Citation Needed - Mars Rovers

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

A Mars rover is a motor vehicle designed to travel on the surface of Mars. Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers: they examine more territory, they can be directed to interesting features, they can place themselves in sunny positions to weather winter months, and they can advance the knowledge of how to perform very remote robotic vehicle control. They serve a different purpose than orbital spacecraft like Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. A more recent development is the Mars helicopter. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

Oh, come on, it was a great movie. No, I agree, I'm just saying I had the most abrupt theatrical finale since the Lincoln assassination. I kind of cheated. Well, sure, but how cool was Hobie though. Oh, he's so fucking cool. Hey, guys, you ready to record? Hell yeah, man.

Oh, where's Eli? Yeah, so about that. You know how this week's episode is about Mars, Rovers. Uh-huh. And you know how NASA's latest rover has a microphone in it. Right. He tried to go to Mars to podcast from there this week. Is that what he did? Great so, yeah. And so he died of exposure on the Martian surface? Yeah. And so he died of exposure on the Martian surface. No, not exactly.

Did he blow up on the launch pad? No, no. He actually put a fish bowl on his head so he could, well, in his words, get used to wearing a space hat and that got stuck. So he suffocated in that? No, no. Reciasonable assumption. He actually became convinced that there was a height that he could fall from that would break

the bowl, but not harm him. Oh, so he fell to his death. Okay, no, no. See, he was dropping from this overpass and it turned out there was a truck coming at the exact moment. Oh, so he got hit by a truck. No, no, actually the truck, the truck break just in time, but it just so happened.

It was carrying this rare toxic. Tom, Tom. Yeah, Cecil. Did you write an ever escalating series of potential deaths for Eli as revenge for all the ways he killed you in the opening sketch. Oh, no comment. Cool. So why is he really off this week? He ripped his dick off while masturbating to his mom. That happened. I honestly, I feel like we should just let him have that one. Thank you. You did, though. Hello, and welcome. citation-eated.

Podcasts where you choose a subject, read a single article about our Wikipedia and pretend we are experts because this is the internet. That's how it works now. I'm Cecil and I'll be counting us down this week. But to get this thing off the ground, I'll leave my team of explosive experts so here to help launch this thing our snap, crackle and pop, Keith Tom M Tom Noah. Okay, you can just butter a marshmallow and eat it I don't know why I have to involve snap out of the pop of the point as a vehicle Crackle yeah, you know it's 45 you're not wrong. So everything crap

And the and the pops are because at 46 the eyes are starting to go. I can't always spot C and say anymore. I'm sure. Patrons, you are the ball of plutonium powering us every week. And if you'd like to learn how to melt down our hearts, be sure to stick around until the end of the show. And with that of the way, tell us, Tom, what person-place thing concept phenomenon or event we'll be talking about today. Today we were discussing Mars rovers a sea soul. Oh, hey, no, we moved from Bill Bryson to Mary Roach then. Is that? No, no, but I will lean on her heavily when I do my essay on space toilets. All right. Nice. So, so why did you pick this one? Well, because after your stars and exoplanets, uh, assay last week, I felt like I was in danger of losing my reputation

as the resident's face. And I, I didn't think of the space toilets idea until I saw you writing that Mary Roach bit. So I went with this. Okay, fair enough. Where is, uh, the history of Mars rovers begin? Well, it begins with a whole lot of failure. So the first attempt to land a rover on Mars came in 1962. The first successful attempt was in 1997. In the intervening 35 years, those motherfuckers were just crashing like Teslas. But in the defense of rocket scientists,

it's rocket science. It's our go-to example of incredibly hard shit, and Lenny Gunn Mars, incredibly hard shit. Ah, whatever, you go, what, up and to the fucking right. It's like the first one after you go up and to the right. Now, how hard could that possibly be? I know where it is. It's the first one.

