Roving Mars

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i( narrator) Space exploration/i

ibegan with dreaming,/i

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ithousands of years/i

iof humans staring into the heavens/i

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iand wondering,/i

i"How did this begin?"/i

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i"What else is out there?"/i

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iThe earliest answers/i

iwere given in myth and poetry./i

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iNow they are sought by/i

ispace-age technology,/i

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iand while each mission/i

iincreases our knowledge,/i

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iit also leads our imagination/i

ifurther and further./i

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iHow did life begin?/i

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iDid it happen more than once/i

iin the universe?/i

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iThe answer may lie on Mars./i

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iMars today is desolate,/i

idry and barren,/i

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iand at first glance has little in common/i

iwith our own planet,/i

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iand yet from orbit we see what look like/i

idried-up lake beds and canyons -/i

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iclues that,/i

ithree or four billion years ago,/i

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iMars may once have been/i

iwetter and more Earth-like./i

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iAnd since life blossomed/i

ihere on Earth, the question is,/i

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idid it ever take place on Mars?/i

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iTo answer this question,/i

iNASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory/i

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ibrought together/i

ia team of scientists and engineers/i

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iwhose mission was to discover if Mars/i

iever had what was needed to support life./i

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iA geologist and astronomer/i

iat Cornell University,/i

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iSteve Squyres was chosen/i

ito lead the science team./i

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iAs principal investigator,/i

ihe would direct the team's search/i

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ifor life's most essential resource -/i

iwater./i

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i( Squyres)/i I've worked on the question

of water on Mars for 28 years,

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You can't learn what you need from

a telescope, You must be a geologist,

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A geologist is sort of like

a detective at the scene of a crime,

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Something happened here

a long time ago, What happened?

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Was it warm? Was it wet?

Could life have existed here?

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The key is in the clues,

and the clues are in the rocks,

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On Earth, a geologist

can find an interesting rock,

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crack it open with a hammer

and just look at what's inside,

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But we're not ready to send

a human geologist to Mars yet,

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So we had to build a robot geologist,

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and the only place this could be done

was NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,

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where some of the most innovative

engineers in the country work,

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We're talking about a robot,

a rover that can go to Mars,

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land on the surface, take a look around

and then cut the cord and go -

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carrying everything it needs with it -

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cameras, instruments,

communications equipment, everything,

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Something that can look inside rocks and

can tell us what clues those rocks hold,

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This place to me is almost sacred,

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This is the place where our rovers are

assembled before they leave this planet,

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Everything that we do

in this room must be perfect,

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Over 4,000 people

have worked on this mission,

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For every single piece of this spacecraft,

down to the tiniest one,

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there was a person somewhere

who conceived it, who nurtured it,

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who took it from a concept

to something real,

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lt's taken this team three years

to design and build and test these rovers,

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and we still have work to do,

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We can only launch when

the two planets are properly aligned,

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and that's just a month away,

but we still have tests to run,

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We're working in shifts, almost around the

clock, and we don't know if we'll make it,

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i( man)/i There's no one person who can get

their arms around this thing and say:

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''l understand everything

about this vehicle,''

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lt's now burst the bounds of our brains,

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This rover is more than

just a roving geologist,

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