Watch NASA's Perseverance Rover Launch to Mars!

that you can make it happen and here we are with Mars Perseverance 51 years later, preparing to make the first return mission to Mars, eventually we will be able to bring those samples back to Earth and determine for the first time if life existed on Mars in less than The trip NASA's one-hour 300 million mile trip from the coast of the United States to Jezreel Crater on Mars will begin with the

launch

of this Atlas V rocket into space and on top of that rocket with a beautiful sunrise and enveloped by that protective fairing is the Mars-bound Perseverance

rover

ready to ride a plume of fire and smoke on its way to the red planet.

What a beautiful morning here on the space coast. Welcome everyone behind us. The star of the show. This is a life-size mockup of the Perseverance

rover

. just like the one we are

launch

ing into space hello everyone, I'm daryl nail and mooji cooper in the 50 minutes before launch we will show you how this mission will reach and search for ancient microscopic life on

mars

and test new technologies critical to the ultimate goal future human missions to Mars that is correct and we have the rocket on the pad and it is ready to go one beautiful day outside we are minus 47 minutes and counting until launch and so far the countdown to Mars is on the way we have good weather the rocket is It looks good and puts us on track for a 7:50am launch.

ET, the beginning of a two-hour window in today's coverage we will hear from Grammy Award winner Gregory Porter. We'll be speaking live with Derek Muller from the Veritasium YouTube channel along with aerospace engineering scientist and a NASA astronaut. Oh, it's going to be a great show, I love it, I love it and we have teams of people from coast to coast helping us countdown to Mars. we will go live to the Atlas spaceflight operations center just a few miles from us and we will go live to California to power the jet propulsion laboratory where the Mars 2020 mission team is waiting to communicate with Perseverance after arriving at the space. and of course, we are here to tell you what the mission of

perseverance

is all about.

It's an exciting day for all of us here, so we want to explain what you'll see next during the countdown and rocket launch, so let's send it to joshua santora and mick woltman who are with the launch services program teams and ula, gentlemen, hello, good morning daryl, I'm joshua santora and I'm here at the atlas space flight operations center accompanied by mick waltman from the

nasa

launch services program, mick, are you excited to go to

mars

? excited to go to Mars this morning Josh, this is a great day. Sunrise looks awesome on this rocket and ready for a big launch today.

Thank you for inviting me to the program. I'm happy to have you providing a lot of good things. context as we move forward before we dive into the story of

perseverance

, we want to give you a preview of what's coming up today in the countdown. Things really got underway this morning, just after midnight, and Atlas 5 is almost ready to fly in a few more days. minutes we're going to have the final weather check and that weather report should be really positive. It's been great all morning, we have the terminal countdown ahead, after that we will continue with the last minutes of the countdown. and then the drama will peak at launch, when the clock hits zero, the engines ignite, and the spacecraft and rocket take flight after successfully passing maximum q just shy of two minutes into the flight. , the rocket's solid propellants will be spent and discarded for almost two more minutes and the payload fairing that could be called the rocket's nose cone that has been protecting Perseverance will no longer be needed;

It will split into two halves and fall away from the accelerating vehicle. One minute later, the Atlas booster will have completed its task of raising Perseverance above the Earth's atmosphere and being on its way to orbit it will also separate exposing the Centaur RL10 upper stage engine which will almost immediately begin its first combustion that lasts approximately seven minutes. after being in inertia for more than 30 minutes the second combustion. which lasts about eight minutes will take Perseverance out of Earth orbit and into solar orbit on its way to Mars, which sets up the separation of the spacecraft and the final milestone we expect to hear about this morning is the acquisition of the signal and I say I hope I do that intentionally because it's pretty Perseverance may be in perfect condition, but we won't be making contact during the broadcast, so there's a lot more to come, but Daryl, we'll give it back to you now so you can tell us more about this incredible mission.

Fine, thanks. You, Joshua and Mick, we have a lot of really smart and talented people that we're going to talk to today, but let's start with a scientist who will appear in a moment. I want to talk a little about Mujiga. Cooper, who is here, she is the planetary protection lead for this mission. Thank you very much, you've been working on this for a while. Yes, it's been seven years in the making and I'm so excited to share this moment with you. with those who are

watch

ing today, I'm ecstatic, it's fantastic and we're in a period of release, people probably want to know why we're launching today, why we're launching right now, we're in a period that only happens once a day.

Two years, yes, explains that the orbits of Earth and Mars are on the same side of the Sun so we can get to that destination with less fuel, making it the best time for a short trip with less energy. We like that and we are studying the climate and geology. and looking for ancient life, but who, what kind of life are we talking about here? Well, when we look, we're not going to find dinosaur fossils. Unfortunately, we are likely to encounter them in the form of microscopic life. We're waiting, we're waiting, we don't know if it's there, right, yeah, I don't know, okay, that's why let's go, yeah, thank you very much, moo, and back here on earth, our Twitter friends are celebrating Mars 2020 In a very special way we want to inform you about this.

If you type, if you tap the Like icon on any tweet that contains the hashtag countdown to Mars, you'll see an animation light up your screen. You can also see it. The button itself has a special little animation that you can see right there in the corner. Look, did you see that it will also work in any language of our partner countries, including Spanish, French, Norwegian and Italian? Wow, that's pretty incredible, yes, and despite how discouraging. Challenges NASA has a long history of missions to Mars dating back to 1965 with the Mariner 4 spacecraft Yes, we've covered a lot of ground on Mars since then, so let's go to California and join Raquel Villanueva of JPL Raquel, what can you ? share our Mars exploration story Daryl, in the past we've explored the red planet with orbiters and landers, but it was the ability to move around Mars with rovers that really helped unlock its secrets.

Today I'm joined by Perseverance deputy project manager Jennifer Trosper. She has worked on each and every Mars mission for the last three decades, now Jennifer, how does today's launch fit into the history of Mars exploration? Well, we've always been interested in Mars because it's the most like the Earth we know and it's a little different today, so understanding what happened to Mars will help us understand more about our solar system and also more. on Earth now, as we said, Mars exploration began in 1965 with the Mariner spacecraft flying over Mars and in 1975 we landed the Viking. a lander on the surface of Mars and then we started sending orbiters with more sophisticated instruments;

Those instruments would make global maps, they would find the minerals, they would find the topography of Mars, they would actually study the climate of Mars, but we discovered that those orbiters needed partners, they needed partners to get down to the surface of Mars and explore like a geologist on Earthwood, we walk around and take pictures and maybe she takes some measurements, that's what these rovers needed to do and that's really what started the Mars Rover Program for us, our first rover that we sent in 1997, it was a sojourner rover that weighed about 25 pounds and went about 400 feet, but she really showed us the value that a Mars rover could have and then the Mars program started. the topic of following the water to try to better understand Mars and the first two rovers that were sent to Mars to follow the rover were Spirit and Opportunity.

They landed on opposite sides of Mars in 2004 and drove a combined 30 miles and both found evidence that there had been water on Mars in the past, but we still weren't sure if that water fostered an environment good for life, so we sent Curiosity in 2012. The Curiosity rover was big, it had a big robotic arm and it had a drill, it had a science lab in the front and Curiosity was trying to understand the habitability of Mars. Could Mars have ever fostered life? Could life have grown on Mars? And within a few months of Curiosity landing on the surface, it found an ancient habitable environment on Mars. but we still don't know if life ever formed on Mars and that is the goal of the Perseverance mission.

Wow, thanks Jennifer, and now that we understand how each rover mission helps shape the other, let's get to know Perseverance. You know Mars is the closest place. that we can reach with robotic exploration that we believe had a good chance of having ancient life the perseverance rover will land in a place called jezreel crater the jezreel crater is a very interesting place it is a crater that once housed a lake there are many craters on the surface of Mars may have once hosted ancient lakes, but not every crater that we think had a lake actually preserves evidence that that lake was there, had an inlet channel and an outlet channel, meaning it was full, the crater was full of water in Jezra we have probably one of the best preserved delta deposits on Mars in that crater the main objective of the Perseverance mission is to investigate astrobiology on Mars in particular to address the question of whether life ever existed on Mars the rover Perseverance starts with a design that is very similar to Curiosity, but we have added a completely new set of scientific instruments to it and these scientific instruments were selected specifically to help us in the search for biosignatures.

We will carry microphones with us for the The first time we are going to have that human sense on another planet, perseverance carries with it a great experiment in space fairing technology. A helicopter whose name is now Ingenuity. One of the main improvements that perseverance has from curiosity is that it is capable of self. -Drive a distance of up to 200 meters per day while the rover is driving, it is literally building the map of the road it travels on Mars. Scientists for years have told us that to really unlock the secrets of Mars we have to bring Mars samples back to Earth, so what Marsh 2020 is going to do is drill down samples, put them in little tubes, we're going to seal them in. own individual tube, we placed them on the surface to provide a target for the second two missions that will hopefully be put into development in the coming years and could potentially return the samples to Earth by 2031.

Perseverance is a first very, very profound step both in our understanding of our place in the universe and a stepping stone towards human exploration of ours and a Great rover breakdown. Welcome back to Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where our next Mars rover will be propelled into space by an Atlas V rocket, and the man leading the company tasked with getting Perseverance safely off this planet is Tory Bruno. the CEO and President of the United Launch Alliance, we appreciate you being here Tony this morning, happy to be here Howard, the launch team, how did he do with the launch team?

How are you doing well? The launch team is very good. They've been at the station for hours. They are calm They are confident They are going over the script I am a little nervous but I always get nervous before all my 400 pitches so why are you nervous? Well, you know that a rocket is incredibly powerful and complex. machine everything has to go right nothing can go wrong and it never goes out of style it's always the same it's always exciting yes and this is a particularly exciting mission talk a little about this being the biggest and heaviest rover we've ever known sent to the red planet, so how did you configure your rocket to make this launch effectively?

Yes, this is our second most powerful atlas, 541, we call it dominator. It has four giant srbs, each generating 350,000 pounds of thrust to augment the central core. and soIt has the power to reach Mars, in addition to the precision, it is the most precise rocket in the world because when we release it it has about 200 million miles to travel in that transfer orbit and precision is key. right, yes, so the power source for the mars rover is a contained radioactive battery. I've seen it up close and we've had to alter the way we behave. How has that changed your team's efforts?

Oh yes, the operations around are completely different now. We have a lot of experience with these, we have flown all the RTGs in the United States and we are the only supplier certified to handle them, but you know it's still 11 pounds of plutonium, as you saw, and in this particular case, the most special thing was installing it in the vif where normally we would never break containment around the spacecraft. It has to be clean and free of biological substances, but we created a portable clean room and we took out this nuclear battery and installed it in the machine while maintaining everything.

Perfect amazing, can you explain what VIP really is before we let it go? This is the vertical integration facility, so these rockets are so gigantic that we build them in a factory, but we can't assemble them there, yes, Atlas and Perseverance are proud of 20 stories right now on the platform, for What they come here and they arrive at Canaveral in pieces on our rocket and then we assemble them in the vertical integration facility and normally the last thing would be to bring a perfectly clean and prepared encapsulated spacecraft under the fairing and put it on top, which we did, but then we open it to install the mm rtg battery.