The Tesla guy does. We would also not to be like you here. No one but like the easiest thing for the Rover to do is land. Oh, let me see if I can dissuade you. Now, so Mars was obviously our first target or among our first targets when we figured out a launch rockets, right? It had been sci-fi's go to planets as the genre's inception. Off a lot of educated people were pretty sure there was life on it. So within three years of sputnik successful orbit, Russia was already launched in spacecrafts at Mars, or at least they were blowing up spacecraft in Earth's atmosphere and failed attempts to launch it. First, their first three attempts failed to make it out of Earth's atmosphere. The fourth one got all the way into space and and and then blew up and and given that

track record. Nothing but that they decided in 1962 to try the first Mars lander. Needless to say it did not succeed. They managed to launch it without blowing it up, but it would be lander never made it out of low earth orbit. Okay. And this is why I'm not you know, because I now land correct. Right.

Land. So America, I'm glad that joke landed. Yeah. I felt like it blew up in low earth orbit, but no, no, no. So America joined the race in 1964, four years after the Soviet unions first failed attempt. Mariner three launched on November 5th of 1964, failed to separate from one of the boosters and died before it could reach low earth orbit, but less than a month later, NASA would launch Mariner four, which would make the first successful fly by of Mars about eight

months later. Probably not coincidentally, Russia also launched their sixth would be Mars mission about two days later, and though it did make it out of Earth's orbit this time, it also failed somewhere in route to Mars. So at this point, the success rate for making Mars missions work is one for eight. And that, and that by the way, is mostly the mission is just trying to snap a few pictures as you Korean past at 11,000 miles an hour. Look, I know you miss all the shots you don't take, but it starts adding up when the shots are billions of dollars a pop.

Yeah. I mean, shot the fuck up when, gratsky, what the fuck, man? Yeah. Also, you don't miss that. Like that's not, you just didn't spend billions a dollar. Yeah. It's better than missing. You might still have possession of a pop. Billion saved even a billion dollars. Yeah. It's better than missing. You might still have possession of a million saved as a billions earned.

There you go. So now, so would go on to launch two more successful Martian flybys in 1969. Kind of a banner year for NASA, really. And the Russians go on. Hey, there's more. And the Russians would go on to launch three more failures. So in 1971, after failing to even reach Mars on nine consecutive missions, the Soviets launched their most ambitious failure to date Mars too. It was a three-part mission that included an

orbiter, a lander, and a rover. And one of them actually worked. The orbiter marked the Soviet Union's first successful Mars mission. And it would have been the first spacecraft to ever orbit another planet. If the Americans hadn't launched Marinor 9 a couple weeks later on a little bit faster of a rocket, they actually made it there two weeks before Mars 2. On your left, you fucking communist learn a capitalism. A one armed guy on the bicycle again. Hey guys, what do you what do you call two successful Martian flybys?

What's up, Blair Gangers? I'm sorry, no, you were reading something. You can continue. Yeah, that's ain't a bit of a were reading something. You can continue. Yeah, that's right. I had a bit of a gobbling. No, first. Mariner 9 didn't include a lander or a rover, and technically neither did Mars 2. It contained two crashers.

But when their intended lander Rover combo fell helplessly to the Martian surface and exploded into Schrapnall, that marked the first time a man-made object ever touched the Martian surface, which is still pretty fucking cool. The Russians would also notch the first soft landing on Mars as well with Mars 3, which launched a few weeks after its prequel. Unfortunately, all that managed to do is transmit 70 lines of indistinct gray photograph before it shut off. Uh, I was like waiting for like 90s porn dial up. Right. Yeah.

