in with a

mass participation experiment to explore a totally uncharted area of

the Red Planet. Dr Chris Lintott will be here with the details later

on. As always, to tell us what is visible tonight, Mark Thompson is

standing outside in a muddy field. How is it looking? Yes, I'm here

with the Liverpool Amateur Astronomical Society. How you

doing? CHEERING It has been a cloudy, wet day. The rain has

stopped so we do remain hopeful, don't we? ALL: Yes! So we will see

how it goes. If the skies are clear where you are, you will have missed

your chance to see Mars tonight. You can see it just after sunset,

ten degrees above the south-western horizon in the constellation of

Capricorn. If you want to see it, you will have to get out there

soon! If you are luckier than us and the skies are clear, there is

plenty still to see tonight in the south-eastern part of the sky. We

have Taurus rising up in the sky. Jupiter is shining bright just

above us. Come back to us later. On the day that David Bowie

released his first single for 11 years, we are going to be asking...

# Is there life on Mars? # In August, NASA landed this, and it

didn't work! This would have been a picture of the Curiosity Rover. Its

mission is to help answer some of the biggest questions in science.

Has Mars ever had an environment that was able to support life?

Bonnin has travelled to NASA's Mission Control. Welcome to NASA's

Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Ever since the first American space

mission in 1958 with Explorer 1, JPL has sent out over 100

spacecraft throughout our Solar System and this is Mission Control

for its latest explorer, the Mars Curiosity Rover. These are the

engineers that monitor her every move and get the very first glimpse

of all the data she is sending back. Tonight, I will be meeting the team

that put Curiosity Rover on Mars. We will find out what she has

taught us so far about the Red Planet and I will be meeting her

twin here at JPL. We are exciting to be coming live

from NASA tonight. NASA are just as excited. A load of their staff are

watching it on their lunch break! Good afternoon to NASA! We will get

a wave off them once... There we go! Fantastic! Lovely stuff. This

makes me more scared! Good afternoon, NASA! What do you do for

a living? You work at NASA. Good for you! They are all over Mars at

the moment. Yes. I think a few facts about Mars. Mars is our

closest neighbour. The last of the rocky planets. And in some ways its

best days are behind it. Its volcanoes are the highest in the

Solar System. It has river beds so it must have had water. It had an

atmosphere but it has now lost it. Yes. Also very interesting for

amateur astronomers. You can see the surface of it which you can't

say for Venus. We have an image which we took last March when Mars

was in opposition which means when it was at its closest point in its

orbit to Earth. We used a 14-inch reflector for this. You can see the

Red Planet. You can see detail at the pole, I think. It is a planet

that an amateur can observe, sketch and see things on the the surface.

Our special guest tonight is a keen amateur astronomer, also a

professional astronomer in some ways, Dr Brian May. Thanks for

joining us. Dr May, how are you? Very good. Welcome to Jodrell Bank.

Thank you. When was the last time you were here? 1968. As a new

graduate I came here for a job. Sir Bernard Lovell interviewed me and

offered me the job. To my shame, I didn't take the job. I went back to

Imperial College. You went through a phase... Other things happened.

Something happened musically! the band happen mid-way through the

PhD? Did you ditch that? The PhD got tired and music called me.

that happen to you? That is you in 1971? Yes, in Tenerife. You got

your PhD. Mars, the planets. You are a particular fan of gazing at

the planets? Yes. Mars is difficult. I wouldn't make out that it is too

easy. You have to have patience. Eventually, you might see the polar

ice Caps, which is a thrill. If you go to Saturn, it will be a big wow!

You do it in London? I have a telescope in the country. I much

prefer my telescope on my roof in town. People laugh at me and say,

"You won't see anything." It doesn't matter. You can see stuff

fine in London. Our knowledge of Mars has been revolutionised thanks

to the extraordinary work of scientists at places like NASA.

They have sent 15 missions to the Red Planet and it has transformed

what we know about the landscape and conditions there. Let's take a

look at what they have managed to achieve in that time.

In 1964, we got close to the Red Planet for the very first time.

NASA's probe sent back pictures of the surface, inspiring a generation

of Martian explorers to go back and find out more. In 1971, the first

spacecraft went into orbit around another planet and sent back

detailed pictures of Mars' volcanoes. NASA's Viking landers

touched down on the planet's surface by the middle of that

decade. # The boys are back in town. #

Their cameras beamed back pictures of a rocket desert.