That came late in the process and was intentional. Yes, you mentioned that there is a certification for who certifies the rocket, so NASA certifies the rocket and then NASA and the Department of Energy certify a supplier like us to handle a nuclear payload because of all these special characteristics. very good requirements you know when you were preparing for this mission you couldn't have imagined uh you know a year ago that you would have a coronavirus pandemic oh yeah, wreaking havoc on this state how did you handle that and how did you overcome it? Yeah, well, you know the big lesson learned here is that you can't buy time, so when this thing blew up, our response was early, it was aggressive, and fortunately it was effective, so we did all the things that you might be familiar with. we clean every surface every hour we deep clean every night we use personal protective equipment we have our teams dispersed we actually change the workflow to keep our people safe but also to keep these vitally important missions going and of course, I can't say enough about our team, they are so disciplined and so brave to persevere through all of this and now to do our third launch under all of these mitigations, I'm so proud of them, well, Tory Bruno, CEO of United Launch Alliance , we appreciate it. be here sharing your knowledge with us good luck with today's rocket launch and enjoy it thank you very much come on atlas come on perseverance very good the countdown to Mars is underway let's go to our launch commentary team for an update on previous efforts to the launch and a weather forecast, joshua, hey, thanks moo, trading this morning has been pretty quiet.

Can you tell us what happened to get the rocket to the point it is today, right at this moment? Yes, actually, Josh, it's great to have a quiet countdown right now. tomorrow, that means really good things for us here at the assoc, but the teams arrived at the station today around midnight, they arrived at the station and began configuring the launch vehicle getting it ready for fueling as we listened to them feed the atlas of the first stage with airlocks and the centaur upper stage of the second stage with cryogenics, the team continues to do that, they reviewed the avionics electrical systems, they also did a check of the flight termination system with the range, so all systems look nominal and the team is now at its t-minus four and maintaining and just evaluating the telemetry and the launch vehicle as we prepare to take off this morning, yes, and it's a scheduled hold, so this is part of the plan, there is nothing wrong, we have Today there is a two-hour window, but everything is moving forward towards 7:50 a.m.

Eastern time. We want to introduce you to some of the teams involved this morning. We want to start with the US space force they are responsible for range operations and weather activities um so tell me about range real quick before we get this weather report in just a few seconds. Yes, the United States Space Force is responsible for the safety of the public and personnel here at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and the Kennedy Space Center where we are. Launching from such an important part of the mission today, they are one of five teams that are working with us to launch Mars Perseverance on its way this morning and an important part of that is not only public safety, but they also make the weather so we can do I'm sure everything looks good, as we saw the sunrise this morning right behind it, everything looks good, on the channel 8 briefing, Roger, I'm sorry, we thought we were going to broadcast it live and Apparently the audio is on another channel, sorry. we should be looking at a visible satellite image.

We now have mostly clear skies. Some clouds to the east over the water. We were monitoring a radar cell 10 miles to the southeast that has dissipated, so things are looking very good for launch. All LCCs are operational and expected to remain in count Our temperature is currently 80 degrees It could rise to 82 at the end of the window The winds are currently two to zero Eight non-sustained with peaks of ten knots Ten percent view for clusters The cloud rule proton flux is at normal background levels and is expected to remain seeded during counting. This concludes the weather report unless there are any questions, so I think we're in good shape.

We heard a great report there again. all lcc releases uh absolutely lcc release community engagement criteria I can never remember the second c I appreciate it so tell us about the t clock because we obviously mentioned that we're at t minus four minutes and we keep , so we have a difference here in these two. clocks today, yeah, so the teams are actually working with two different clocks, the l clock or what we call launch time or l minus time is the real time clock that continues the countdown to takeoff. t time which is the clock the team uses for operations sequences of events in the procedure, this time it has built-in suspensions, one of which we are on hold for 30 minutes right now, allowing the team to adjust the things they need to do during tonight's countdown for the clock to continue. countdown and what's unique about this is that l minus four or t minus four as we count down these two clocks will synchronize and we'll count down to take off this morning one of the things we want to take advantage of the weather briefing so let's talk about the power source for perseverance perseverance actually has a nuclear battery, which might be a little alarming for people to hear that it's not a nuclear reactor, it's a nuclear battery and that's actually something that's been developed by the department of energy for this type of purpose is a multi-mission radio isotope thermoelectric generator which is a mouthful but it is a mm-rtg it is about the size of a five gallon bucket and is designed to do this actually produce power for the robot, so it's using a nuclear material inside to generate the electricity that's there as we start today's mission, it's going to be about 110 watts of power that's going to provide the spacecraft as we take off and it's going to provide power for perseverance on Mars. for the entire life of your mission, so that's the only thing about this battery source, which is pretty good, and it will continue for the entire time, yes, the atlas 5 has a perfect launch record, so it's on good shape, so we don't expect anything. problems, but if there was a contingency today, we would like you to stay with us to talk through some of the details and we would provide advice.

We have teams that have specifically focused on this and are working to ensure that everyone is safe and our robotic explorers are safe as well, so that will be enough for now. An excellent report on the climate. We'll send it to Daryl and Moo. Thanks Joshua. With the countdown to mars underway we want to take a moment to honor our country with the song of america the beautiful we are proud to now introduce you to two time grammy award winning singer gregory porter lori glazed come on good morning , your majesty, the simple and fruity Americans, god of america sent his grace from the sea to bright god sent his grace see the beautiful baritone voice of grammy award winning singer gregory porter that was exceptional it was very emotional oh if only i could launch the rocket now same after that see some rockets red glow red perfect thank you very much sir porter us I appreciate that perseverance will seek to unlock many mysteries about Mars, but remote scientific instruments can only go so far.

Join us now to talk about returning samples from Mars to Earth. It's Dr. Lori Glaze, director of NASA's planetary science division. Thank you very much for joining us. It's a pleasure for me to be here today, yes, first, can you talk to us about the value of studying samples from Mars here on Earth? You can bet that one of the most exciting parts of this mission, of course, is that we are going to drill samples that we are going to return to Mars and collect and bring back to Earth and part of the reason for this is that the main reason is that we can only go so far with the instruments we have on the rover.

They're wonderful, it's a great set, but nothing compared to the state-of-the-art instruments in labs around the world, so we really want to get those precious samples back here so we can do that really deep analysis of the samples here, plus Not only do we want to study them now with those state-of-the-art instruments and facilities, but we can preserve most of the sample for decades and that will allow us to use future instruments that haven't even been invented yet or you know, answer questions that we don't even know. We haven't even thought about it yet, so it's very important to bring those samples back here and could we confirm life if it's there with the instruments we have on the rover or would that really happen?

On Earth, I fully expect that we will not be able to make that real determination until they return here on Earth. We hope that with the instruments we have on board we can detect biosignatures and the kinds of things that say yes. a sample that may contain evidence of past life in the sample, but I think it would be very difficult to confirm that until we actually recover the samples here on earth, talking about bringing them back here to earth, the key part of this, how it will? That's a great question. We are already starting work on the next mission called Marsh Sample Return.

We believe it will be launched. We are planning a launch in 2026. This is a really complex presentation that will require two launches from Earth and one. launch from Mars to be able to bring those samples back here, we are working very closely with the European space agency, our main partners on this mission, so we will have a launch from the US that will launch a lander back from samples that will land on the surface carrying a rover that will go out and collect the samples, bring them back, load them onto a rocket, the Mars Ascent Vehicle, and launch them into orbit around Mars, at the same time we launch from the Earth, the Europeans are also launching an orbiter from Earth that will be in orbit around Mars and capture those samples with that orbiter, we're going to capture them and then it'll make its trip back to Earth, release them and they'll come down and land on the Utah desert, where we will then safely take them and place them in the healing facility.

What an incredible process! Thank you very much Lori for joining us today. We appreciate your time. Enjoy the launch. What perseverance. What ingenuity. Thanks Lori. Well, at the beginning of the 20th century. the wright brothers showed that powered flight was possible on earth now

nasa

plans to test powered flight on mars with an ingenious helicopter so let's go back to california now and raquel the martian atmosphere is 99 less dense than here on earth so this It is not easy The task of flying to Mars is sterile.Now riding the Perseverance rover is an exciting technology demonstration.

The Mars Ingenuity helicopter would now, if successful, be the first time humans have performed powered flight on another planet. Ingenuity project manager Mimi ong joins us now. to talk about the set of milestones that ingenuity must reach to take flight on Mars. Hello, by the way, we just had an earthquake in this room, but anyway, with that technical demonstration of the helicopter on Mars, it is motivated by the potential of adding the aerial dimension to space exploration in the future a helicopter can serve as explorer for rovers and astronauts a helicopter can take us to places of high scientific interest that cannot be reached today it is not easy to build a rotograph to fly on mars the atmosphere there is very thin one percent compared to that of the earth, so a helicopter for Mars has to be very light and have a rotor system that can rotate very quickly behind me, it is the full-scale model of the Mars helicopter ingenuity, it is very light, approximately 1.8 kilograms 4 pounds, is capable of flying through the thin atmosphere of Mars and is capable of surviving and operating autonomously.

There are a number of milestones between now and Ingenuity's first flight, the first being when we power up the helicopter and base station. to verify its status the first time it operates in a true space environment, the next big milestone will be when the Perseverance rover deploys the Ingenuity helicopter on the surface. The deployment will also mark the first time the helicopter begins to operate on its own independently, never returning to the rover and the first. The most important milestone then will be the helicopter that survived the first cold Martian night at approximately minus degrees minus 90 degrees Celsius and we have designed the helicopter to stay warm, so we have planned up to five flights in the 30 Martian days that have passed.

Reserved for our flight experiments, the flight data we obtain from the helicopter will inform our team about the health of the helicopter and the performance of each flight. The data could also include some color photographs. The first photographs of the Martian terrain taken from Aerovantage that would be true. The icing on our cake, mimi, thank you and you are right, we had a little change, but everything seems to be fine here so far and we are looking forward to the first flight of Ingenuity and with that let's return to ksc as we continue the countdown to mars ok thanks Rachel, when the name Perseverance was chosen for our country's rover, it was in the early stages of the Covid 19 pandemic.

Now the name is also an apt description of what NASA teams needed to get this rover to the platform on time. Join us now is NASA administrator jim breidenstein thank you very much for being here Jim, perseverance means a lot and that includes a recent 3.9 earthquake that we have reports of in California. We just saw our own minions. She said things were rocking there, so we're persevering hard. Thank goodness we won't be launching from Vandenberg. today you are absolutely right that things are looking good here in florida i want to ask you why we chose why you chose to move nasa forward on this launch in the middle of a global pandemic oh well there are several reasons but I think the most The important thing is that the public wants to see the United States of America and our international partners do amazing things and we have a history of doing amazing things in the most difficult times and this is no different.

See, here's the other challenge with Mars in general. You know, we can only go to Mars once every 26 months when literally the planets are aligned and, um, and if we missed this launch window, you know, it would cost us half a billion dollars. store this vehicle for the next two years, so, there are many reasons to move forward, some of them are financial, you know NASA's budget, you know, and then the other, the other big reason is that the Americans want to see us continue . To do great things, I want to be very clear, although we have made sure that throughout this process, if someone did not feel comfortable working on this project, they had the option of not working on this project and I will tell you that we did.

