1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,750 (dramatic music) 2 00:00:13,730 --> 00:00:15,870 The sun at the center of the solar system 3 00:00:15,870 --> 00:00:17,873 is an incredibly hot object. 4 00:00:19,470 --> 00:00:22,871 This hot raging ball of gas. 5 00:00:22,871 --> 00:00:26,260 The atmosphere is so much hotter 6 00:00:26,260 --> 00:00:30,333 than actually the surface and we don't know why. 7 00:00:31,830 --> 00:00:34,170 In order to be able to truly see the sun 8 00:00:34,170 --> 00:00:37,450 the interior, the surface, the atmosphere, 9 00:00:37,450 --> 00:00:39,053 we have to go into space. 10 00:00:41,067 --> 00:00:42,880 We have had spacecraft that have gone in 11 00:00:42,880 --> 00:00:44,723 as far as the planet Mercury. 12 00:00:45,740 --> 00:00:48,860 Mercury is known as the planet of extremes. 13 00:00:48,860 --> 00:00:52,380 It is the planet that formed closest to the sun. 14 00:00:52,380 --> 00:00:54,700 The day side of Mercury plus 450 degrees, 15 00:00:54,700 --> 00:00:57,410 the night side about minus 180. 16 00:00:57,410 --> 00:00:58,950 It's so close to the sun, 17 00:00:58,950 --> 00:01:01,254 the dynamics are so much more powerful. 18 00:01:01,254 --> 00:01:03,540 Mercury is the easiest place to get to 19 00:01:03,540 --> 00:01:04,860 in our solar system where we can measure 20 00:01:04,860 --> 00:01:06,910 the space weather, solar wind 21 00:01:06,910 --> 00:01:09,451 coupling with the planetary magnetic field. 22 00:01:09,451 --> 00:01:11,499 We've identified a coupling object. 23 00:01:11,499 --> 00:01:13,560 If it turns out that calculation's wrong 24 00:01:13,560 --> 00:01:14,960 the mission doesn't succeed. 25 00:01:16,090 --> 00:01:19,700 It transpired a new discovery had been made. 26 00:01:19,700 --> 00:01:24,113 We have found what we believe is ice at Mercury. 27 00:01:25,950 --> 00:01:29,390 We're gonna go to the most extreme environment 28 00:01:29,390 --> 00:01:30,873 in our entire solar system. 29 00:01:31,970 --> 00:01:35,063 We're gonna go in and we're gonna touch the sun. 30 00:01:36,205 --> 00:01:39,339 Three, two, one, zero. 31 00:01:39,339 --> 00:01:42,089 (dramatic music) 32 00:01:44,440 --> 00:01:45,740 This is the story 33 00:01:45,740 --> 00:01:48,280 of the exploration of the sun 34 00:01:48,280 --> 00:01:51,340 told by those who dared to do it. 35 00:01:51,340 --> 00:01:53,770 The latest step in our quest to uncover 36 00:01:53,770 --> 00:01:57,930 the secrets of the sun and the mysteries of Mercury. 37 00:01:57,930 --> 00:01:59,463 That's goodbye, spacecraft. 38 00:02:11,196 --> 00:02:13,946 (dramatic music) 39 00:02:18,450 --> 00:02:20,790 Humanity, I think, has a general quest 40 00:02:20,790 --> 00:02:21,710 for knowledge. 41 00:02:21,710 --> 00:02:25,163 We tend to just ask questions and wonder why. 42 00:02:26,360 --> 00:02:29,560 The nature is to look up and to look around you 43 00:02:29,560 --> 00:02:32,120 and to want to understand your surroundings. 44 00:02:32,120 --> 00:02:34,508 And so the first thing anyone looked up 45 00:02:34,508 --> 00:02:36,450 and wandered about was the sun. 46 00:02:36,450 --> 00:02:39,350 Studying the sun has always been difficult, 47 00:02:39,350 --> 00:02:40,850 mainly because it's so bright. 48 00:02:41,690 --> 00:02:44,450 It burns out your eyes, it burns out photographic plates, 49 00:02:44,450 --> 00:02:47,850 it burns out everything if you don't do it carefully. 50 00:02:47,850 --> 00:02:49,830 It think it's been over the years, 51 00:02:49,830 --> 00:02:54,830 seen as at sometimes friend and at other times as foe. 52 00:02:55,360 --> 00:02:58,200 Described in literature and in art 53 00:02:58,200 --> 00:03:02,433 as being a fiery warlord of the solar system. 54 00:03:03,620 --> 00:03:07,720 Giver of life but then during solar eclipses, 55 00:03:07,720 --> 00:03:10,260 all the civilizations were fearful 56 00:03:10,260 --> 00:03:12,110 that the sun wouldn't come back 57 00:03:12,110 --> 00:03:14,700 because they relied on it so much. 58 00:03:14,700 --> 00:03:16,830 The sun is a constant in our lives. 59 00:03:16,830 --> 00:03:19,160 It rises every morning, it sets every night 60 00:03:19,160 --> 00:03:21,090 and yet when you look at the sun 61 00:03:21,090 --> 00:03:24,140 you will see that it is anything but constant, 62 00:03:24,140 --> 00:03:27,593 it is a continually changing, incredibly active star. 63 00:03:30,334 --> 00:03:31,880 Chinese astronomers were among the first 64 00:03:31,880 --> 00:03:36,370 to record the sun's behavior some 2,800 years ago. 65 00:03:36,370 --> 00:03:39,230 They noted that dark patches sometimes appeared 66 00:03:39,230 --> 00:03:41,443 on it's surface and then disappeared. 67 00:03:42,820 --> 00:03:45,470 But it would take the invention of the telescope 68 00:03:45,470 --> 00:03:47,330 for humans to truly to begin 69 00:03:47,330 --> 00:03:50,400 to unravel the mysteries of our star. 70 00:03:50,400 --> 00:03:55,370 In the summer of 1610, amazingly and somewhat foolishly 71 00:03:55,370 --> 00:03:57,760 we would say today, Thomas Harriet 72 00:03:57,760 --> 00:04:00,940 looked through a telescope directly at the sun. 73 00:04:00,940 --> 00:04:03,250 So he did this in the early morning 74 00:04:03,250 --> 00:04:04,940 when there was mist on the horizon, 75 00:04:04,940 --> 00:04:06,870 so the sun's light was diminished 76 00:04:06,870 --> 00:04:10,130 but he looked at the sun directly 77 00:04:10,130 --> 00:04:13,193 and saw on the surface black spots. 78 00:04:14,100 --> 00:04:16,690 The record that he left for us was a drawing of the sun 79 00:04:16,690 --> 00:04:17,990 with spots on the surface. 80 00:04:19,210 --> 00:04:23,570 But then the most famous observer of sunspots is Galileo 81 00:04:23,570 --> 00:04:27,470 and he made absolutely fantastic intricate drawings 82 00:04:27,470 --> 00:04:30,552 of sunspots and he monitored, in particular 83 00:04:30,552 --> 00:04:32,584 over the summer of 1612 84 00:04:32,584 --> 00:04:36,240 allowing us to see where the sunspots were forming, 85 00:04:36,240 --> 00:04:39,110 he was able to show that the sun rotated. 86 00:04:39,110 --> 00:04:41,130 He was able to show that the sun rotated 87 00:04:41,130 --> 00:04:45,150 at different rates depending on the latitude of the sun 88 00:04:45,150 --> 00:04:46,450 and he really showed us 89 00:04:46,450 --> 00:04:50,030 that yes the sun is not this perfect object, 90 00:04:50,030 --> 00:04:55,030 it is blemished, but it is interesting and it's changing. 91 00:04:55,520 --> 00:04:57,540 Galileo thought that the sunspots 92 00:04:57,540 --> 00:05:01,790 were most likely clouds forming in the sun's atmosphere. 93 00:05:01,790 --> 00:05:05,480 Then 200 years later an entirely different set 94 00:05:05,480 --> 00:05:07,860 of observations began to hint 95 00:05:07,860 --> 00:05:10,870 that the earth and the sun might have some kind 96 00:05:10,870 --> 00:05:13,583 of mysterious invisible connection. 97 00:05:14,616 --> 00:05:15,659 (dramatic music) 98 00:05:15,659 --> 00:05:18,000 In 1806, a Prussian explorer and geographer 99 00:05:18,000 --> 00:05:20,510 called Alexander Humboldt. 100 00:05:20,510 --> 00:05:23,400 He noticed that during a night 101 00:05:23,400 --> 00:05:25,700 where there was a strong display of the aurora 102 00:05:26,600 --> 00:05:29,773 his compass needle veered away from it's normal bearing. 103 00:05:31,250 --> 00:05:35,070 Then when the aurora display subsided, 104 00:05:35,070 --> 00:05:37,470 the compass went back to it's previous position. 105 00:05:38,430 --> 00:05:41,150 In fact from May of that year until June 1807 106 00:05:41,150 --> 00:05:43,460 he took compass readings every half an hour 107 00:05:43,460 --> 00:05:45,510 from midnight till morning. 108 00:05:45,510 --> 00:05:48,130 And in his work he discovered a phenomenon 109 00:05:48,130 --> 00:05:50,410 that he called a magnetic storm. 110 00:05:50,410 --> 00:05:52,850 Today we call it a geomagnetic storm, 111 00:05:52,850 --> 00:05:55,423 a disturbance of the earth's magnetic field. 