20 years later, the NASA Pathfinder mission returned to the surface

with a rover, a mobile laboratory that drilled into the rocks to

learn the secrets of Mars' past. Meanwhile, in the skies above, a

new generation of NASA orbiters captured detailed birds eyes views

of the entire surface. In 2004, the European Space Agency's Mars

Express photographed the planet in 3D giving us a stunning new

perspective on Martian landscapes. In the same year, two new NASA

rovers travelled for miles across the surface, exploring cliffs, sand

dunes and craters during their journey of discovery. Spirit kept

going for six years. Opportunity is still on the move to this day.

Nearly 50 years of exploration has told us more about Mars than we

could have ever dreamt and with the Curiosity Rover, the stage is now

set for a new era of Martian discovery.

Let me show you that picture of the Curiosity Rover on Mars. It is

spectacular. This is a self- portrait. The Curiosity Rover

landed in the Gail Crater. The landing site was chosen because

this is a place where we are sure that water existed at some point in

the past and it's - I saw a lot of noise about this on Twitter. It is

a self-portrait of a free-standing rover. Who took the picture? To

prove that NASA are on Mars, I thought I would show you a picture

from Viking. This proves that NASA did land on Mars and there was no

funny business going on! Curiosity Rover has a much more profound

mission than just exploring the landscape. Its goal is to search

for evidence that Mars was habitable in the past. To tell us

all about the mission and how they managed to get that enormous thing

This is the room where NASA scientists controlled the landing

on to Mars. It is very calm right now, but on sixth August last year

it was a very different place. One of the very excited people you saw

is the man in charge of landing the Rover. Thank you for coming, Adam.

You will never forget that day, is that save to say? Yes, the best day

it ever. The rovers were bounced onto the surface of Mars with their

backs, to put it crudely, but when you think about Curiosity, your

team have to have an audacious plan to land the thing. Talk me through

this animation. We let go of the parachute onto rockets, we have

done that before, but we have not done the next step. Because she was

so big, the team had to lower her on Cables, Lundin her gently on her

wheels. Every time I see this, I can't believe what you achieved.

You also have to deal with something called the seven minutes

of terror - of what were they? takes seven minutes to get from the

top of the atmosphere to the surface safely, and during that

time everybody on earth is the Spectator, waiting to see if

Curiosity makes it safely to the surface. Terrifying! With something

as challenging as this, and with the options you might have had in

your head, when you came up with this, did you ever say I am having

second thoughts? Every day. Throughout the whole process, you

are worrying about it and a lot of other people worrying if this is

the right thing. All the way to the head of NASA, the administrator. He

said it looks crazy, but he thought it might be the right kind of crazy.

It doesn't do justice to say this to you, but well done. Another

thing that NASA is very good at is maximising its chances of success.

For every mission it does. When it comes to Curiosity, it even made an

exact copy here at JPL to put through its paces so I have to

check it out. The job for the earthbound twin is to practise

moving in this replica of the Martian landscape. It may not look

much, but these variations of sound on stone are the best guess of what

Curiosity might encounter. It is so exciting to see it in action.

are standing right up close to this thing, which is taller than you.

Even though it is moving slowly, it is kind of scary. It has a laser so

it could shoot you. That is not even funny. Scott Maxwell drives

the real Curiosity. His job is to avoid steering a multi-billion

dollar vehicle into a Martian ditch so the meticulously planned

rehearsals with this twin are crucial. Right now it is trying to

navigate what it thinks are the sloping sides of the Martian Valley.

With the rotating camera, it takes three still pictures which helps it

to plot the safest route. Then it powers forward a few centimetres,

and begins the process again. A love the way the wheels move. It is

going this way. It is so clever. The record of the painstaking

rehearsal was then sent to the twin on Mars. How fast can the Rover go?