I don't find that very often, if at all, I will also say that our top priority was the safety of our people and we wanted them to know that if they come to work they will be safer at work than they are. be if they stayed home um and of course personal protective equipment, social distancing, changing schedules to minimize people working in the vehicle at the same time, all of these things were implemented as protective measures, but it's true, the name perseverance was given to this robot by alex mather, who is a seventh grader in virginia, this is about perseverance and going to mars, like you said, going to mars is about perseverance in general, doing it Now he is more persevering than ever.

Quick, we have to jump in, of course, counting down, how are you feeling? Well, nervous, as always, this is a lot of money on the top of a rocket and, of course, not just the money, but the entire life's work of many of you. I know thousands of people so um look, it's going to be a good day, we're knocking on wood, but it's going to be a good day for NASA, thank you very much for being here, Jim, thank you, you've been good, thank you. We are now at minus 14 minutes and counting, let's check back in with Joshua and Mick for an update on preparations to launch the Joshua rocket, there is a major survey by the launch services program taking place soon, yes, absolutely, so the countdown continues. um obviously a status report, we heard them talking about the earthquake and everything's still good. um we're hearing that deep down things are going well, no, there are no major problems or setbacks because of that, um, everything is going well, smart viewers.

There you will notice the moving clocks, two clocks, actually, the countdown clock behind Daryl and Mu is at minus four and staying, excuse me at t minus four minutes, without stopping, uh, but the clock on your screen now It's clock l and it continues. countdown to 7:50am takeoff time, yes that's exactly it josh as we talked about before the l hour is the real time clock that continues the countdown to zero at t minus four and counts both clocks , clock t and clock l. synchronize as the team continues to work on their operational sequence events in the procedure, so the team is very focused this morning, as you already mentioned the earthquake that was mentioned, the team evaluated it and analyzed it and they are doing a great job and taking us to zero this morning, so earlier we mentioned the US Space Force as one of the five teams and next we have the NASA launch services program team responsible for managing the launch and we're going to hear a survey here about the NASA launch.

The manager Omar Báez himself is going to ask his team to be ready to be able to report in just a few minutes, so he is very punctual, so this should arrive right on time here in just a few seconds, let's listen now, this is the nlm. on nlm network currently running no issues on range or launch vehicle whether green 10 chance of breach and airborne wins looked good for entire window spacecraft experienced some seismic activity in its control center in Pasadena, but here it is. ready to move on and with that i would like to get the team together for the final launch survey and spacecraft community setup nasa ce nasa cesco sma sma es ir smp smd es ir nasa mission manager yes the mission manager es go lsp lsp es go copy the nest team is ready to proceed, okay, so we hear that the NASA team is ready to proceed.

He even mentioned the weather there, which is great, there is only a ten percent chance of a violation occurring again. Many thanks to Jessica Williams of the US Space Force, 45th Space Wing. I like it. The fact that we're not working on issues this morning in this count is an important part that Omar and, uh, the team mentioned. One thing you should understand about the NLM is that it is a combined NASA spacecraft and engineering team. That's all good this morning, yes, and we're going to keep moving because we still have a lot to do. We'll give it back to you, Daryl.

Okay, thank you very much, Joshua, our NASA teams across the country overcame the challenges. caused by the covid 19 outbreak, as you have heard so far, to get this Mars rover to the launch pad on time, we are about to hear from workers at the centers in California and Florida who took every precaution imaginable while They managed to carry out this vital work. When I saw the country go into lockdown I thought for sure there was no way we could continue with this. It's something that no one expected. It's something no one could plan for instead of making their first priority the success of the mission and getting to launch. pad, your first priority immediately shifts and is now people's safety.

I was seriously thinking that Mars would be March 2022. It took a lot of work to put things together to keep the momentum going, keep people working safely, keep them healthy, and keep the project on schedule, there's no question that working on Isolation, not virtual isolation, but physical isolation from everyone else, is a challenge. It's difficult to me. I have two small children. Sometimes I can't concentrate or listen, probably as well as Anyway, I would like a lot of our work to be done in a clean room, but that meant that before even entering the clean room we had to find ways to make sure not putting ourselves or others at risk most of the time for these On missions, our relationship with the spacecraft customer is incredibly important, so we can usually be here working alongside them on their teams and making sure that all their needs are covered even before they ask for it.

It's a challenge, but we're used to it. to meet unique requirements here in the hangar and we are proud of our flexibility, this is just another mission just with a different set of obstacles we have to overcome, it may not be like a broken rocket but it has its own challenges, our work is going into the unknown and this is just another example of the unknown, how to make this work happen when you do it primarily through a computer screen. A couple of months ago I asked the team if they would like to do something to symbolize and mark these challenges we face and they designed something we call the covid19 perseverance plaque.

It is now fixed to the port side of the rover. It has a balloon that represents all of us who face this challenge together. The spaceship leaves Earth on its way. Mars and all of this is supported by the now familiar staff and servants of the medical community and we hope that this mission in some small way can inspire you in return, almost everyone I have spoken to who is associated with the mission has said that Lo You couldn't have come up with a better name than perseverance. We have persevered in food if no one gives up.

We will fulfill this mission. We will do it during the pandemic. I think it's a really important symbol of humanity now. As we persevere through this very challenging time that we have right now, we appreciate that team, as well as the medical community, who really stepped up and helped, and it's ironic, you know, move on because the name Perseverance was chosen by a student at seventh grade than at the time he presented that. name, I didn't know we would be facing a global pandemic, so we're happy to have him and his family here along with the student who named the helicopter to see the launch in person.

Their names are alexander mather and veneza rupani and they. They're

watch

ing from the fifth-floor balcony of our engineering building, just a stone's throw from the countdown clock. Look, they're looking great. Alexander Mather, who attends Lake Braddock Element High School in Burke Virginia, presented the winning essay to name our rover perseverance yes, they have a great view, i have seen it from up there, they have the vab in the background, as you can see there, so it is such a beautiful setup for this amazing launch and venisa, can be seen here. Hello guys, I thank you. She is a junior at Tuscaloosa County High School in Northport Alabama, she also participated in the contest and came up with the clever name for our helicopter that will accompany our rover to Mars.

Thank you both for being here. What a beautiful sight. Yes, it's okay, friends. With the shore phase approaching, we want to let you know that after launch it will be about an hour before Mars Perseverance separates from the second stage, when that happens the rover will be on its way to Mars, so hang in there. Yes, don't leave as we will guide you through the flightaround Earth and we'll talk live with astronaut Xena Cardman about our human exploration ambitions and NASA Associate Administrator for Science Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen will be great friends, so stick around. around, it's minus six minutes and 26 seconds and it's time to turn our attention to the launch operation the rest of the way to liftoff, so let's send it back to mick woltman and joshua santorum, gentlemen, thank you, I want to let you hear the para the rest of this survey in motion, let's go to the range coordinator, clear, proceed to the launch director, ld is ready and you have permission to start the process with the alc account, check that t0 is set to 11.50 zola, so than 1150 Zulu, that is, 7.50 a.m.

Eastern time, uh. So the timing is right as I watch Josh do the math with his finger, take out my defenders, so there's a lot ahead, one of the things coming, in just a few seconds, five minutes, thirty seconds, oh yeah , nfc go nsc. spaceship with internal power and time are set to t0 of 1150 roger os start list roger data capture fantastic complete before terminal count lc switch is ready awesome so things are really starting to improve here you will hear more and more talks those networks there that call was to say that perseverance is powered and ready to go, which is a phenomenal call, yeah, a couple of things happened during that time, right, it's a launch driver, the launch driver ula launch, scott barney, brought out the entire ula team, everyone was ready, we got it. the third of our five teams the third of our five teams we were able to hear the end of that where the range was clear to proceed and ula launch director bill collin gave the authority to launch this morning at 7:50 A.M. and then we get to I heard from the JPL spacecraft team that they are the fourth team, that they have internal power and that the timers are set, that they are aiming for a 7:50 a.m. liftoff. m. this morning, so everything is looking good for us, Joshua. in the morning is so you know we're talking about being nervous and excited, this is right here where we're nervous and excited, yeah, there's a lot going on as we get ready to countdown to takeoff this morning, we have about 15 seconds. is left in this hole before we resume counting, yes, let's hear that, the fifth team, the one we haven't mentioned yet is the department of energy, which is responsible for the amazing mmrpg, so now this is the countdown of the terminal.

It's that moment where things become more and more automated over the next few minutes, a few minutes, and the energy increases, but the focus increases exponentially. Yes, Torrey said during his interview that you know the teams are very disciplined, very focused on what they're doing. operational sequence of events that they are following, they are making sure that everything happens, especially in this period of t-minus four and counting because there are a lot of things that they have to do, they have to finish finishing off the vehicle, make sure that all the tanks are in the first stage.

The second stage at Centaur is at flight pressure and fully fueled ready for this morning. They have to make sure the FDS system is armed and ready for personnel safety, just in case. For the field to be able to do that, they have to check the electricity and avionics. systems, they have to make sure the flight computer has all the information it needs to put Mars 2020 into orbit, so there's a lot going on at an exciting time for the team right now, but again, stay focused and keep going. that procedure. We have three minutes while I look forward to the takeoff post.

I want a kind of preview of what's going to happen because a lot of things are going to happen. You won't hear much from us. In fact, you'll hear from ula's flight commentator, Jesse González. We will be giving those calls after takeoff that will take us through the maximum dynamic pressure and to the srb separation and then to the fairing separation booster separation and then to the first firing of the centaur rl10 main engine and then you will hear us jump. Come back and help provide more context on what's happening. We encourage you to stay with us for the rest of the program.

There is so much more content we have to offer you and we are far from done. We want to emphasize that the countdown to Mars has begun. It's not done at zero today, the countdown to Mars ends in February, when March 2020 safely brings perseverance and ingenuity to the surface of the red planet, so we'll let you listen now and enjoy the last minutes of the process of launching a rocket one minute 59 internal vehicle one minute 55 start of the launch sequencer one minute 50. the centauri carrying it is also leaking securing the centaur lo2 so we hear that refueling is ending 40. yes, the fuel is finishing up, the team is gone, the naval launch is ready The launch driver sequence is ready to begin, they are preparing to turn the vehicle and automatically arm it in t minus 31 seconds, um, so it is important that they are doing it here In t minus 25 seconds, we will hear the team give their The ending says that everything is ready and the launch vehicle is ready to take you on this mission.

Scf count. Start minute 15. Produce ECS for launch. Roger, one minute, ten, Denver, one minute, rock report, range, state, range, green, good to hear Joshua, right there, public safety. there's accounting for the fts system there you see on your screen a beautiful photo uh the skies look great there's little wind um happening you could see more of the vent um if there was wind on the trail of that vent then We're ready to go and actually , that is our important point. The reason we don't see it is that the event valves have been locked to put flight pressure into the tanks and as we just heard, they are stable at step three, which means. the tanks are ready to go and here at about five seconds we'll hear the reduced eps team for the launch draw 25 second status check here we go we're ready to take off this morning joshua eight seven six five five four engine ignition two one zero related and liftoff as the countdown to Mars continues humanity's perseverance launches the next generation of robotic explorers to the red planet and atlas you have moved to closed-loop control 30 seconds into the flight the rd-180 is decelerating while the expected engine response looks good and mach 1 atlas 5 is now supersonic and spends 45 seconds in flight the vehicle now goes through the maximum dynamic pressure q and spends a minute in flight the rd-180 is accelerating again while the response expected engine looks good this time in flight srv chamber pressures are still nominal rd-180 pump speed and fuel injector pressures are responding well to engine demands waiting for srb to burn in brief and we have wear on all four srbs the burn pressure signatures look good expecting srb to break down shortly and we have a good indication that srb is breaking down to all four srbs and the vehicle has moved to closed loop guidance.