112 00:05:56,340 --> 00:05:59,450 Humboldt concluded that whatever was behind the aurora 113 00:05:59,450 --> 00:06:00,630 the northern and southern lights 114 00:06:00,630 --> 00:06:04,013 was a having a magnetic impact on the earth. 115 00:06:05,540 --> 00:06:07,770 As investigations into the mysteries 116 00:06:07,770 --> 00:06:09,970 of the sun continued more 117 00:06:09,970 --> 00:06:12,693 and more strange phenomena was seen. 118 00:06:14,650 --> 00:06:18,260 In 1859, Richard Carrington, a wealthy brewer 119 00:06:18,260 --> 00:06:20,750 in Surry, in England, his passion was 120 00:06:20,750 --> 00:06:23,930 to watch the sun everyday and draw what he saw 121 00:06:23,930 --> 00:06:25,650 on the surface. 122 00:06:25,650 --> 00:06:28,630 And he noticed one day in early September 123 00:06:28,630 --> 00:06:30,560 when he was drawing his sunspots, 124 00:06:30,560 --> 00:06:34,660 that he saw these two bright regions form, 125 00:06:34,660 --> 00:06:36,980 they sort of flared into brightness. 126 00:06:36,980 --> 00:06:39,920 And he was so shocked he rushed off 127 00:06:39,920 --> 00:06:41,760 to find somebody to come and collaborate 128 00:06:41,760 --> 00:06:44,750 what he'd seen, amazing new discovery, 129 00:06:44,750 --> 00:06:46,170 no one had ever seen that before, 130 00:06:46,170 --> 00:06:47,910 he wanted a second opinion. 131 00:06:47,910 --> 00:06:49,800 But by the time he got back, 132 00:06:49,800 --> 00:06:53,347 the white flaring spots had diminished in brightness 133 00:06:53,347 --> 00:06:55,570 and they'd moved. 134 00:06:55,570 --> 00:06:59,600 At the same time, in London's Sky Garden Observatory, 135 00:06:59,600 --> 00:07:02,543 an extremely sensitive device called a magnetometer 136 00:07:02,543 --> 00:07:05,440 that monitors the earth's magnetic field 137 00:07:05,440 --> 00:07:08,070 registered a sudden anomaly. 138 00:07:08,070 --> 00:07:12,923 Then 17 and a half hours later, the aurora break out. 139 00:07:15,290 --> 00:07:17,340 Across the United States and England 140 00:07:17,340 --> 00:07:18,510 and various other places, 141 00:07:18,510 --> 00:07:20,730 in India where they had telegraph systems, 142 00:07:20,730 --> 00:07:21,980 they all stopped working. 143 00:07:23,210 --> 00:07:26,610 They generated hundreds of volts of electricity 144 00:07:26,610 --> 00:07:27,623 on these lines. 145 00:07:29,440 --> 00:07:31,260 There was a person in Washington 146 00:07:31,260 --> 00:07:32,783 that was nearly electrocuted. 147 00:07:34,480 --> 00:07:37,430 Apparently another telegraph station was burned down 148 00:07:37,430 --> 00:07:38,283 in Connecticut. 149 00:07:42,274 --> 00:07:43,670 The Aurora Borealis which normally 150 00:07:43,670 --> 00:07:45,840 hides up in the arctic regions 151 00:07:45,840 --> 00:07:49,373 could now be seen in Cuba almost directly overhead. 152 00:07:51,410 --> 00:07:55,283 In Japan they were reporting deep crimson red aurora. 153 00:07:56,750 --> 00:07:59,700 Miners up in Pike's Peak in Colorado 154 00:07:59,700 --> 00:08:02,340 basically broke camp at one in the morning 155 00:08:02,340 --> 00:08:03,440 thinking that it was daylight, 156 00:08:03,440 --> 00:08:05,712 you know they were fixing breakfast. (laughs) 157 00:08:05,712 --> 00:08:07,823 'Cause it was so light. 158 00:08:09,040 --> 00:08:13,280 So when Richard Carrington saw something on the sun 159 00:08:13,280 --> 00:08:17,660 and people directly saw and temporarily correlated 160 00:08:17,660 --> 00:08:19,713 the same time an event of the earth, 161 00:08:19,713 --> 00:08:20,860 they started to think, 162 00:08:20,860 --> 00:08:23,521 yeah there is something going on here. 163 00:08:23,521 --> 00:08:25,938 (slow music) 164 00:08:28,070 --> 00:08:30,300 Carrington described his observations 165 00:08:30,300 --> 00:08:33,810 of solar flares at the Royal Astronomical Society 166 00:08:33,810 --> 00:08:36,410 in London that November. 167 00:08:36,410 --> 00:08:39,750 It was the first time an event on the sun's surface 168 00:08:39,750 --> 00:08:43,760 had been directly linked to events on the earth 169 00:08:43,760 --> 00:08:46,370 but the cause of this strange connection 170 00:08:46,370 --> 00:08:50,423 remained a mystery until the invention of new technologies. 171 00:08:51,420 --> 00:08:53,740 The real revolution for astronomy didn't really happen 172 00:08:53,740 --> 00:08:55,953 until the advent of photography, 173 00:08:56,900 --> 00:08:59,725 beginning with the daguerroeotype method. 174 00:08:59,725 --> 00:09:02,870 (dramatic music) 175 00:09:02,870 --> 00:09:05,434 And that was adapted for telescopic use 176 00:09:05,434 --> 00:09:06,880 (dramatic music) 177 00:09:06,880 --> 00:09:10,283 and finally the first photograph of the sun was taken. 178 00:09:13,220 --> 00:09:16,100 Georgia Ellery Hale in the late 1890's 179 00:09:16,100 --> 00:09:17,720 was the first to develop an instrument 180 00:09:17,720 --> 00:09:20,440 called the spectroheliograph, 181 00:09:20,440 --> 00:09:22,830 where basically he selected a spectral line, 182 00:09:22,830 --> 00:09:25,780 I think it was H-alpha the atomic hydrogen line 183 00:09:26,910 --> 00:09:30,250 and he scanned that line on a photographic plate 184 00:09:31,270 --> 00:09:32,150 to build up an image of the sun 185 00:09:32,150 --> 00:09:36,030 seen only in the light of that particular transition 186 00:09:36,030 --> 00:09:36,863 of that atom. 187 00:09:39,128 --> 00:09:40,610 And so all of a sudden that reduced the brightness 188 00:09:40,610 --> 00:09:42,470 of the sun by a million times 189 00:09:42,470 --> 00:09:45,250 and now you can just image the sun 190 00:09:45,250 --> 00:09:47,000 and see this glowing ring of light. 191 00:09:48,276 --> 00:09:51,026 (dramatic music) 192 00:09:51,918 --> 00:09:52,751 Using this technique, 193 00:09:52,751 --> 00:09:55,610 Hale established that there was strong magnetic fields 194 00:09:55,610 --> 00:09:58,063 in sunspots on the sun's surface. 195 00:09:59,725 --> 00:10:02,240 Other technology was used to unravel the sun's secrets, 196 00:10:02,240 --> 00:10:05,393 it resulted in an even more puzzling discovery. 197 00:10:07,369 --> 00:10:08,202 That hazy atmosphere that you see 198 00:10:08,202 --> 00:10:10,240 during a total solar eclipse, 199 00:10:10,240 --> 00:10:13,483 the sun's corona is hotter than the surface of the sun. 200 00:10:14,668 --> 00:10:15,501 And that really doesn't make sense, 201 00:10:15,501 --> 00:10:17,060 it breaks the laws of physics. 202 00:10:17,060 --> 00:10:20,210 You move away from a hot body, it should get colder 203 00:10:20,210 --> 00:10:22,690 but something is happening in this region 204 00:10:22,690 --> 00:10:27,003 that really heats this material up to incredible heat. 205 00:10:29,666 --> 00:10:32,980 And we don't know why if it's that hot 206 00:10:33,870 --> 00:10:36,743 why does the gas stay on the sun? 207 00:10:38,658 --> 00:10:40,500 Hot materials move really fast 208 00:10:42,722 --> 00:10:45,320 and if the gas molecules are traveling faster 209 00:10:45,320 --> 00:10:49,260 than escape velocity, there should be a wind 210 00:10:49,260 --> 00:10:50,853 streaming away from the sun. 211 00:10:52,870 --> 00:10:55,690 And this radical idea was predicted 212 00:10:55,690 --> 00:10:58,893 by an American astronomer Eugene Parker. 213 00:11:03,212 --> 00:11:06,300 In 1958, space was thought to be a hard vacuum 214 00:11:07,180 --> 00:11:09,370 and while the light and heat from the sun 215 00:11:09,370 --> 00:11:13,150 could pass through space, the enormous gravity of the sun 216 00:11:13,150 --> 00:11:17,140 would prevent any matter such as gas from reaching us. 217 00:11:17,140 --> 00:11:19,303 But Parker thought differently. 218 00:11:22,513 --> 00:11:26,577 In the 1950's, people thought that space was empty 219 00:11:26,577 --> 00:11:29,383 and it's vacuums void, there's nothing in it whatsoever. 220 00:11:31,630 --> 00:11:35,993 The idea was contradicted by several observations. 