Mars Gets Ready for Its Close-up

Overheard at National Geographic

National Geographic

Science, Society & Culture

4.5 • 10.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mars Gets Ready for Its Close-up Mars has fascinated Earthlings for millennia, ever since we looked skyward and found the red planet. Through telescopes, probes, and robots, scientists have gazed at its red rocks, craters, and canyons—and the latest rover, Perseverance, is poised to tell them much more about the planet’s past and present as sophisticated new cameras search for signs of ancient life. Join National Geographic writer Nadia Drake, NASA engineer Christina Hernandez and Mars Perseverance Principal Investigator Jim Bell for a behind-the-scenes look at how Perseverance will expose Mars in ways we’ve never seen before. For more information on this episode, visit nationalgeographic.com/overheard. Want More? Magazine subscribers can learn about the Mars Perseverance mission through a series of beautiful graphics, including those of the instruments that will help the rover search for traces of ancient life. You can also read Nadia Drake’s article on why people are so “dang obsessed” with Mars, an explainer on the history of Mars exploration and how artwork over several centuries has shown how people have imagined the red planet. There’s also an interactive graphic of the red planet you can play with to learn about how it might have evolved over the last 3.8 billion years. Also explore: Humans could make it to Mars one day, but for now, our AR experience may be as close as you can get. See through the Perseverance rover’s eyes and share your own selfie on Instagram. If you like what you hear and want to support more content like this, please consider a National Geographic subscription. Go to natgeo.com/exploremore to subscribe today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Yeah, I'm getting to go on a guided tour of Mars. This is so freaking cool.
0:11.9	You can see this spectacular panoramic landscape. This could be Canyonlands. This could be Death Valley.
0:21.3	What's the weather like in this section of Mars?
0:25.0	Yeah, the forecast for tomorrow is just like the forecast for yesterday in general.
0:30.3	And like the forecast has been every day for billions of years. The no chance of rain.
0:36.9	Tonight's temperature is going to dip down to maybe a minus 100 degrees Celsius,
0:41.1	minus 200 change Fahrenheit. But tomorrow it's going to be a balmy, maybe plus three Celsius.
0:49.4	That's planetary scientist Jim Bell. He's taking me on the most unusual guided tour I've ever
0:54.7	been on. Along Mars's gale crater, courtesy of images from the rover curiosity.
1:00.3	It's currently beaming back photos from the red planet.
1:06.7	The view is gorgeous. The color of the landscape reminds me of Petra, the ancient
1:11.7	St. Jordan and its beautiful rose colored sandstone. The sky looks like a silvery, very light blue,
1:18.5	but that's thanks to the photo white balancing. It's almost as if we were standing on the surface.
1:23.5	It does beautiful pictures I was talking about that we've taken from rovers and landers that
1:28.4	make it look like. Well, this would be a cool hike somewhere in the desert southwest, right?
1:32.9	Well, that's all wrong. I mean, it's you die in so many ways, so fast. If you're out there.
1:40.1	Not a tempting prospect, but that hasn't stopped humans from millennia from imagining
1:44.7	themselves or some other life form as living on the red planet. NASA's next mission to Mars hopes
1:50.6	to find out if life has ever been or can be possible there.
2:00.0	It's January 2021, and as I record this, the latest rover per surveillance is heading to Mars.
2:14.5	Those crunchy noises, they are the sounds recorded by a microphone aboard per surveillance,
2:19.3	picking up the word of the rover's thermal system as it hurdles through deep space at a speed
	...

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