( intro music )
( applause )
Kobie Boykins: Tonight what we
are going to try to do...
we are going to take
an exploration,
an exploration of
the planet surface of Mars.
And we are going to look
at that planet through the
eyes of Rovers.
And the first Rovers
we're going to talk about
are Spirit and Opportunity,
the two Mars Exploration Rovers.
And then we're going to
switch into Curiosity.
A larger Rover and its
job is to do something
a little different.
But first we have to
go back in time.
We're going to back
approximately 10 years,
a little bit more than 10 years.
And we're going to discuss
what happens
 and how Spirit and Opportunity
made it to the surface of Mars.
 So, we're going to fly over to
Kennedy Space Center in Florida
 and we're going to go
 and we're going to get
 real close and personal
 with the Delta II rocket.
Now this is the Delta II rocket,
 it's built by the
 Boeing Company.
 It has three stages to orbit.
 And around the bottom side
 of this vehicle
 there's nine air-lit solids.
 So this is going to help us
 get a little bit extra lift,
 so that we can get to Mars
 as rapidly as possible.
And if you don't mind
counting down with me.
Five, four, three, two.
Begin ignition.
 And lift off of the Delta II
 rocket with the
 Mars Exploration--
 And in a minute and 30 seconds
 we're in orbit around Earth.
 As you see, we're starting to
 drop away some of the
 air-lit solids.
 Once those air-lit solids fall
 back away they get recycled.
 They get picked up.
Once out first stage burns out,
 we're going to let that go,
 we're going to light
 our second stage.
 Once we light our second stage
 then we let that first stage
 fall back to the ocean,
 it becomes an ecosystem
 for the fish.
 We light our second stage.
 At this point the spacecraft
 has very little stability,
 so we are going to spin it up.
 We spin it up to about 12 RPM,
more or less like a quarterback
 that throws a nice,
 tight spiral.
We are going to get really good
 flight through the air.
 We light our third stage,
 this puts us on
 a direct trajectory to Mars.
We are going to do what we like
to call quiescent period.
The boring period of travelling
through interstellar space.
( audience laughter )
Okay. So now...
Seven months later, here we are
 travelling at
 16,000 miles per hour
 toward the surface of Mars.
We lose our cruise stage because
 we don't need it any more.
 It has pointed us
 directly at Mars,
 we are ready to go and we are
 going to hit our landing site.
 We are travelling at
 16,000 miles per hour
 and we hit the
 upper atmosphere of Mars.
 When we hit the
 upper atmosphere of Mars,
the friction as we come through
 literally burns a hole
 in the upper atmosphere.
 The heat shield
 in the front of our Rover
 gets to about the
 surface temperature of the Sun
 1600 degrees centigrade.
 At this point we're
 going to start
 what I like to call
 reverse origami.
 We're going to pull up
 a parachute,
 this is a supersonic parachute
 and that's going to start
 changing our angle
of attack from being directly in
 to being more vertical
 with the surface of Mars.
 At this point
 we're going to slow down
 to around 300-400
 miles per hour.
 We are going to lose
 our heat shield
because we don't want that heat
 to come back into our vehicle.
We are going to lower our lander
 more or less on a shoestring.
 Once we find the surface
 we blow up the airbags.
 That takes about
 the blink of an eye,
 about half a millisecond.
 And then we're going to fire
 some retrorockets
 when we get to about
 40 meters above the surface,
slow down to zero miles per hour
 cut the cord and bounce.
 And we bounce...
 and we bounce.
 Now the first bounce of
this vehicle could take us over,
 I use,
 the Empire State Building.
 we can bounce anywhere from
a mile and a half to two miles.
 Each successive bounce
 is taking away a
 little bit of energy,
 which slows us down.
After we lose all of our energy
 and we come to a stop,
 we are going to
 deflate the airbags.
 So the vehicle senses that
 we've stopped
 we deflate the airbags.
