Curiosity at Mars The Sky at Night

Good evening. I'm afraid I begin with some sad news.

We've lost two of our greatest men,

The great radio astronomer, Sir Bernard Lovell,

and also we've lost Neil Armstrong,

the first man to set foot on the surface of the moon.

And of course, we'll be talking about those,

but on the good side, the Curiosity probe has landed safely upon Mars,

is working well, and sending back a mass of information.

-With me is Chris Lintott.

-Evening, Patrick.

I can't wait to talk about Curiosity,

but we should start by talking about both Neil Armstrong and Sir Bernard.

You were involved in the early days at Jodrell Bank.

Very early days at Jodrell Bank.

That great telescope was only a madman's dream in those days,

and Bernard was working on radar and he wanted meteor trails,

and so a lot of us were lying on our backs outside

where the theatre now is, plotting meteor trails.

This was inspired by the fact they'd seen during the war,

they'd seen that they got radar echoes from things in space,

from meteors, and so that became a whole new field of research.

-What was he like as a person in his heyday?

-Immense courage,

total calmness under all situations, charm, he had that.

If you tried to find a fault it would be very difficult to do.

Certainly I can't.

-What was he like as a cricketer?

-Very good batsmen.

I once had the pleasure of playing against him.

-Who came out on top?

-I forget now.

One thing that impresses me most, looking back at Sir Bernard's life,

is how quickly things went from you lying on your back on Jodrell Bank

to building what we now call the Lovell telescope,

that enormous, fully steerable radio telescope

made up of bits of battleship.

For Bernard is entirely responsible.

But the project had quite a rocky start. It was expensive.

Very expensive, much more so than the official quote had been.

At one stage, Sir Bernard was even threatened

with being sent to prison for his spending.

Then a piece of real luck came along,

the launch of Sputnik 1,

the first ever satellite, and outside Russia,

the only telescope in the world capable of tracking it

was what we now call the Lovell telescope.

It was easy enough to pick up Sputnik,

but it was the rocket that launched Sputnik that you needed the telescope,

and the Lovell telescope, in 50 years, has done

-an amazing amount of science.

-And still is.

Yes, Jodrell's the centre of worldwide radio astronomy now,

and it's entirely thanks to Sir Bernard Lovell.

Without Sir Bernard, radio astronomy

wouldn't be as advanced as it actually is.

Well, Sir Bernard was on the Sky At Night many times,

but I particularly like this interview from 1981.

I was at the meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society

when you first made your suggestion of a huge radio telescope.

How was it received by astronomers?

I think my proposal for the telescope,

for which I was eventually given a quarter of one million pounds,

I think it was referred to one or two astronomers who said they knew nothing about the subject,

and wouldn't it be better to build it in brick anyhow instead of steel.

It is incredible, looking back,

that that was the state of knowledge about the subject.

It simply didn't exist.

And of course while all of this was going on, we had the space race.

Lovell was involved.

And that brings us onto Neil Armstrong, who you also knew.

I knew Neil very well.

He came to talk to me

almost as soon as he came down from that first flight.

He was quiet, retiring, never pushed himself forward,

in fact, quite the reverse,

and immensely competent in all he did.

And remarkably brave as well.

Don't forget, when they came down on the moon,

they had only four seconds' worth of fuel left,

and he had to decide then, "Do I go for a landing,

"or do I abandon the landing, blast back into orbit

"and give up the idea of being first on the moon?"

To his eternal credit, he went for the former, "We'll land."

When I heard Neil's voice coming through, "The Eagle has landed",

I remember the feeling of overwhelming relief that came over me.

Neil's first spaceflight was on Gemini 8,

and that nearly went badly wrong as well with the docking.

It did indeed, as Neil rescued it by his calm appraisal of the thing,

and brought it back under control.

Easy enough to say, but calm appraisal

while you're in a spacecraft that's spinning,

docked to a lifeless piece of junk that's also spinning.

He must have been terrified.

You must remember too that when Neil and Buzz blasted off to the moon,

they were going into the actual unknown. No-one had done it.

No-one had even really thought seriously about it.

But they were doing it and showing the way.

Neil had to work it all out for himself.