221 00:11:38,092 --> 00:11:38,925 He went through the mathematics, 222 00:11:38,925 --> 00:11:41,414 he went through the physics and he predicted 223 00:11:41,414 --> 00:11:43,510 the hot atmosphere of the sun 224 00:11:43,510 --> 00:11:48,190 has high pressure so the gas is wanting to push outwards, 225 00:11:48,190 --> 00:11:51,530 meanwhile the gravitational pull of the sun 226 00:11:51,530 --> 00:11:53,340 is trying to hold the gas in 227 00:11:53,340 --> 00:11:55,783 so you have this competition of forces. 228 00:11:56,800 --> 00:11:59,780 And if you go up in height in the atmosphere of the sun 229 00:11:59,780 --> 00:12:03,640 you get to a point where the gravitational pull 230 00:12:03,640 --> 00:12:08,640 is not able to overcome the outward push of the hot gas. 231 00:12:09,940 --> 00:12:12,993 And there's a really important consequence of that. 232 00:12:14,070 --> 00:12:17,330 The gas streams out into the solar system, 233 00:12:17,330 --> 00:12:20,663 the sun is literally expanding into space. 234 00:12:21,850 --> 00:12:25,350 I realized that we had the supersonic expansion 235 00:12:25,350 --> 00:12:27,490 of the outer atmosphere of the sun. 236 00:12:27,490 --> 00:12:30,173 A completely radical idea. 237 00:12:31,810 --> 00:12:34,071 Eugene wrote up a scientific paper, 238 00:12:34,071 --> 00:12:36,710 submitted it to the Astrophysical Journal 239 00:12:36,710 --> 00:12:39,510 and it got rejected. 240 00:12:39,510 --> 00:12:41,793 Hardly anybody took it seriously. 241 00:12:43,000 --> 00:12:48,000 I received several polite and not so polite declinations. 242 00:12:50,200 --> 00:12:54,790 What Eugene Parker realized was that the sun is so hot 243 00:12:54,790 --> 00:12:59,150 that the atoms are moving so quickly 244 00:12:59,150 --> 00:13:02,170 that some of them can actually escape from the sun 245 00:13:03,329 --> 00:13:07,424 and his calculations suggested the sun should be constantly 246 00:13:07,424 --> 00:13:12,160 losing gas, streaming away to make a wind. 247 00:13:12,160 --> 00:13:15,240 It was too revolutionary to think 248 00:13:15,240 --> 00:13:20,070 that the previous view of a sun held together by gravity 249 00:13:20,979 --> 00:13:22,929 in it's entirety was not actually true. 250 00:13:24,212 --> 00:13:25,550 Parker asked the then editor 251 00:13:25,550 --> 00:13:29,280 of the Astrophysical Journal, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar 252 00:13:29,280 --> 00:13:30,933 to look at his paper again. 253 00:13:32,192 --> 00:13:34,510 Chandrasekhar couldn't find any mathematical flaws 254 00:13:34,510 --> 00:13:36,040 in Parker's work. 255 00:13:36,040 --> 00:13:38,860 Chandra studied stars for many years, 256 00:13:38,860 --> 00:13:41,190 in fact he goes on to win a Nobel prize 257 00:13:41,190 --> 00:13:43,130 looking at the lifetimes of stars. 258 00:13:43,130 --> 00:13:46,260 He looks at the math, he looks at the physics. 259 00:13:46,260 --> 00:13:48,840 The editor said to Eugene, so do you really think 260 00:13:48,840 --> 00:13:51,030 there's something in the work you've done? 261 00:13:51,030 --> 00:13:53,987 And he said yes and the editor published it. 262 00:13:53,987 --> 00:13:56,603 But still it's ridiculed. 263 00:13:58,730 --> 00:14:00,500 Just because the paper was published 264 00:14:00,500 --> 00:14:05,500 it had no positive effect, they were not behind it 265 00:14:06,240 --> 00:14:08,283 because they just believed it was wrong. 266 00:14:10,147 --> 00:14:13,420 Three, two, one, zero. 267 00:14:15,026 --> 00:14:18,352 (rocket blasting) 268 00:14:18,352 --> 00:14:20,580 Four years after I made the proposal, 269 00:14:20,580 --> 00:14:23,863 there was a spacecraft going to Venus. 270 00:14:27,631 --> 00:14:29,347 When Mariner Two flew by Venus in December 1962, 271 00:14:29,347 --> 00:14:34,347 it became the first successful mission to an other planet. 272 00:14:34,470 --> 00:14:37,300 During the journey it made another first, 273 00:14:37,300 --> 00:14:40,240 it measured the density and composition 274 00:14:40,240 --> 00:14:45,130 of a constant stream of particles racing out from the sun. 275 00:14:45,130 --> 00:14:47,900 And they did indeed discover that the sun 276 00:14:47,900 --> 00:14:51,223 does have this outflow of gas coming from it. 277 00:14:52,420 --> 00:14:54,870 The solar wind does exist. 278 00:14:54,870 --> 00:14:56,280 The rest is history. 279 00:14:57,898 --> 00:15:00,648 (dramatic music) 280 00:15:04,890 --> 00:15:07,707 This discovery was momentous, all of a sudden space 281 00:15:07,707 --> 00:15:11,520 is no longer a void, it's no longer a vacuum, 282 00:15:11,520 --> 00:15:14,560 it's filled with material, it's filled with this wind 283 00:15:14,560 --> 00:15:15,393 from the sun. 284 00:15:16,930 --> 00:15:20,723 The speed of the solar winds, it's almost beyond belief. 285 00:15:21,560 --> 00:15:26,560 It's moving between 250 and 750 kilometers per second 286 00:15:30,422 --> 00:15:34,003 and it has some real significant effects on our planet. 287 00:15:35,990 --> 00:15:38,190 The earth sort of protects itself 288 00:15:38,190 --> 00:15:43,150 from the large dynamic forces of solar wind 289 00:15:43,150 --> 00:15:46,513 through this fairly stiff magnetic field that it has. 290 00:15:48,160 --> 00:15:50,000 In the direction of the sun, 291 00:15:50,000 --> 00:15:53,197 the magnetic field gets compressed and strengthened. 292 00:15:56,220 --> 00:15:59,540 On the midnight part of the earth directly opposite 293 00:15:59,540 --> 00:16:00,547 the magnetic field gets stretched out 294 00:16:00,547 --> 00:16:03,148 into a comet like tail. 295 00:16:03,148 --> 00:16:08,148 That tail actually can snap and reconnect itself identically 296 00:16:11,407 --> 00:16:13,970 and that causes a flow of particles into the polar regions 297 00:16:13,970 --> 00:16:16,320 of the earth and that's why we have the aurora. 298 00:16:17,878 --> 00:16:20,628 (dramatic music) 299 00:16:29,340 --> 00:16:31,010 So the first time I really understood 300 00:16:31,010 --> 00:16:33,540 that the sun was having a big impact on our planet 301 00:16:34,472 --> 00:16:36,097 was when I first saw the northern lights 302 00:16:36,097 --> 00:16:38,690 and I was out in Sweden in Kurina 303 00:16:38,690 --> 00:16:43,690 in the freezing cold winter and I looked up 304 00:16:44,814 --> 00:16:49,814 and just saw this incredible curtain of green and red light 305 00:16:50,840 --> 00:16:53,890 and it literally looked like sort of cinema curtains 306 00:16:53,890 --> 00:16:55,573 billowing in the wind. 307 00:17:01,510 --> 00:17:03,540 When I actually stood on the ground looking up 308 00:17:03,540 --> 00:17:08,260 and watching the aurora, I was like, wow, (laughs) 309 00:17:08,260 --> 00:17:09,233 this is amazing. 310 00:17:11,830 --> 00:17:14,410 And the sudden thought of everything I'm looking at 311 00:17:14,410 --> 00:17:17,250 is being driven by what has come from the sun 312 00:17:17,250 --> 00:17:19,480 through the solar wind and is impacting 313 00:17:19,480 --> 00:17:22,351 with our planet's magnetic field. 314 00:17:22,351 --> 00:17:25,101 (dramatic music) 315 00:17:29,210 --> 00:17:30,830 Orbiting solar observatories 316 00:17:30,830 --> 00:17:33,400 carry a number of complex experiments, 317 00:17:33,400 --> 00:17:36,489 advised by scientists in NASA. 318 00:17:36,489 --> 00:17:37,460 The Orbiting Solar Observatory 319 00:17:37,460 --> 00:17:40,600 were eight missions in a series. 320 00:17:40,600 --> 00:17:43,190 They were launched from the early 1960's 321 00:17:43,190 --> 00:17:45,429 towards the end of the 1970's. 322 00:17:45,429 --> 00:17:48,360 Collectively these missions gave 323 00:17:48,360 --> 00:17:52,093 a longer term opportunity to study the activity of the sun. 324 00:17:54,600 --> 00:17:57,120 There was an instrument on board that allows 325 00:17:57,120 --> 00:18:00,940 you to view the sun using an artificial solar eclipse. 