So nothing like 0.1 of a mile per hour. The reason for that is the

Rover has a mass of about a ton. Why so little energy? There we have

a chunk of radioactive plutonium and a device that turns the heat

into electricity. It is a trade-off to get as much power into the Rover

without being too heavy. Meanwhile, about 140 million miles away on

Mars, communication is not good enough for video so NASA has

created simulations to help visualise the journey. Curiosity

await instructions. We e-mail a package of stuff, the to-do list

for the day, and when we sleep the Rover spends the day carrying out

those commands, then e-mails back. On a good day those packages look

the same, the things you wanted it to do are the things it actually

did. A on a bad day? On a bad day, they are different. So far we have

never driven the Rover over a cliff. She is packed full of science

instruments. Curiosity can locker rocks up to 12 metres away and fire

them with the laser, and look at the Weber, the light spectrum of

the vapour and determined properties and mineral content of

the rocks to understand whether she wants to investigate more

completely. We have got an ability to drill into rocky material and

take out powdered samples, sort them by the size of their grains,

and distribute them into science instruments in the body of the

Rover. Have you had a moment when you thought we should have put this

on it as well, or so far so good? So far so good, Curiosity blows out

of the water anything we have done on Mars today. Can you believe they

have allowed me in here? This is the operation centre for the Deep

Space Network, and they communicate with everything from brogue to

telescopes to all voters in here. This is the chief scientist, John

Grozinger. It is such a privilege to be in here. It is 21 minutes

past eight in the UK, what time is it on Mars right now and what is

the Rover doing? It is slightly after 2 o'clock in the morning, and

Curiosity has just finished processing some of its data and it

is sending some back to earth. has already sent back tens of

thousands of images, some of which are extremely exciting. Can you

talk me through this one? This is one of my favourites, the foothills

of Mount Sharp, which has almost five kilometres high. The mountain

is made out of layers, which allows geologists to read it like a book.

You can turn the pages and understand the early environmental

history of Mars. This other images even more interesting for other

reasons. Talk me through what we are looking at. The so something we

found literally where we landed. You don't need a higher degree to

understand this kind of science. We have rounded pebbles, some gravel

that accumulates on earth here, and the difference is this one comes

from 3 billion years back in time we know we had an ancient flowing

river. You are also looking for evidence from the sedimentary

layers as well, right? Yes, they tell us that these could be the

kind of places were micro organisms could have lived. That is

incredible. Thank you so much. I will be checking out Curiosity's

twin, and finding out the future of NASA's Mars mission. John mentioned

water being a key component of the search for evidence of past life,

so why water and nothing else? is the basic physics behind it.

Dara will be charging that rod, and I will be filling this with water.

I will not tell you what you are supposed to see. Carry on talking,

please. Water... Can you see how that is bending? Slightly towards

the charged rod, and that is because of the poll molecules.

There we go. Water it is responding because of the electric field from

the rod. Imagine my fist. Oxygen once electrons. It wants to drag

electrons around it if it can, so it drags the electrons from the

hydrogen and leaves the protons, which are positively charged. The

net result is that you get a positive charge up here, a negative

charge down here, and that is why water molecules respond. In some

ways it is like a bar magnet. like that, but that has an

interesting effect when you look at the structure of the liquid. It

looks like the simplest thing in the universe, this is a picture of

a representation of some of what the water molecules do it in the

liquid. They come up because the oxygens can bond to the hydrogens

from other molecules. You can create this lattice of H2O

molecules linking up. They look like ice but they are passive

structures, structures that come and go in the liquid called

hydrogen formeds. Water is like scaffolding, and biological

molecules like proteins can be orientated in the right way by the

water because of that complex structure of water and the way that

proteins in complex carbon molecules are relying, there is key

to our biochemistry. Also because of that polarity, the water

molecules can get inside other things and it is one of the best

solvents that we know of. Also, it is liquid across a vast range of

temperature. If you look at hydrogen sulphide, sulphur with

hydrogen bonded to it, that boils at minus 60 so you wouldn't have

hydrogen sulphide as a liquid on earth. Because of the polarity, the

fact you can polarise these things, they'll loose living together as a

structure, but they are also liquid at temperatures that other liquids

are not. Yes, and that is why most biologists would say that water is

a pre- requisite necessary for the existence of life. On Mars, we know

there is no water at the moment. What various NASA missions has

discovered is that evidence liquid water used to flow on its surface.

