Space

DATE=6-26-03

TYPE=INTERVIEW

NUMBER=3-714

TITLE=NASA-MARS

BYLINE=DAVID BORGIDA

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

VOA-TV's David Borgida talks with Dr. Cathy Weitz, NASA program scientist with the Mars Exploration Rover, about the Rover missions.

MR. BORGIDA

To the world of space explorations now. The second Mars Rover is to explore that red planet in upcoming days. And here to talk about the mission, Dr. Cathy Weitz, a program scientist at NASA for the Mars Exploration Program. Thanks for being here on a hot, hot day in Washington.

DR. WEITZ

Well, it's great to be here.

MR. BORGIDA

What are we looking for up on Mars?

DR. WEITZ

Well, we want to understand what was the past like on Mars and how does it compare to what we see today. If you look at Mars now from orbit, you see evidence of all these valleys and channels, so it tells us there was a lot of water flowing once on Mars.

And we want to understand what happened to that water. Did it get very cold and dry, like we see on Mars now? Was it like that in the past? Or was it more warmer and wetter in the past like we see here on earth? And what caused that changed climate?

MR. BORGIDA

And I presume the key point about water is that it will yield life, and therefore we're wondering whether there was other life on Mars, right?

DR. WEITZ

Yes, absolutely. On earth, everywhere we find liquid water we see evidence of life. And so the question is, if we had liquid water flowing around in the past on Mars, then that gives us clues that perhaps there was life on Mars in the past, and maybe it's still there today.

MR. BORGIDA

Give us a little detail on the mission itself, when does it begin and how long and so on.

DR. WEITZ

Well, we've launched one already. We launched on June 10th. The second Rover will launch hopefully this Saturday, at 11:56 p.m., here on East Coast time. And we're planning on landing the first one on January 4th, 2004. The second one will land January 26th, 2004.

And we've selected two landing sites that show evidence of past persistent water activities. So we're going to drive around and look for evidence that there may have been water at this site and therefore there may be some preserved life there.

MR. BORGIDA

And when you say, "we're going to drive around," this is an unmanned flight obviously and you will be controlling this from down here on terra firma, right?

DR. WEITZ

That is correct. As you can see, we'll do an airbag landing on the surface of Mars. After we've stopped moving around we're going to then deploy the Rover. It's going to drive off the Lander.

And we're going to look around and try and find rocks and soils that look like those on earth that formed in the presence of water. We'll drive up, do some studies of them, and learn as much as we can about these sites and see what they tell us about Mars, what it was like in the past and what it's like today.

MR. BORGIDA

And this is the Rover unfolding that we're looking at now.

DR. WEITZ

That is correct.

MR. BORGIDA

And that's actually how it's going to happen, right?

DR. WEITZ

Yes. It lands with airbags, and then we deploy the solar panels. That's where we get our energy. That's a pan-cam mast. That's a camera on board there. There is the antenna that's just deploying right there.

It stands up. Those are the six wheels that we use to drive around. This is the same design that we had on the very successful 1997 Mars Pathfinder mission.

MR. BORGIDA

Blow-by-blow commentary on the Mars mission, you get it here at VOA TV. Is the search for water really the focus of the mission or are there any other issues that you're going to be looking at?

DR. WEITZ

Well, our focus was to find two landing sites that show evidence of water, because that's what we're really interested in -- understanding what was the water activity on Mars in the past. And also we know that because water is where we would find life in the past, that's where we're going to look as well.

MR. BORGIDA

Well, an interesting Mars mission coming up. Some insight and blow-by-blow comments, we appreciate it. That's Dr. Catherine Weitz of NASA. We appreciate very much that you were with us today.

DR. WEITZ

It's great to be here and hopefully everybody will be paying attention next January when we land there.

MR. BORGIDA

We'll be following it for our viewers. Thanks a lot.

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