326 00:18:00,940 --> 00:18:03,090 So place a disc in front of the sun 327 00:18:03,090 --> 00:18:05,440 block out it's dazzling light 328 00:18:05,440 --> 00:18:08,683 and monitor the extended atmosphere around the sun. 329 00:18:12,802 --> 00:18:13,635 (dramatic music) 330 00:18:13,635 --> 00:18:18,077 In 1971, some sort of smudges were noticed in these images. 331 00:18:20,430 --> 00:18:23,343 It transpired that a new discovery had been made. 332 00:18:27,351 --> 00:18:29,523 Today we call them coronal mass ejections. 333 00:18:32,297 --> 00:18:35,413 Huge amounts of gas and by huge up to 334 00:18:35,413 --> 00:18:38,562 about two million tons of gas 335 00:18:38,562 --> 00:18:43,562 ejected in filament that moves very rapidly 336 00:18:43,740 --> 00:18:44,783 away from the sun. 337 00:18:48,047 --> 00:18:50,050 These are like bowling balls of gas 338 00:18:50,050 --> 00:18:54,003 being thrown away from the sun towards the planets. 339 00:18:59,693 --> 00:19:02,550 13, 12, 11, 10-- 340 00:19:02,550 --> 00:19:04,840 Skylab made some of the first detailed 341 00:19:04,840 --> 00:19:08,610 observations of the coronal massive ejection events. 342 00:19:08,610 --> 00:19:10,827 Four, three, two, one, zero. 343 00:19:12,477 --> 00:19:15,623 The Skylab mission was a human space flight mission. 344 00:19:17,340 --> 00:19:19,673 It was an orbiting laboratory. 345 00:19:21,320 --> 00:19:24,540 All the astronauts had been trained in solar physics 346 00:19:24,540 --> 00:19:25,690 before they launched 347 00:19:26,635 --> 00:19:28,040 and they were operating solar telescopes 348 00:19:28,040 --> 00:19:31,513 that were on board this fantastic space station. 349 00:19:31,513 --> 00:19:34,263 (dramatic music) 350 00:19:38,375 --> 00:19:40,371 One of the real successes of Skylab 351 00:19:40,371 --> 00:19:43,110 comes from the number of coronal mass ejections 352 00:19:43,110 --> 00:19:44,930 that the mission observed. 353 00:19:44,930 --> 00:19:47,610 Long term observations really showed 354 00:19:47,610 --> 00:19:49,550 just how active the sun is 355 00:19:49,550 --> 00:19:52,200 and we can see that these eruptions 356 00:19:52,200 --> 00:19:55,670 are basically the massive amount being ejected 357 00:19:55,670 --> 00:19:57,320 into the solar system at speeds 358 00:19:57,320 --> 00:19:59,460 of millions of miles an hour, 359 00:19:59,460 --> 00:20:04,460 maybe even up to 3,000 kilometers a second. 360 00:20:04,460 --> 00:20:08,383 They are phenomenally energetic events. 361 00:20:09,628 --> 00:20:12,378 (dramatic music) 362 00:20:16,244 --> 00:20:17,600 Whenever I see the images from Skylab, 363 00:20:17,600 --> 00:20:22,240 I'm always in awe because it strikes me 364 00:20:22,240 --> 00:20:25,520 just how beautiful the sun is, 365 00:20:25,520 --> 00:20:28,371 how much structure the atmosphere has 366 00:20:28,371 --> 00:20:30,840 but also how dynamic the sun is. 367 00:20:30,840 --> 00:20:34,933 There are images of eruptions that are absolutely vast. 368 00:20:37,585 --> 00:20:41,003 And I always have in mind how dwarfed we are by the sun. 369 00:20:43,548 --> 00:20:46,960 The power of the sun and the complexity of the sun 370 00:20:48,040 --> 00:20:50,050 and the beautiful structures of the sun 371 00:20:50,050 --> 00:20:52,853 are all encapsulated in those images. 372 00:20:54,265 --> 00:20:56,833 (dramatic music) 373 00:20:56,833 --> 00:21:00,330 That allowed us to understand the events of 1859, 374 00:21:00,330 --> 00:21:01,900 the so-called Carrington event 375 00:21:01,900 --> 00:21:04,330 because we realize that the sun can reach out to us 376 00:21:04,330 --> 00:21:05,280 in a different way. 377 00:21:07,664 --> 00:21:09,670 The discovery of this huge mystery 378 00:21:09,670 --> 00:21:13,240 of all this charged material on earth, 379 00:21:13,240 --> 00:21:15,750 it is coronal mass ejection 380 00:21:17,530 --> 00:21:20,150 and that what happened in 1859, the Carrington event. 381 00:21:20,150 --> 00:21:23,624 And there have been a number of near Carrington events. 382 00:21:23,624 --> 00:21:28,624 In 2012, there was a Carrington level coronal mass ejection 383 00:21:29,270 --> 00:21:32,683 event that just missed the earth. 384 00:21:35,247 --> 00:21:37,220 As we move to a society that's more and more dependent 385 00:21:37,220 --> 00:21:40,293 upon technology we become more vulnerable to space weather. 386 00:21:42,203 --> 00:21:45,678 (dramatic music) 387 00:21:45,678 --> 00:21:48,360 With space weather it's extremely theoretical 388 00:21:48,360 --> 00:21:51,090 until your city goes into a blackout 389 00:21:51,090 --> 00:21:53,193 for a couple of weeks at a time. 390 00:21:54,268 --> 00:21:58,040 That hasn't happened yet 391 00:21:58,040 --> 00:22:00,890 but if we have a Carrington level super storm 392 00:22:00,890 --> 00:22:04,180 that event is likely to be very, very real 393 00:22:04,180 --> 00:22:06,143 and quite deadly as well. 394 00:22:07,290 --> 00:22:10,090 A Carrington level event has been predicted now 395 00:22:10,090 --> 00:22:13,300 to cause trillions of dollars worth of damage, 396 00:22:13,300 --> 00:22:15,270 could wipe out power grids. 397 00:22:15,270 --> 00:22:19,380 It can cause GPS malfunctions, satellite instrumentation 398 00:22:19,380 --> 00:22:23,550 to be damaged, satellites to change their altitude, 399 00:22:23,550 --> 00:22:25,470 it can cause high doses of radiation 400 00:22:25,470 --> 00:22:26,850 to any astronauts out there 401 00:22:27,690 --> 00:22:29,870 but we never see that big event 402 00:22:29,870 --> 00:22:31,900 because they very rarely happen. 403 00:22:31,900 --> 00:22:33,840 So the reason I want to study Mercury 404 00:22:33,840 --> 00:22:38,183 is because Mercury sees that Carrington size event everyday. 405 00:22:40,443 --> 00:22:43,193 (dramatic music) 406 00:22:45,115 --> 00:22:46,870 It's so close to the sun, the dynamics are so much 407 00:22:46,870 --> 00:22:50,450 more powerful, I can study the physics 408 00:22:50,450 --> 00:22:52,005 behind the interaction 409 00:22:52,005 --> 00:22:54,390 and if I can understand that physics of Mercury 410 00:22:55,235 --> 00:22:57,860 I can apply that knowledge to the earth. 411 00:22:57,860 --> 00:23:01,250 Mercury is known as the planet of extremes. 412 00:23:01,250 --> 00:23:04,673 It is the planet that formed closest to the sun. 413 00:23:06,120 --> 00:23:08,450 One of the things that we do in planetary science 414 00:23:08,450 --> 00:23:10,770 is fly by and the fly by enables us 415 00:23:10,770 --> 00:23:12,930 to do initial reconnaissance to determine 416 00:23:12,930 --> 00:23:14,083 if we wanna come back. 417 00:23:16,570 --> 00:23:20,980 For Mercury, it's first fly by Mariner 10 418 00:23:20,980 --> 00:23:22,413 really was exciting. 419 00:23:27,010 --> 00:23:28,985 Mariner was launched in 1973. 420 00:23:28,985 --> 00:23:32,110 The journey there is very complex. 421 00:23:32,110 --> 00:23:34,990 You have this issue of not being sucked into the sun 422 00:23:34,990 --> 00:23:38,084 so what we do is lapse of the solar system 423 00:23:38,084 --> 00:23:42,570 until our spacecraft and Mercury are in the same orbit 424 00:23:42,570 --> 00:23:44,750 and then we use a little bit of power at the last minute 425 00:23:44,750 --> 00:23:47,090 to be captured by Mercury's gravity 426 00:23:47,090 --> 00:23:49,175 and it took three fly bys of Mercury. 427 00:23:49,175 --> 00:23:52,583 We didn't really know what we might find. 428 00:23:53,889 --> 00:23:56,639 (dramatic music) 429 00:24:22,125 --> 00:24:24,075 And they produced a lot of surprises. 430 00:24:25,621 --> 00:24:27,200 They encountered strong magnetic fields. 431 00:24:27,200 --> 00:24:29,450 It surprised us, Mercury has a magnetic field, 432 00:24:29,450 --> 00:24:31,300 wow who would have thought 433 00:24:31,300 --> 00:24:34,130 then they saw the magnetic field looked like a magnetic tail 434 00:24:34,130 --> 00:24:35,533 just like they see at earth. 435 00:24:37,670 --> 00:24:40,320 Because they were fly bys and they took images 436 00:24:40,320 --> 00:24:42,871 of the surface spanning around 44% 437 00:24:42,871 --> 00:24:45,717 they gave us a snapshot in time 438 00:24:45,717 --> 00:24:48,280 but we've got no idea about the global picture 439 00:24:48,280 --> 00:24:51,880 of Mercury and so we couldn't really get a good idea 440 00:24:51,880 --> 00:24:55,113 about that until we sent the next mission of the orbiter. 