What you saw happen
in a few seconds there
takes about
45 minutes in real time.
The next thing
that we're going to do is
we're going to open up
our lander petals.
We are going to open up
these lander petals now,
what you're going to see
happen in about 30 seconds
happens in 45 minutes.
 The next thing
 that we are going to do
 we are going to open up
 the solar arrays.
 If you don't mind,
 I'll watch too.
 Ah!
( audience laughter )
We've got one more thing to do.
 Just one more part.
 Okay, just...
 ooh...
 once it gets over center,
 ah, okay! Well done.
I must have seen this
a thousand times,
it doesn't matter
how many times I see it,
I get very excited
when it works.
Because my team and I were
the team that designed that
and if it didn't work we had
a very, very bad day on Mars.
So, when it works
I get a little excited.
So, open up the solar arrays,
now we can power the vehicle.
We are starting to
charge up the batteries.
The last things that you
are going to see happen
on this first day
is we pull up the Pancam mast,
what we call the PMA.
And we deploy our
high-gain antennas,
so we can talk directly
back to Earth.
The last thing that you are
going to see the Rover do
in this animation is it's going
to take a panoramic image.
One of the things that you want
 to do when you've landed
 in a new place
 is find out where you are.
 So we are going to
 take this beautiful image,
 we're going to start
transmitting that back to Earth.
 So the next day
 what we're going to do is
 we're going to stand up
 the vehicle.
 Deploy the front wheels,
 and we're going to change
 more or less
our perspective on the surface.
 When we designed
 Spirit and Opportunity,
 we designed the eyes
 to be at 5-foot-2.
 That's approximately the level
 of a human being walking
 on the surface of Mars.
 So, now when we take images
and we get our panoramic images,
it's going to feel like a human
 being was standing on Mars
 looking around.
 We are looking for
 scientifically exciting sites.
 Spirit and Opportunity
 are roving geologists.
 Their job was to follow
 the water,
to look for water that may have
 flown on the surface of Mars.
 And we are going to do
 that through the history
 of the rocks.
 Go up taste the rocks,
touch the rocks, feel the rocks,
 if you can break the rocks.
 Try to figure out
 do the rocks tell us something
 about the history of Mars.
 So now the last thing
 that we have to do
 is drive the Rover
 off the lander.
 You are going to see
 the lander change it's
 position a little bit,
 get ready for the
 Rover to drive off
on these things called batwings.
 We drive off on those batwings
 and we get six wheels
 on the surface of Mars.
 We call Spirit the bad sister.
 And not because
 she was bad in any way...
but we drive off the lander,
we go up to the first rock.
The rock was called Adirondack.
We took out her arm,
we touched the rock
and as soon as we
touched the rock
Spirit did not call home.
It's like ET went,
"I no phone home."
So, we were worried that
we didn't understand
what was going on with Spirit.
Remember that boring period
of driving through
interstellar space
that I told you about...
seven months.
So, during that
seven month period of time
we had one of the
biggest solar flares,
solar activities
that we have ever seen,
Alright? So lots of gamma rays,
bad stuff...
are... the sun burped,
bad stuff goes flying through
interstellar space.
So what did we do?
First time ever when we
were flying a spacecraft
into deep space we actually
rebooted the computer.
So we turned it off.
( audience laughter )
Turned it back on.
And it goes, "Hey, I'm here."
And we go all, "Oh goodness,
gracious, thank you."
Okay! It calls back home,
we are like great, great, great.
It has all of this great stuff,
it starts recording everything
that it's doing,
all of it's maneuvers,
it records all the things
that are felt,
all the bounces on the surface,
everything, everything...
eight days later drives off,
touches a rock
and it's memory got full.
And once its memory got full,
the computer wouldn't boot up.
And we actually told it to
erase it's memory,
threw all of that stuff
through quiescent space away.
And then,
"Hey, here I am all happy."
"Do whatever you want me to do."
"Do the rock."
