WEBVTT

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🎵 [music] 🎵

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KIDS: Our World!

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EVAN: Hey Globey, today weíre
going to talk about the Phoenix
Lander.

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Have you ever heard of it?

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No? Well the Phoenix Lander is
really cool, and its mission
was very exciting.

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Itís a robotic craft that NASA
sent to Mars to learn more
about our neighboring planet.

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The Phoenix Lander was sent to
Mars for two main reasons.

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The first was to look for water
or a history of water on the
planet.

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The second reason was to test
the soil to see if it could

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support life in the past or
present.

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We call this ability to sustain
life "habitability."

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CARLA BITTER: Habitability
refers to the potential or

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the ability for anything
biological in nature to survive
or exist in a place.

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So when we explore Mars to go
looking for life as we know it,

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would probably be pretty
foolish because Mars is really
different from Earth.

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So what we want to know is, is
it a possibility? Is it
habitable?

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Does it have the building
blocks of life? The carbon,

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the oxygen, the nitrogen, the
phosphorous, and of course
water.

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Liquid water is the huge
ingredient which allows Earth
to be habitable.

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EVAN: The Phoenix Lander
touched down on the surface of
Mars

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on May 25th, 2008, completing a
journey from Earth that was

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680 million kilometers long.
Thatís a very long way.

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The Phoenix Lander has all
sorts of cool instruments on
board.

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One of those is a robotic arm,
which is used to dig trenches
in the Martian soil,

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scoop up soil samples for
testing, and also search for
evidence of water.

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Possibly the most exciting
discovery was when the robotic
arm

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dug just below the surface of
the soil and discovered ice.

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This was proof that water
existed on Mars...even though

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it was now all frozen or in the
form of gas in the atmosphere.

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If water existed on Mars in a
liquid form in the past,

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then perhaps life did too at
some point.

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The camera on-board the Lander
sent photographs of

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the ice back to scientists on
Earth. It was a major
discovery!

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And thanks to the technology of
the internet, the whole

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world shared in this discovery.
We saw the

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pictures just a few hours after
the scientist learned about the
ice themselves.

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CARLA BITTERS: It was very
exciting to find it because

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it said 'yes' all our other
instruments, the things weíve
done in the past.

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The other missions we sent to
Mars, thatís all right.

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That missing ingredient is
there.

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So the potential goes through
the roof that it is a

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possibility that Mars was or
even currently is

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habitable by some kind of
living thing.

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EVAN: And thatís what
exploration is all about...

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discovering new things and
determining if what you

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thought was correct is indeed
right.

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CARLA BITTERS: Exploration is
important to humans because

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I wouldnít be standing here
today talking about a mission
to Mars

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if my ancestors didnít cross
the ocean.

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Or didnít know what was on the
other side of the river or over
the mountain.

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And now we have the opportunity
and the

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technology and the possibility
to just offload planet Earth
altogether

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and go see whatís out there, go
see the ends of our known
universe.

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So exploration is what we do,
itís how we move forward,

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not just as a species, but as a
thinking group of people

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that are curious and want to
know whatís next.

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EVAN: The Phoenix Landerís
mission was designed to last
around 90 Sols,

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which is what we call days on
Mars.

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If you want to count in Earth
days, then the Lander was meant
to work for 92 days.

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Remember, days on Mars last
longer because the planet is

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revolving or spinning on its
axis at a slower speed than
Earth spins on its axis.

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It takes about 37 minutes
longer for Mars to make one
complete turn.

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EVAN: Because the Phoenix
Lander had touched down in the
polar region,

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scientists knew that when the
Martian winter arrived,

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it would become much too cold
for the Lander to continue to
work.

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And thatís exactly what
happened. One day the
scientists

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here on Earth simply stopped
receiving information from the
Phoenix Lander.

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Even though the Phoenix Lander
is no longer working,

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its mission is still an amazing
success story.

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It proved that water ice exists
on Mars.

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And perhaps in the future,
during another NASA mission to
Mars,

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scientist will prove that life
once existed on the red planet
as well.

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That is so exciting, Globey. I
canít wait to see what

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those NASA scientists uncover
next.

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? [music] ?

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KIDS: Our World!