thank you all for being here tonight and
listening to us tell you a little bit
about curiosity so starting out with why
Gale Crater well here’s a map of Mars
we’ve landed in six locations before
curiosity why do you need to go for a
seventh haven’t we haven’t we been all
over the planet it looks kind of like a
shotgun blast to me here in terms of the
yellow marks well Mars is a smaller
planet than the earth but without oceans
it’s got about the same land area as the
surface of the earth and I travel a fair
amount more than I’d like to but if I’d
only been to six places on the surface
of the earth I wouldn’t know much about
it let me give you one example there’s a
place where I used to live in western
New York called Letchworth State Parks
called the Grand Canyon of the east
fabulous place but if I’d never been out
west and didn’t know about the Grand
Canyon it’d be kind of a different story
in terms of where I might choose to go
but what if the rocks in the Grand
Canyon weren’t of interest and the ones
in Letchworth State Park even though
it’s smaller were so what you really
need when you’re looking at landing
sites is not only do you have to know
something about the planet and where the
good places are but you’ve got to bring
together the expertise to be able to
look at those places and find out which
ones are the most relevant for the kinds
of things that you want to accomplish
with your mission so we started with
about 65 landing site candidates from
our science laboratory curiosity we
whittled it down to the final four that
you see here in white holding crater
Evers vivaldi Crater Mars Valles and of
course Gale Crater where we ended up
going and just to give you a sense of
what we found attractive about those
four places and I’ll point out that the
yellow ellipses that you see here are
all 25 kilometers long by 20 kilometers
high we’ve got Martha Valles in the
upper left
there’s the stratigraphy these layers of
rock that we see there that we see a
sense of different kinds of clays from
top to bottom and it’s an ancient
ancient set of rocks that tell us
something about the earliest history of
the planet a question about Mars was how
did those rocks get to be there and we
never really could get a handle on that
although work has been moving for
or down here in the lower left we see a
place called Holden crater it’s about
the same size as Gale Crater about a
hundred miles across and here we see
along the side of the crater sediments
that have been washed down into a big
fan it’s the best alluvial system
preserved on Mars over here in the lower
right we see a burs of all the Delta a
place where we might go in sample
sediments that are deposited by water
running down through a river in the
ancient past the problem or question
about these two on the bottom where they
occur relatively late in Mars history
compared to when we think it was the
wettest and if we got there we’re seeing
a fairly narrow period in the history of
Mars so we want to know relative to
habitability when those things occurred
we might want to sample a place where
the section that’s preserved is much
older and that brings us to Gale up here
in the upper right you’ll notice that in
this hundred mile across crater 150
kilometers across there’s this mountain
of material five kilometers or three
miles high and the layers that are in
that mountain are very much like pages
or chapters in a book and when we look
at the chemistry or the chemical
composition of those layers we see a
transition from the kinds of things that
were deposited in water and wet
conditions near the bottom to drier
things as we move up through the section
and so Gale became a chance to sort of
read the chapters related to the
changing environment on Mars from when
it was wetter to when it’s relatively
dry today and that’s why we picked Gale
Crater Gale Crater lies across this
transition on Mars what you see here is
topography where the yellows and the
Reds are relatively high and the blues
and purples are low and Gale right there
in the middle straddles this boundary
called the planetary dichotomy and what
we see here already visible is this
Mound this mountain of material Mount
sharp if we zoom in on the crater proper
we’re looking across here towards the
south and on the north side between the
small crater that you see in the middle
in the mountain is about where we were
planning to land so we wanted to land
and be able to drive directly over to
the flank of the mountain transitioning
up between these layers of material
these chapters in the book telling us
about the environmental history of Mars
but there was another target there a
small channel that runs down the wall of
the crater
this is a closer view now the top of the
crater is now to the north so I’ve
turned things around on you this is an
image from the Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter there’s this incredible synergy
between the cameras that we have in
orbit and the pictures that we can take
of the surface and the things that we
can do on the surface to ground truth
that data this data we can resolve