If you take a look at an image like this, this is from 2003, a river

valley. It obviously looks like that. I want to show you the polar

caps on Mars. A proportion of that is certainly water ice. What

happened to that water? Birth is next door and we are covered in

liquid water, so what makes these two planets so different? Our next-

door neighbour is known as the Red Planet, a rocky, lifeless world

covered in dust, but Mars has not always been a desert. Billions of

years ago, we think liquid water flowed here, perhaps even enough

for an ocean. Where did the water go? When did Mars die? In the early

solar system, debris came together to form the inner planets so Mars

and the Earth are made from the same material. At the heart of each

is a metallic core, something which is key to the difference between

the planets today. In the earth, the outer core is Malton, and as it

spins an electric current is produced generating magnetic field

that extends into space. It is the effect of this magnetic field which

could explain why we have the water and Mars does not. When charged

particles leave the sun, they head towards us as solar wind, but are

magnetic field deflects them, protecting our atmosphere. The

situation on Mars is very different. Being smaller, Mars had less heed

to begin with, and also lost it to space more quickly. Its outer core

began to solidify, weakening its electric currents, so by 3 1/2

billion years ago, its magnetic field had almost completely shut

down. Without it protection, the solar wind blasted much of the

atmosphere into space, leaving it 100 times less dense than our own.

That had a devastating effect on On the Earth we have ice at the

poles, water vapour across our skies and liquid water in the

oceans. Water exists in three states - something that is possible

because we have a thick atmosphere thanks largely to the protection

given by the magnetic field. But in today's thin and cold Martian

atmosphere, while we find both ice and water vapour, there's barely

any liquid water at all. It's probably been that way ever since

Mars lost its magnetic field. So the challenge now is to look for

signs of liquid water in Mars' distant past before it disappeared.

Perhaps billions of years ago life may have exploited a brief

opportunity to flourish when the Red Planet was blue.

The good parallel comes if you look at frozen carbon dioxide here on

Earth. That is the block of frozen dry ice there. If you heat it up,

it doesn't turn liquid at all, it goes to vapour. You are loving your

demos! I love this. The interesting thing is that is how water would

behave on Mars. We tend to think of Earth as unique because we have

liquid water on the surface. It is a rare commodity, but if you

include ice and vapour, water is abundant throughout the universe.

Oxygen is the third most abundant element and hydrogen the most

abundant element in the universe. Let's welcome back Tim O'Brien. Tim,

I want to start with a picture that will be familiar to every

astronomer, the Orion Nebula. are pointing our second biggest

telescope here. It is called the Mach II. There it is. Does that

cable go to the field? It travels to the focus of that telescope.

What you are seeing here is radiation coming from water vapour

molecules in clouds in the Orion Nebula. What is this? Radiowaves?

Yes. What are we looking at? It is a bit like a laser. It's spinning

water molecules in space that are radiating, beaming these radiowaves

towards us which is why it is so bright. This is a signal of

spinning water molecules in space?! That is wonderful! I'm impressed

you get to see that amount of water vapour. We have to see through our

own atmosphere with all those rain clouds. How much is there? Probably

about 100 times the mass of the Sun in the Orion Nebula. I want to show

this of the Chandra X-Ray of the Quasar - what are we looking at

here? Quasar is the most distant detection of water we have ever

made in the universe. This isn't the earliest detection of water?

The light from this thing has taken 12 billion years to reach us.

is fascinating. At least one generation of stars has lived and

died to produce the oxygen. billion times the mass of the Earth.

Water is everywhere. Earth isn't the only place in the Solar System

where you can find liquid water. There might be more of water on the

moons of other planets than there is here. Liz is standing by with

Linda Spilker from Cassini, the NASA mission that first discovered

water on Saturn's moons. Thank you for joining us. It has sent us back

some spectacular images of Saturn's moons. Can you talk me through

Enceladus. There are features which point to liquid water? These are

cracks or fractures in the crust of Enceladus at the South Pole.

Cassini instruments have measured the temperature deep inside these

cracks. It is warm enough to have liquid water underneath the tiger

stripes. This comes out and freezes and forms this comet-like plume.

When it comes to Titan, this is a very recent image from Cassini. It

is a river system flowing into an ocean. This is liquid methane.