And then Spirit became okay
Spirit and Opportunity were,
I'll tell you,
they were designed to go
to the surface of Mars
and explore the surface
for 90 days.
And travel up to 600 meters.
 Spirit was on the surface
 communicating for more than
 five years.
 Traveled a little less than
 five miles.
 Opportunity, the good sister
 landed a month later,
 has been on the surface
 for over a decade
 and continues giving us
 great information daily.
 And she's traveled
 over 25 miles.
So, why do we go to Mars?
Why is Mars
such an interesting place
to explore?
In the image that you see
behind me on the left is Mars.
And on the right is Earth.
Looks like where river or water
may have run
at some point in time.
 In this image,
 I have switched it around.
 On the left is Earth,
 on the right is Mars.
 That image on the right
 is the largest known volcano
 in our solar system.
 The rocky planets,
 it's called the Olympus Mons,
 it's on the surface of Mars.
 It's approximately the size
 of the state of Arizona.
 Go back to the early 70s,
 76-77 when we landed
 the Viking landers
 on the surface of Mars.
 We have Mars Pathfinder,
 which landed in
 July 4th of 1997.
 And then we had Phoenix.
 And then you have the
 two landing sites for
 Spirit and Opportunity,
 in this topographical map.
 Let me show it in
 a different way.
 For those that like
 planetary maps
 you can see where we landed.
 And the other thing
 that you'll see in this
 is the yellow places are the
 places that we've landed,
 the ones in white were the
 possibilities for
 Curiosity to land.
 So, now we're on the surface.
 Spirit and Opportunity caught
 some very interesting things
 on the surface.
 From orbit we could see things
 that look like large tracks,
 long tracks on the...
 on the dust, the surface.
 And we always postulated
 that they would have to have
 these dust devils,
 but we had never seem them.
 We believe that this is
 one of the reasons
 the vehicles have lasted
 so long.
 Every so often when these
 dust devils would come by
and clean off my solar arrays...
and make us happy
and we make more power
and now the Rovers can
continue to do their science.
Very interesting.
 Scientifically this is one of
 the most important images
 that we took with the
 Opportunity vehicle.
 It was the first time ever
 remotely
 with a robotic vehicle
 that we took an image
 on the surface
 at the exact same time
 we took the image from orbit.
So, now we can actually do
atmospheric science
from the ground and from
orbit at the exact same time.
 So, with Opportunity,
 the good sister,
 it travels 300 million miles,
 bounces along the
 surface of Mars
 and lands in a crater.
 There's nothing there,
 it's just nothing,
 except one rock.
 And the rock is not from Mars!
It's a meteorite
from somewhere else.
Now, the interesting thing is
we've seen quite a few of these
now on the surface of Mars.
 We do know that they are from
 one of the four rocky planets
 or some of the asteroid belt,
 we do know that.
But where they are actually from
 we don't know, okay.
They probably were around
sort of the early formation
of the planet.
But we don't know.
But they are very interesting.
Very exciting.
 The Rover is now
 here in Endeavour Crater.
 It's been exploring
 Endeavour Crater
 for at least a year now.
 We've driven down
 into the crater,
 we are at a new location
 inside the crater.
 We are seeing a lot more of
 these clays, right.
 So now we know that
 in this location
all across the Meridiani Plains
 there's a lot of water.
 Deep water.
 We see the change in salinity.
Same thing for Spirit,
as we drove up Husband Hill
we started to see this change
in salinity in the soil.
It was a failure that actually
told us that.
One of the wheels
on the Spirit Rover
stopped working
and so we started dragging it.
And by dragging it we created
this trench
on the surface of Mars.
And as we were
creating this trench
when we turned around
and took images
we saw the actual albedo,
the light that was coming off
the soil change.
And that started to tell us
something is going on
so we started doing
more investigation.
And we saw this salt
level change
as we started to get higher
in elevation on the mountain.