441 00:25:01,410 --> 00:25:04,860 Mariner 10 comes back and says oh, we're seeing things 442 00:25:04,860 --> 00:25:07,803 here that contradict our previous understanding. 443 00:25:08,820 --> 00:25:12,220 Then when resources are available and conditions 444 00:25:12,220 --> 00:25:14,210 are favorable, they go back 445 00:25:14,210 --> 00:25:17,350 and they do a mission of exploration 446 00:25:17,350 --> 00:25:19,671 and that's what Messenger was. 447 00:25:19,671 --> 00:25:23,770 Six, five, four, three, main engine start, 448 00:25:23,770 --> 00:25:28,050 two, one and zero and lift off of Messenger 449 00:25:28,050 --> 00:25:29,913 on NASA's mission to Mercury. 450 00:25:30,830 --> 00:25:32,890 When I became the head of planetary science, 451 00:25:32,890 --> 00:25:37,023 Messenger had launched and it was on it's way to Mercury. 452 00:25:40,439 --> 00:25:43,190 Messenger was all about exploring the full surface 453 00:25:43,190 --> 00:25:44,830 that we've never seen before 454 00:25:44,830 --> 00:25:46,700 but also we had to really think about how 455 00:25:46,700 --> 00:25:49,440 we develop our technology to survive this environment. 456 00:25:49,440 --> 00:25:51,000 It's much more extreme than other planets 457 00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:52,000 in our solar system. 458 00:25:53,813 --> 00:25:55,480 I think one of the main concerns with us with an orbiter 459 00:25:55,480 --> 00:25:57,540 is we go from one side to the other 460 00:25:57,540 --> 00:26:00,290 in a very short time period, a few tens of minutes, 461 00:26:00,290 --> 00:26:02,610 the day side of Mercury plus 450 degrees, 462 00:26:02,610 --> 00:26:05,250 the night side about -118. 463 00:26:05,250 --> 00:26:07,960 So the extreme in temperatures over 600 degrees 464 00:26:07,960 --> 00:26:10,120 swing between one side and the other. 465 00:26:10,120 --> 00:26:12,570 So the gradient in temperature is huge 466 00:26:12,570 --> 00:26:14,790 and trying to build an instrument 467 00:26:14,790 --> 00:26:16,780 that takes precise scientific measurements 468 00:26:16,780 --> 00:26:19,273 is a huge challenge, a huge engineering challenge. 469 00:26:21,988 --> 00:26:23,966 Messenger orbited Mercury every 12 hours. 470 00:26:23,966 --> 00:26:27,900 In the four years from 2011 to 2015, 471 00:26:27,900 --> 00:26:31,903 it took more than 200,000 images of it's surface. 472 00:26:32,820 --> 00:26:35,120 What Messenger did was it provided 473 00:26:35,120 --> 00:26:37,400 as it's top science priority, 474 00:26:37,400 --> 00:26:41,713 a high resolution image of the entire surface of Mercury. 475 00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:46,573 But the mystery was that there were bright spots, 476 00:26:48,155 --> 00:26:50,490 there were small bright spots 477 00:26:50,490 --> 00:26:52,240 and in order for the radar 478 00:26:52,240 --> 00:26:55,830 to produce a bright high intensity reflection 479 00:26:55,830 --> 00:26:58,680 there were thought to be two possibilities. 480 00:26:58,680 --> 00:27:01,030 First possibility is that you have 481 00:27:01,030 --> 00:27:04,443 a highly electrically conducting material. 482 00:27:05,610 --> 00:27:07,540 The other possibility is you might 483 00:27:07,540 --> 00:27:10,910 have a natural geologic formations. 484 00:27:10,910 --> 00:27:12,900 But it was very hard to imagine, 485 00:27:12,900 --> 00:27:16,163 nobody's ever seen any kind of geology that would do that. 486 00:27:18,450 --> 00:27:21,130 And then one of the Messenger scientists 487 00:27:21,130 --> 00:27:24,060 took all of the bright spots 488 00:27:24,060 --> 00:27:27,430 in the ground based radar measurements 489 00:27:27,430 --> 00:27:30,603 and laid them down on the map of Mercury. 490 00:27:33,547 --> 00:27:37,800 Every single bright spot that was detected from the earth 491 00:27:37,800 --> 00:27:42,283 was inside of a crater that is permanently shadowed. 492 00:27:43,480 --> 00:27:47,060 We have found what we believe is ice, 493 00:27:47,060 --> 00:27:51,250 water ice at Mercury which is really close to the sun. 494 00:27:51,250 --> 00:27:55,140 It's in one of the hottest regions in our solar system. 495 00:27:55,140 --> 00:27:57,473 So how did the ice get in there? 496 00:27:58,870 --> 00:27:59,790 Has it been through meteor strikes 497 00:27:59,790 --> 00:28:01,740 'cause meteors have water? 498 00:28:01,740 --> 00:28:04,600 Has it been through comets hitting the body, 499 00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:06,880 comets have a lot of water. 500 00:28:06,880 --> 00:28:08,353 It's really an enigma. 501 00:28:17,626 --> 00:28:20,140 It used to be thought that earth is the cradle for life, 502 00:28:20,140 --> 00:28:23,070 therefore all organic chemistry in the solar system 503 00:28:23,070 --> 00:28:25,630 is probably concentrated in the band 504 00:28:25,630 --> 00:28:28,563 that the earth's orbit maps out around the sun. 505 00:28:29,690 --> 00:28:31,893 But we're not studying the water cycle 506 00:28:31,893 --> 00:28:34,663 literally throughout the solar system. 507 00:28:38,730 --> 00:28:41,430 At one extreme, again planet of extremes, 508 00:28:41,430 --> 00:28:45,950 you have mercury, where despite the huge temperatures, 509 00:28:45,950 --> 00:28:48,575 you actually do have some water trapping 510 00:28:48,575 --> 00:28:51,365 and the rest of the solar system 511 00:28:51,365 --> 00:28:54,470 we're seeing huge reservoirs of water 512 00:28:54,470 --> 00:28:57,093 tied up in the ice planets, the moons. 513 00:28:58,940 --> 00:29:01,259 So when you're talking about where life is 514 00:29:01,259 --> 00:29:05,690 and where the kind of chemistry and ultimately biology 515 00:29:05,690 --> 00:29:08,960 that might produce something like us could take place, 516 00:29:08,960 --> 00:29:12,156 at the moment, it's looking like it might be broader 517 00:29:12,156 --> 00:29:17,113 than just one little planet at the Goldilocks distance. 518 00:29:23,897 --> 00:29:26,615 We knew that Messenger was not going to go on forever. 519 00:29:26,615 --> 00:29:29,170 We had our nominal mission lifetime in a single year 520 00:29:29,170 --> 00:29:31,150 and our spacecraft survived incredibly well, 521 00:29:31,150 --> 00:29:33,000 survived four and a half years 522 00:29:33,000 --> 00:29:34,530 but there had to be a point 523 00:29:34,530 --> 00:29:36,630 where the mission came to an end. 524 00:29:36,630 --> 00:29:40,220 Let's end it by impacting the planet. 525 00:29:40,220 --> 00:29:41,620 Now why would we do that? 526 00:29:41,620 --> 00:29:44,168 And that's because European Space Agency 527 00:29:44,168 --> 00:29:47,050 has a mission called BepiColumbo 528 00:29:47,050 --> 00:29:49,960 that's going to Mercury next 529 00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:52,500 and it's gonna answer some of the questions 530 00:29:52,500 --> 00:29:54,223 that Messenger left behind. 531 00:29:56,030 --> 00:29:58,340 And one of the things that we wanna know about 532 00:29:58,340 --> 00:30:01,231 is when we open the surface up, from an impact, 533 00:30:01,231 --> 00:30:04,623 from a new impact, what are we gonna find? 534 00:30:06,112 --> 00:30:09,459 Now we really have an excellent idea 535 00:30:09,459 --> 00:30:11,208 as to where we crashed it, 536 00:30:11,208 --> 00:30:12,041 'cause we did approve doing that. 537 00:30:12,041 --> 00:30:14,679 I signed off on it or it wouldn't have happened 538 00:30:14,679 --> 00:30:18,050 (laughs) and we crashed it, left a big hole 539 00:30:18,050 --> 00:30:21,180 and so we really are gonna be able to tell BepiColumbo 540 00:30:21,180 --> 00:30:22,770 where to look for it. 541 00:30:22,770 --> 00:30:24,780 And I think some new science will come out of that, 542 00:30:24,780 --> 00:30:25,763 that's the hope. 543 00:30:26,748 --> 00:30:29,498 (dramatic music) 544 00:30:32,467 --> 00:30:34,370 One of the things that Mercury tells us 545 00:30:34,370 --> 00:30:39,290 and Messenger did is by looking carefully at it's orbit 546 00:30:39,290 --> 00:30:40,643 and how it's changing, 547 00:30:41,699 --> 00:30:46,493 the sun must be losing mass. 548 00:30:49,360 --> 00:30:52,410 We know by studying other stars 549 00:30:52,410 --> 00:30:54,860 that the sun's evolution will lead it 550 00:30:54,860 --> 00:30:57,020 into a phase called red giant 551 00:30:57,020 --> 00:31:00,950 where the surface will balloon out to perhaps 552 00:31:00,950 --> 00:31:03,170 further than the orbit of earth 553 00:31:04,180 --> 00:31:07,170 and when that happens all life on this planet 554 00:31:07,170 --> 00:31:09,063 will be extinguished. 