Exactly. And your internet practice like, we pick up the time and just so close to the nipple. We're so close to the squint. I by

man, I don't know fuck. Let's get the magazine of the moon. That so all in all bars three transmitted from the Martian surface for 20 seconds. Needless to say, they did not manage to deploy their rover in that time frame. Earth is the solar system's like shitty hillbilly neighbor that keeps lighting off fireworks

and you find them the next day in your yard. Like where the worst. At least suck. So, the first thing? Cool. Probably. Yeah, probably. So the first truly successful landing on Mars

comes in July of 1976 with NASA's Viking 1. So yeah, kind of depressing to be reminded that I'm older than the surface exploration of Mars, but I am The Viking one lander was deployed from the Viking one orbiter on July 20th, 1976 And it would go on to transmit data for 2,245 days Quick terminology note on that by the way, that's 2,245 Mars days Mars days are about 37 minutes longer than our days. So you actually do have to specify

we don't even understand what you were talking about until now. Thank you. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So we'll put that reason when we talk interplanetary shit, we generally use the term souls to mean a day on the planet that we're talking about. The correct way to say that would be that Viking one transmitted for 2,245 souls. Yeah. Okay. No, that may be the accurate way to say it, but I promise nobody is going to say I'm going to say that way. No, I'm going to say. Thank you, Cecil. This, this fucking 50 50 with Eli off God damn it. Now, I know we got to exert our near majority. I'm definitely on the stupid team is what we're saying.

I hadn't weighed in yet. I'm on the other side of the street. It's days or it's nothing. So now, so when you consider the fact that we've been trying to do rovers pretty much that entire time, and the fact that we've made our first successful Martian landing when I was four months old, it's actually kind of weird that we wouldn't move on to and also add remote control car until I was old enough to drink. But that's how long it took

right now. That's mostly because NASA was obsessed with justifying the goddamn space shuttle program. But regardless, the first successful Mars rover doesn't show up in the story until 1997. I don't understand. Just put the rover on the first lander. Get a room and tape a camera on top. Why are we doing multiple trips? That's every reason what we have. That would be so mad about this. Yeah.

So now this first one was the sejur. It was named after famed abolitionist, Sejurna Truth, because NASA eventually realized that they were gonna have to name at least one of their things after a lady eventually So this little robot was 65 by 48 centimeters and about 30 centimeters high So and like a little bit too big to count as carry on luggage It had six wheels front and rear cameras and it's top was completely covered over in solar panels to provide most of its power. Okay, yeah, covered is a pretty strong word for something that's smaller than two feet

by two feet. I mean, like anything you put on the battle bot here would cover it. No, that's true. Yeah. And wouldn't it be called a Mars Dayer panel at that point? What's that? I guess importantly know what, Google eyes or no Google eyes.

No Google eyes, but they would learn their lesson eventually on that. Did they put Google eyes on one? No, but it's it's close. We get there. Yeah. So in a low ball strategy that's a bit of a recurring theme in Martian exploration,

Surjourner was originally slated to operate for seven souls and ended up chugging on for 83. In that time, it managed to travel all of about a hundred meters or 330 feet. So that sounds better. Yeah, no, so you're right, that's almost three times as many units. But yeah, we were cruising around Mars

at the breakneck speed of I calculated 0.00003 miles per hour or so. But it was still, it was that was a Martian man speed record. God damn it. It's like teaching your dad to play a video game and you're like, go to the right. Just, whoa, fucking go to the right. Stop. All those bricks are the same. They're all the same.

You're the same. It's the right. So one of the reasons. You're the same. It's the right. So one of the reasons it stayed so close to home, by the way, was that in order to keep it as small and light as it had to be, the engineers had to offload a ton of the work to the lander that deployed it. So, journalists antenna could only transmit a short distance. And then the lander, which was called the Mars Pathfinder, would amplify that signal and send it back to Earth.

In addition to that, the lander had all the meteorological equipment, so you needed that to know what kind of weather you were driving, so join our in. Unless we think everything about this motherfucker was coding edge technology, I have to point out that it measured the winds by taking a picture of a wind sock once every hour. It also noted the time by slightly shifting the camera to the side of the windstock so it could see the sundial on its own. And like 21 years later we finally got a spinny metal chicken up there to get a professional.