He certainly did. A remarkable achievement.

One thing I should ask you about because you'll probably know,

is the famous phrase, "one small step for a man".

-Ha!

-Was that Neil's? Obviously he delivered it.

Did some committee come up with that or was that him?

No, he meant to say "one small step for the man"

and he said to me afterwards, "I fluffed it!"

And the "a" got lost somewhere.

It did. But did he come up with the phrase?

Oh, yes.

He worked it out in great detail, practised and practised,

and still he fluffed it.

Well, we both know what that feels like.

Exactly!

It's one small step for man...

..one giant leap for mankind.

Mr Armstrong, I needn't say what a great honour and privilege it is

to have you with us for this evening's Sky At Night.

I realise that when you were on the surface of the moon,

you didn't have much time to look upwards.

But could you say something about what the sky looks like

when you're on the moon?

The sky is a deep black when viewed from the moon,

as it is when viewed from space between the Earth and the moon.

The Earth is the only visible object other than the sun that can be seen.

The Earth is quite beautiful from Space.

From the moon, it looks quite small and quite remote,

but it's very blue and covered with white lace of the clouds.

And the continents are clearly seen,

although they have very little colour from that distance.

When you were walking about on the moon surface,

kicking about a certain amount of dust, did you notice any local colour?

You generally have the impression of being on a desert-like surface

with rather light coloured hues,

yet when you look at the material at close range,

as if in your hand, you find it's charcoal grey in fact.

We were never able to find anything that was very different from that colour.

We've put the full version

of both of those interviews up on our website,

so if you want to see them, go to:

We always come out late, it's tradition for the Sky At Night.

We always have done.

Well, we've lost them,

but their work lives on and of course, work is going on apace.

The Mars Curiosity probe is down on the surface of the Red Planet

and doing marvellous work already.

Curiosity is NASA's latest mission to Mars.

It's taken years to develop

and it's the most advanced vehicle ever to be sent to another planet.

This is NASA putting it through its paces in the lab.

You can see how big it is.

It's the size of a Mini, but it weighs over a ton.

Thanks to a small nuclear power source,

it should have oomph to climb a Martian mountain.

On board are a fleet of amazing instruments.

These test shots show the movable arm with its cameras and spectrometers,

which will be used to examine rocks,

and it's got a laser which will zap rocks telling the scientists

if the rocks are interesting without the hassle of driving up to each one.

If they do turn out to be interesting,

and I'm sure some of them will, Curiosity can test samples

with its ovens and with its on-board chemical laboratory.

RADIO: Fire.

But its size and its weight mean that Curiosity needed something

really rather special to reach the surface.

-RADIO:

-Lift-off of the Atlas 5 with Curiosity.

Curiosity, then known as Mars Science Laboratory,

was launched last November,

and in early August, finally arrived at the top of the Martian atmosphere.

With us to discuss Curiosity, from University College London

Dr Peter Grindrod and of course Chris North.

Chris, it's been a really exciting couple of weeks.

It's been incredibly exciting. It all started for us

early in the morning on that morning, 6th August,

when Curiosity landed, an incredibly exciting event

because the landing was just so exciting.

With everything that's going on, it had a sky crane

and thrusters and a parachute

and all these things to make the landing incredibly exciting.

The dreadful seven minutes.

Yeah, the seven minutes of terror,

where for seven minutes there was nothing they could do.

It was running on its own. It's 14 light minutes away on Mars,

so it took 40 minutes for signals to get back.

Absolutely nothing could be done, and its target was Gale Crater

on the surface, but it was an incredibly exciting journey down.

Pete, can you talk us through

what had to happen to get it safely onto the ground.

There are a number of things that had to happen.

The first is to enter the atmosphere at the right point

so that the heat shield can slow the craft down enough

from 13,000 miles an hour down to about 1,000 miles an hour,

by the time the atmosphere had done its job and at which point,

the parachute could then come out for the first time.

-RADIO:

-Parachute deployed.

APPLAUSE

-RADIO:

-We are decelerating.

And the heat shields ejected

and we actually had some amazing pictures of the heat shield.

We got them later, not live.

But the heat shield falling down across the Martian surface.

Quite remarkable to be able to see this in a descent.