things that are about 20 meters across
the camera has a resolution of 6 meters
per pixel and we can see that channel
now coming in from the upper-left and
draining out into a fan of sediment we
call this an alluvial fan there’s many
examples of this on the earth that we
see in places for example like Death
Valley so this became a very important
secondary target to the layers in Mount
sharp for our exploration well here’s
the view from the surface after
curiosity landed this is one of my
favorite images from the mission because
to me it’s almost like you’re standing
in Death Valley looking up to the west
at the Panamint Mountains and seeing
this fan of material you can see the
bright outline of peace’ Valles this
channel coming down and the sloping sort
of the positive sediment that’s being
laid down by that River at some time in
the past we’re way down at the very far
end of that where we landed with
curiosity in fact we weren’t even sure
if we were going to be on those
sediments now here is an overhead view
this time from the high-rise camera
which can image things that are about 3
feet across it has a resolution of about
25 centimeters or about a foot you can
see where curiosity landed the two blue
spots over here on the left and those
are the tracks of the rover when we
landed because we had mapped the surface
of our landing ellipse before we got
down to the surface of the planet we
knew that there were some different
terrains that we were likely to sample
depending on where we landed and because
we landed at that spot there we happen
to be very close to three different
kinds of material that were sort of like
a rosetta stone we thought for
understanding the geology of our
Traverse as we went across to Mount
sharp the most material for the left
two-thirds of the image was one type in
the lower right corner was another and
then the brighter whitish blue stuff up
there is a third seeing this juncture of
these three different materials knowing
that they held clues to what was going
on in Gale and that they might be
related
alluvial fan drove us literally in the
opposite direction that we intended once
we got down on the surface Mount sharp
is down to the lower left your left my
right we went east we went to your right
and it paid off very soon after we got
started we started to find these
outcrops the pebbles that you can see
weathering out that are rounded Becky
Williams who’s here tonight was the lead
author on a science paper that first
described these as deposits related to
that River flowing down the side of the
canyon now in Death Valley doesn’t it
doesn’t rain very often but when it does
that water comes out fast and I can
almost imagine when I see these sorts of
things you know water up to my thigh
kind of thing draining across the
surface depositing these gravels what an
amazing in different place this must
have been three three and a half billion
years ago we got into this place called
Yellowknife Bay and here’s our dried-up
lake sediments this is a mud stone we
drilled down into this rock the rocks
weren’t red they’re gray they tell us
something about the conditions in the
past when we look at the chemistry it
tells us that these clays that are in
here were deposited in conditions that
were relatively neutral that is not too
acidic not too basic but we’ve already
sampled sediments wash down in a river
and ancient Lake deposits and we haven’t
even gotten to Mount sharp yet so
clearly the first bit of information
that we got back from curiosity really
sort of set us on our ear in terms of
understanding Mars as a planet and how
it evolved since leaving Yellowknife Bay
in these ancient lake deposits we’ve
been traversing across a landscape
that’s littered with sedimentary rocks
you can see some of those here in the
foreground and we’ve been sampling these
as we’ve gone trying to understand more
about the relationship between sediments
wash down in this in this river piece
Valles and out onto this fan of
sediments versus the sediments that have
been shed off the side of Mount sharp
there’s still kind of an uncertainty in
terms of where some of these different
sediments have come from and what their
origin is in relationship to the timing
of the formation of this big huge
mountain in the middle of the of the
crater but as you can see the same
we haven’t lost sight of Mount sharp
it’s always sort of been dead in our
sights and we’re actually more than
halfway there
from when we left the Yellowknife Bay
area and in fact we see images like this
almost daily with curiosity and it
reminds us exactly why we came here and
why this is the goal because you can see
the layers here that I described earlier
as sort of chapters in a book and you
can see here how they transition from
sort of darker and grayer layers near
the bottom to lighter sediments at the
top and knowing what we already know
about Gale Crater from our exploration
of these lake and sediments wash down in
the fan we’re very eager to get here and
understand more about the evolution of
the Martian climate as these sediments
were deposited
you
you
