Mars Rover Curiosity takes a tour of Mars (Photo: NASA)
TEDx playlist: 4 TEDx Talks to celebrate Curiosity’s new discovery
Yesterday, NASA announced an amazing finding from its Mars Curiosity rover — evidence of conditions once suitable for life on the Red Planet.
Says NASA:
Scientists identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon — some of the key chemical ingredients for life — in the powder Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet last month.
“A fundamental question for this mission is whether Mars could have supported a habitable environment,” said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “From what we know now, the answer is yes.”
As we all wait with baited breath for more groundbreaking (pun intended) discoveries from the world’s most powerful rover to land on Mars, celebrate this incredible discovery with 4 TEDx Talks about the Red Planet:
How we landed a car on Mars: Jordan Evans at TEDxMidAtlantic
In this talk from TEDxMidAtlantic, Jordan Evans, Engineering Development and Operations Manager for the Mars Rover Curiosity project explains what it was like to be behind the scenes as the rover landed on Mars, making sure one of the greatest achievements in the history of space exploration was a success.
Why is there water on Earth? Why not Mars?: Maria Sundin at TEDxUniversityofGothenburg
In this talk, astrophysicist Maria Sundin discusses the importance of water to supporting life on our planet — and possibly others — and provides us with a look into the surprisingly watery history of our neighbor planet, Mars, a history which could have maybe included life.
No life on Mars? No problem; we’ll bring it: Bas Lansdorp at TEDxDelft
Bas Lansdorp is the head of the Mars One project, an endeavor to establish a human settlement on the planet Mars in 2023. At TEDxDelft, he lays out the project’s plan for a manned mission to Mars, explaining the drive behind this very ambitious goal.
Live like a rocket scientist: Charles Elachi at TEDxBeirut
Charles Elachi is the director of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the outlet responsible for the Mars Science Laboratory, which launched and maintains Mars rover Curiosity. Just 100 days after Curiosity’s landing, he spoke at TEDxBeirut about how a sense of curiosity and a willingness to collaborate drive not only missions to Mars, but also all great things in life.
And a bonus — with absolutely no relation to TEDx — David Bowie’s seminal hit, “Life on Mars”:
“Asteroids are nature’s way of saying, ‘how’s that space program coming?’” - Dr. Ed Lu at TEDxMarin
It’s a humbling day to be an Earthling. Just sixteen hours before the highly-anticipated flyby of the asteroid 2012 DA14, the skies above the Chelyabinsk region of Russia were shattered by the explosion of an incoming meteor. Although fortunately nobody appears to have been killed by the blast, more than 1,000 people reported injuries, mostly from flying glass and debris.
We know that these objects are out there, but what are scientists doing to locate them? And how would we respond if one were found to be on a collision course with our planet?
At TEDxMarin, Dr. Ed Lu gave a fascinating talk highlighting the efforts that scientists like himself are making to detect and deflect near-Earth objects.
Fortunately, says Dr. Lu, “You don’t need oil miners and Bruce Willis” to push an asteroid off course. “Deflecting asteroids is not that hard. We have the technology to do something like this.”
The bad news? We can’t deflect an asteroid we don’t know is coming. And there are a lot of asteroids out there (check out the jaw-dropping graphics at about 6:00). That’s why Dr. Lu and his team are working on satellites to detect them from space — before it’s too late.
Up, up and TEDx! 26 TEDx Talks by astronauts
Today TED-Ed released a fabulous new lesson by astronaut Jerry Carr: Life of an astronaut. To celebrate the lives and work of all the brave men and women who take great risks to increase our knowledge of the universe, we’ve collected 24 compelling TEDx Talks given by current and former astronauts.
Inside the full list you’ll find:
Joseph Allen walking you through daily life on the International Space Station
Lodewijk van den Berg — the first Dutchman in space — describing how a scientist becomes an astronaut
Nicole Stott sharing the stories of her heroes — the first women in the space program
Roberta Bondar — the first neurologist in space — detailing that stresses that zero-gravity puts on the human body
Six-time space shuttle crew surgeon Dr. Jon Clark was the head of the medical team designed to keep “space diver” Felix Baumgartner safe as he jumped from 128,100 feet this Sunday, becoming the first man to break the speed of sound.
At TEDxUSC this April, he gave a talk detailing his role in Red Bull Stratos, and explained some of the dangers inherent in this sort of mission, dangers that he is dedicated to keeping astronauts from having to face. “This Stratos mission is a very personal journey for me,” he said in his talk. “My wife was on the Columbia mission, and she perished with the rest of her crew. And I dedicated my life after this to improving crew escape and survival in spacecraft.”
From his talk:
The atmosphere—that bounds the earth, that gives us life—is like four sheets of paper on a basketball. And the lowest sheet—the bottom of the lowest sheet—is where we live and what we can survive in. Above that layer and we go into the death zone: the stratosphere.
…[T]he extreme low pressures of the vacuum of space…can lead to hypoxia and inadequate oxygen; it can also lead to decompression sickness or the bends…The worst problem that you can face is in the vacuum of space—above 63,000 feet—is that the water that makes up 70% of our body can turn spontaneously from a liquid state to a gaseous state…this is the phenomenon called ebullism, where your blood boils. And this is actually survivable if you can get back to Earth within a minute or so. People that have survived this say the thing that they remembered is their tongue boiling.”
“A big part of our test program is to learn everything we can from this program,” he said. “The lessons learned from this will be applied to future spacecraft…My team—made up of physicians and physiologists and rescue specialists,” he said, “are all volunteers…dedicated to one thing: bringing [Felix] home safely.”
And this past Sunday we learned that Dr. Clark and his team were successful, guiding Felix to space and home again.
(Photo credits: © Red Bull Stratos/Red Bull Content Pool and © Jay Nemeth/Red Bull Content Pool)
Watch Jon’s talk at TEDxUSC here.