555 00:31:11,600 --> 00:31:12,893 Now when is that? 556 00:31:14,191 --> 00:31:17,300 By really looking at the evolution based 557 00:31:17,300 --> 00:31:20,220 on our observations of Mercury, 558 00:31:20,220 --> 00:31:23,120 we can really find tune those answers 559 00:31:23,120 --> 00:31:26,290 and determine how the sun is evolving over time. 560 00:31:26,290 --> 00:31:29,561 This is really spectacular when you think about it. 561 00:31:29,561 --> 00:31:34,223 Understanding our star by looking at individual planets. 562 00:31:44,021 --> 00:31:45,993 The Soho mission launched in 1995. 563 00:31:47,440 --> 00:31:52,440 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, 564 00:31:54,690 --> 00:31:59,690 two, one, ignition and lift off of Soho in the atmosphere 565 00:32:01,620 --> 00:32:04,530 on a international mission of solar physics. 566 00:32:04,530 --> 00:32:07,120 It was a really significant mission 567 00:32:07,120 --> 00:32:10,200 because it carried a whole suite of telescopes 568 00:32:10,200 --> 00:32:14,973 that enabled us to probe the sun inside and out. 569 00:32:19,701 --> 00:32:22,250 It made the closest observations yet of the surface 570 00:32:22,250 --> 00:32:27,250 of the sun that really showed how the sun is sculpted 571 00:32:27,580 --> 00:32:29,103 by magnetic fields. 572 00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:34,350 One of the big, exciting outcomes of the Soho mission 573 00:32:34,350 --> 00:32:36,560 has been the development in our understanding 574 00:32:36,560 --> 00:32:38,943 of how corona mass ejections work. 575 00:32:40,034 --> 00:32:43,450 Soho over the years has literally observed thousands 576 00:32:43,450 --> 00:32:47,410 of them because we had this continuous view of the sun. 577 00:32:47,410 --> 00:32:50,140 And we understood that they are eruptions 578 00:32:50,140 --> 00:32:54,874 of magnetic field that carry mass into the solar system. 579 00:32:54,874 --> 00:32:59,874 So Soho has really enabled us to sort of work more 580 00:33:01,560 --> 00:33:05,120 on that sun-earth connection through these eruptions 581 00:33:05,120 --> 00:33:06,623 that can come our way. 582 00:33:07,520 --> 00:33:10,020 The other big discovery that Soho helped us make 583 00:33:10,020 --> 00:33:13,244 was the understanding about the internal mechanisms 584 00:33:13,244 --> 00:33:15,053 inside the sun. 585 00:33:16,910 --> 00:33:19,300 It sounds really counter-intuitive to say 586 00:33:19,300 --> 00:33:21,190 that we can look inside the sun 587 00:33:21,190 --> 00:33:23,070 because we know when we look at images, 588 00:33:23,070 --> 00:33:25,380 we can see through the atmosphere down into the surface 589 00:33:25,380 --> 00:33:27,810 but we can't directly see inside. 590 00:33:27,810 --> 00:33:30,130 So when we say see inside the sun, 591 00:33:30,130 --> 00:33:31,980 we're actually referring to a technique 592 00:33:31,980 --> 00:33:36,980 in which we use sound waves to see, to probe inside the sun. 593 00:33:38,220 --> 00:33:41,140 So the sun is this huge ball of gas 594 00:33:41,140 --> 00:33:44,450 and it has sound waves that bounce around on the inside. 595 00:33:44,450 --> 00:33:46,950 And when those sound waves come to the surface, 596 00:33:46,950 --> 00:33:49,520 they make the surface breathe, 597 00:33:49,520 --> 00:33:52,940 we're able to decipher the sounds 598 00:33:52,940 --> 00:33:54,740 and from that we're able to decipher 599 00:33:56,396 --> 00:33:57,643 what the conditions are like inside the sun. 600 00:34:00,025 --> 00:34:01,640 One of the most remarkable things about Soho 601 00:34:01,640 --> 00:34:04,109 is it's one of the toughest little spacecrafts 602 00:34:04,109 --> 00:34:06,440 in NASA's fleet. 603 00:34:06,440 --> 00:34:10,260 It's still there today and the mission has been extended 604 00:34:10,260 --> 00:34:14,610 until around 2022 and we should all be thankful 605 00:34:14,610 --> 00:34:17,310 because Soho is our guardian, 606 00:34:17,310 --> 00:34:21,340 it monitors the sun, it's our early warning system 607 00:34:21,340 --> 00:34:25,906 of coronal mass ejections of geomagnetic storms. 608 00:34:25,906 --> 00:34:30,125 We have ignition and we have lift off 609 00:34:30,125 --> 00:34:31,170 of NASA's Genesis spacecraft 610 00:34:31,170 --> 00:34:33,793 on a mission to retrieve a piece of the sun. 611 00:34:35,027 --> 00:34:37,100 Genesis launched in 2001. 612 00:34:37,100 --> 00:34:42,100 It's aim is to measure the composition of the solar wind, 613 00:34:42,300 --> 00:34:44,391 so the composition of the sun 614 00:34:44,391 --> 00:34:47,363 and the different layers of the sun. 615 00:34:48,310 --> 00:34:51,740 Now previous missions have done this from a distance 616 00:34:51,740 --> 00:34:55,000 but Genesis is actually gonna collect some of the sun 617 00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:58,800 that's come to it and bring it back to earth 618 00:34:58,800 --> 00:35:01,690 because on earth in a laboratory 619 00:35:01,690 --> 00:35:05,273 we can measure compositions extremely accurately. 620 00:35:06,682 --> 00:35:09,432 (dramatic music) 621 00:35:19,410 --> 00:35:21,810 The composition of the sun is really important to understand 622 00:35:21,810 --> 00:35:24,160 because the mass of the sun compared to the planets 623 00:35:24,160 --> 00:35:28,625 is absolutely huge and if we know the composition of the sun 624 00:35:28,625 --> 00:35:33,563 we know the composition of the solar system as a whole. 625 00:35:35,870 --> 00:35:39,080 The spacecraft has located a very special point 626 00:35:39,080 --> 00:35:43,450 where the sun's gravity balances the earth's gravity 627 00:35:43,450 --> 00:35:48,080 and there it sat for 850 days 628 00:35:48,080 --> 00:35:50,460 collecting the solar wind, 629 00:35:50,460 --> 00:35:54,640 collecting these charged particles from the sun 630 00:35:54,640 --> 00:35:57,100 and then collectors were closed 631 00:35:57,100 --> 00:36:02,100 and it flies back to earth to land in a desert in Oregon. 632 00:36:05,563 --> 00:36:06,733 Have a good visual on the target. 633 00:36:06,733 --> 00:36:09,690 Genesis probe has fallen through the atmosphere 634 00:36:09,690 --> 00:36:12,960 and it gets to 33 kilometers above the ground 635 00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:16,504 and this is when the drope parachute is supposed to deploy 636 00:36:16,504 --> 00:36:18,913 and it doesn't. 637 00:36:20,960 --> 00:36:23,853 There is nothing to slow this spacecraft down. 638 00:36:28,267 --> 00:36:29,320 And on mission Maidrin CCP advise 639 00:36:29,320 --> 00:36:32,486 from our vantage point we do not see a drope chute, 640 00:36:32,486 --> 00:36:33,736 negative drope. 641 00:36:37,234 --> 00:36:38,750 345, it looks like we have no chute sir, 642 00:36:38,750 --> 00:36:40,978 sector 200-- Mission manager. 643 00:36:40,978 --> 00:36:42,847 Look for an impact. 644 00:36:43,940 --> 00:36:48,940 (dramatic music) (crashing) 645 00:36:55,113 --> 00:36:58,196 (helicopter engines) 646 00:37:01,366 --> 00:37:05,200 And we have a bit visual on the impacted vehicle 647 00:37:05,200 --> 00:37:06,033 on the surface. 