-RADIO:

-We're down to 90 metres per second at an altitude of 6.5 kilometres.

We even got a photo of Curiosity on its parachute.

From the Mars reconnaissance orbiter.

It's great to be able to have a spacecraft taking a picture

of another spacecraft, but that wasn't the hard bit.

What happened next?

Curiosity dropped down away from its back-shell and parachute.

APPLAUSE

And then moved away from the parachute and left it behind

and then started to send on its own powered rockets then,

so coming down are eight thrusters that slowed it down,

made sure it was all smooth.

It slows down to an almost stop, hovering above the surface.

-RADIO:

-The sky crane has started.

About 20 metres above the surface,

Curiosity, the rover part, then descended on its own kind of cables

on this sky crane technology.

This was the part that we'd never seen anything like this before.

-RADIO:

-Stable.

Patrick, this looked completely insane to me.

I thought, this is not going to work.

-RADIO:

-Touchdown confirmed. We're safe on Mars.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Why did they have to do this?

Previous rovers had bounced to a stop

so why have this complicated sky crane?

Curiosity is the size of a small car.

-Too heavy.

-Yeah. It weighs a ton.

That's far too heavy to bounce down on air bikes,

which is what previous rovers had done.

The other problem is that it had to come down on thrusters,

but you don't want it to land on thrusters,

you want it to land on wheels.

So it couldn't have the thrusters on the rover itself,

and besides, that's dead weight you've got to drive around.

So once it's landed on the surface, this sky crane, this jet pack,

has done its job and gets sent off to go and crash elsewhere

on the surface a few hundred metres away.

Well out of the way.

Word came back that it was safely down,

and then almost immediately, we got the first images coming back.

You can see that Curiosity was on a flat surface, it wasn't tilted.

It looked safe.

And straightaway you could start to see some things in the distance.

Let's talk about the landscape, Patrick.

You've covered more Mars landings than anyone else.

What does Gale Crater look like to you?

How does it compare to where we've been before?

Well, rather the same, flat-ish.

All the red powder and stuff.

The sky, pink, of course, which is now familiar.

And rocks in the foreground as well.

Yeah, there aren't too many big rocks.

But, of course, this landing site was chosen

because there were few rocks there.

It's safest to go where there are no big boulders that could damage the rover.

So, that's not too much of a surprise.

The thing that's affected me is the view.

This is a view across the plain of Gale Crater,

the floor of Gale Crater, which is very flat,

looking towards the raised rim.

It's about two-kilometres high, the rim, at this point.

It's quite eroded, so it's not a sharp crater-rim.

It's a bit kind of hazy cos there's dust in the atmosphere.

But, to me, it does look like Mars,

but there's a kind of Earthliness about this image.

It looks familiar when you look at this image

-and you recognise features.

-Is this Mars or Earth?

Have we made some ghastly mistake?

-It's definitely Mars. Definitely Mars.

-That's why we needed

that Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shot of it on the way down.

One of the surprising things about this image

is actually the scale.

So, the crater rim that we're seeing in that image there

is something like 50 kilometres away.

It's quite a long way in the distance.

As Pete said, it's 2km high. It's a big rim.

It's the same area as Wales,

to use a normal unit of measurement in area.

So it is a big place. The other images we've got,

besides the rim, of course, are the central mountain.

This mountain in the centre which is the reason we're at Gale...

-Mount Sharp.

-Mount Sharp.

It's a big one. What is it? 3km from base to top?

-Even bigger. About five.

-So on Earth

-that's Kilimanjaro-size, something like that?

-It's massive, yeah.

Mount Sharp is distinctive, but why choose that particular landing?

The reason that Mount Sharp's interesting is because

it's five kilometres of rock, but more than that, it's layered rock.

These layers are almost like a timeline, a history of events

of the environments that have existed on Mars.

Basically, the further down you go in this mountain towards the base,

the further back in time we hope we can actually analyse.

And the chemistry from orbit seems to suggest that down

near the bottom of the mound, near the bottom of the layers,

there was some kind of water around interacting with the rock

and altering it to give it a different chemistry.

And as you move up the mound towards the middle,

it starts to dry out. Even before then, the chemistry of the water

might actually change as well.