And what it means is that
as the water was receding
it got much more salty
and that told us that
there was water there.
Very salty water and there was
water at both these locations.
So now we know that Mars
was a very wet place
at one point of time
in the past.
 We are going to change
 gears and talk about
 Curiosity a little bit.
 Curiosity was launched on
 November 26th 2011,
 and landed August 5th.
 We've traveled for 9-point...
9-point-4, 9-point-5 kilometers
 on the surface as of Saul 774.
Curiosity was designed
to drive 20 kilometers
and be on the surface
for one Martian year.
So, we've already made
one Martian year,
so we've already made part of
our prime commitment to NASA
and that... it's been awesome.
It's been an awesome
couple of years.
Now how did we get there?
 So it's a little different.
 Very, very similar
 launch sequence
 but it's a different
 launch vehicle.
 So instead of a
 Boeing vehicle, this is a
 Lockheed Martin vehicle.
 It's called an Atlas rocket.
 It's built by Lockheed.
 It has really
 just two stages to orbit.
 So you've seen
 we've already got into orbit,
 you saw that particular part.
 Now, this second stage of this
 vehicle is much more capable.
It has some retrorockets on it,
 it has some thrusters on it.
 Now it can spin us up and it
 can point us directly at Mars.
 So we did the last kick,
 and then that's going to
 fall back and burn up
 in the atmosphere.
 What doesn't burn up
 becomes ecosystem for fish.
 And now we are going to
 start going around.
 So now we are on a
 direct trajectory to Mars.
 You are going to see us
 light up the solar arrays
 that are around
 on the cruise stage.
 That's going to actually
 charge up our batteries
 and then what we do is,
 we supercharge the batteries
 and then we discharge them
 and we keep them at about
80 percent the rest of the way.
 Now we are travelling
 a little bit slower
 because we don't have
 the same lift capability
 with the Lockheed vehicle.
 So we are travelling at
 14,500 miles an hour.
And it takes a little bit longer
 because Earth and Mars
 are at different orientation.
 Deploy a parachute again.
 We are going to
 lose that heat shield
 because we don't want to
 get that heat soak
 coming back
 into the vehicle.
 But now everything is changed.
 We lose the heat shied
 and instead of...
 lowering a lander with airbags
 we are actually going to
 cut some cables and bolts,
 more or less
 and let our Rover
 fall toward the surface.
 Fire up some rockets and fly.
 We added a new science
 instrument called the
 Marty Camera.
This camera is actually
taking images
at about 32 frames per second.
So we are going to
zoom in on the camera
and you're going to look at
what's going on.
 So as we are
 falling toward the surface
 the camera is taking images
 of the surface of Mars,
 overlaying them, figuring out
what is our downrange trajectory
 and velocity, and if there are
 any obstacles that
 are in the way.
 Once we figure out
 there are no obstacles
 in the way, we are going to
 lower our Rover
 on three shoestrings and
 an umbilical cord.
 Really gingerly hit the ground
 and once we sense
 slack in the cables.
 The cables go slack, we cut
 the three umbilical cords
 and the descent stage
 fires up and flies away.
 Designed to go 600 meters
 away from the vehicle.
It would be bad if it came back
 and crashed on us,
 that would be really bad.
 Now we are on our wheels.
We are ready to start exploring.
So now instead of having to
drive off a lander,
we are ready to go
the very first day.
Last things that we have
to do is pull up our
remote sensing mast
what we call the RSM
and pull out our
high-gain antenna.
The high-gain antenna
for this vehicle
was delivered to us
by the Spanish
as a gift... to NASA.
 Last thing you are going to
 see here is
 as we start driving around
 with Curiosity is that
 Curiosity is a
 different vehicle.
 Instead of being a
 roving geologist,
 it's a roving biologist.
 It's job is to look for
 past places on Mars
that could have sustained life.
 We get to shoot a laser
 at the rock.
 Now why did we do that?