Vehicle body speeds are responding normally at this time and are approaching two and a half minutes for the RD-180 flight. accelerates slightly as the expected engine response continues to look good at this time the vehicle is at 50 miles altitude 85 miles down traveling at 6000 miles per hour and the centaur reaction control system is now pressurized to flight levels and barely three minutes into the flight the rd-180 is now accelerating to maintain a constant two and a half g acceleration limit for the payload fairing waste motor response and the vehicle acceleration looks good and we have a good payload fairing disposal indication and ford centauro forward cargo reactor platform disposal indication and the rd180 is accelerated backwards is accelerating again to achieve an acceleration of 4.6 g.

Engine response continues to look good and Centaur has begun the boost phase cool-down sequence to thermally condition the rl10 for operation. Waiting for beco, shortly Biko is the why booster engine is required and We have the cut of the BCO booster engine ready for stage separation and we have a good indication of the separation of the centaur atlas, so they are using images in I live and we have a rl10. Operating parameters seem good. Chamber pressures are stable. This will be the first of two burns for today. mission, this first burn will probably last about seven minutes, so make this pretty exceptional footage that's a live video, uh, we'll see that change shortly to an animation that helps us know what's happening with the rocket, but just there, uh, Beautiful liftoff, fun, feeling that rumble in the building here as we move towards orbit and then towards the destination of Mars, yes, absolutely, it was great to see an on-time liftoff of the Atlas 5 with a little over 2 million of pounds of thrust clearing the tower. in about 5 seconds Josh, you and I worked on the insight mission and if you remember the mission on the west coast took about 17 seconds to get the pest tower so with those four solids today this thing really came out of here and on the way is uh as we heard from jesse the chamber pressure, everything seems nominal and all the vehicle parameters are within the design limits and we are preparing to start the main engine for that first start that jesse was talking about , yeah, so recapping this countdown to Mars. the stations started filling up this morning, just after midnight, uh, preparations, fuel, powering up, uh, during the whole takeoff that happened, uh, I think it wasn't exactly on time, I think you said it was like 10 milliseconds early um so it's pretty much dead yeah dead on this team does a great job like I said they are very focused very disciplined as Torrey also said they are brave they have worked hard to get us to this point today through of this pandemic, they changed the way they did it. of his work, you know, he made adjustments as needed, he cleaned a lot of things, he wore a lot of face masks and he did all kinds of things, so this is an exciting time not only for the JPL team at Mars 2020 but for all the who worked on this. mission and for the country at the agency, so it's exciting to see that we still have a long way to go, Joshua, before spacecraft separation.

Yes, we had a very smooth countdown today, which is phenomenal, we took off on time and are moving forward now. that we're in the middle of the first combustion, it's hard to tell, but that engine is on and it's firing, so we're moving, there you go, there's the animation that we talked about about the telemetry as we switch to a video format. TDRS compatible data. uh the overall quality of the tdrs telemetry is very good, the spatial tracking system, um, so there you have it, this is not a real video, but it is an animation driven by real data, so although in We're not actually seeing the engine on the screen right now, we can see that the engine is on and that's driven by the data that says the engine is actually on and we're at this on.

Yes, the launch vehicle continues to send telemetry to the launch team over the tdrs network as you mentioned and that allows. Let them continue to observe what is happening and make sure that the entire sequence of events adheres to their schedule. We will continue on a nominal flight this morning. This first combustion, as we heard before, will last approximately six minutes. This will take us into the orbit of the park. around the Earth allows us to continue our path and then enter that coast period of approximately 30 minutes in which we will have eight minutes of flight beginning to see the centaur system pu balance the mass errors seeing very stable body velocities in the centaur, so we've mentioned five teams in play and although if you were watching, hopefully, you'd have a chance to see it in person, if not on camera, it's easy to say "oh, job's over", but these five teams are still very committed.

I'm still very focused because there's a lot of work ahead as we move through this first burn and then a coastal phase like you mentioned mc and then a second burn and then spacecraft separation and Mars 2020 signal acquisition. um so there's a lot more to come. Up here, Mick, I know the launch services program, you guys manage the launch, so what does that mean? I mean, you guys are working on action right now, by the way, that's the fifth team that we couldn't mention, we talked about. about jpl, we talked about the united space force, uh, the united states space force and theunited launch alliance, uh, lsp, we are like the middlemen, uh, to select this launch vehicle and help manage this mission, so that we get our spacecraft customer the People from JPL come to us and have certain requirements they need for this mission.

The launch services program is made up of engineers and flight analysis people and they look at everything they help find those requirements and then we go out and get a vehicle. from a commercial partner, in this case it was the 541 atlas for the Mars 20 20 mission that was needed for performance, as you and I have talked about over the last few days, josh, one of the things that was important for us to look at was That performance to be able to get Mars 2020 into that transfer orbit to solar orbit to intercept Mars in seven months is sort of analogous to a football game with a quarterback trying to throw a pass downfield, you need a quarterback. of field with a lot of performance that can get that ball where it needs to be uh and then the receiver can intercept that in our case seven months later, there you have it, yes, it is the longest football pass of all time.

Earth is the quarterback the atlas is the quarterback's arm perseverance is the football and Mars is the receiver that's a good guy, exactly, and what we also talked about is that you could technically throw yourself at Mars at any time. moment if you had a rocket that was powerful enough, but this is the launch period every 26 months or so. We've talked about how that makes the most sense because it takes the least amount of energy to get to Mars because it takes a lot to get there, obviously the Atlas 541 is a workhorse. Yes, Torrey said she's his dominatrix.

I love that name. the atlas v 541 but we heard uh jim Bridenstine, our NASA administrator, tell us that if we didn't meet this launch period, we would be down for about 26 months, so the period started on July 17th and continues until the 15th August, today July 30. It was one of those launch opportunities that we had, we had a two-hour window and within that window we had several opportunities, 25 actually 25 opportunities and we launched at the beginning of the window in our first opportunity to get Mars 2020 on its way. And you know, that sounds like a lot and the flight analysis group at both JPL LSP and ula did a lot of work to select those target sets and figure out where we needed to be, so they did a great job.

We'll see how this mission continues, so tell us about the two burns required here and we're actually coming to the end of the first one, ultimately, probably a lot of people and myself included at some point, why not? you just keep firing the engines, fire all the way and get to Mars in one go, so the first burn takes us into that park orbit we talked about, we've taken off, we've left Earth, we've entered a orbit of park. around the Earth right now and while we're in that park orbit we'll do some maneuvering to roll the Mars sweats and the centaur and the coast during that time, basically setting up facing the sun and moving away from the sun to control the thermal environments that are on Mars 2020 during this coastal period that coastal period will allow us to glide around the position that we need so that we can have that second firing to get the speed necessary to head to Mars, yes, and we will be back for that second firing in just under 30 minutes, but for now there is more to learn about this mission and all the incredible science that Daryl involves.

Okay, thank you very much. Excellent pitch and great job, guys. Come back outside now to recap a The Atlas 5 rocket carrying the Mars Perseverance rover launched on time from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 7:50 a.m. ET incredible after the rocket lifted off, separated from the first stage and was then boosted into orbit by the Centaur second stage. preparing for a second burn that will put you on a trajectory towards Mars, it's just incredible to say it gives me goosebumps, it really is and we are very excited about that too and while we wait for that second burn, hang in there with us because we have plenty of coverage interesting ahead, we will welcome one of our guests to the launch, dr.

Derek Muller is the creator and host of the popular science education channel on YouTube called Veritasium. He also has a PhD in physical education, so he's really smart and that's why you saw us having fun because Derek was here on set, we're just having a good time talking about this release. I started with Derek, your first time seeing a launch in person. Do you think I mean? What can you say? I have nothing to compare it to, but it was amazing, something I will never forget and I definitely want to be invited back. So if you guys could make that happen, I mean, it's so amazing that you did such a great job of explaining the physics, how it felt, kind of a guide while you were watching it and experiencing it well, it's like all the physics went away. little out the window, it's a very visceral moment between you and this very powerful ship, I think it's just incredible.

You know, all the engineering that goes into making something that's so powerful and yet so controlled, you know. , and to witness that is phenomenal and then feel the roar of all that sound when it hits you. I found it to be an incredibly emotional experience. It's almost It's amazing, you know, watching it take off, it's very surreal, it sure is nice, what excites you the most about the Perseverance rover. Well, the Perseverance rover will do a lot of great science, so I'm excited, for example, that it will do caching. samples that we're going to bring back, you know, I'm very excited that we're actually going to get our hands on samples from Mars and I think that may determine whether we can see that life actually exists there, but I'm also very excited about Uh, wit about the helicopter I was able to visit at JPL before they strapped it to the belly of the rover and thinking about flying a helicopter in, you know, another world, essentially in a place that only has one-hundredth of the Earth's atmosphere.

It looks bold and I'm impressed and amazed and I can't wait to see if it works, you know, I'm cautiously optimistic, I think the team is phenomenal and you actually did a YouTube story about it, an article on your channel and I did a fantastic job going to JPL. I did, yeah, and I was so lucky that it was there, you know, a meter or two away from me, on the other side of a door in a clean room and, uh, that was, yeah, one of the great moments of my life, yeah, that thing is exactly going to break down, yeah, and it weighs as much as my laptop, yeah, and you think about you know it's substantial in its size and it's going to go there and take off and blow everything up. on its own because of course we can't control it given the time delay and all I like about it is that I think it's one of the pinnacles of human engineering, yes absolutely, now this is going to generate great science too, What do you think about this? look for ancient microbial life on another planet Mars, well, you know, I think there's a good chance that Mars once hosted life.

In the past it was so similar to Earth that one can only hope that you know that life probably arose there too, but I'm sure. I'm so excited that we're getting that confirmation because I think it really transforms our ideas about life and you know how prevalent that is right now. All we have is this sample size of a life-bearing Earth. You know, we found another one that has 100. more information and data and I think that life is probably not exactly like ours and I think it will be fascinating how much we can learn about other potential forms of life just by discovering that there is life somewhere else. planet. to suggest that you believe there is life, I do, I mean, you have liquid water because I don't know how many, you know, 500 or 1 billion years on Earth, that was enough to create life, so you know, the assumption is that it doesn't.

It's like that. something unique, you know it well, I mean the scientific hypothesis is that you run enough times it will surely come back to life in other circumstances dr. derek muller, we really appreciate you being here youtube creator with the veritasium channel, we know you have two one and a half week old son, uh, your wife is holding on. There are very few things she could give up, but this lunch is one of them. Thank you very much for doing it. Take a selfie with our full-size rover here. It definitely reads very well, thank you very much.