What do we do? No, Sirjourner's main objective was proof of concept. It was mostly there so we could figure out how to drive a vehicle on Mars. The plan was to eventually send much more sophisticated vehicles to the red planet, but before you do that, you definitely want some practical data regarding what does and doesn't work in terms of like wheel design and suspension and temperature tolerances, et cetera. It did some other basic science type stuff, but mostly it was driving around for the sake of driving around. Yeah, for those who contend that spending money on NASA is a waste, knowing that our first

mission to Mars was just cruise and about probably makes you feel stupid. No, I should say it's worth noting that the sugerter was built for $25 million. The entire mission, the lander, the development, launching it, no, cost under 200 million. Those are huge Trump golf trips. I mean, come on, that's the dead end. Right, those are huge sums of money in terms of everything except space exploration, but in terms of Mars missions, those are dirt cheap. See, this mission came during NASA's infamous

faster-better cheaper phase, which is often dried it as a logical contradiction, which it was, it was actually faster, worse cheaper. But it did allow us to drive a fucking microwave oven around Mars for a few months, for $175 million in three years development. Yeah, Daniel Goldins, the guy who did that, right? He took over NASA in 1992 and he was like, okay,

so everybody gather in. I'm noticing all these TGI Fridays are fucking crushing it. Yeah, so I was thinking FWC, I think some good game of it. But so next up in our timeline, we get the twins. A launched about a month apart in 2003, the Rover's spirit and opportunity would both successfully land on Mars in January of 2004, initiating what might be the most successful non-apolo mission in NASA's history. Originally lowballed at 90s souls or 92 earthes, spirit would go on to operate for over six years. More than 25 times its intended lifespan

and it would cover more than five miles during that time. But it was the Ben Johnson to Opportunity Shakespeare. Opportunity would outdo spirit in every way and go on to become in my estimation the most beloved non-f fictional machine in human history. There's success was also the first time the USA didn't destroy opportunity and break spirit. So what is it?

It's first man. I did. It did break spirit actually. Nothing. It was the most beloved fictional machine in human history. It was like a very specific. Oh, well, yeah. Sure.

Sure. Now, and which was probably based, honestly, on opportunity, at least to some degree, now, to be clear, the two landers were essentially identical. Opportunity just got lucky or along the way. Spirit landed first with opportunity, touching down three weeks later on the opposite side of the planet. They were significantly bigger than their predecessor. And I think a lot bigger than most people realize when they see pictures of them, they were 2.3 meters by 1. And I think a lot bigger than most people realize when they see pictures of them,

they were 2.3 meters by 1.6 meters and a meter and a half tall. That's basically a golf cart, right? And they were, they carried a fuck ton of scientific instruments and stuff, but in many ways, the most important feature were the googly eyes. These came in the form of stereoscopic cameras that were mounted on a big swiveling rod at the front of the machine

But it kind of looked like a little head with little eyes And so suddenly everybody thought of them as our goddamn robotic Martian space dogs and fell in love with them Okay, yeah, and if if we get them back from Mars we can repurpose them and then comfort ourselves by pretending that like making them into pets makes old people feel less lonely. Well, there you go. Yeah, exactly. You know, now, life's a journey. They, these were six-wheeled rovers and to maximize redundancy, each wheel had its own

motor. Their top speed was slightly over 0.1 mile per hour, though they normally traveled at about one fifth that speed. The dual missions had a long list of objectives, but most of them revolved around answering the question of whether Mars ever had liquid water, which they more or less successfully did. It did have water. Yeah, I found ice and salt and it made the first solar system's first Mars, Gerita, Mars. Mars, green.

Now, it's the spirit crapped out six years on. I got stuck. Is this modeled? Hang on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, circle. Now, spirit crapped out six years on when it got stuck in some Martian quicksand.