Instead of having to go over and
 touch every rock
 and taste every rock...
 like we said before,
 we can actually fire
 the laser at the rock,
 burn the surface of the rock
 and look at the gas
 that comes off.
 And from that gas we can see
 what the chemical composition
 of that rock is.
 What are the elements
 that are there.
 The other thing
 that we did with Curiosity
 is we added a drill.
 Now this is the first time
 that we will be able to
 drill robotically
 on another planetary surface.
 Now we have drilled before
 with human beings
 on the surface of the moon.
 Anyway what we are seeing here
 in the video is what we call
 x-ray florescence.
We are actually shooting x-rays
 through the rocks,
 we agitate them and we can see
 how the actual chemicals
 are held together.
What is the crystalline
structure and that actually
tells us a lot
about what's going on with rocks
on the surface of Mars.
 Some more of the testing
 that we've got
 and here what we're going to
 do is,
 we're going to show
 the mobility system.
 The mobility system
 is very similar
 to the mobility system
 that we had on Pathfinder
and the Mars Exploration Rover.
 Right.
 It's the rocker-bogie
 suspension system
 that we've used
 on all of the vehicles
 that we've had on the surface.
 But this one serves
 a different purpose.
It actually is our landing gear.
 So, the wheels that look like
 they are one monolithic
 structure of aluminum,
 they are not.
 They are about seven sheets
 of paper of aluminum
 on the outside shell.
But in the middle it's titanium
 and the titanium is there
 to give us sort of a spongy,
 flexer feel.
 You are going to see us
 doing some testing.
 We are driving over
 obstacles that simulate
what we believe we are going to
 get to on Mars,
 about 35-centimeter
 height obstacles.
 We tilt the vehicle to
driver over different surfaces,
 we drive on the surface.
 We have six-wheel drive,
 four-wheel steering.
 So, all six wheels
 of the vehicle can drive,
 and all four wheels can
 turn toe-in about 90 degrees.
 So we can actually turn
 about our center of mass.
 So if we wanted to turn
 in place we actually could.
 The vehicle has a top speed
of five centimeters per second.
 It's boogieing.
( audience laughter )
 It takes us...
 I'll tell you what--
 It takes us 45 minutes
 to do a football field.
 That's how slow we move.
 So it's really, really slow.
Now, when you are
300 million miles away from the
nearest gas station,
it's okay to go slow.
 Where did we go on the surface
 of Mars for Curiosity?
 Curiosity went to a place
 called Gale Crater.
 So, why did we go
 to this Gale Crater?
 The reason we went to
 Gale Crater is that...
we wanted to investigate
this place called Mount Sharp.
 And Mount Sharp is this very,
 very large mountain.
 It's 5-point-5 kilometers
 in size
 and what we are looking
 for is the different layers
 as you drive up the mountain.
So, we are going to land,
drive to the mountain
and then look at the difference,
they say clays,
we'll just say it
is time periods.
So, early time period
to later time period
as you drive up this mountain.
Trying to see... can we see
places on the surface of Mars
that once could have
been habitable for life.
Could Mars in this location,
around Gale Crater,
sustain life and does it have
the building blocks,
the basic pieces to
actually have life grow
in that location.
 Then we got some of the
 first images back.
 So this was actually...
 after the first drive.
 And you see the
 name Curiosity.
 After we got to the surface,
 we started taking selfies.
( audience laughter )
 So this is one of the
 first selfies of the Rover.
 It's a shadow,
 we weren't really
 good at it yet.
 Then...
( audience laughter )
 Somebody had some fun
 with one of our images.
 Optimus Prime came
 and visit us...
 So...
( laughter )
That's fun.
 We have a laser.
 So great, we have a laser.
Here's what people think we do.
( audience laughter )
 Sort of fun.
 Here's what we really do.
 So, you have the picture
 on the left, undisturbed soil
 picture on the right,
 five laser holes.
I'll show it to you a different
 way, I'll show a video.