There has been a lot of anticipation from NASA teams leading up to this launch, but some won't be able to fully celebrate until the rover has safely landed on Mars in seven months. Rachel, you are there. The Mars mission team at JPL in California, how are they reacting to seeing Mars 2020 take off? Well, it's been a pretty hectic morning with the earthquake, but you could feel the energy building in the room in the run up to the launch and now I'm with bobby braun, director of planetary science at jpl, bobby now that we've started our journey to Mars, can you tell me how you feel?

This is a good day. We are all very excited. And to start. this way and continue on our way uh after all this work that the team has been through uh it's really really fantastic, that's great now, what is it now? Perseverance is off the launch pad, what are your next steps? Yeah, well, we're almost on the road. on the way to Mars, so to speak, the launch vehicle has worked very well so far, our partners at ula are just fantastic and we are very happy to work with them and to have them give us this boost so far, but we still have to do another burn.

From our upper stage we have to go through the night side or the shadow of the earth comes out the other side and find the sun and turn it on and then make contact with the spaceship and once we do that we will really be on our way. To Mars we will have a securely powered spacecraft that we can communicate with and our journey will truly begin. We look forward to it. Thanks Bobby now Daryl, as Bobby mentioned, there is excitement here in the room as the team looks towards the second. Centauro burns up, but before we get to that, let's learn more about the science aboard this rover.

Well, thank you Rachel. As you mentioned, there are numerous scientific studies and technological demonstrations on Perseverance, some of which are directly preparing us to one day send humans to Mars. one in particular is called moxie jeff shihai from the science and technology mission directorate joins us now to explain and he's here with us, you know it well, you know sometimes you know it, although yeah, thank you for making the adjustment there , so jeff, this is amazing. piece of technology here, this moxie, so tell us what it is and why it's important. Well, moxie means Mars Oxygen Institute resource utilization experiment, that's a little complicated, so we took some letters from there and just called it moxie and I think.

The name moxie has a certain type of attitude that is appropriate for this ambitious mission to Mars, but what in situ resource utilization is is using the resources we find at a destination to produce useful products and, therefore, what moxie is going to do is absorb the atmosphere of Mars, which is mainly carbon dioxide and produces pure oxygen, oxygen is a product that we can use in our exploration efforts, so moxie is the first resource utilization experiment in located on another planet. What about that? That's why it's so important if we can. produce things we need at the destination, we don't have to load them into a launch vehicle, launch them from the surface to the earth, push them to the destination and land them on Mars or the Moon, saving incredible weight and fuel resources to use them. those that are there and in place, that's right, it took a lot of courage what were some of the biggest challenges in developing the technology, designing it, developing it, building it well, the team that produced the hardware that we just saw, that was launched on the way. to Mars they certainly had courage because they had overcome many challenges along the way.

When you start developing new technologies, you're working in a lab and you have all the space you need, you can usually build it big and heavy because you're not trying to make it look pretty, you're just trying to make it work and you have all the energy you need. you need and can control the thermal environment and you can have teams of people come in and take it away. and fix it when it breaks and all that, but then you can probably see where I'm going with this when you get to the point where it's time to fly that hardware to test it in the space or planetary environment. surface, then the rubber really hits the road in terms of engineering and that's where teams of engineers come into play and develop smart solutions to implement the process that was developed in the laboratory and package it for space flight, so Moxieso out. very thick, you could do what we're doing on Earth, we just go in and with parachutes, if there weren't any, you could do, you know what we do on the moon, when on Mars you have to do both on top of each other? which makes it ten times harder than either of the other two and that's what makes it so difficult.

You have dedicated a large part of your life to science and I know that the other day you were asked during a press conference: do you know why another rover? and you gave a pretty passionate answer: why is this rover important in your mind to the work that so many people are doing in science? So it's really kind of the key to a whole host of new research that we're doing that focuses on a question that for thousands of years philosophers have asked, scientists have asked, and we're ready to answer it with the tools of science. science, what's the way to get reliable answers and that is: is there life out there?

For 20 years we have learned. about the environment on Mars and we're ready to ask that now and the way we're doing it is with this rover, so it's really for the first time in decades the first astrobiology mission that we're ready for and it will be the next one. . step and of course other ones come, you know, dragonfly, yeah, we're already thinking about other missions that we want to, of course, go to Enceladus in Europe, you know, and really learn about life there too, so, it's incredible. first in that sense and whether there is life there or not, that will be the answer that we are looking for in these places, yes, exactly, yes, and that's why we want to ask a question on social media, yes, if that's okay with you, absolutely OK.

We have a Twitter question: What's the key difference between NASA's previous Mars rover missions, like Spirit Opportunity Curiosity and Perseverance Rover? is that we decided to put the instruments on Perseverance, the best geology instruments so that we can find the right samples and we decided not to put a chemistry laboratory on it, so we don't know which one yet and what we are going to do. What we are doing is we are actually collecting the samples that we are going to take to the best laboratories that are available to humanity, which are laboratories around the world and that is the choice here and, of course, do what we have to do. another novelty, which is humanity's first round trip to another planet and that is what makes it different.

We have more to do with the launch operation, but real quick, how did you feel about that launch? Oh, I loved it, it's like making a hole in the sky. true, it really is to leave the cosmic coast, our earth, and wait there in the cosmic ocean. I just love it every time it does me good. Alright, Dr. Thomas Zurbukin, thank you for joining us. We appreciate you being here to explain it all. The science and the excitement that is emerging. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Now we've spoken with scientists and engineers and shared mission highlights and technology demonstrations that are critical to the Perseverance rover, and friends, we have much more to share.

Mars Perseverance has been flying in space for more than half an hour. Now back to Joshua and Mick to recap the flight so far and tell us what's next. Hey, thanks, yeah, as you're seeing on the screen, that's it again. the animation of the centaur moving around the Earth in orbit around the Earth and you can see it there as I mentioned the animation is driven by real telemetry data um Mick how was the report that came in from the first burn and after our coastal phase? From what we heard from Jesse González and the engineering team, everything so far has been nominal.

Centauro has been working well. All the break-in shots have gone very well, which keeps the fuel that is still in the tank where it needs to be while we. prepare to fire the main engine, start two for that second firing, which is very important to get up to our speed and get into that transfer orbit to Mars, yes, that will be ready in just a few minutes, but I think we're going to actually send you back to our main desk to listen oh sorry they're keeping me uh we're going to hang out here uh so come on so we'll talk about uh c3 meg this is something we talked about and it has to do with the energy to leave the Earth and go somewhere else we're talking about having to reach speeds in excess of 25,000 miles per hour, that's the escape velocity from the Earth, yeah, so c3 is basically the technical term we use in the aerospace industry to refer to the speed we need to get the vehicle to where it needs to be, so as you said, we got that little over two million pounds of thrust that we left Earth with this morning with those powerful four solids in the domineering.

I still like that Tory Bruno thing. I'm going to take that from Tory, but we came out here and entered the park orbit with the proper speed that we needed and then of course this second burn is very important for the speed that we need to get the transfer. amazing orbit, so the dominator made a hole in the sky like Dr. Zurbukin said, uh, so we'll send you back now to the main desk and we'll be back with you in just a minute to catch that second burn, Daryl, It's okay, thank you very much. So much for Joshua to join us now to talk about how special these missions are.

This is Dr. Michael Watkins. He is the director of the jet propulsion laboratory in California, which planned Perseverance's mission to Mars. That is my center. Thanks for joining us, Dr. Watkins. many interesting questions for you, why are missions to Mars unique? Well, you know, I think they're unique for two reasons and one is that it's just Mars, you know, it's been in our imaginations for centuries, you know, it's a place that looks similar. the earth looks like it could be our home, it looked like it was once the home of what could have been life and the fact that we can get there, we can get there every two years and we can send missions and we can build on those missions and you know , you can learn from your mistakes, you can learn from your successes, one of the things I like to joke about is that we say perseverance looks like curiosity, but the people who built them are the same way, they look even more like a child, so, you know, a lot of our people worked on Mars Pathfinder, they worked on spiritual opportunity, um, they worked on curiosity and now perseverance, and you know that story, that group of people.

They are just world leaders and that is why we are successful. You oversee the jet propulsion laboratory in California and do incredibly complex work. Why are these robotic missions so difficult? You know they are difficult because you can't. To really see what's going on, you can't use your human responses, right? You know you're used to driving your car and seeing what happens and you know you turn the wheel in this case, you know we have to use tilde rover, but we have to prepare the rover to do a lot of those things on its own, so we have We have to understand Mars, we have to understand how the rover works and we have to put all that together into a machine that can work. pretty much without us, so we talk to him once a day and tell him how we are and we go there and do these experiments and then he has to do that, so you know we give him his intention, but then he has to do all those activities on its own and that's a challenge and the further you get from the earth the harder it is, so you go out to Saturn, you get to Europa, you get further and further and it gets harder and harder.

Really quick, one question to finish. You've been in contact with the JPL people on air. There was an earthquake that developed. It was magnitude 3.9. How's everybody? How is your team? They are doing very well. You know our view was just Pasadena. Earth is excited to go to Mars, so it was a very small earthquake. We have them a lot in California. Well, you know, maybe they're like hurricanes here or something, but tropical storms here, but it was a very, very minor event. and everything is fine and uh we were on our way to Mars okay so a little rumble here in Florida a little rumble in California works great Mike Watkins.

Thank you so much. We appreciate you joining us on the broadcast. It's a pleasure, thank you sir. Great, we'll have that conversation. Soon we will have a conversation with Zena Carmen. Yes, yes, she is very excited. That's how it is. Yes, on the other side of burning centaurs and separating spacecraft, we'll also highlight six major technologies that NASA will focus on over the next decade. including the critical power needs for such missions, but with that let's turn our attention to the next operational steps, joshua, are you there? Yes, we are here and we are excited. We have a pre-start call for fuel that just arrived.

We are preparing. to hear the call for this second firing of that centaur rl10 engine again, explain what this second firing is for, so as we talked about before, the second firing is really to get that speed as we head into that transfer orbit of the right centaur on Mars 2020. We will head into that solar orbit on its way with the appropriate speed, then we will prepare to separate March 2020 on its way and I hear that the settlement is done and we have the maintenance main engine start up there, We're awesome and Again, that animation is powered by real telemetry data coming from that rocket, so it's a phenomenal sign again.

I think it's difficult with these images. Perspective and scale are so important that this vehicle is in Earth orbit, it's not close to anything, so you can. I don't see the acceleration of what's happening right now, but for eight minutes it will pick up speed, yes, this is the burn that actually gets us moving in the direction that we need to go at that fast speed that we need to get out of our park the orbit and point our head towards Mars, of course Centauro and March 2020 are still together with them, so we hear everything seems nominal on this fire so far, the main engine start was good and the firing is going well . nominal as we see in the animation fantastic uh so this is rocket science and it's not easy actually we want to bring him in now we have a special guest this is denton dr denton gibson excuse me uh he is a rocket scientist his official title is senior senior systems engineer vehicles uh denton how are you?

