Kind: captions
Language: en
- The most amazing part of my job
is that I get to touch
parts of the hardware
that will go to Mars.
(dramatic music)
(rocket firing)
When the Perseverance rover
lands and conducts its science,
the big thing that I hope it
accomplishes is to determine
if life ever existed on Mars.
It is our job to make
sure that when we send
the spacecraft out, that
it doesn't contaminate
the native environment that
we're trying to explore.
So when we explore moons
and planets and other bodies
in the solar system, we want
to make sure that we donut send
microbes from Earth that may
contaminate that environment
and affect our ability to find
biosignatures on the surface
and allow us to bring the
sample back so that we can
definitively find ancient
microbial life on Mars.
The spacecraft has to be extremely clean.
The limit for the entire spacecraft,
- that includes the
rover, the heat shield,
the descent stage, the back
shell, has to be less than
500,000 what we call bacterial
endospores, or spores.
Just to give you an idea,
a teaspoon of seawater
has ten times more bacteria
than that entire spacecraft has.
Spores can stay in a dormant state
for millions of years,
until another habitable
or a favorable environment comes along.
So that's why we target those
types of microbes specifically
because they could possibly
survive a journey to Mars.
The vacuum of space, the huge
temperature fluctuations,
the UV radiation.
Humans are the dirtiest
thing in that clean room.
We have all kinds of
microorganisms in our body
and on our skin, and
so we have to make sure
that from head to toe, including our eyes,
that it's protected from the spacecraft,
especially our most critical parts.
So that's why we have gloves
on our hands in the clean room.
We have full bunny suits,
which is a head-to-toe covering
of a very clean material that
allows us to stay separate.
It's a barrier between
humans and the spacecraft.
We also have the spacecraft
going through bakeouts.
They go in high temperature
chambers, 350 degrees Celsius,
and we kill a lot of the microorganisms.
Our most critical parts
that touch the Martian soil
are extraordinarily clean.
The most difficult part
of my job is worrying
whether or not I was paranoid enough.
Did I miss something?
How about if this fails?
How about if that fails?
It's hard enough to build spacecraft,
but on top of that, as we
were approaching launch,
the COVID-19 pandemic
was surging in parallel.
As I step outside, it
looks closer and closer
to what I see in the laboratory.
Everyone's wearing face masks,
they're social distancing,
and making sure that they
don't spread contaminants
from person to person.
So it's my job, but in the real world.
But what was most worrying
was that off the clock,
you might catch COVID
and there is now a vector
to wipe out an entire team.
That could completely derail the mission
and throw us off of our scheduled goal.
And that was a major concern
as we were marching to launch,
that a person would get sick
and we couldn't launch at all.
That's what we did not want to happen,
and fortunately it didn't.
It's truly heartbreaking
during this particular mission
that many people, due to
the COVID-19 pandemic,
couldn't actually fly out to Florida
and witness the launch in person.
There were tons of team
members that had to cancel
their flights because they
didn't want to put themselves
or their family at risk.
I was fortunate enough to be
one of the final two people
to sample the rover, the aeroshell
and the fairing before it was closed up.
So it was nice to kind of say
that last goodbye to the spacecraft.
Launch was extra special
for me, not only because
I put my heart and soul into this mission,
but also I was able to participate
in the launch commentary.
That eyeball, what looks like
an eye, is actually a laser.
It shoots at the rocks.
- Oh my gosh, a laser!?
- A laser! Lasers!
And then depending on the
signature that comes back,
the spectrometer reads it and
tells you what the geology is.
Open a window or door
to the rest of the world
that is watching to
allow them to understand
what science instruments are
on the Perseverance rover,
and what is the journey going to look like
from here to Mars?
And that experience, on top
of experiencing the launch,
was just unforgettable.
I hope to just spread the joy like,
"Love science, love it, please."
(dramatic music)