648 00:37:14,740 --> 00:37:16,713 The parachutes failed to deploy, 649 00:37:18,655 --> 00:37:23,655 the probe split into two and that horrible desert mud 650 00:37:24,660 --> 00:37:28,303 enters the spacecraft, the thing is shattered. 651 00:37:31,438 --> 00:37:34,123 The disappointment around the scientific community is huge. 652 00:37:36,242 --> 00:37:38,220 The information that we have here 653 00:37:38,220 --> 00:37:41,510 from people on the ground is that nothing deployed 654 00:37:41,510 --> 00:37:44,563 and therefore they're treating it as a live spacecraft. 655 00:37:47,646 --> 00:37:51,450 After this dreadful failure they go to the desert 656 00:37:51,450 --> 00:37:55,210 and they pick out little tiny pieces of glass 657 00:37:56,721 --> 00:37:58,940 and were picking out little bits of the collectors 658 00:37:58,940 --> 00:38:02,020 and they actually managed to clean the collectors 659 00:38:02,020 --> 00:38:04,813 and perform these really detailed analysis. 660 00:38:07,576 --> 00:38:10,653 And actually the mission achieved all of it's objectives. 661 00:38:11,504 --> 00:38:13,539 It measured the composition of the sun, 662 00:38:13,539 --> 00:38:15,340 it measured the composition of the solar wind, 663 00:38:15,340 --> 00:38:18,826 it measured the composition of these mass ejections 664 00:38:18,826 --> 00:38:22,673 and it measured the isotopic composition of the sun. 665 00:38:25,571 --> 00:38:27,370 And it was incredible, it did everything we wanted it 666 00:38:27,370 --> 00:38:31,363 to do but it just did it in pieces. 667 00:38:40,124 --> 00:38:42,950 Study of the sun is incredibly important. 668 00:38:42,950 --> 00:38:46,430 We rely on it for light and heat 669 00:38:48,370 --> 00:38:53,370 and we are so dependent on our star for our survival 670 00:38:54,050 --> 00:38:56,223 we really need to understand. 671 00:38:58,490 --> 00:39:01,170 The solar probe is the next big challenge, 672 00:39:01,170 --> 00:39:04,833 it's the next ambitious mission that we've ever done. 673 00:39:06,270 --> 00:39:10,030 Because we're gonna go to the most extreme environment 674 00:39:10,030 --> 00:39:11,883 in our entire solar system. 675 00:39:13,160 --> 00:39:16,243 We're gonna go in and we're gonna touch the sun. 676 00:39:19,270 --> 00:39:23,050 There are still so many things to understand about the sun. 677 00:39:23,050 --> 00:39:24,883 There are some huge mysteries. 678 00:39:27,570 --> 00:39:30,510 We already knew that the corona's a million degrees 679 00:39:30,510 --> 00:39:32,773 but how come? 680 00:39:36,116 --> 00:39:38,400 The solar probe is gonna get closer to the sun 681 00:39:38,400 --> 00:39:40,973 than any spacecraft ever has. 682 00:39:41,818 --> 00:39:43,930 It's gonna be within 10 radii 683 00:39:43,930 --> 00:39:46,140 that's within the outer parts 684 00:39:46,140 --> 00:39:48,040 of the atmosphere of the sun. 685 00:39:48,040 --> 00:39:50,693 It's touching our star. 686 00:39:52,649 --> 00:39:54,730 It really is because we have worked so hard 687 00:39:54,730 --> 00:39:58,300 over the 60 years since Gene first wrote his paper 688 00:39:58,300 --> 00:40:01,170 to really hone the technology that's needed 689 00:40:01,170 --> 00:40:03,064 to do this kind of mission. 690 00:40:03,064 --> 00:40:05,155 It really is an incredibly ambitious mission. 691 00:40:05,155 --> 00:40:09,400 So I actually did have the pleasure of taking Gene 692 00:40:09,400 --> 00:40:13,440 into the clean room at the John Hopkins applied physics lab 693 00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:16,803 where we did most of the assembly and a lot of the testing. 694 00:40:16,803 --> 00:40:21,620 And it was a really nice moment of taking him in 695 00:40:21,620 --> 00:40:24,980 and seeing his reaction to this incredible piece 696 00:40:24,980 --> 00:40:28,180 of technology that was going to go and do this mission 697 00:40:28,180 --> 00:40:30,590 that he'd really kind of fathered. 698 00:40:30,590 --> 00:40:33,750 And so he got very emotional in the clean room 699 00:40:33,750 --> 00:40:36,090 and watching some of the engineering team 700 00:40:36,090 --> 00:40:38,450 that was in there that I introduced him to 701 00:40:38,450 --> 00:40:41,710 and it was like they were meeting a rockstar. 702 00:40:41,710 --> 00:40:44,610 And they were very excited to be meeting him, 703 00:40:44,610 --> 00:40:46,930 he was very excited to be meeting them 704 00:40:46,930 --> 00:40:50,530 and so it was a lovely moment to just say, 705 00:40:50,530 --> 00:40:53,410 this is your spacecraft and she's going 706 00:40:53,410 --> 00:40:55,490 into the solar wind and into the corona 707 00:40:55,490 --> 00:40:56,880 and hearing the instruments 708 00:40:56,880 --> 00:40:58,840 that are gonna make the measurements. 709 00:40:58,840 --> 00:41:01,840 Everybody seems to be in good spirits. 710 00:41:01,840 --> 00:41:04,186 I think everybody loves working on this mission so, 711 00:41:04,186 --> 00:41:06,866 look at the happy smiles all around. 712 00:41:06,866 --> 00:41:09,230 And so having that time with him 713 00:41:09,230 --> 00:41:13,052 and again watching him get just he was mind blown 714 00:41:13,052 --> 00:41:16,100 at the technology he was looking at 715 00:41:16,100 --> 00:41:18,960 and the first thing he did was immediately 716 00:41:18,960 --> 00:41:21,560 give credit to all of the engineers 717 00:41:21,560 --> 00:41:25,070 for their work on that spacecraft 718 00:41:25,070 --> 00:41:30,070 and he even said to me, really Nicky, I just wrote a paper. 719 00:41:30,350 --> 00:41:32,900 And I said, yeah, it's a pretty good paper, though Gene. 720 00:41:32,900 --> 00:41:35,780 And he said yeah, if it turns out that I'm wrong 721 00:41:35,780 --> 00:41:39,910 in what I've predicted I can just write another paper. 722 00:41:39,910 --> 00:41:42,161 He said but if one of your engineers 723 00:41:42,161 --> 00:41:45,715 has got any of their calculations wrong, 724 00:41:45,715 --> 00:41:47,630 the mission doesn't succeed. 725 00:41:47,630 --> 00:41:50,970 And so he said the pressure on you guys 726 00:41:50,970 --> 00:41:54,820 is just intense and seeing the way you've risen up 727 00:41:54,820 --> 00:41:57,010 to every challenge, he said is just amazing. 728 00:41:57,010 --> 00:41:59,207 And that I think his favorite phrase 729 00:41:59,207 --> 00:42:00,740 was I take my hat off to the men and women 730 00:42:00,740 --> 00:42:02,023 of the solarprobe team. 731 00:42:02,951 --> 00:42:04,451 Nice to meet you and good luck with everything. 732 00:42:04,451 --> 00:42:07,451 Thank you so much. Thanks again. 733 00:42:10,380 --> 00:42:13,430 It's by far the most ambitious solar physics mission 734 00:42:13,430 --> 00:42:17,533 we've ever had and in fact it has a really fitting name. 735 00:42:20,600 --> 00:42:22,603 I was sitting in my office one day, 736 00:42:24,190 --> 00:42:28,020 the phone rang, I picked it up, 737 00:42:28,020 --> 00:42:33,020 it was Tom Serbokin and he said NASA is contemplating 738 00:42:35,609 --> 00:42:40,330 putting your name on a solar probe, 739 00:42:40,330 --> 00:42:42,000 did I have any objection 740 00:42:43,060 --> 00:42:46,120 and I was sort of astonished 741 00:42:47,024 --> 00:42:52,024 and I guess I sort of mumbled back well yeah, I guess so. 742 00:42:54,987 --> 00:42:57,270 I was sitting there in my office thinking 743 00:42:57,270 --> 00:43:00,223 my god, what have we gotten into now? 744 00:43:05,740 --> 00:43:09,310 The Parker Solar Probe named after the person 745 00:43:09,310 --> 00:43:12,740 who predicted the existence of the solar wind. 746 00:43:12,740 --> 00:43:14,730 The first time we ever named a mission 747 00:43:14,730 --> 00:43:19,252 after a living scientist and absolutely appropriate 748 00:43:19,252 --> 00:43:20,813 that it has this name. 749 00:43:22,042 --> 00:43:24,792 (dramatic music) 750 00:43:33,061 --> 00:43:35,223 That discovery of the solar wind, 751 00:43:36,260 --> 00:43:40,920 he was so visionary, he made this amazing discovery. 