There was an iron sulfate deposit hidden under some normal looking soil. Apparently, that has very little cohesion so the wheels couldn't gain traction. It has to spend about two months trying to like wriggle back and forth to get it free, but eventually they gave up. They did what they could with the stationary platform while they could and formally ended the spirit mission on March 22nd, 2010. It's so sad. It's like watching our tax die in the never ending story. That's it. Yeah. I cried so much. I just some NASA dad like I told you we should have put a bag of cat litter in the trunk. Yeah, now you're gonna have to rock it back and forth. Rock it back and forth.

Right now try now. What? Opportunity which eventually earned the nickname oppie was so adorable for another eight years. Poppy was so adorable. That's adorable. Another eight years. It would go on to log the current record for distance traveled on Mars at 28.06 miles and in so doing, it would become such an ingrained part of American culture that when it finally succumbed to a Martian sandstorm in June of 2018 and cease transmitting, America would lose its goddamn fucking mind.

One journalist, when it's a come to sandstorm, did it wait for the beat to drop first? For. So my favorite part of this story is one journalist translated the last transmission data as, and keep in mind, it's sending ones and zeros, right? But this is his translation, quote, my battery is low and it's getting dark end quote, and the nation overreacted to the point that I thought we were gonna lower flags to half fucking massed over it.

Oh no! Well, I feel sufficiently ashamed, so while I raise my opportunity flag back to full mass, we'll take a little break for some apropos of nothing. Okay, look, with the severe setbacks in these missions. You mean like exploding in the atmosphere? We're scientists, Davis, we call them setbacks. Okay, sorry, setbacks. Right, right, thank you. Okay, anyway, as I was saying, with all these setbacks, setbacks,

we need to make sure that this mission to Mars is successful this time. Oh, don't worry, we will. This is the latest in high tech, and it will absolutely be a success, I guarantee it. Oh, all right, great, give is the latest in high tech and it will absolutely be a success I guarantee it. Oh, all right, great. Give me the rundown. Okay, so first, the shaft and the platform, we made it from carbon fiber, we abandoned the aluminum, the stuff is tougher and it's lighter. It's really sleek too. I'd like that.

Right, doesn't it look good? It looks great. Also, look here, we replaced the nylon cord with nano spring cord. Sorry, what now? Okay, it's really hard to get into, really complicated. But it basically has the same spring properties, it's just lighter and stronger. Oh, okay, well, yeah, that's amazing. Cool stuff. Okay, go. The firing mechanism.

We up the processing power in the onboard memory, and we added an artificial intelligence operating system. Okay, and I love the case with NASA, like stenciled on it. Did you have that like airbrush? It looks really good. It looks great, right? Yeah, no, it does look great.

It does look great. Now, does it perform like our other projects though? It's way more simple. Instead of building a rocket and letting it fail, we just put billions of dollars directly into this big carbon fiber bucket. The computer determines the exact moment to light it on fire, and then the nano springs on the catapult do the rest.

Oh, okay, can I do the countdown? Well, we're back and before we left we found out how fucking happy Noah was about disassembling Johnny V. So what happened next to heartless fucking monster? It's a really problematic movie. Alright, so like super, super bad. Oh yeah. So, to give you an idea of just how new we are to this Mars rover thing, we've discussed the first three successful Martian rovers so far. All the rest of them in this essay are currently operational.

Astrosk. In fact, there are actually more operational rovers on Mars right now than defunct ones unless you count the ones that Russia crashed into it. Okay, it's just like Mario Kart battle mode up there all the time. Yes. All right. Yeah, with balloons and everything. So, so let's start this half of the discussion with the curiosity rover that touched out on Mars in 2012. Now this thing's a fucking

car, right? Like if you hollowed it out of a scientific equipment, you, you, you, it's mounted on the chassis, there is room to put a family of four on this motherfucker and drive to grandma's house. So many fucking cup holders, right? This guy. So this guy is, it's 2.9 by 2.7 meters and 2.2 meters tall. 2.2 meters tall, the motherfucker could take a picture of the top of Heath's head. So I have to emphasize this for the metrically impaired audience members. There's so many other ways to describe that.