 So, here's a video of us
 burning a hole in the ground.
 Pretty exciting, you can
 see sort of the by-products
 coming off.
You can't see the gas.
But what we are actually doing
is we're burning a hole,
looking for the gas so we
can tell what it's made of.
So, the first thing that
happened after we got--
after we landed
 we drove to this area on Mars
 that was very interesting.
 Within the first three months
 of being at this location,
 we were able to say,
 one, Gale Crater was wet.
Number two, it can sustain life.
Now we can't say that
there was life there
but we can say that
if there was,
it would have been
able to be sustained.
There are all of the
chemical compositions
that are needed to support life.
 Paying homage to some of
 our great explorers before us,
 footprint of Buzz Aldrin and
then Curiosity Rover footprint.
 Our first scoop,
 so we now went down and
we scooped up some of the dirt.
 We are going to actually
 take that inside the vehicle.
 Some more of
 these analogues.
 So, looks like riverbeds.
 Picture on the left
 is uncorrected,
 just an image that comes back
 from the surface of Mars,
 looks like a riverbed.
 You can see
 false cover image of Mars
 that's sort of in the middle
 and then an Earth riverbed.
 Looks very, very similar.
 Here is the first time
 we are going to sample,
 we are going to drill
 into the surface of Mars.
 I can tell you
 this took a long time.
 It took us about four weeks
 to actually make this
 one little hole.
 Here's a picture
 of the hole up close.
 The next image is
 after we've taken that
 and we ingest it inside,
 we can actually separate
 different particle size.
 So we can take things that are
 down to the couple microns.
 We will sift those out,
 then we can deliver those
 to different instruments.
Here's a picture of Mount Sharp.
 This is where we wanted to go
 It was an early picture.
 There's a rock that's out
 in the distance,
 that rock is 5-point-5
 kilometers away from our Rover
 and it's approximately
 the same size as the Rover.
 And we are thinking,
 "Oh, my goodness,
 it would so great
 if we can make it there."
 The other thing that
 you will notice in this image,
 if you are looking
 closely is there's clouds.
 Mars does have clouds
 just like Earth, right.
 So there is moisture
 in the atmosphere.
 So, this image shows sort
 of our trajectory to get down
 to the start of the mountain.
 And as we were driving
we were starting to figure out,
 "Oh, my goodness
 there's parts of Mars
that are really, really scary".
And the reason they are really,
really scary
is that the rocks
that are on the surface
are different than
we have ever seen
anywhere else
on the surface of Mars.
As we were driving on Mars
with Spirit and Opportunity,
we'd hit a rock and
we'd break it
or push it over and
move it out of the way.
In this particular area,
the rocks are like cemented
into the ground.
And then they have this word,
I don't know,
I'm just going to use it,
it's called Ventifacted rocks.
In other words
the rocks are wind-blown.
So, if you can imagine
you are covered with water
and as the water recedes, the
wind starts working on the rock
and as it recedes,
it sharpens the rock.
So the rocks look like teeth.
Very, very sharp teeth.
And as we are driving over them,
we are puncturing holes
in the wheels.
So, we thought,
"Oh, my goodness,
one, we have to figure
how not to hurt our wheels,
and number two,
we have to figure out where
to drive around things."
 So, you can see we take
sort of this really crazy path.
 And then we got to the place
 that's at the end of
 this particular image.
And the scientists had a choice.
We could go right,
effectively right from
the Rover's perspective
and go through this area,
right here,
which is a choke point.
There's really no way to get out
if you get in there.
Or we could go straight,
very, very bad rocks.
So we chose to go right.
So we go right.
We end up right
 we take some images
 of our wheels.
We started to see lots of wear
as we were driving over this
area called the Hummocky Plains.
And the hole that you see is,
eh, sort of benign.
The thing that's actually,
really scary
is the hole
that's underneath that.