And then it dries out towards the top of the mound.

It looks like it's probably always been dry up there.

So this is not only a timeline of rocks forming

throughout Martian history, but also recording the environmental change

that seems to have happened in Gale Crater.

So we go from a watery environment to one with maybe acidic water around.

We've seen evidence for that elsewhere on Mars with Spirit and Opportunity.

And then up to the dry present.

That's the rough sequence we're after.

A good point here is the Gale Crater is fairly typical of many Martian craters.

Before we talk a bit more about that,

why don't we look at the rover itself?

Chris, what's it been doing since it landed?

It landed at the start of August.

The first thing it did was take some photos just to check where it is.

It's got a mast that shortly after landing it had to deploy.

So, its mast had to lift up.

And the mast is able to take a 360 degree panorama by spinning round.

The rover has got six wheels and all of them can be driven independently

to give it full flexibility.

Of course, one of the things it did a couple of weeks after landing

was to actually drive a short way to check the wheels worked.

It drove a few metres and did a little loop the loop.

One thing I noticed that was very odd but predictable...

When you look at those photos showing the wheel tracks,

-they appear to start in the middle of nowhere...

-Oh, yes.

..which feels very, very strange.

-It's almost like it just dropped out of the sky.

-Exactly!

Or was lowered out of the sky. So why is the arm important?

What role does that play in the mission?

It's a two-metre long arm.

It's got this turret on the end that weighs 30kg.

That's more than the payload on some of the missions to Mars in the past.

That arm can not only analyse the rocks up close with a hand lens,

a magnifier and a spectrometer as well,

but it can also take samples from the ground.

It can take a dust sample or it can actually drill into a rock,

take some of the material off the rock from inside it

and then bring the sample back into the body of the rover.

-Yes. All of a sudden, we have some ovens on board.

-Yes.

There's two main instruments.

One is an X-ray instrument to look at the minerals inside the rocks.

The other one is a set of ovens that will heat up the sample

to really high temperatures

and analyse what's given off during that process.

And from that, understand the organic make-up of the samples.

But you can't put much material in each one. We're talking, what?

-Just a pinch of soil?

-About 40mg, I think. A very small amount.

A pinch of Martian dust or rock into the instruments on board.

Up to now, each probe has done what previous probes have done,

but done it better.

-This one is entirely new.

-It's a league above the rest.

It's got ten instruments on board.

I think the one that's got the most attention,

just because of what it is,

is ChemCam which comes with a laser and quite a powerful laser at that.

If you'd like to explain why we've put a robot with a laser on Mars,

I think that might be good.

It sounds like something out of science fiction.

It is, absolutely. I think we do it because we can!

It's a great instrument.

It means that rather than having to go up close to a rock

to either take a sample

or analyse it in situ, you can actually fire this laser

from up to about seven metres away

and analyse what the rock is made of.

Then that gives you results in itself.

The laser vaporises the rock

and you can analyse the plasma that's given off.

But if that's really interesting, maybe you want to drive over there,

take a sample and analyse it in even more detail on board.

But it means your first step doesn't have to be to go and get samples?

Absolutely, yes. It also means we can access rocks that otherwise

we wouldn't be able to drive up close to.

I should know the answer to this, but I don't.

How long do you expect Curiosity to go on working?

Well, this is why Curiosity is a completely new kind of mission...

-I know.

-It's designed to last for one Martian year which is

almost two Earth years. It's not in any rush to start driving quickly.

It's doing a very thorough check out

of all the systems and instruments first

and the science will slowly pick up over the months and years.

One of the reasons that Curiosity can last for so long

is that it's actually got a nuclear generator.

This power source will work 24/7 or 24.5/7

because the Martian day is 24.5 hours long.

So not only has it got a laser,

it's a nuclear-powered laser robot which is quite fun.

-It's pure Doctor Who.

-It really is. It really is.

A nuclear-powered lasered robot. But to get back to the science,

-it has shot its first rocks.

-The first target it shot with the laser

was part of the commissioning phase of that instrument and the rover.

And it looked like, it kind of seems strange to say this,

but like a typical Martian rock.

We're used to seeing rocks on Mars now.