I'm fine thanks for having me, yes, did you enjoy it? You have to see this one today. Oh yeah, and today was a beautiful release. Yes, nice sunrise. Hey, tell us about your role with LSP. I wasn't making things up when I said you're a rocket scientist, but what exactly do you do? As our role at LSP as a vehicle systems engineer, we are the engineering team leader for many rockets on which we launch our science missions and are responsible for NASA's oversight and understanding of these launch vehicles, that It's amazing and I know it. In the past you've supported a variety of vehicles tell us a little bit about the vehicles that you've supported and those that you're focused on today yeah so some of the vehicles that I've supported in the past are the delta ii which was a very strong workforce. time for our science missions as well as Pegasus and Taurus, slash minnesota minotaur c and right now I've been mainly focused on the fog falcon 9 and the heavy yeah amazing um so obviously I'm not focused on the atlas v, but yes a lot. from that experience and the process is the same i want to take a moment to pause and say that denton is there in the ae hangar, that's the NASA launch services programs hangar that they are very proud of, we call it the telemetry center of the universe, that's where today's data is flowing, but I also wanted to ask you if the process is the same for all of these vehicles when we talk about telemetry and these types of processes of going from Earth to Mars.

Does the Falcon 9 experience translate to atlas or are they? They are completely separated, so the process for many of these launch vehicles is the same, while you send stages to the launch site and assemble the launch vehicles in stages, in that sense, they say there are a lot of differences between launch vehicles. vehicles that may change that process a little bit, but overall the processes are the same, yeah, and Joshua was going to say Denton, I work with Denton quite a bit over the years and he, you know, talks about the different vehicles that has worked. but Denton is one of my senior vehicle engineers at LSP and although he doesn't fully support Atlas 5 today, he has experience with Atlas 5 and as he said things are very similar so using his experience we can train and bringing in new generation of engineers and Denton has been a big part of that to allow us to grow our bank, if you want, start working with business partners, yeah, cool, so tell us a little bit about what that entails, what's going on behind the scenes. scene, what is therocket. science of going from Earth to Mars, this maneuver to enter solar orbit, yes, a lot of the things that happen behind the scenes are a lot of analysis work done by our analysis teams, I mean, it's months and months of analysis .

It was done based on orbit insertion and launch vehicle performance. A lot of modeling and simulations were done to get to this point where we can transfer from Earth orbit to solar orbit. Awesome and obviously you are a rocket. scientist, that's for a lot of people, it's like the pinnacle, it's like, hey, I want to be a rocket scientist. So where do you go from here in your career? Because obviously, I'm sure there are a lot of things you'd like to go to. and achieve it so you know that from here one of the best things about this job in the landscape services program is working well on the launch.

I mean, who doesn't love pitching and who doesn't work on pitching? Yes, we love you and I love the excitement of this morning, don't you? Couldn't we see it? That's what it's all about, of course, so you know, one of the ideal jobs to be a launch manager because you work every lunch, I mean, it's great, no, yeah. that is true and I guess in some cases it is correct to say that you make the decisions or the responsibility falls on you or how would you say I would say that the responsibility falls on the launch manager like today We speak well, Omar Báez is our manager launch for March 2020 and you had to get the team together and make sure everything is ready to go so the buck stops right there at today's launch and as Denton says, I think there are a lot of people.

That would love that job and Denton is definitely considering the next step, so I guess we should let Omar and his pitching assistant, Tim Dunn, know, yeah, there you go, Dr. Gibson, Dr. Gibson, awesome, well, Dr. Gibson, before we let you go. Give us a very quick snapshot. I know you have a mission later this year. What are you working on? So we're supporting the team on an upcoming release, so we're helping the commercial team with that as well as 10.06 as far as the lsp missions, um, that's coming later this year, so we're excited about that Yes, it will continue, dr. gibson, I appreciate it, thank you, uh, and I want to take a special moment in the commercial team note, yeah, to comment. we have a big day ahead of us, yes depending on the weather there is a tropical system that could come into the mix here but we have a tropical system that could create some problems otherwise we have Bob and Doug from demo2.

We will return home on August 2nd. Yes, I was going to say that Joshua is important to us. Also at LSP Denton was my leader, uh vsc, along with a few others that are in the group that worked on that mission with the commercial team program, so it's really important for us to be able to support other programs within the agency to make these things happen as we launch March 2020 today, which is another step in getting humans to Mars. a big step off American soil, yes, it was a big step for us, yes, so let's talk about that very briefly with lsp, obviously, Denton, I appreciate him and his contribution, and you work on the commercial team, but You also support Artemis, who is a crazy person.

He is also part of that path to taking humans to Mars one day. Artemis is about learning to live on the Moon to maintain a presence there with eyes on Mars. So how does LSP even support Artemis? Yes, one of the things that exists is the deep entry program. Space logistics is doing a lot of work on that, so LSP is working to support Gateway and help them work with the commercial partners that provide the rockets for those types of missions that exist and future things, one of the good things about working with the launch services program is we work with all of our commercial partners, the spacex united launch alliance, uh, northrop grumman space systems and of course some new stuff, you may have heard right, it's a growing origin, yeah , it is definitely a growing field. in the aerospace industry and LSP is proud to work with those business partners to figure out what we can do for NASA and the country.

Awesome, yes it is an exciting time for spaceflight, the commercial spaceflight industry is booming, there are always new things happening, if you keep an eye on the news you will see new things. We are learning now that the engine shut down here should happen momentarily. Once we see that happen, we'll have about, I think, five minutes left until we actually see the spacecraft separation happening, so we'll stay with you through all of that, but we just want to give you a preview. of that, hopefully, on the screen here you should see the engine off and that's completely expected, it's nominal operation. we'll hear from jesse gonzalez who is looking at the launch vehicle telemetry and seeing the animation there so let's listen to jesse here and there is the call and there is the animation again uh modified based on zero shutdown parameters let's talk about communication for a minute because it's not an automatic thing to just send information to Earth and make it usable, so how can we communicate not only during launch but on the way to Mars and then once we're on Mars?

Yeah, so the important thing This morning is when we take it off from Complex 41 here, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. We had ground stations that observed the launch vehicle and tracked it all the way to provide data once we entered orbit after stage separation. You heard a call for TDRS, the telemetry network that NASA owns, which by the way, is also used for the ISS and hopefully will be used for the landing with Doug, and yeah, so taking off today was great because we were able to. Deconflicting part of the right to use TDRS, but TDRS is very important to us to be able to get the launch vehicle telemetry to Earth here and then, of course, when Mars 2020 separates and heads to Mars, then JPL.

The team will take advantage of NASA's long-existing deep space network to be able to transmit commands and data back and forth to Mars in 2020, so it takes a lot of people to work with those and those tdrs and the deep space network. They are very important not only for scientific missions but also for human spaceflight, yes, and I think the coordination of that is something that people don't have the opportunity to understand much because, as you said, we are using TDRS for the return of the crew, we use TDRS. For the space station and the TDRS it's not an unlimited resource, we have a good number of TDRS satellites in orbit that help us do these things, but it is a coordination effort around the world because we even have ground stations in Australia, I think, where are all ours?

Ground Stations Even we have ground stations everywhere, not just here in the United States, on the west coast and the east coast, but then you get to the South Africa area, Australia, you said we have several ground stations that pick up different things for the missions, but, of course, in TDR orbit. and the deep space network are very important and as you said there is not an unlimited amount of resources in the tdrs network so we have to coordinate those things within the NASA agency and with our commercial partners when they are used for our launches and Again, that's another part of what NASA does as an agency, yeah, so in that sense, I think around the world today, this spacecraft is roughly over the southern Indian Ocean, so that's just Think about how fast we are moving.

Just the wonderful world of space flight is hard to put into words sometimes, like we're literally flying around the Earth and we're already halfway there, so I want to talk a little bit more about planetary protection, I know we have heard about. that a little bit of uh about how they're working to protect Mars from contamination, so to speak, by just putting things there that we don't want and we have to consider that or ula has to consider that when they fly to Mars and deliver the spacecraft yeah, it's a combined team ula jpl lsp had to look at that uh for uh when we prepare for spacecraft separation here in about a minute, one of the things we talked about before is that centaur and march 2020 are on the same path to Mars right now, so once we separate Centaur, the sea will be able to maneuver what we call a control and contamination evasion maneuver and then it will shoot down what's left of the thrusters in its tank and by doing that, we've now put Centaur on a different route so it can not intercept Mars or interfere with Mars 2020 at all for the next 50 years or so, yes, and that would require a lot of work on the part of the JPL team and the launch team to make sure that happens, so again, another planetary protection maneuver that had to be carried out. must be done, yes, and I understand from the telemetry experts at LSP that this rocket actually after the second burn is not aimed directly at Mars for that reason, it is actually slightly outside of Mars and therefore the Perseverance March 2020 will be redirected slightly, we are not.

Talking about over seven months, a little difference here makes a big difference later on absolutely and josh, we heard jesse tell us that the centaur is turning, this is the maneuver just before spacecraft separation, where we enter a light paper. stable model front tank pressure stability uh very good performance of the rcs system um and stable indications of the avionics systems as well so rcs there the reaction control system which is those little ones and the series of those little engines that you see shooting around of the spacecraft those are used for that in the flight operations, they need the taxiing activities as the mixture basically provides stability to the flight of Mars 2020 as we move forward, tell us actually and we have a successful separation of Mars 2020 with the Perseverance rover, here we come, incredible.

We got a good applause, that's a great moment. We hope to get some live video of that. Due to delays in communicating with things in space, we don't have it right now. We hope to have it. to see that here in a few minutes um and we'll bring it to you if we do uh but tell us about the separation maneuver because the device is actually very simple it's a separation clamp that we'll talk about in a minute, but as you see on your screen right now the mission director center where Omar Baez and the team are and Josh, you and I joked about this a little bit before, but with the pandemic and everything that's going on, the teams have done a great job. normally separating the c20 spacecraft with the perseverance rover, the centaur will now perform its standard propellant purge sequence to inert the vehicle and complete today's flight after completing its uh c-cam avoidance maneuver.

This will conclude today's commentary on the Mars 2020 mission. This is an Atlas Light commentary log out, so that's the end of ula's work for jesse jesse gonzalez did a great job with ula's sworn commentary, but what was saying about the mission director center is that normally we would see a lot of applause, a lot of who paul and a lot of highs. high five handshakes, yes, but with the pandemic and everything else, people are staying at a distance taking the guidelines seriously and getting into this, so we saw a lot of high fives in the air, yes, absolutely, that It doesn't take away from how excited the team is.

We've worked so hard to get to this point and to see the spaceships separating is incredible, so yeah, but again, and on top of everything, 2020 was like there was an earthquake here, so we just did it like we were. . They're most of the way there, they're not there yet, yes, as you heard Omar earlier in the broadcast say that many of us when we started this, when the pandemic started, we thought Mars 2020 could be Mars 2022, but Mr. Bridenstine, The NASA. The agency decided to move forward. The teams found ways to do this, as we heard they were disciplined, they were focused, they were brave and all of that played out today with a successful launch at 750 and now the separation of the Mars 2020 spacecraft, perseverance and ingenuity on their path to the railroad Hey, let's wait for the acquisition to say stay with us, but real quick, Nick, tell us very, very quickly about this mechanism because we make fun of it, we make fun of it, yeah, how did these things get separated?

So the separation system is called The Marmon Clamp Band was actually previously designed by Karl Marx, one of Mark's brothers, with a very simple design, but it has some spring systems that, once the signal is sent and the bolts release the clamp band, the springs basically give enough force to push the spacecraft from the front of thevehicle is amazing and again hopefully we'll see that video here momentarily, but for now we'll send it back to you and we'll review it one last time in a moment with the folks here at asoc uh. but daryl, again, thanks and great job to both joshua and mick.