Scientists were talking about the possibility of methane-based life

forms. Is there evidence of liquid water on Titan? There is evidence

of liquid water on Titan, but not on its surface. It is too cold

there. Titan is deformed by Saturn's gravity as it orbits

around. It can't be frozen solid. There has to be a liquid water

ocean underneath Titan's icy crust. It points to the possibility of

life, doesn't it? It is a fascinating possibility. Thank you

so much. Next, we will be finding out about the future of Mars'

missions here at NASA. See you soon. It is not just Titan, there is

another candidate for liquid water, that is Jupiter's moon, Europa.

This is a picture of Europa taken by Galileo. What you are looking at

is a surface of water-ice. We know that because of a spectoscropy.

There are a lot of cracks on the surface. If we zoom in to another

picture, of those ridges on Europa, what you are looking at there is

ice sheets but moving against each other. Over the years, the Galileo

saw those ridges shift. That looks like - it's the same way water-ice

behaves in the Antarctic or the Arctic. Also, the way Europa

interacts with Jupiter's magnetic field. It tells us there is an

ocean beneath the ice. There is more water in the ocean of Europa

than there is in all the oceans of the Earth combined. Liquid water

within that, but it is a long way away from the Sun. Where it is

getting its heat from? It is. Because it is eliptical, the Moon

gets stretched, that is what melts the ice. If there are clear skies

above where you are, it will be easy to observe Europa and the

three largest moons of Jupiter after the show tonight. If you do

observe them, you will be following in the footsteps of one of the

greatest scientists of all time. In 1610, Galileo Galilei became the

first person to observe the four largest moons of Jupiter. He

tracked their movement with the telescope and found they were

orbiting around the gas giant. At the time, the widely accepted view

was that all celestial bodies orbited the Earth, that we were at

the centre of the universe. His discovery shattered this belief.

They are known today as the Galilean Moons and they are easy to

observe. Anyone can get a glimpse of these distant worlds. Even a

simple pair of binoculars or a small telescope will reveal

Jupiter's companions. Finding Jupiter is really easy at the

moment. Simply look due south around 7.00pm. The moons can't be

seen with the naked eye. Look through a decent pair of binoculars

and they are suddenly revealed. They are even more impressive

through a telescope. Each moon is a distinctive world. Even through a

telescope, it is difficult to identify which is which. This is

because they are so far away they appear small and faint. The four

moons have different orbits so working out which one you are

observing can be tricky. You may not see all of them all of the time.

One or two may be behind Jupiter when you are looking. Fortunately,

there are free reference charts online and affordable apps to help

you identify them. I can see all four Galilean moons. I'm using an

app to help me identify which is which. The moon I can see on the

far left is Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System. The tiny

dot to the left of Jupiter is Io. It is covered in hundreds of

sulphur-spewing volcanoes. To the right of Jupiter, the first moon I

can see is Europa. This is the moon that scientists seeking life are

most interested in. Images taken by the Galileo mission have shown us

it is a frozen world. Last but not least we come to Callisto. It is

believed to have the oldest solid landscape within the Solar System.

Thanks to their constant dance around Jupiter, observing the moons

can be different every time. It is a spectacular sight. Learning about

these diverse worlds makes seeing them with your own eyes more

incredible. It is possible to see all four of

Jupiter's moons tonight, but it is still cloudy! I have been joined by

Brian May. Bryan, the British weather, don't we love it?! It is

rubbish for astronomy. What is it that makes us keep coming back for

more? I guess we just love it. There is a passion for knowing what

is out there. We still do it. We still do it in England. We get a

low percentage of nights where we can see something. We were lucky

enough to capture some footage of the moons of Jupiter last night. It

was clear for us during the rehearsal so you can see in this

video footage the belt of Jupiter and you can see the tiny dot of

light is Europa. Now, the planets are really quite spectacular for

most of us. Do you remember the first time you saw a planet and do

you remember how you felt? first gasp was Saturn. I still feel

the same about it. I think I was like Galileo. "My God, what is

that?" I wasn't educated. We had a telescope and it looked like two

circles next to each other. It is breathtaking. You never get over

Saturn. It is quite amazing. I have a lot of keen astronomers here.

