パーサヴィアランスが火星で最古の岩石を発見／ローマン宇宙望遠鏡の最新状況

Perseverance finds its oldest rock and an update on the Roman Space Telescope. You're listening to Are We There Yet? The radio show exploring space exploration. Hi, I'm Brendan Byrne. NASA's Perseverance rover found what scientists think is the oldest rock discovered by the robotic rover. The rovers on Mars are studying old dust and rocks on the red planet, and a new sample could help scientists better understand the planet's past. We'll speak with University of Florida's Amy Williams about some of the recent findings on Mars. Then, back in August, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched on a mission to study things like exoplanets, dark matter, and dark energy. And now it's on its way to its destination, about a million miles away from Earth. So, how's it going so far? An update on Roman. That's ahead on Are We There Yet? Before we jump into this show, a quick update on another mission we've covered here on Are We There Yet?

22 years after launching, NASA's Swift Observatory met its fiery end as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere. The observatory launched back in 2004 on a mission to study gamma-ray bursts, or powerful explosions, in the universe. The mission was only expected to last two years. NASA tried to save the observatory before it plunged into the atmosphere by pairing up with Catalyst Space. The company attempted to use its Link spacecraft to give Swift a boost into a higher orbit and prevent it from burning up. But after launching, Link had technical issues and anomalies that prevented the vehicle from saving Swift. Most of the observatory burned up upon reentry, but NASA says some parts of the vehicle may have survived. NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance rovers are roaming the Red Planet, taking observations and sampling some of the surrounding terrain. And Perseverance described an interesting sample, a rock that appears to be ancient.

In fact, it could be the oldest rock it has ever discovered so far. By studying Martian rock and dust, the rovers are searching for ancient life and also helping future life, like astronauts, survive on Mars. Here to talk more about the latest news happening on the red planet is Amy Williams. She's an astrobiologist at the University of Florida and a scientist on the perseverance and curiosity of Mars rovers. Amy, welcome back to Are We There Yet. Thanks for keep having me back on. This is amazing. Hey, as long as there's rovers on Mars, I think we're going to have you on this show. So we appreciate that. I appreciate it. I know I'll have to pivot at some point. Unless I can keep getting myself on other missions, I feel like I'll have to, I don't know what my next thing will be. There you go. That should be your career deciding factors. How do I get back on Are We There Yet? Yes, absolutely. Well, we're glad to have you here. Glad that you're working on the rovers. Let's talk about a really exciting discovery from the Perseverance rover. You all sampled what could be the oldest rock on Mars.

Is that true? Well, at least the oldest rock that we've run into that we could get a sample of on Mars. Okay. We spent a year, or it has been a year, I should say, since the last time that we were able to sample a rock. We are still collecting samples. It's, I think, a really exciting opportunity to demonstrate why being able to return samples at some point from Mars would be so valuable. So we collected this rock, which is called Singita. It's probably as old as, like, most of our oldest rocks on Earth. And Mars is so cool because without plate tectonics, a lot of those really ancient rocks are preserved on Mars. So we've had this opportunity to collect this rock. We think that it is this, like, crystalline, so meaning, like, made of big crystals. Igneous rock, meaning it was made from a magma at some point, slowly crystallized and made this rock. And it's been probably exposed through an impact. I mean, it probably almost certainly was billions of years ago. And we don't know, you know, if it was when the really big Isidus impact occurred. but it almost certainly has to be older than the Jezero impact.

So we've just got these really cool rocks we continue to collect on Mars. So you're finding a rock that is older than the crater that you are exploring. So we found a rock that is older than the crater we left, which is Jezero. Yeah, so Jezero, like, you know, when you're looking at it, these landscape images, and you're like, oh, I can't even see across this crater, it's so big. and then think like this is like this tiniest little pockmark on this enormous basin that was formed by a massive impact. We call that one the Isidus Basin for the Isidus Impact. I don't remember off the top of my head how big that one is, but yeah, Jezero is like a tiny blip compared to the size of this impact. Wow, wow. So you're telling me that, you know, these rocks, they're almost like witness plates, right, that has seen the history of what is on Mars. So with it being the oldest that you think you've discovered, it's a very long book of what happened on the surface of Mars, right? Absolutely. And that's one of the really cool things about Mars is that, like, without having plate tectonics,