It's always great to see mick explain that springs are what get us to Mars, so we've got our second burn going that we've been flying through. Just about an hour in and as you just saw, the spacecraft separation went well and that's fantastic, now we can say that Perseverance is officially on its way to Mars, what a beautiful thought that is and while NASA has been tracking the spacecraft since its launch with its tracking and data relay satellite system I know that the mission control team at JPL is focusing its attention on the next milestone and that is ensuring that the communication antenna array known as the deep space network or dsn begins to receive a signal from the spacecraft flying the Perseverance rover. to Mars we expect to see the teams acquire the signal around 9:14 Eastern Time, although as you saw, the spacecraft separation occurred in the shadow of the Earth and out of the system's line of sight, so This could take a little longer than estimated.

Okay, finding life on Mars won't be as easy as you might think and we talked a little about that here to talk about that and more is NASA astronaut xena cardman xena is here to join us and we're so glad you're here thank you for taking the time first of all your reaction to that launch wow every time it takes my breath away, I had actually never seen a launch before until I got this job as an astronaut and now I am very lucky to have seen three and every time it makes me feel a lot of emotion and he talks to me about it, I mean, he got up quickly, so while you were looking at him you felt the noise he made, yes, first you see him get up and then.

You feel the rumble as the sound travels towards you and you can really feel it in your chest. It's incredible, very good, very good, talking about astrobiology. Now you have an amazing experience. You've looked for signs of life in some of the most extreme environments on earth the Antarctic the Arctic um so you're used to looking for these biosignatures what do you think about this rover looking for signs of life? Yes, you know we have a lot of experience looking for signs of life in unusual places. environments here on Earth, so if you take a look at Mars today it is very cold and very dry and we have some places on Earth that are actually very similar, places like Antarctica or the deserts, but if you want to look for signs of life ancient life that existed billions of years ago perhaps when Mars looked much more like Earth today, you have to know what signs of life they left in the rock record because the microorganisms are very small and very soft, so they don't leave a fossil. the same way a dinosaur would leave a bone or a footprint, so instead we use these chemical signatures.

Daryl's dreams were shattered again. We told you there won't be dinosaur bones there moving around, but yes, so why do we have to go to the moon first? We are going to Mars, that is a very good question because we have been to the Moon, but we have not been to the Moon to stay. We don't really know how to live off Earth on another planetary body and we really need to. figuring out how to use resources, use tools, especially if we want to do geology on Mars, the tools that we use here on Earth will look pretty similar, but they may not work the same way and because the round trip to Mars is much longer than the round trip to the moon when we go we want to do it well, very well and uh, how do you like that rover behind you?

Oh my gosh, I love it, yeah, it's great, hey, I want to ask you some social questions, uh, now you're. are some of our audience that have been watching very well, we appreciate you doing that. Our first question comes to us through Facebook. Thomas asks if Perseverance will land to investigate the landing site for a future crewed mission to the same location. Yeah, you know, that's really it. Good question. I think one of the most interesting things about doing a mission to Mars is choosing where you're going to go because you know you can imagine planning a mission from Mars to Earth and whether something landed in Utah or in the ocean.

Your view of Earth could be quite different, so one possible approach is to take a human mission and return to somewhere these rovers have already been or maybe we decide to explore somewhere new. I have no idea yet, but I can't wait. To find out it seems incredible, we have another question on Huda's Twitter social media. Do you think that in a few years we will be able to send astronauts to Mars safely if we can send a rover-like Perseverance? Mars in a safe and surprisingly planned way. I hope we don't go until it's safe for humans and we won't go until it's a round trip, but actually part of this mission, of course, is a round trip, so we'll do it. eventually you'll learn how to send a rocket to Mars and then get something off Mars and back fine have doubts, okay, thanks now, as you can imagine, there are many systems to develop and test as we prepare to send humans to Mars, as you just heard, here now are six technological disciplines that are fundamental to the success of our explorations future, so NASA's first Mars rover was powered by solar energy, but dust storms caused problems by blocking much-needed sunlight, so NASA upgraded to nuclear batteries provided by the Department of Energy and now joining us as the undersecretary of the nuclear energy office Dr.

Rita Barnwall thank you very much for being here. Excellent, thank you for inviting me. It is a pleasure to be here. How did you enjoy the launch? It was incredible, absolutely incredible, so I'm very lucky to be able to be here and be invited to see it. I'm just dizzy, no, no, it was the first one and what did you feel when you were? You could literally feel yeah, the launch, so it was um, it was very exciting, very good, so it's really interesting when I watched this segment. I was fascinated by the whole nuclear part.

This is right in your wheelhouse, so explain to me how the energy department got into the business of making nuclear batteries for space exploration. So space exploration requires energy sources for uh long duration missions that we need for this type of activity so that heat and electricity are provided to spacecraft and scientific instruments and nuclear power can certainly provide that energy. One source is the radioisotope energy system that is part of that. rps is the radioisotope thermoelectric generator and rtg, I know it's very powerful, but you have a decoder ring, so I hope you're okay there, a space nuclear power, but it's a space nuclear power system that converts heat into electricity.

With no moving parts, RPS work converts heat from the natural decay of radioisotope materials into electricity and that's what we have in the rover that was just launched this morning. It consists of two main elements, a heat source that mainly contains a radioisotope fuel. Plutonium-238 and solid-state thermocouples that convert thermal energy from plutonium decay into electricity developed several generations of space nuclear power systems that can be used to supply electricity and use excess heat for a variety of other space applications. . It is called multi-mission RTG and was designed with the flexibility to be operated on planetary bodies with atmospheres like those of Mars, as well as in the vacuum of space.

The longevity of that battery is surprising. Yes, I heard it could last. Up to 14 years, will it really last longer than the duration it can? In fact, at this point it was 17 years, three years here and then 14 years on the mission itself, so we are very excited about that is one of the benefits. to power this mission with nuclear power the rps that currently power voyager 1 and 2 um that are exploring the edges of our solar system are also being powered by an rps that has lasted 43 years and yes, yes, a long time, that's a For a lot of time the mm rtg is essentially a nuclear battery like you said and it contains only 10.6 pounds of plutonium dioxide fuel and provides 2000 watts of thermal power.

It's similar, the material used in this is similar to what was used in the two Viking spaceships that landed on Mars in 1976. Wow, this technology has been around. A long time and it is well proven. Yes, Dr. Rita Berenwald. Thank you so much. Deputy Secretary of the Office of Nuclear Energy. Thanks for coming. We are very happy that you enjoyed the launch as well. Thanks for inviting me. You are welcome. Here's a statistic you may not know about missions to Mars. About half of them make it there. Imagine that, but now we know that the health of the Mars 2020 rocket is good because it is sending a stream of data to our telemetry powerhouse here. in the cape now let's go back to joshua santora to learn more about that joshua yeah thanks daryl so we talked to dr. denton gibson, who is one of those who works behind the scenes, but there is a group of people who work behind the people behind the scenes. the scenes uh and jessica connor are one of those, she comes to us now from the same hangar to crazy hanger ae location jessica thanks for joining us hey, it's a pleasure to be here thank you very much for inviting me yeah uh so tell us what you do this for help do all of these activities and as Darryl mentioned, telemetry happens, what do you do?

What is your role for LSP? So I work as a mission communications engineer for LSP, that means I'm getting the video data and the voice. spacecraft requirements and then making sure that they can go ahead and perform these operations once they actually get to the pad phase Ed Joshua, I was just going to say Jessica is one of our magicians, you said behind the scenes within the services launch. program as engineers we depend on our people at ae to make sure that we get everything we need to do our evaluations as engineers to make everything possible there, yes, absolutely, so Jessica tells us a little bit about how to recover the data and then how it's used for the equipment, so while it's on the platform we go ahead and get that data through the umbilicals and then that continues and goes back to the engineers and they can provide information about the fleet based on the discussion that they get from the consoles and can you tell us how long you have been working on this mission?

People probably don't understand how much time goes behind the scenes to get these missions done, so I've been working for about After two and a half years on this mission, about two years from now, we start working with JPL to move forward and get those requirements and then we've been working with them since then to go ahead and get a processing video and also be able to get back to you. JPL being able to talk to headquarters and stuff like that is amazing, so what has been the biggest challenge for this mission? I know this mission has presented many unique challenges for all of our teams, but for you, where has that challenge been?

I have a lot of experience from different mission communications engineers from the past, so the most unique thing about this mission has been our treatment of covid and it's amazing what we've done to move forward and keep the control room safe for everyone. on the console and go ahead and launch this mission on time and successfully. Hey, listen, we did it. We have the data coming back. That means yes, I think that means you did your job very well today. I would say they did their job. Great Joshua, they found new ways as we talked to the launch team earlier.

They found new ways to do their things. The folks at Hangar Ae also found new ways to ensure the entire engineering team could perform their fleet knowledge assessments and support today's launch. So that team has done a great job, they really make us look good in engineering, so we appreciate all the work they do, jessica, yes, amazing, jessica, congratulations, job well done, thank you for joining us for this interview today. Thanks, very good, mick. uh things are pretty quiet now um and that's to be expected um because we're just waiting for signal acquisition uh the weather there is the estimate based on pre-launch data yeah right now we're in the shadow of this Earth , uh, so we are behind the Earth and we will come out of that at some point soon and then hopefully we will acquire that signal because there are some solar panels that have to work here, like thisthat I still don't do it yet.

I know time is the right word, but we are still anxious, yes, I would say we are anxious, we are still focused, since I like this, I like to refer to what Tori said before, very focused and disciplined, although it is nice . quiet right now we have had the separation of the spacecraft, which was a big milestone for the team, an exciting time for us at nasa ula jpl, the range and our united states space force family, but the team is still sitting at the console, they are still following their procedures. They are still doing everything that needs to be done while we wait for the acquisition signal.

Some of the things that are happening here behind us are the grounds security and everything here at the complex to make sure that we can get in safely and get the work done so yeah. There's still a lot of work going on, yes, and we'll send you back to Darrell because we need to sign up and talk to the people who are going to retrieve that data so Darrell can get in touch with one last thing. in just a few minutes, okay, thank you very much, signals every day on our cell phones and you can imagine driving out into the countryside and you are as far away from the nearest cell phone tower as possible and you look at yourself when you see a very faint bar.

The signal, as you mentioned, Mars is very far away, so you get a very weak signal, much less than a bar, and fortunately we have on the ground, from our deep space network, very large satellite dishes managed by Owl JPL that can detect that weak signal. signal, you're talking about a signal that is basically like an incandescent light bulb and is received from millions of miles, we have 70 meter antennas and 34 meter antennas, a 70 meter antenna is about the size. Give some context about the size of a 20-story building. very large systems that can detect that very weak signal and the deep space network also communicates with all of our other missions beyond the moon.

How far have we gone into space? Well, our Voyager missions are the furthest and fastest objects created by humans. They exist, Voyager 1 is almost 14 billion miles from Earth, it takes almost 20 hours in one way to communicate with it, so once again, you can think about that light bulb. Can you imagine turning on a light bulb or a light switch and that light takes 20 minutes? hours to reach your eyes and basically to communicate with Voyager, we send a command saying hello. It takes 20 hours to get there and every 20 hours to get a response from Voyager. It's very far away, fortunately, Mars is not that far away. very far away, as you mentioned, several million miles, not billions, uh, so it doesn't take 20 hours, but about seven minutes, so the situation is a little better there, so what does it take to add the Perseverance mission to the deep space network?