752 00:43:40,920 --> 00:43:44,343 He started a whole new branch of science, 753 00:43:45,300 --> 00:43:48,127 the physics of our sun. 754 00:43:48,127 --> 00:43:50,877 (dramatic music) 755 00:43:55,633 --> 00:43:57,810 I had not been present at a launch 756 00:43:57,810 --> 00:44:00,393 but of course we've all seen it on TV. 757 00:44:02,750 --> 00:44:07,750 We were invited to a location which had a clear view 758 00:44:09,067 --> 00:44:11,043 of the launch but over six miles away. 759 00:44:12,920 --> 00:44:15,380 It's three o'clock in the morning. 760 00:44:15,380 --> 00:44:19,113 Eight, seven, six, five, four, 761 00:44:20,620 --> 00:44:23,659 three, two, one (screaming) 762 00:44:23,659 --> 00:44:27,000 lift off of the mighty Delta 4 heavy rocket 763 00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:29,560 with NASA's Parker Solar Probe, 764 00:44:29,560 --> 00:44:31,850 a daring mission to shed light on the mysteries 765 00:44:31,850 --> 00:44:33,803 of our closest star, the sun. 766 00:44:34,750 --> 00:44:37,551 Wow, go baby go! 767 00:44:37,551 --> 00:44:41,085 The sky lights up and very slowly 768 00:44:41,085 --> 00:44:46,085 this luminous bubble rises up and booms off, 769 00:44:46,690 --> 00:44:50,998 you realize that it's never coming back. (laughs) 770 00:44:50,998 --> 00:44:54,165 (applause and cheers) 771 00:45:01,827 --> 00:45:03,283 What a way to start. Yeah. 772 00:45:07,987 --> 00:45:09,320 Here it comes. 773 00:45:15,290 --> 00:45:20,007 That's goodbye spacecraft, so long fellows. 774 00:45:20,007 --> 00:45:22,757 (dramatic music) 775 00:45:24,661 --> 00:45:26,800 Nothing on Parker Solar Probe was easy. 776 00:45:26,800 --> 00:45:28,070 Everything was challenging, 777 00:45:28,070 --> 00:45:31,240 you're going into this extreme temperature, 778 00:45:31,240 --> 00:45:32,680 you've got a lot of solar pressure, 779 00:45:32,680 --> 00:45:35,300 you've got a huge amount of heat coming just from the light 780 00:45:35,300 --> 00:45:37,463 on the sun because you're so close to it. 781 00:45:37,463 --> 00:45:40,770 We used Venus to do our gravity assist. 782 00:45:40,770 --> 00:45:42,440 It's a little bit like a hambraic turn, 783 00:45:42,440 --> 00:45:45,450 it's counterintuitive because we don't use the planet 784 00:45:45,450 --> 00:45:48,440 to increase our speed as a lot of missions do. 785 00:45:48,440 --> 00:45:50,510 We actually use it to slow down a little bit, 786 00:45:50,510 --> 00:45:52,974 we give energy to Venus but very generous. 787 00:45:52,974 --> 00:45:57,150 So it slows down and turns the craft in a little more 788 00:45:57,150 --> 00:45:59,220 towards the sun and so that helps us 789 00:45:59,220 --> 00:46:00,950 sort of trim our orbits. 790 00:46:00,950 --> 00:46:04,710 And we do 24 of them very close to the sun on one side 791 00:46:04,710 --> 00:46:06,910 out around the planet Venus on the other 792 00:46:06,910 --> 00:46:10,620 and then do that trim maneuver just to keep making 793 00:46:10,620 --> 00:46:12,310 that orbit smaller and smaller 794 00:46:12,310 --> 00:46:15,220 so she will actually get closer and closer to the sun 795 00:46:15,220 --> 00:46:17,140 with each one of those orbits. 796 00:46:17,140 --> 00:46:19,590 So the idea of designing that mission, 797 00:46:19,590 --> 00:46:21,450 getting all those trajectories in place, 798 00:46:21,450 --> 00:46:22,880 getting all those maneuvers, 799 00:46:22,880 --> 00:46:25,210 knowing exactly when to fire the thruster, 800 00:46:25,210 --> 00:46:28,103 that's an incredibly challenging thing to do. 801 00:46:28,103 --> 00:46:30,853 (dramatic music) 802 00:46:33,154 --> 00:46:35,170 She has to be incredibly independent. 803 00:46:35,170 --> 00:46:36,690 She has to look after herself 804 00:46:36,690 --> 00:46:39,120 because it takes light eight minutes to travel 805 00:46:39,120 --> 00:46:40,580 from the sun to the earth, 806 00:46:40,580 --> 00:46:43,250 we don't have time to joystick the mission 807 00:46:43,250 --> 00:46:46,379 if she's in trouble, she needs to take corrective action. 808 00:46:46,379 --> 00:46:49,478 The programming of the corrective action, 809 00:46:49,478 --> 00:46:54,110 everything is challenging lightweight materials 810 00:46:54,110 --> 00:46:57,633 so that you can stand up to these incredible heat. 811 00:46:58,522 --> 00:47:02,220 Everything was a big challenge with this mission. 812 00:47:06,518 --> 00:47:09,320 (dramatic music) 813 00:47:09,320 --> 00:47:13,900 Parker Solar Probe today has completed two of the flybys 814 00:47:13,900 --> 00:47:16,300 through the sun's corona. 815 00:47:16,300 --> 00:47:18,180 We're in a very good location where the earth 816 00:47:18,180 --> 00:47:20,400 can see the spacecraft and actually down link 817 00:47:20,400 --> 00:47:22,410 all of our data so we just started seeing 818 00:47:22,410 --> 00:47:24,350 some of the incredible images 819 00:47:27,859 --> 00:47:29,680 and some of the secrets that have been unlocked 820 00:47:29,680 --> 00:47:31,428 in these data sets. 821 00:47:31,428 --> 00:47:33,237 So we're scientists, we get excited about wiggly line plots 822 00:47:33,237 --> 00:47:35,490 and we've seen some of the plots 823 00:47:35,490 --> 00:47:37,950 and I've actually heard scientists kind of gasp 824 00:47:37,950 --> 00:47:40,280 because it's just not quite what you thought 825 00:47:40,280 --> 00:47:42,670 or it doesn't fit any of the simple models. 826 00:47:42,670 --> 00:47:44,970 There are so much in there and it's going to take 827 00:47:44,970 --> 00:47:47,950 a long time to kind of unravel all the mysteries 828 00:47:47,950 --> 00:47:49,433 that are in these data sets. 829 00:47:51,830 --> 00:47:54,750 Right now we're in a region where we can do corotation 830 00:47:54,750 --> 00:47:56,780 so that means that the spacecraft 831 00:47:56,780 --> 00:47:59,450 is sitting above the same part of the sun 832 00:48:00,761 --> 00:48:02,088 and as the spacecraft is moving, 833 00:48:02,088 --> 00:48:04,180 the sun is rotating and we're actually getting some time 834 00:48:04,180 --> 00:48:06,760 where it was sitting over the same part of the sun 835 00:48:06,760 --> 00:48:10,240 for a long time. 836 00:48:10,240 --> 00:48:13,740 And so we're excited about all of the different types 837 00:48:13,740 --> 00:48:14,940 of science, the different ways 838 00:48:14,940 --> 00:48:16,820 that we can operate the spacecraft 839 00:48:16,820 --> 00:48:19,266 and the again, teasing out the science 840 00:48:19,266 --> 00:48:22,733 that is really appropriate for wherever we are in the orbit. 841 00:48:27,680 --> 00:48:30,940 It tends to be visionaries like Parker 842 00:48:30,940 --> 00:48:34,450 who are responsible for some of the greatest leap forwards 843 00:48:34,450 --> 00:48:35,530 in science. 844 00:48:35,530 --> 00:48:39,700 It's people who can really see the simple parts 845 00:48:39,700 --> 00:48:42,770 of the problem, the things that really matter. 846 00:48:42,770 --> 00:48:46,160 I think that the whole Parker Solar Probe science team 847 00:48:46,160 --> 00:48:49,640 feels a tremendous responsibility to answer these questions 848 00:48:49,640 --> 00:48:51,340 that have been around for decades 849 00:48:51,340 --> 00:48:54,320 but I also think that missions really do inspire 850 00:48:54,320 --> 00:48:56,420 the next generation of scientists. 851 00:48:56,420 --> 00:49:00,350 If you look at a NASA mission it has such an incredible 852 00:49:00,350 --> 00:49:04,010 diverse group of people that have a common goal 853 00:49:04,010 --> 00:49:06,590 and so I don't think you necessarily need to aspire 854 00:49:06,590 --> 00:49:09,830 to be a rocket scientist or a propulsion engineer, 855 00:49:09,830 --> 00:49:11,340 you can be anything you want 856 00:49:11,340 --> 00:49:13,640 and really work on a NASA mission. 857 00:49:13,640 --> 00:49:18,640 They make us explore these tremendous concepts 858 00:49:18,790 --> 00:49:22,892 that ultimately are gonna be our future. 859 00:49:22,892 --> 00:49:25,873 They will provide the future science 860 00:49:25,873 --> 00:49:29,753 that allows humanity to survive and thrive. 861 00:49:31,118 --> 00:49:33,868 (dramatic music)