without having aqueous or water-based weathering processes like we do on Earth, you've actually slowed down the degradation of a bunch of these rocks and preserved them over extraordinarily long timescales. So, you know, I think the listeners probably know, like, I care about looking for life beyond Earth, but I am a geologist. And so even for me, seeing a coarsely crystalline igneous rock being made from a magma, that was still really exciting for me to see. Because, like, this is the kind of rock we really haven't run into before. It's thrilling to not only get to examine it with our instruments, but then collect it and hopefully one day be able to learn a lot more about it back on Earth. I'm looking at a photo of the core taken from the cash cam, and it says it's got bovine-like splotches. I love the terms that you geologists come up with because I'm like, yeah, that's cow marks. That's like cow spots. I feel like I don't even know who we can blame these on. We come up with all of these names, you know, leopard spots, bovine splotches.

These are really descriptive terms. You say that, and you're like, yeah, I know what a cow spot looks like. I can picture what this rock must look like as well. But it always leads me back to the joke, you know, anything but the metric system. You say, like, the space shuttle weighs as much as X number of elephants. You know, no one can say kilograms. We just have to use elephants or bovine splotches. But I do love it because it does immediately bring to mind that's what that rock looks like. Amy, you mentioned it's been almost a year since you've been able to get this. What goes into sampling and making that decision? Like, why did it take so long? You just been like, hey, look, that's a cool rock. Let's pick it up. I think earlier on in the mission it was easier because we had so many open tubes We knew kind of what we wanted to collect through each like how many tubes we wanted to expend on each of sort of the subset campaigns that we did within Jezero and outside Jezero We down to a handful of tubes now We gotten to the point where we don even seal them anymore because there's this, you know, this FOMO, this fear of missing out of like, oh, you filled the tubes and then you find, you know, the rock that makes the difference.

And so we've left some actually unsealed so that we could potentially dump that core out and take a new one. We've become really picky about what it means to have a seat in our cache of samples. You're listening to Are We There Yet from Central Florida Public Media. I'm Brenton Byrne, speaking with Amy Williams. She is an astrobiologist at the University of Florida and a scientist on the Perseverance and Curiosity Mars rovers. Amy, you mentioned that Perseverance has a lot of other landscapes to explore, but it has hit a milestone already, hasn't it? How far has Perseverance actually traversed? So just last month, we became the vehicle that has traversed the furthest distance on another world. And so I'm going to count the moon as another world as well as Mars. So we got to, as of last month, 45.2 kilometers. So the marathon. How many elephants is that? How many elephants, right? Yeah, let me, I just have to get my calculator out.

Give me a moment. For reference, for anyone who has tried to run a marathon, which is the 26.2 miles, that is 42.2 kilometers. So we have exceeded a marathon on Mars with Perseverance. And the only other vehicle that has accomplished that is actually the Mars Opportunity Rover, one of the twin Mars exploration rovers. So we're in a very distinguished category now of traversing the furthest on another world. And that was by design, right? I mean, Perseverance was built with hardier tires, and you've got lots and lots of places you want to explore, right? This was the whole plan, right? Yes. So building Perseverance, yeah, we were able to modify the wheels and the wheel structure so that they were even more robust in the landscape, even better than what we were able to build with Curiosity. And, yeah, the intention was to be able to go a pretty decent distance and get a diversity of rocks.

And that's what we're doing, and that distance is being accomplished, I should say, right now. Is all going as planned? How is the health of Perseverance so far? After running a marathon, I would probably be dead. Tom, but I would, I know. And I, and I think about all of the little 5Ks I've run, adding them all up. Maybe I got to a marathon over how many years of running little races. Yeah. We're, we're still going strong. The, I think one of the interesting things to keep in mind is as the vehicles age and as we use consumables, yeah, things, things change. And so one of the reasons that this Sangeeta rock is so cool is that the first time we tried to sample a similar rock, we actually couldn't really get into the rock. The rock was so hard. And our drill bits have actually gone through so many rocks that they're getting a little dull. And there's no Home Depot or Lowe's or hardware store on Mars for us to get new drill bits. So we do have a couple of more pristine, far less used bits. We switched with one of those and we're able to get into this