listening to us tell you a little bit
about curiosity so starting out with why
Gale Crater well here’s a map of Mars
we’ve landed in six locations before
curiosity why do you need to go for a
seventh haven’t we haven’t we been all
over the planet it looks kind of like a
shotgun blast to me here in terms of the
yellow marks well Mars is a smaller
planet than the earth but without oceans
it’s got about the same land area as the
surface of the earth and I travel a fair
amount more than I’d like to but if I’d
only been to six places on the surface
of the earth I wouldn’t know much about
it let me give you one example there’s a
place where I used to live in western
New York called Letchworth State Parks
called the Grand Canyon of the east
fabulous place but if I’d never been out
west and didn’t know about the Grand
Canyon it’d be kind of a different story
in terms of where I might choose to go
but what if the rocks in the Grand
Canyon weren’t of interest and the ones
in Letchworth State Park even though
it’s smaller were so what you really
need when you’re looking at landing
sites is not only do you have to know
something about the planet and where the
good places are but you’ve got to bring
together the expertise to be able to
look at those places and find out which
ones are the most relevant for the kinds
of things that you want to accomplish
with your mission so we started with
about 65 landing site candidates from
our science laboratory curiosity we
whittled it down to the final four that
you see here in white holding crater
Evers vivaldi Crater Mars Valles and of
course Gale Crater where we ended up
going and just to give you a sense of
what we found attractive about those
four places and I’ll point out that the
yellow ellipses that you see here are
all 25 kilometers long by 20 kilometers
high we’ve got Martha Valles in the
upper left
there’s the stratigraphy these layers of
rock that we see there that we see a
sense of different kinds of clays from
top to bottom and it’s an ancient
ancient set of rocks that tell us
something about the earliest history of
the planet a question about Mars was how
did those rocks get to be there and we
never really could get a handle on that
although work has been moving for
or down here in the lower left we see a
place called Holden crater it’s about
the same size as Gale Crater about a
hundred miles across and here we see
along the side of the crater sediments
that have been washed down into a big
fan it’s the best alluvial system
preserved on Mars over here in the lower
right we see a burs of all the Delta a
place where we might go in sample
sediments that are deposited by water
running down through a river in the
ancient past the problem or question
about these two on the bottom where they
occur relatively late in Mars history
compared to when we think it was the
wettest and if we got there we’re seeing
a fairly narrow period in the history of
Mars so we want to know relative to
habitability when those things occurred
we might want to sample a place where
the section that’s preserved is much
older and that brings us to Gale up here
in the upper right you’ll notice that in
this hundred mile across crater 150
kilometers across there’s this mountain
of material five kilometers or three
miles high and the layers that are in
that mountain are very much like pages
or chapters in a book and when we look
at the chemistry or the chemical
composition of those layers we see a
transition from the kinds of things that
were deposited in water and wet
conditions near the bottom to drier
things as we move up through the section
and so Gale became a chance to sort of
read the chapters related to the
changing environment on Mars from when
it was wetter to when it’s relatively
dry today and that’s why we picked Gale
Crater Gale Crater lies across this
transition on Mars what you see here is
topography where the yellows and the
Reds are relatively high and the blues
and purples are low and Gale right there
in the middle straddles this boundary
called the planetary dichotomy and what
we see here already visible is this
Mound this mountain of material Mount
sharp if we zoom in on the crater proper
we’re looking across here towards the
south and on the north side between the
small crater that you see in the middle
in the mountain is about where we were
planning to land so we wanted to land
and be able to drive directly over to
the flank of the mountain transitioning
up between these layers of material
these chapters in the book telling us
about the environmental history of Mars
but there was another target there a
small channel that runs down the wall of
the crater
this is a closer view now the top of the
crater is now to the north so I’ve
turned things around on you this is an
image from the Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter there’s this incredible synergy
between the cameras that we have in
orbit and the pictures that we can take
of the surface and the things that we
can do on the surface to ground truth
that data this data we can resolve
things that are about 20 meters across