Whatever. So anything but metric, right? No, seven foot three inches. So this thing is fucking huge. And it weighs almost a ton. So if Mars curiosity, if it wanted to kill you, it's got the size to do it. Um, but at the top speed of 0.09 miles per hour, you're going to have to help it out a little.

You're going to want to be like me. Yeah. Just Mars Eli lying in front of it as it slow motion bumps into him and gently presses him to death like a murderous lover. It's a great. I would give you a minute for the visual on that one. Now obviously I just want us to all think about what Tom says right before he says murderous lover and that we now we know. So obviously you can't power something that big on solar power alone, right? So curiosity relies on what's called a radio isotope thermoelectric generator, because that term doesn't have the word nuclear in it, right?

So it's not a lot. Sounds exactly nuclear though. Right, yeah, so the curiosity is fueled by an 11 pound chunk of plutonium. And that's all it takes apparently to move 1900 pounds of science around a frozen wasteland for 11 years and counting. Oh no, granted that's only 750 pounds on Mars and it's for lurching than driving.

And granted we don't want cars driving around with plutonium fuel source, but I feel like it's a good chance to remind folks that we don't want to throw the baby out with the radioactive bath water when it comes to nuclear energy. More lurching than driving sounds like every single car ride with Eli driving. Like, everyone. Sure. Yeah. Honestly, though, some kid at NASA trying to drive stick for the first time on a plutonium reactor.

That sounds safer than Eli, if anything. Really? Yeah. So, so curiosity's mission was basically concerned with two things. Could Mars have ever had life on it in the past and could Mars ever have life on it in the future? Officially, the objectives were to determine whether Mars could have supported life in its early stages to study the climate and geology of Mars and to determine the role that water

played in the geological formations, but the real purpose was to help pave the way for future human exploration. Like what resources would the geology provide to human explorers? What kind of solar and cosmic radiation levels would they actually be exposed to? Is there a source of available water in or beneath the soil? That kind of shit. You know, it is comforting to know that we're spending untold millions of dollars driving radioactive ux around on Mars to see if we can live there someday since we've already decided we're definitely not going to fix shit here. It's a great truth man. 100% a whole big thing.

So a year into the mission, curiosity had determined that the Martian environment actually could have been hospitable to microbial life early on. So it moved on to the study of taffonomy, a branch of paleontology interested in nobody cares and I don't understand it. But let's face it. Because we can, it's plenty of reason to drive a fucking sedan around on Mars. Yes, absolutely. This is awesome. Existential spite is the most human fucking thing. And that's not how it's pretty great like right here. Now that brings us to NASA's latest effort, perseverance or Percy. Now, unfortunately, this one didn't keep up with the trend of scaling up in size that

we've seen so far, because if it did, we'd be like driving a small house around on Mars and that'd be fucking awesome. But you can't do that with a bowling ball of plutonium, right? So Percy is the same size as curiosity. In fact, in a lot of ways, it's the same machine as curiosity, the same dimension, same power system, same landing system, basically the same mission. There are some important tweaks to the design and it carries a much different payload of scientific equipment, but it's basically the same car doing the same thing.

But that's okay. And totally we're spending $2.2 billion on because it brought along an awesome little helicopter. That sounds like a tagline for Black Hawk down. That's, or Vietnam. I so it was either I get it, it was either bring the helicopter or just go there and hope you can find a recoon suit. So, right, yeah, exactly.

You don't do there's no guarantees. So, so Perseverance landed in 2021 with four main scientific objectives. Identify past environments that were capable of supporting microbial life, look for possible biosignatures in those environments, test oxygen production methods for possible human explorers, and collect Martian rock and regolith

for a possible sample return rocket in the future. So not exactly the same as curiosity, but not exactly different either, but that's not to say that the mission was redundant. NASA was able to build on what they'd learned from curiosity, to tailor experiments to the environment, and we actually do stand to learn a lot of new shit from Percy. That includes, by the way, what Mars sounds like. I honestly, I tried. I could not think of a single scientifically relevant reason to know that, but we do, and it's awesome. And by the way, it's public domain audio too, Cecil. All right, let me play it. Hold on a minute.