drill into this really, really hard crystalline rock. Along with rocks, these rovers are investigating dust and especially how it might impact humans when they go to Mars. What are we learning about the dust, which is dust is tiny, tiny rocks. Yes, ground, ground, ground, ground down, super fine, super fine material. Yes, so it does originally come from the rocks. So, yeah, I can still count it in my general geology wheelhouse. Yeah, so one of the concerns with sending humans to Mars, and it actually ended up being something to learn from sending humans to the moon, is that the dust that's formed on these worlds can, in some cases, be extraordinarily fine. So fine, in fact, I think one of our recent studies has shown that it's actually of a particle size that you could actually see this, like, transfer into the bloodstream in a human. Like, it is crazy, crazy fine materials. So, you know, what we've done is actually on one of the sort of target calibration plates that we have,

we have a couple of pieces of spacesuit material, two different materials, that we can actually measure the dust on there, measure the elements that make up that dust, learn a bit about it, and that helps us build better spacesuits for eventual crewed missions to Mars. when the astronauts went to the moon, they had all of these issues with that really fine regolith powder, that dust on the moon, getting into the seals on the spacesuits, getting into everything. And so that's something that we know if we have a longer term mission to Mars, we've got to be able to mitigate. And so it's really cool. Perseverance is doing sort of this groundwork now so we can build better missions in the future and safer missions for crewed flights to Mars eventually. Finally, Amy, we've been talking about the work of Perseverance, but there is another rover that is exploring the red planet that you are also working on. Curiosity, what's that little bugger up to these days? I think we just recently exceeded a one kilometer sort of high elevation

change in how far the vehicle has driven up Mount Sharp. So we can have our own exciting, you know, milestones to meet with Curiosity, of course. So yeah, Curiosity is, of course, still exploring Mount Sharp. We've actually recently drilled into a new sample. And so remember, with Curiosity, we can't take cores, but we can drill into the samples and we can actually ingest that rock in instruments and learn more about what the rock is made of. And so we actually drilled into this rock that we ended up calling Nazca. And it has these little features in it that look like salt crystals. And it's really cool because the salt crystals tell us about a drying environment. It can tell us about sort of the temperature of the water that helped to form those crystals. And the cool thing is that the crystals have these really distinct shapes that even if the

components that make it up, what we call minerals, even if those minerals are different from what they were originally, because of the shape, we can actually start to take guesses about what the the salts might have been like and how the water flowing through the rock has changed over billions of years. So this is just like another really cool like little tidbit into the history of Gale Crater and Mount Sharp and how water was flowing in this environment for such a long time and impacting it in the ancient past Always cool stuff happening on Mars Always glad to have you to bring us up to speed on what's happening on the red planet. Amy Williams is an astrobiologist at the University of Florida, a scientist on the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. Amy, great to chat with you. It's awesome to talk with you, Brennan. Thanks. Still to come, checking in on the Roman Space Telescope. I mean, it gives me goosebumps. When I look at the images that we've collected, and you can see all of so many things. I mean, I've looked at Hubble images or web images for all of my career,

and you see these postage stamp size images, and they're beautiful. But looking at a huge swath of what is a wide field of view, there's just something else. How's Roman doing? That's ahead on Are We There Yet? You're listening to Are We There Yet? from Central Florida Public Media. I'm Brendan Byrne. On August 30th, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched from the Kennedy Space Center. Now, just a few months after launch, the telescope is getting closer to its planned home in space, called Lagrange Point 2, which is about a million miles away from Earth. The Roman team is monitoring the telescope's status and the equipment on board. Soon, the observatory will be able to take wide-view images and surveys of our universe like never before. Here to talk more about Roman and the latest on how it's doing as it gets closer and closer to starting scientific observations is Scott Smith, the Roman Space Telescope Manager.

Scott, welcome to R.V. There, yeah. Well, it's glad to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, this is such an exciting mission. We have been following it from the clean room to the launch pad, and now while it's in space. Speaking of which, where is it, Scott? Where is the Roman Space Telescope right now? It's on its way to Lagrangian Point 2, which is about a million miles from Earth. And so it's past the moon, and it's making its way there. And has it been smooth sailing so far? Oh, very much so. It's gone exceptionally well. We managed to get a chance to see it launch here in Florida. It's always incredible to see a Falcon Heavy take flight. after it separated from the spacecraft? Does it kind of like fling into Lagrange 0.2 and then like settles in there, or does it have to fire engines or anything to stop it and get it into position? There was a small mid-course correction burn that was planned. Actually, a significantly longer mid-course correction burn was planned. They just used a tiny bit of fuel to course correct after that initial launch.

