WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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I’ll be honest with you, this is not Mars.

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But it’s one of the closest simulations
we’ve got:

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the Mars Yard, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

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This is where NASA tests out models of its
rovers before they get sent to the Red Planet.

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And over there is where NASA’s engineers
can learn to drive one.

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We have the Mars Yard, which is made of a
few things:

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some of them are rocks that we actually take
to a lab to cook

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and ensure that they have the exact same compositions,

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and we bring it to the Mars Yard.

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Other rocks are actually not the same composition

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but the colour is the same,
or the texture is the same.

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And the same thing with the sand.

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We bring sands from specific areas so that
the colour and the texture matches.

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Out here in the Mars Yard, there’s not just
that simple model.

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Over in that hanger, well, it’s not really
a model of Curiosity:

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It’s a full-size physical twin.

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It’s not got quite all the electronics and
there’s no plutonium,

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but it’s close enough to figure out what
to do in tough situations.

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All the instruments,
all the mechanisms that we have,

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plus additional simulations,
we put it all together

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and we integrate it right here with Maggie.

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80-90% is probably the same thing
we have on Mars.

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There’s a few things that aren’t.

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For example, the wheels themselves.

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The gravity is different on Mars,
so you don’t want to have

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the exact same thickness of material
on the ones on Earth

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otherwise you’re going to
break them very easily,

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and it’s not going to represent
what actually happens on Mars.

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So the intent is: try to dry-run
everything that we can with this one,

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try to simulate it,
and then go for it on Mars.

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Driving a rover comes with a strange problem:
a time lag that,

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depending on where Earth and Mars
are in their orbits,

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is anywhere between four minutes and 24 minutes.

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This is not a case of just grabbing a joystick
and powering forwards:

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there is a lot of planning involved.

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Because if you break that rover,

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there are no spare parts and no second chances.

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I’ve been driving rovers since 2004, so
13 years now.

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I’m the person that has driven
the most kilometres on Mars.

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Only 16.

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We can go from really low level commands,

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say “apply 5 volts to a motor”, up to
a command of saying

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“go there and avoid all the obstacles that
are in between”.

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The vehicle not only has software on board
to control the movement,

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but most importantly, has software to determine
if something bad is happening.

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Every day we use the cameras to take pictures.

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The images there — there they are — so
we can reconstruct the 3-D terrain.

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From those pictures, we can determine what
activities we can do at that location

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and where it is safe to drive.

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On Curiosity, we have about 20 people that
are certified to drive the vehicle.

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We have different styles,
different comfort levels,

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in terms of risk or
things that we are scared of.

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Some of us are particularly scared of
sand, steep slopes.

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It depends on what problems
you had when you were driving.

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Every single day that we are going to spend
with the rover on a specific site,

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it’s very important for us to
“test as you fly”,

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and what I mean with that is:
as much as possible, do it here,

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because you don’t want to be surprised when
you try it on Mars!

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Thank you to all the team at the Mars Yard

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and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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Pull down the description for more about them
and their missions.