Let me see if you guys can hear it. It's a wind on Mars. Here we go. Can you hear that? Oh, shit. That sounds marshy. Right? The mars is I love this song. This is my favorite part.

Sounds a little roomy on Mars. I don't know. It's a lot of hiss. Yes. Is the wind going into the wrong side of the microphone? Maybe. Sounds like Eli Bosnick when he set his mic on like the blender. Yeah, right.

Yeah, exactly. But for all that's accomplishments, perseverance manages to get overshadowed by its much smaller companion ingenuity. Now, it gets, it's like it's hard to get a sense of the size of this thing because NASA didn't launch a banana with it for scale or anything. But ingenuity is a drone. It's got two counter rotating rotors that are about 1.2 meters across or about four feet. The actual fuselage below them is a little bit bigger than a lunch box.

And it became the first vehicle to ever make a powered flight on another planet on April 19th of 2021. This was a flight of about 39 seconds in which ingenuity took off vertically, hovered about three meters off the ground and then land. Okay. Okay, I feel like this is why all the aliens that very clearly came here from other galaxies didn't attack. They're just like felt bad. They were like, well, that's it. I was just to make sure it works. Since then then it's made another 50 flights and counting

Traveling a total of over seven miles and logging nearly 90 minutes of total flight time on Mars Now a lot of people might wonder what to point a flying a tiny drone around on Mars is and those people can go fuck themselves Who the fuck needs a reason for that? what's the reason for that? Jesus, exactly. That's so fun. Fuck no people. Yeah, but that's not to say that there aren't reasons. It's actually super useful as a scout for the larger rover, but it was mostly included

in the mission as proof of concept for future Mars exploration. As a potential spite. Yeah, well, yeah. Well, but also like there were legitimate questions about whether you could even fly a helicopter on a planet with an atmosphere as thin as the one on Mars. And there were huge fights at NASA for years about whether to include this in the mission. But ultimately, Mars copter was too enticing for the nurse to resist. That and what NASA won't tell you is that every other craft that drives up there on land got gobbled up by that face up there. That's what they want.

Yes, I got to have something that can escape from the face. That makes me interesting. Thank you. I agree. And that brings us to the most smart team this time. Did I land on this smart team this time? I know. I didn't. And I'm just alone.

It was being sarcastic. All right. So now that brings us to the most recent arrival on Mars and the first Mars rover that wasn't sent by NASA. That would be the Chinese National Space Administration's Zhurong rover, which settled into the Martian regolith in May of 2021, a couple months after Percy. The name Zhurong comes from a mytho historical figure associated with fire and light in Chinese history. And whereas NASA just let school kids submit names with little essays when it comes time

to name their rovers, the CNSA actually left their rovers name to an online poll. Because I guess Chinese people could apparently be trusted not to use that power to call it Marzy McMarz space. That would have been a risk here. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe Noah or possibly the authoritarian autocratic Chinese regime put up an online poll and then just name the rover whatever they wanted to anyway, because that's exactly what I would do. No, you're right. That is how they do elections there. You're right. Yeah. Also, we all know all of us here would know what regular means, but just for all the listeners

who might not know what is regular. Martian soil. Let's just got it. Yeah. Fancy term for space soil. So okay. So. So loyal.

I'm very. I mean, welcome back to my team. It's 37 minutes longer. The soil's longer. Yeah. So now, so this is where my asterisk from earlier comes in because technically the Zhurong is still operational, but that might be because the Chinese government are a bunch of fucking liars as Tom alluded to already.

It's been inactive for over a year as of the time of this recording, and it's widely suspected that it was buried by Mars and Regolith in a sandstorm. Now, this machine does have the ability to sort of fold up its solar panels and shake off the dust, but it has to have enough energy to do that, and instead of using a bowling ball of plutonium, as you're wrong is powered by a chemical compound called Hendike.