And the reason it's scary
as we are driving over the
surface what we are going to do
is the wheel is taking load,
right, it's moving,
it's actually getting stressed.
And every time you do that
you are actually having
this crack propagate.
And we were worried,
"Oh, my goodness,
how are the wheels
going to fail?"
These cracks are going
to propagate across the wheel
and then part of the wheel
is going to fall off.
And the part of the wheel
that falls off
is it going to hit anything
that's bad?
Because there's cables
all around this.
So, as the wheel falls apart,
is it going to do this.
So now what we are doing is
selectively on different
soils we are driving the
Rover backwards.
So, driving backwards actually
takes a little bit of the load
off the front wheels...
about the same
in the middle wheels,
and then starts to do
the damage to the back wheels.
But that's okay
because they are not
damaged at all at this point.
So we are going to start
to try to even out
the wear across the wheels
so that we get a little bit
of longer driving.
The other thing we noticed
and I told you we went
to that choke point
is that with damaged wheels
we could drive over
sand dunes better.
So,
climbing over nice light stuff
was actually better with
these holes in the wheel.
 So, we turn right
 we get to the sand dune.
 Now we've done some testing,
 we know that we could
 drive over it.
 But as all good engineers and
 all good scientists, go,
 "Well, what happens if there's
 really sharp rocks
 underneath the dune?"
So we argue for about two days,
about driving over this dune
and I'm thinking,
"Golly, it's only a meter tall,
only a meter tall,
you know three feet.
And the Rover's belly
is 75 centimeters,
so three-quarters of a meter.
So, if it was really
just light, fluffy
you know sand dune
we would get stuck.
But the reality is that the
rover would sort of
float over it.
But we were freaked out,
for a little while.
So, we did some testing.
And then we decided to go.
But we didn't decide
to go all at once.
We put a toe in and
then put another toe in,
we drove up to the top
and looked over
and then we drove back.
Then we said, "Okay, go."
 So here's the image
 from the other side.
 Here's the video of us driving
 over that particular obstacle.
 Sort of fun. But it took us
 a while to do that.
 Then we have where we've gone.
 So we land at Bradbury,
 we go over to Yellowknife Bay.
 And now we are
 at the Pahrump Hills.
 Now the Pahrump Hills are more
 or less the gateway to
 Mount Sharp.
 Our first drill at
 Pahrump Hills.
 Now you can see it really
 sort of looks clayish.
 We do some
 close-up investigation,
 we can see these lines,
 looks like secretions.
 And hard stuff around it,
 the mineral that we believe
 that's there,
 and we were just doing
 some investigation
 right now,
 looks like hematite...
which only forms
in water here on Earth.
So, it looks like we are
finding another place
that was really wet
on the surface of Mars.
 And then we can talk
 about what's coming next.
In 2020, we'll have a new Rover.
You can see some of the science.
 The science suite
 has been announced.
 You can see the
 international collaboration
 that's going to happen.
 Very, very similar vehicle
 to Curiosity in terms of size,
 but has a different mission.
And it's mission really is going
to go sample the surface of Mars
 and capture the samples.
 And hopefully return them
 back to Earth.
So, now as I close
I'm going to show you
some of my favorite images
from the surface.
 This image is from Curiosity.
 And you see that star...
 that's out there?
 That's Earth.
 And in high-resolution
 you can see the moon.
And now I'll show
you my favorite video...
my favorite image.
 This is from
 the top of Husband Hill.
 This is one of the last things
 that we got from Spirit.
 And if we had been able...
had a little bit better camera,
 we could have seen Earth set.
 And I'll show you this
 as a video.
 And this is the
 Sun setting on Mars.
 And, the thing that makes me
 love this image so much is
 literally the fact that...
some day a human being will
stand on the surface of Mars
and say,
"I am watching the Earth set
and then I am watching
the Sun set."
And I can't wait for that day.
Thank you guys so very much.
It's been awesome.
( applause )
( outro music )