What is your top tip? For people who are starting - you know what

you are doing - I would say keep it simple. Get something which is

rigid and doesn't flap about but is simple. My favourite telescope is a

Dobsonian. There is no electronics or whatever. You have the find on

it and you go, "I want to look at that." Learn your way around the

universe. Yes. Of course, if you want to find out if it is clear

tonight - we are unlucky here - if you want to find out if it is clear

where you are tonight, here is Nina where you are tonight, here is Nina

Ridge with the weather. You are stuck underneath the cloud

there. There are some places where we will begin to see some breaks in

the cloud. A weather front has been moving south, taking the rain.

However, to the north of that system, that is where we will see

some breaks in the cloud, certainly Northern Ireland, North East

England, Eastern Scotland. Here we will see some clear skies through

the night. Later on, the risk of patchy mist and fog forming. These

look like being our best spots for tonight.

Thankfully, the Moon isn't going to rise until later on in the night.

Eastern Scotland, North East England and Northern Ireland is

where you will see some breaks coming and going. Tomorrow night is

coming and going. Tomorrow night is looking cloudier.

Last year we teamed up with the Zooniverse Citizen Science Project

and asked for your help to find a new planet outside of our Solar

System. It was a huge success. It resulted in the discovery of a new

planet. We want your help again. Whilst the Curiosity Rover is

exploring the geology, we want your help. Here is Dr Chris Lintott.

Curiosity is exploring one tiny piece of Earth, which is like

exploring Earth by sitting in Trafalgar Square. We have taken

images from the spacecraft called the Mars reconnaissance or bitter,

and these are images that no one in history has seen at this level

detail. They have been sitting on a hard drive, and nobody has looked

at them. This is near the South Pole. What is the resolution here?

The is small back things are probably maybe 100 metres across.

In this resolution, you can see things this sort of size. If you're

dining room table was on here, we could see this. We can see these

appear every spring time, and they disappear over the course of the

summer. We don't know what causes these, we have ideas, but this is

what we want people to look for. You will give people a patch of

ground to look at, and what sort of things should they be looking for?

You can see these spider things, known as Marsh and spiders. Imagine

you were standing on a sand dune, you hear rumbling underneath you,

and suddenly this geyser erupts. This shows that Mars is not a dead

world. You yes, this is a dramatic event, and it tells us about the

cycle that happens every year on Mars. We want people to do this, go

to the website, where there is a full tutorial. Go to

bbc.co.uk/stargazing and click on the box that says Explore Mars.

Searching for life on Mars is not a new idea. Ever since we have been

able to observe the planet with telescopes, scientists have been

theorising about what Martians might look like. William Herschel

used his 20 ft telescope to produce some of the first detailed images

of Mars. From observation after observation, he recorded the

surface with patches of light and dark areas. But then he went beyond

simply observing. He speculated that those dark patches could be

oceans, and if there are at oceans there could be life. In 1783,

William Herschel published his findings on the philosophical

Transactions of the Royal Society. He says, "and that Canada has a

considerable atmosphere so that its inhabitants probably enjoy it the

situation, in many respects, similar to ours". He is making an

assumption that people live there. That assumption live on for the

best part of 100 years. Then, in 1919, they made contact. The

inventor of the wireless was experimenting with his radio at sea,

and thought Mars was signalling to him. In a way, I suppose this was

the beginning of what we think of as modern radio astronomy and it

turned out that what he detected when not signals from Mars. What he

actually picked up were natural signals generated in the atmosphere.

But the world's imagination was caught, and science-fiction authors

eagerly turned the inhabitants from Mars from humans into monsters. The

Martians were born. They were all bent on interstellar domination.

This could be the beginning of the end for the human race. Hollywood

film-makers chose to show Martians hidden inside Cyclops like machines.

Even NASA was at it. On Mars, deadly radiation from the sun

penetrates to the surface. Mars may have silica cells to protect it

from this radiation. It was hoped the speculation would end once and

for all when NASA sent probes to Mars. Some still thought life would

be found. We have just had some amazing photographs sent back from

Mars, and you can see some of the darker areas which may be

vegetation, and at the bottom you can see the white polar cap which

has always been thought to be a frosty deposit. Alas, it turned out

to be a dead planet full of craters. So, was that the end of the

Martians? No, actually. The search for life has continued, but the

Martians just got smaller. Instead of little green men, we are now

Joining us now is and astrobiologist. To sum up what we

have learned, I think we should ask the question - speculate, what

could be fined on Mars? The best we can possibly hope for from Mars,

given what we have seen about its environment, is for committed

bacterial life, similar to what we find in harsh environments on Earth.