Now, I don't know what that is, but I googled it, and Google said it was a mild sex attractive for various types of moths and cockroaches. What? Yeah, that's not really, it's like not remotely relevant to the story, of course. But if I didn't share the fact that China's Mars River is stuffed full of fucking cockroach aphrodisiac. I would lose my license to pie. I would. It's fueled by cockroach aphrodisiac. So like a huge pile of make America great again ball caps. Is that what it's using? Okay, then must have a weird conversation at some point. It was like, all right, so the rover we sent up there, it's getting a mild like a tepid fucking from

Mothra. And we're saying sandstorm, right? We're saying, we're saying. And we're switching to plutonium, maybe. Cool. So there's no telling what the future holds in terms of Mars, rovers. There is one under development by the European Space Agency, but that's a joint project with Russia.

It's been indefinitely postponed to the invasion of Ukraine. China's also working on the very promising Taiwan three sample return mission. That won't include a rover, but it includes a fucking sample return. And then we could just drive regular RC cars over top of the Martian soil at that point.

So that would probably count to Japan Space Agency, Jackson. They have proposed a rover called Melos, but it's been like eight years since the last update on that one And of course NASA has at least hinted about the follow-up mission originally intended to turn perseverance into stage one of a sample return mission Okay, good news is we can now get samples of the rocks from Mars The bad news is that they are just rocks. But we'll call them regal Samuino's worth 2.2 billion dollars. It was worth it was worth it like 37 rock units Yeah, there's more of their longer if you just for inflation, but but ultimately look The points of Mars rovers is to figure out how to do this shit with people. At most of the scientific community has seemed to push back

against the very concept of crude flights since you can always accomplish the objective cheaper and more safely if you just let robots do the work. There is, according to a dominant school of thought, no scientific justification for crude missions to Mars. And I don't know if I believe that even, but if it is true, like just because there's no scientific reason to do something doesn't mean there's no reason to do it. The whole point has to be to send human explorers

and eventually settlers to Mars, because I think I speak on behalf of all the American taxpayers when I say that we are not 2.2 billion dollars worth of curious about Martian geology And if you had to summarize me learning one sentence what would it be? Blessed their little hearts the Russians are still trying Always All right Noah when I heard there was a rover

Always. All right Noah. When I heard there was a rover powered by Bug-Afro-DZ-AC landed on Mars by China, why was I surprised? Hey, it sounded more like a Spanish fly-by than a Chinese landing. Ah!

Ah! Ah, perfect. So stop digging all the way up. Yeah, it's gonna be D all of the above. Correct. Nicely done. All right, Noah, why did the spirit rover really stop transmitting? A, the antenna didn't get enough Mars bars.

Mars bars. Mars bars. Mars bars. No, we're here. We're here. It's the whole. I said. Bars. Bars. No, we're here. We're here for you. Is the whole.

I say I'm not. So. So go. Okay. Cecil, did you come up with a small question? I do have a question. She answered yours first. Did you answer yours?

I think we all heard it. I think we all heard it. Okay. No, all right. Okay. Silence. Hey, hey, Noah, what's the best name for you and I's upcoming astronomy podcast? a the interstellar medium

B average Jovians C Two guys and a galaxy or D the landing pod. Oh Nice D. It's obviously D the land. It's obviously obviously the landing I was gonna with a skate pod but Sounds like sounds like good. I know it sounds like a room or something It sounds like we're trying to get rid of uh talk and heat at the end of the episode if you You win no you win I want I want a Keith ass ass I want a Keith Essayus. I will be the Essayus next time. All right, well for Noah, Tom and Heath, I'm Cecil.

Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week, and by then, Keith will be an expert on something else. Between now and then, listen to Kanye and his distance with Tom and I, or you can listen to D&D Minus with Heath, Eli and Noah. If you'd like to help keep the show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pot, or you can leave us a five-star review every can. If you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media or check the show notes.

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