It looks like it's a kind of typical Martian basalt,

a lava, basically, on the surface.

So, basalt, just like we might have here on Earth?

Yes, very common on the Earth and on Mars as well.

Mars is predominantly a basaltic planet.

But it's how these rocks, these basalts, have been altered by water

that ultimately has chosen Gale as the landing site.

Let's talk about driving for a second.

Chris, when we say driving the rover, it's tempting to think

of somebody with a joystick, but it's not that.

The rover drives based on a series of commands

that are sent up to it the day before.

So every day the rover operations team will send

a bunch of commands to tell it what to do for the next day.

They will tell it, "Drive 30 metres in that direction."

And it will just go in that direction.

It has hazard avoidance cameras that will warn

if there's something in the way.

So if it finds a particularly big rock or if it discovers

that one of its wheels might be slipping in soft sand

and therefore risks getting stuck and so on,

it will stop and say, "Tell me what to do."

How fast can Curiosity go?

It's not very quick when it's actually driving.

It's only about 30 metres an hour as an average.

-The same as a garden snail, I think.

-OK. I can imagine that.

A robot nuclear-powered laser-equipped snail on Mars.

I can just about get my head around that.

But Curiosity is designed to drive for 20km.

The science targets are only 8km away,

so hopefully it can drive much further than that.

So what is the first science target? Where are we going?

We're going just to the east, about 400 metres,

a target called Glenelg. This is interesting to the science team

because it seems like there are

three different geological rock types

that we're looking at from orbit from spacecraft images.

So they have different textures.

They may have formed in a different way.

They might have different chemistries when we look at them up close.

So each one of these can tell us

a different part of the history of that area.

What does understanding Gale tell us

about the possibility of life on Mars?

Well, understanding the geology tells us what the environment

was like when the rocks were laid down and how they've changed.

Now, it's the environment of Mars that tells us how habitable

areas like Gale Crater actually were in the past.

So we understand whether life as we know it,

if it had the conditions necessary...

So, if it had liquid water or the energy

or the right elements present

to actually survive on Mars early in its history.

But Curiosity's not actually going to ask, was there life there?

It's just going to ask, was it habitable?

-Could there have been life there?

-I've seen a few people

talking about fossils. Is there any hope at all?

You're talking about sedimentary rocks, after all,

which is where you find fossils on Earth.

It is. The cameras will be capable of seeing anything like that.

But we don't expect to see anything as big as fossils on Mars.

Instead, when we talk about the possibility of life on Mars,

we're talking about microbial stuff, very early in its history

and very, very small.

So the instruments on Curiosity are designed to analyse

the organics, the rocks, the minerals and things,

but probably isn't capable of finding the microbial stuff.

All I will say is I expect the unexpected.

Thank you, Peter, and both Chris's.

So, there's a lot to see in September's night sky.

Over now to Paul Abel.

We'll come onto the September night sky very shortly.

But first, we've come to a rather special observatory.

It's one we've not visited before

and we thought we'd do a sort of astronomical Through The Keyhole.

So I'll give you some clues and why don't you see

if you can work out who it is we've come to visit?

Well, we're inside and look! A long-suffering astronomer's wife.

-Hello, Paul.

-I'll talk to you later, if that's OK?

And outside, telescopes. Let's go take a look.

Look at this. This is an immense telescope.

This is actually a very specialised piece of kit. It's called a C14.

So, have you guessed who it is yet?

Let's go and see who's in the astro Wendy house.

Hope he's in.

Hello, Paul.

Rather quick! Did you guess who it was?

We thought we'd come and visit your astro Wendy house.

Why do you call it a Wendy house? This is my astro cabin.

This is where I do all my set up for observing

and out there is where I do my observing.

-Let's have a look what's in the September sky.

-OK.

So, you don't have an observatory? This is where you observe from?

I like to be out underneath the sky. I don't like to be

constricted in an observatory.

-I feel more connected to it like this.

-It is lovely.

I've seen the Milky Way from this garden. It is spectacular.

It just sort of arches over. You've got no light pollution.

You almost cast shadow! I'm very envious.

Anyway, on with the night sky, September.

So, Venus is going to be having a nice little encounter with

-the Beehive Cluster?