SpaceX did a phenomenal job of doing the initial launch and the initial placement, and then that small mid-course correction resulted in just a little bit of fuel to burn for that, and it's been very, very successful after that. So because of that very limited amount of fuel we had to burn there, we've got close to 22 years of fuel is what we're projecting now. That early launch and placement and successful trip there was able to help position the program to go much longer if needed. Excellent. And so that fuel would be if it needs to make kind of tiny tweaks to its orbital location? Periodically, we use reaction wheels to point the observatory, and periodically there is a momentum unloading that you use. So there's a fuel burn for that unloading momentum. And when they do that, then there's a certain amount of time that you need planted for that. What is it telling you? What are you learning about these initial checks and diagnosis of the vehicle as it's making its way to that point?

As the telescope manager, I was closely watching where the telescope is, what temperature it is. Of course, we launch its room temperature or a Florida room temperature. And then it starts cooling down very quickly. And so we're monitoring to help to make sure that it's cooling down uniformly. We're not getting a large temperature gradient where it's too cold in one area, too hot in one area. And then after it gets into its temperature, we start tuning the heaters to get everything aligned thermally. And then once we've achieved that, then we start aligning the telescope for positioning the mirrors. You need to position the mirrors in a safe position during launch where you have that large load from the launch vehicle. And then after you're on orbit, then you can move your optics into the position that is for a better image. And then we were able to do that, and the images are very, very beautiful.

I can't wait to share them with the public. You know, I remember in the early days of JWST, another really exciting space observatory, there was concerns about, like, micrometeorites and debris and things like that. Is that a concern for Roman, and is there any indication that we need to be worried about that? It's always a concern. I mean, you can't avoid the fact that you're in space and those items are there, micrometeoroids. But the unique characteristics of Roman is that we have a barrel that wraps around the primary mirror, whereas JWST is a very exposed, open architecture. And they did that thermally to help heat dissipate because it's a colder telescope. But we have that barrel that helps. It helps protect us from micrometeoroids, and it also helps us thermally control the telescope better. So it has many benefits. When we start seeing these public images, you know, what are we going to see? What is so exciting about this, Scott? The amount of data that they can get. So it's on the order of like one and a half terabytes, 1.4 terabytes of data a day is what you can download from Roman,

which is just mind-boggling in comparison. It's so much data. And I think what I find just like, I mean, it gives me goosebumps, is when I look at the images that we've collected and you can see all of so many things that, I mean, I've looked at Hubble images or web images for all of my career, and you see these postage stamp size images, and they're beautiful. But looking at a huge swath of what is a wide field of view, there's just something else. So I think the magnitude of the number of galaxies and stars is just going to be breathtaking. You're listening to Are We There? You have the radio show Exploring Space Exploration. I'm Brendan Byrne. We're speaking with Scott Smith, the Roman Space Telescope Manager, about the telescope and its journey to its home in space about a million miles away. Scott, so we're going to see these really, really cool images of the galaxy, the scope of the galaxy never before seen. But the things that Roman is looking for are the unseeable things in our cosmos right The dark matter and dark energy How do you explain or show just how important these phenomena are to a general public You going to be speaking at the

Orlando Science Center about this topic. How do you bring the story of Roman and how it's uncovering these unseeable forces in our cosmos to the general public? Everything that we see around us, you know, everything that you see in even, you know, this podcast, you know, everything, it's all makes up about 5% of the universe that exists. And so there's a 95% of the universe that is just not that we can't see. And we really we use the starlight from distant stars as it moves through the universe to see how that light bends around and how dark energy and dark matter actually bend that light. When we look off at a distant star, where that star should be and where it actually is and where we image it those are two different places and the fact that that light bends through the universe that's telling us something about that dark energy and dark matter and and similarly how the universe is expanding the rate at which is expanding it it doesn't quite match our models and we're using dark energy and dark matter to