This is a sandstone from Antarctica in the dry valleys. In these cold

environments on Earth, we use it to study our techniques for finding

life, and if you look at the inside of this rock, just underneath the

surface you can see this layer of green, it is colonised in the rock

to protect it from the harsh environment outside. We could

imagine organisms like that existing on Mars? That is exactly

what we are trying to look for, yes. Would it be the same biochemistry,

similar even down to DNA? If it were different, what would that

suggest? The fundamentals, water- based or carbon-based, seems to be

the best bet. If we look at the specifics of how the cells are

built, perhaps something like DNA would be too specific, they might

be alternatives that might be able to store the information and pass

it on to the next generation. life on Earth is based on DNA.

Would be more exciting to find DNA or not? Let's say the probes we are

sending to Mars are successful and we find life on the surface of the

planet, and they are DNA based like us. It might be that that is how

life works, or it might be that way are the same thing and we have the

same origin. The en email asks, "how do we know that we did not

A good question. We could have been transferred by a meteorite during

the early solar system, or it could be that life got started on Mars

first and got transferred to Earth. It might be that we are the

Martians. A what are the next steps for the exploration of Mars? Back

to Liz. To answer that question, I am back with Curiosity's twin. This

is another indoor facility, where they can carry out testing. We are

joined by a Dr Fuk Lei, the manager for the missions in NASA's Mars

programme. Can I ask about the latest news that finally we will be

using the last tool in the Rover's kit, the drill, is that right?

we can drill into the rocks, turn them into powder, and we are

excited to test out this equipment. When it comes to the future of Mars

exploration, you have an Orbiter mission to investigate the thin

atmosphere, and another Rover mission in 2020, but the one I am

interested in is the one that is sending samples back to Earth.

many scientists believe the most important thing we can do is to

return samples that are worth, but it is more ambitious. A extremely

challenging, but ultimately do these lead to one thing - to put a

man on Mars? Of it is my personal opinion, but we all have an innate

spirit to explore. We went to the South Pole and all that, and I

believe that spirit will drives people into the solar system beyond

the Earth, and one-day humans will be on Mars. When? I don't know, I

hope one day soon. There is it from us at JPL today, but tomorrow I

will be finding out more about the Deep Space Network at NASA and its

deep space missions, and also I will be finding out about the

biggest space telescope ever built, which might finally answer

questions about our very origins. Join me then. Back to you guys.

next generation Rover is not from NASA, it is a joint European Russia

and mission run by ESA, the European Space Agency. This is a

prototype. I am here with Abigail Hutty, can you give an overview?

this was built to demonstrate ability to build the Mars Rover

project. It is different from Curiosity in that we are looking

for life, not just the conditions for life. Can I just say, this is

fully functional and I have been given the complex control device.

These are presumably the similar rocks you will use, because they

are very authentic-looking. I know we were talking earlier, and in

many ways this is better than Curiosity at somethings. One of a

big development is the autonomy system, so we can give our all

Rover a destination. It doesn't have to be in the field of Duke of

the Rover. It can mark in 3D, form an elevation Mark, and plan a route

towards its goal, driving unaided by people on Earth. I am just going

to bring in Lewis, the astrobiologist, and Brian May who

wants to play with it as a toy. This is what I have been waiting

for! The drill, we will get down two metres. Why would we want to do

that? We have this trail on the front of the Rover. Where Curiosity

is only managing to take a sample from the surface, we have a two me

to drill, and it will be protected from the cosmic radiation

environment so if there is any life still on Mars, that is where we are

likely to find it. Is there life still on Mars? Certainly. I hope so.

We can discuss this at greater length, but first we are going to

see how Mark is doing in the field. Three astronomers have gone indoors

now for the start of Back To Earth in a few minutes, but if you have

been inspired to learn about this guy, there was a lot of

downloadable resourced on our website. Just go to

bbc.co.uk/stargazing, and if you want a more detailed guide, you can

stay tuned. If you are looking for hints and tips on how to get

started in astronomy, then you should checkout this year's Star

Guide. Put together by the BBC and Open University, it'll help you get

the most out of the night sky, wherever you are in the UK. Keep