Well, it's a lot. of pre-launch work before launch we test with the launch vehicle we test with the spacecraft we test with the rover we test again and again to make sure that when it launches when the spacecraft separates when it lands on Mars we can be confident that it will be to establish a communication with us on Earth, that is very important, that we instill that confidence through testing and making sure that we have a lot of tests in advance and the reward comes when we see those fantastic images of all the aspirants from Mars, so a lot of tests are done from the beginning and a great team working on it is excellent.

Now, getting a signal acquisition is a very important moment. Can you tell us how it works and what we should expect to see for this mission? Yes, that is very important. important moment and sometimes you will see a spectrum graph that has a couple of wavy lines at the bottom and what you expect to see is a peak in the middle and that is what you call a carrier signal and the carrier signal is described as a carrier because it What it does brings the signal, transmits the signal to us, therefore we can see that signal and know that we are receiving data and basically we see the signal from the carrier, but after that we have to decode what the signal says and hopefully what we're seeing is this spaceship saying hey, I'm fine, I'm on my way to Mars and I'll see you there in a few more moments, so we're looking forward to seeing that. signal and then we will decode it and we will be able to get the health and safety of the spacecraft, but also what we will also keep an eye on is how to track it so that once we have the signal we lock on to it.

We will move our very large satellite dishes and, as the Earth rotates, we will track the spacecraft around the world. This is a global effort. We have our station in Canberra, Australia, Madrid, Spain and Goldstone, California, who will be part of this monitoring. As a spacecraft goes to Mars, it's a very exciting time and we hope to hear from Perseverance soon. Excellent, thanks Phillip. We are now just a couple of minutes away from the first opportunity. We'll have to see if Perseverance's signal is in the depths. The space network is on our screens, that moment brings us one step closer to Mars, but we have many other milestones to reach over the next seven months and I'm with Perseverance chief engineer Adam Stelzner who will tell us what awaits the rover Adam.

What should we expect to see next? Well, Raquel, we are after acquiring the signal. We have left the building. We are on our way to Mars. We are no longer in orbit around the Earth. What will happen next is that we will begin our cruise phase. It will be about seven months before we reach the red planet. We have a series of planned trajectory change maneuvers that we perform during the cruise to adjust our aim. In fact, our goal is to avoid Mars right now. We are on our way. general direction of Mars, but so that our centaur atlas that threw us in the direction of Mars does not run towards Mars, we are on a missing trajectory and I will make one that will point to our impact with the with.

The Martian surface in a few days, so we start monitoring the spacecraft, making sure it's healthy and happy, and modifying its trajectory so it's on target when we reach Mars. Great, thank you very much, Adam, and we're here right now. just a minute away from the acquisition signal, so let's pause for a moment and watch our teams at work hello, okay, it will be fine waiting for the signal acquisition indication these copies hmm initial acquisition radio science flight navigation go ahead now these copies now we have a sign acquisition, the roars are now of applause and cheers and it is an incredible moment and the years of blood, sweat and tears of every person who worked on this mission now come true as perseverance It's making its way to Mars now if we still have Adam here Adam i I want to know your reaction upon receiving the signal.

Well, Raquel, it's great to have the spacecraft somewhere safe and separated on its way to Mars. Navigation looks good. We're hearing from the spaceship. That was the only question. Actually, it's not a big question. question, but it's nice to have that confirmation that our launch process is complete, the vehicle is on its way to Mars, so the next chapter in the Perseverance mission can get off to a great start and what are you looking forward to next? Ideally, I'm looking forward to a very quiet and boring cruise to Mars as we prepare for the never boring and always stressful entry, descent, landing on February 18.

Great, thank you very much Adam and we hope you tune in to our coverage of the landing on February 18, 2021, Joshua Mick. Here at JPL we would like to thank you and the entire launch service program and teams at United Launch Alliance for all of your incredible work today and all of the work you do every day to make a launch like this possible. Meet Joshua. raquel uh congratulations to you and the team there obviously jpl uh I think Adam's response is kind of what you would expect from Adam hey check that box but we have a lot of work to do.

Yes, yes, I mean work here. Launch team it's an exciting day, yes we've done this. Our part is done, Adam and the team now have Mars 2020 underway and they also have a lot of work ahead of them and hopefully it will be a smooth seven months and they can get it done. Ready to go, but we are very excited to be able to do this for them as our JPL customer. I know Tory Bruno and the UA team are excited too and uh, I just can't be. More excited about how this went, it feels good. Hey, before we sign off today, we want to talk to NASA launch manager Omar Báez to get some insights from him.

Omar, can I give us your answer after seeing a successful process this morning? Okay then, um. About a minute ago we got the signal from the spacecraft, which means JPL's deep space network has locked onto the spacecraft, it's on its journey to Mars, everything seems to be going nominally for them, they'll be able to check out the spacecraft. Now, do that. The checks they have to do to learn how to fly that vehicle the way it wants to fly on its way to Mars are quite interesting. We separate them at about 25,000 miles per hour and it will take a couple of months. to get to the February 18 landing date that they're targeting, so we imparted an impressive amount of speed to them and that speed is our job as a launch services program and launch alliance united to give that spacecraft the heavy work now.

It's up to our partners at the jet propulsion laboratory to slow down when it breaks down, the parachutes slow them down in the atmosphere and extend that sky crane and land on Mars, so they have a lot of work to do. From now on, today's count was beautiful until the last 20 minutes. It started to get exciting with some of the resources. on the range with interruptions and then a surprise call from the spacecraft mission director saying we had a small earthquake in California in Pasadena that the people in the control room felt, but they never lost the signal and came back to me and told me they said We were ready to continue, we were able to lock in the time we were on after launch on time, perfect launch from what I could see visually here in the control room.

Oracle parameters seem dead. Our speed is dead, so we are. There is no turning back on our path to Mars, so good luck to the Mars 2020 team. It has been a pleasure to be a part of this. I have been with this traveling Mars community for as long as I have been a traveler and through spiritual opportunity and curiosity, so it is a pleasure to be with. Once again, I'm part of that little bit that becomes that club, that traveling car club on Mars and I just want to say that I'm very proud of this team.

This team has worked diligently to get here. It's hard enough to get to Mars. Let's add greed today, we're dealing with a small earthquake, the threat of a tropical storm heading in our direction, it's just immense pressure on the team and it's a huge relief to be able to have started that mission today on the first try. and with that um that closes the show for us, incredible, thank you very much to omar, I appreciate him and his words, obviously, a phenomenal effort from our five teams that we talked about, yes, um, so, from lsp, congratulations to this team , jpl, uh, congratulations to the US space force congratulations to ula thank you to ula for hosting us today and then to the department of energy um and a special thanks to a couple of groups, the red cc, yeah, and the jic, those were two teams that worked behind the scenes for over three years to prepare for a contingency with the mmrpg, that's right, they didn't have to do any of that work, which is what they wanted, that's what they had a great day , you had a great day, yes, everyone had a great day, so, mick, thank you.

Thank you too for joining me, Joshua, thank you for inviting me again. I've always loved doing this with you and again I'm excited about the mission to Mars, like Omar said, our prayers and good luck with the JPL team you have. There's a lot of work ahead and we're very excited to get you on track for a perfect launch into orbit today, so thanks again for having me. Yes, the countdown to Mars continues, that will be enough for us at the assoc. the launch of the mars 2020 mission with the perseverance rover daryl, again, very good, mick woltman and joshua santora, thank you both for the great work done by you and again congratulations to the launch services program team here at nasa for the big launch as well as United Launch Alliance is starting that and I have to congratulate you too, Dr.

Mu, you're with JPL, you've been working on this for seven years, yeah, congratulations, how do you feel? It's incredible to have this phase of the mission cemented now on time. Unbelievable, but like Adam said, there's a lot more to do, a lot of work to do, but you know your baby right in front of you is on the way to Mars. Is very good. Well, the engineers andNASA scientists have spent years designing as we told you we tested and built the Mars Perseverance rover, but we have also received help from several countries around the world, Norway, France and Spain, just to name a few, but also from space agencies European and Japanese.

Here now, it's a toast to everyone. from those who helped us get to Mars and helped the Perseverance rover prepare to fly. Congratulations on the successful launch of this fantastic new mission to the planet Mars. Congratulations on the great work despite all the obstructions said by scottish 19. I want to congratulate everyone. who made this mission possible so far, thank you all for the passion and commitment to make this epic a reality, which means my sincere congratulations to all the teams involved in this magnificent adventure, for which you have been rewarded with a beautiful launch and I hope we will have a safe cruise to Mars.

Very well done job so far. Let's keep going to school for all teams for a successful flight. Our international effort to reach Mars is more important now than ever before. This mission is confirmed when we work together. We can overcome incredible challenges and build a mission that truly deserves its name. Perseverance to persevere means insisting people to keep trying tirelessly and if we persevere we will succeed and that is why I think this is an appropriate name for this nation. Perseverance has just begun. the journey to make history in Mars exploration is the beginning of our collaboration knowledge to go to Mars but bring back samples the Mars sample return campaign and this will change our view of Mars forever Mars is an incredible place to explore because the Exploration is within the human being himself, nature Mars is essential to understand and know our solar system including our Earth we believe that we can contribute to scientific research and future mass exploration this mass exploration is of great global importance as it contributes to the search Of the humanities a home away from planet Earth, we need robotic precursor missions like Mars 2020 Perseverance to help us understand where we need to go and what we need to do when we get to Mars, but ultimately our goal as a globe is to put humans on the surface of Mars together, we are counting down tomorrow so let's persevere together, we are counting down to Mars, let's persevere and thank you very much to our international partners who just saw there, they did a fantastic job now before Let's let them go, we want to tell them. about a little tradition that JPL has where they did this, I guess after the launch or before the launch with some peanuts and Moo knows this well, yes, in fact, perseverance, a little baby, Percy, brought us some peanuts here to hand out , so let me tell you.

Some look there, it actually started with a landing event so rangers one through six didn't go as planned and then with ranger seven successfully landed on the moon and they were thinking what the difference was between rangers from one to six and seven and that It was these lucky peanuts the lucky peanuts and since then I guess they've been eating peanuts exactly every landing and now it launches well and now that we have ours in hand we're going to wait because we have a little more reading. to do, but we are ready to continue with our miseries, yes, thank you very much for watching NASA's launch coverage in March 2020.

Stay tuned to NASA TV and our social media channels for mission updates. Yes, coming up at 11:30 ET we will have a post-launch press conference right here on nasa tv, so stay tuned for that and of course the next big moment we've been talking about the landing of the Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars seven. In a few months that date is February 18, 2021. So for now we leave you the highlights of this morning's exciting takeoff, take care everyone and remember to keep looking up, applause, seven six five five four engine ignition two one zero zero relationship and liftoff as the countdown to Mars continues, humanity's perseverance launches the next generation of robotic explorers to the red planet and Atlas Tu has moved to closed-loop control, coming in third place.