the camera has a resolution of 6 meters
per pixel and we can see that channel
now coming in from the upper-left and
draining out into a fan of sediment we
call this an alluvial fan there’s many
examples of this on the earth that we
see in places for example like Death
Valley so this became a very important
secondary target to the layers in Mount
sharp for our exploration well here’s
the view from the surface after
curiosity landed this is one of my
favorite images from the mission because
to me it’s almost like you’re standing
in Death Valley looking up to the west
at the Panamint Mountains and seeing
this fan of material you can see the
bright outline of peace’ Valles this
channel coming down and the sloping sort
of the positive sediment that’s being
laid down by that River at some time in
the past we’re way down at the very far
end of that where we landed with
curiosity in fact we weren’t even sure
if we were going to be on those
sediments now here is an overhead view
this time from the high-rise camera
which can image things that are about 3
feet across it has a resolution of about
25 centimeters or about a foot you can
see where curiosity landed the two blue
spots over here on the left and those
are the tracks of the rover when we
landed because we had mapped the surface
of our landing ellipse before we got
down to the surface of the planet we
knew that there were some different
terrains that we were likely to sample
depending on where we landed and because
we landed at that spot there we happen
to be very close to three different
kinds of material that were sort of like
a rosetta stone we thought for
understanding the geology of our
Traverse as we went across to Mount
sharp the most material for the left
two-thirds of the image was one type in
the lower right corner was another and
then the brighter whitish blue stuff up
there is a third seeing this juncture of
these three different materials knowing
that they held clues to what was going
on in Gale and that they might be
related
alluvial fan drove us literally in the
opposite direction that we intended once
we got down on the surface Mount sharp
is down to the lower left your left my
right we went east we went to your right
and it paid off very soon after we got
started we started to find these
outcrops the pebbles that you can see
weathering out that are rounded Becky
Williams who’s here tonight was the lead
author on a science paper that first
described these as deposits related to
that River flowing down the side of the
canyon now in Death Valley doesn’t it
doesn’t rain very often but when it does
that water comes out fast and I can
almost imagine when I see these sorts of
things you know water up to my thigh
kind of thing draining across the
surface depositing these gravels what an
amazing in different place this must
have been three three and a half billion
years ago we got into this place called
Yellowknife Bay and here’s our dried-up
lake sediments this is a mud stone we
drilled down into this rock the rocks
weren’t red they’re gray they tell us
something about the conditions in the
past when we look at the chemistry it
tells us that these clays that are in
here were deposited in conditions that
were relatively neutral that is not too
acidic not too basic but we’ve already
sampled sediments wash down in a river
and ancient Lake deposits and we haven’t
even gotten to Mount sharp yet so
clearly the first bit of information
that we got back from curiosity really
sort of set us on our ear in terms of
understanding Mars as a planet and how
it evolved since leaving Yellowknife Bay
in these ancient lake deposits we’ve
been traversing across a landscape
that’s littered with sedimentary rocks
you can see some of those here in the
foreground and we’ve been sampling these
as we’ve gone trying to understand more
about the relationship between sediments
wash down in this in this river piece
Valles and out onto this fan of
sediments versus the sediments that have
been shed off the side of Mount sharp
there’s still kind of an uncertainty in
terms of where some of these different
sediments have come from and what their
origin is in relationship to the timing
of the formation of this big huge
mountain in the middle of the of the
crater but as you can see the same
we haven’t lost sight of Mount sharp
it’s always sort of been dead in our
sights and we’re actually more than
halfway there
from when we left the Yellowknife Bay
area and in fact we see images like this
almost daily with curiosity and it
reminds us exactly why we came here and
why this is the goal because you can see
the layers here that I described earlier
as sort of chapters in a book and you
can see here how they transition from
sort of darker and grayer layers near
the bottom to lighter sediments at the
top and knowing what we already know
about Gale Crater from our exploration
of these lake and sediments wash down in
the fan we’re very eager to get here and
understand more about the evolution of
the Martian climate as these sediments
were deposited
you
you
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