help explain that when i come back to you know how does that relate to people i would say this is It's fundamentally changing how we understand physics, which that's about as basic as you can get. But it's, you know, how does the universe work? Do you think it's difficult for people to wrap their mind around that, that, you know, we only understand about 5% of all the stuff that's around us? You know, I think scientists, we study it and we characterize it. We can write down more and more equations about it. But I think it still is a hard concept for any human. I think that's what makes it relatable is that it's an interesting challenge. It's easy for anybody to ask the question, you know, what makes up the universe? But it's the hard parts to answer that and to really understand that. You know, when you are doing these public talks, Scott, like at the Orlando Science Center here in Florida, what is the kind of overall message you hope people leave with? I think there's an element of hope and unification that happens.

There's something that's internal to all of us where we look up at the stars. We've been doing it for thousands of years where we look up at the stars. And that's part of what makes us human is to ask questions. Are we alone? And what makes up the universe? And what is around us? And it doesn't matter what walk of life you are. Just that's part of what makes you who you are. Thinking back to when JWST came online and the unveiling of the images for the first time to the public, there were so many eyes on that. More than I imagined that people would be paying attention to a story like this. Does that give you optimism that there's really like telescope fever happening right now, right? Yeah, there is. It's so exciting to see all of, I mean, I don't know how many people are going to engage and how that compares. But I spent more than a decade on web and more than a decade here on Roman. And, you know, it is just as exciting as web, if not more,

because the momentum of the community just builds upon itself. So, you know, we had a very successful web launch and images, and I think, you know, we're right around the corner. We're getting ready to release these as well. So it's just it builds on that momentum and that fever. And on top of that, Hubble is still bringing back incredible images as well, right? It is. It absolutely is. I continue to see discoveries that are being made there. I think what I find really exciting is how all three of them will work in concert together, where you can get that wide field of view, you can identify targets and areas of interest, and then Hubble and Webb can follow up and explore those areas and more interest. I am really excited to know that all of them are going to be able to help collect data together. Scott, I'm going to ask you a final question. This may be an impossible one for you to answer as the Roman Space Telescope Manager, but is there a particular instrument on here or a particular observation that you are extremely excited to either come online or get beamed back down to you?

What are you really, really looking forward to? You know, we've talked a lot about the Widefield instrument and what it's doing there for its wide field of view. There's another instrument, the coronagraph, and I am very excited to see some of the first images. It's a technology demonstration. You know, the technology demonstration is really what paves the way for future telescopes like the Habitable Worlds Observatory. So I see what the coronagraph is doing and help setting up the future missions, and it's paved the way for even more. And that's going to help scientists like yourself image an exoplanet, right? This is the first time that's going to happen, right? That's right. Yeah, so we'll directly image a planet that is in another solar system. and the coronagraph, you can imagine if you're looking up at a star or if you look at our sun and you have the bright sunlight is staring at you, it's kind of like holding your hand up and blocking the sunlight during the day.

And so this is similar to that, but it's significantly more powerful and we'll be able to directly image a planet that's in another solar system with the coronagraph. and it would be Jupiter-size distance from the star, so we're not going to quite be able to see into what we call the habitable zone or that Goldilocks where it's liquid water zone, but it really will pave the way for the future of what is possible. And when are we going to start seeing these images? Before the end of the year? Start of the year? You know, that is my understanding is that, you know, I don't think anything has been officially planned, but it would be a wonderful holiday present if all of us were able to get these in time. Yes, well, we will be waiting excitedly. Scott Smith is the Roman Space Telescope Manager. Scott, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. That's going to do it for this week's show. If you're interested in our search for life in the universe, check out our newest podcast, When We Find Them,

a limited series that explores the search for life and what happens when we find it. Get When We Find Them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. and stay connected with this show. Be sure to follow us on social media. You can find us on Instagram and Facebook. We're at AWTYspace. And if you have an idea for a future episode of this show or you want to join us as a guest, we'll reach out. Our email is arewethereyet at cfpublic.org. Are We There Yet is a production of Central Florida Public Media. Our producer is Marion Summerall. Editorial guidance comes from LaTroya Dennis. Support for Are We There Yet comes from our listeners. Until next time, I'm Brendan Byrne. Thanks for listening. you