-It is. Messier 44 as it's also known.

-A lovely object.

-It's a beautiful open cluster,

right at the heart of cancer, the crab.

Between 10th and 16th September,

Venus will pass just underneath. It's about 2.5 degrees.

That's about five moon diameters, if you like.

It's quite close. A wonderful object.

It's the only thing worth looking at in Cancer!

There's not much else in there. It's very easy with binoculars,

telescope at low magnification. It's just a great thing.

-It is. Absolutely.

-Well, Venus isn't staying in Cancer.

It's going to move along to Leo.

In particular, it's going to have yet another encounter,

this time with the star Regulus in Leo.

Actually, this is going to be quite exciting.

-I'm going to throw a challenge open to the viewers with this one.

-Here we go!

At the end of the month, about the 30th,

if you get up at about 4am,

you'll see Venus really close to that bright star,

Regulus in Leo, the lion.

If you can follow it over the next few days,

it gets closer and closer to the star.

Pick it up on 3rd October and you'll see Venus

really close to Regulus in the morning sky.

Again, about four o'clock in the morning.

If you can keep with it and you've got a telescope,

wide field, watch Venus as the sun starts to come up

and Regulus and you should be able to keep both objects in view,

even though the sky has gone bright blue.

And that's amazing because you can then see a star.

I tell you what, if you get any images or drawings,

bung that on our Flickr site. We'll have a look at those.

That would be interesting.

Do you think you'll be able to see that in binoculars?

A star in binoculars during the day? I'm not sure, actually.

I can't see any reason why not,

but it might be a bit on the threshold of visibility.

We'll see what we get. It'll be cloudy and away,

-so it doesn't really matter.

-Always the optimist.

Always the optimist. OK. Let's move on to the rest of the planets.

Jupiter, wonderful Jupiter, has returned to the morning skies.

Really very bright. And it's now in the northern hemisphere

so getting quite high.

We've had some interesting changes on the planets.

The North equatorial belt is really, really complex at the moment

and very thick as well.

It is. Well worth taking a look.

But the really stunning thing about Jupiter for me,

I saw it the other morning, is that you go outside

and you can see it there in the sky and it's in Taurus, the bull.

So you've got the Pleiades, the Hyades, Aldebaran and Jupiter.

-Together, they look amazing.

-I'm never tempted to look

at the deep-sky objects, not when Jupiter's about!

OK. Another planet of interest is the planet Uranus.

A tricky customer because it's hard to find

and it does have this reputation of being very bland.

But if you persevere and stick with it,

you do need a large telescope for this,

but it looks like there has been some banding appearing,

some zones appearing that are brighter.

Certainly, it's not dead

and not inactive and well worth keeping an eye on.

I wouldn't be at all surprised

if storms and things do appear on that planet.

If nobody's watching it, we'll never know.

Not in an easy place to find. It's in Pisces at the moment.

It's off to the left, if you like, of the Circlet asterism.

My technique for doing it is to search around the area

-with binoculars and then put your telescope on it.

-Yeah.

-I find that the best way to do it.

-It looks really green.

-It does.

It looks like a little emerald shining among the stars of Pisces.

Lots of lovely things to see in the September sky.

-Let's hope some clear skies.

-Definitely.

-Look. Some tea.

-Here she is, Tessa.

-A nice, hot cup of tea.

-Thank you.

-Thank you very much.

We should introduce this charming lady.

This is Tessa Lawrence, long-suffering wife of Pete Lawrence.

As all astronomers' wives are.

Tell us, what's it like to live with Pete? You be quiet.

I think the worst thing about being an astronomer's wife

-is that he never shuts the door.

-Oh.

And he doesn't feel the cold so there's a constant draft...

He does when we're camping. He never stops whingeing.

When it all gets too much, I just banish him to his Wendy house.

-Yes. It is a Wendy house, isn't it?

-It is a Wendy house.

-Astro shed.

It's a Wendy house! Anyway, thanks for inviting us over.

-It's a pleasure.

-Let's hope for clear skies.

Cheers.

Next month, we're going to look at the autumn and winter skies.

And do the second part of our Moore Marathon.

Until then, good night.

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