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American Morning
Britain's Beagle 2 Scheduled to Land on Mars Today
Aired December 24, 2003 - 07:45 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN ANCHOR: Many have tried, many have failed, but there's new hope now that a small fleet of exploratory spacecraft can accomplish a Mars landing. Britain's Beagle 2 probe is now closing in. And if all goes according to plan, the little spacecraft that could is scheduled to land tonight to begin a search for signs of life, past or present, on Mars.
So, why the renewed fascination with the red planet? Well, joining us from Miami to help us work through that, Jack Horkheimer. He's the host of the PBS show, "Star Gazer."
Nice hat. And welcome. Good morning.
JACK HORKHEIMER, HOST, "STAR GAZER": Good morning. Good morning. Merry Christmas.
GUPTA: Merry Christmas to you as well.
Listen, all of this fascination now with the red planet, four spacecrafts within the next month are scheduled to either land on the planet or around its orbit. Why the sudden fascination?
HORKHEIMER: Well, it's not really sudden. It's been going on now for about a little over a quarter of a century. It really started with all of the Viking Landers. We had two Landers in 1976. Then in 1997, we have a Rover on Mars. And we've sent a lot of spacecraft to Mars over the past quarter of a century, over three dozen spacecraft, but there's a high fatality rate. Only two-thirds -- two-thirds of those spacecraft have failed.
So, we are hoping that one or two of these spacecrafts makes it. Tomorrow, of course, the European Space Agency's Beagle lands on Mars for a Christmas landing. And it's going to do some very out-of-this- world, exotic scratch-and-sniff tests. It's actually designed to search for organic materials. It's going to scratch rocks and go underneath the surface. And it's going to burrow down to the surface of Mars, take samples. Put them into a little oven and analyze the gas that's produced to see if there are traces of microscopic prehistoric life or maybe even bacterial life today.
GUPTA: This is your area of expertise. And just to put it in perspective, these things are about the size of a golf cart. It cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Why is this important, you know, if we find these little samples and they show something? Put it into perspective for us.
HORKHEIMER: Well, it's human curiosity. When we started the space program over 50 years ago, we went there not knowing what we'd really find. But all of our technology today that we use -- television, satellites -- everything in our life today, much of it has come from the result of space technology.
So, there are of all these spin-offs that we don't know about. Every time we push the envelope, so to speak, and seek new frontiers, we never really know what we're going to find. But what we do know is that we always find a lot more than we ever expected.
So, when we go out into space and explore, we are looking for immediate benefits, but usually the benefits, they eventually are reaped thousands of times beyond our wildest imagination.
GUPTA: Well, given Columbia's recent tragedy as well, hopefully this will be a victory for NASA. We'll find out over the next month.
Really quickly as well, tomorrow night in the sky: a crescent moon and Venus. What are we going to be seeing tomorrow night right after dinner?
HORKHEIMER: Tomorrow night, just go outside just after twilight. Look southwest, and you will see the most exquisite pairing of a young crescent moon and the brightest planet we can see, beautiful 8,000- mile-wide Venus. It will be the kind of a sight that will make this Christmas night memorable.
This pairing of Venus and a crescent moon is so incredibly dramatic that every culture in history has portrayed it in their art. There are several flags that have this, the depiction of Venus and the crescent moon. We even find these depictions back in cave art thousands of years ago.
You'll also see a black full moon nestled within the crescent, and that's created by earth shine -- sunlight that bounces off our oceans on the earth and our clouds, bounces the light to the moon on the dark portion of the moon and bounces it back to us.
So, look for a beautiful, beautiful, brilliant Venus. No photograph can even explain it. You have to see it for yourself -- a beautiful, bright crescent moon and a black full moon nestled within it. The best Christmas gift from the cosmos we could have.
GUPTA: Jack Horkmeier, thank you very much. We know what you are going to be doing tomorrow after dinner. That's a great description. Thank you for joining us this morning.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
Aired December 24, 2003 - 07:45 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN ANCHOR: Many have tried, many have failed, but there's new hope now that a small fleet of exploratory spacecraft can accomplish a Mars landing. Britain's Beagle 2 probe is now closing in. And if all goes according to plan, the little spacecraft that could is scheduled to land tonight to begin a search for signs of life, past or present, on Mars.
So, why the renewed fascination with the red planet? Well, joining us from Miami to help us work through that, Jack Horkheimer. He's the host of the PBS show, "Star Gazer."
Nice hat. And welcome. Good morning.
JACK HORKHEIMER, HOST, "STAR GAZER": Good morning. Good morning. Merry Christmas.
GUPTA: Merry Christmas to you as well.
Listen, all of this fascination now with the red planet, four spacecrafts within the next month are scheduled to either land on the planet or around its orbit. Why the sudden fascination?
HORKHEIMER: Well, it's not really sudden. It's been going on now for about a little over a quarter of a century. It really started with all of the Viking Landers. We had two Landers in 1976. Then in 1997, we have a Rover on Mars. And we've sent a lot of spacecraft to Mars over the past quarter of a century, over three dozen spacecraft, but there's a high fatality rate. Only two-thirds -- two-thirds of those spacecraft have failed.
So, we are hoping that one or two of these spacecrafts makes it. Tomorrow, of course, the European Space Agency's Beagle lands on Mars for a Christmas landing. And it's going to do some very out-of-this- world, exotic scratch-and-sniff tests. It's actually designed to search for organic materials. It's going to scratch rocks and go underneath the surface. And it's going to burrow down to the surface of Mars, take samples. Put them into a little oven and analyze the gas that's produced to see if there are traces of microscopic prehistoric life or maybe even bacterial life today.
GUPTA: This is your area of expertise. And just to put it in perspective, these things are about the size of a golf cart. It cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Why is this important, you know, if we find these little samples and they show something? Put it into perspective for us.
HORKHEIMER: Well, it's human curiosity. When we started the space program over 50 years ago, we went there not knowing what we'd really find. But all of our technology today that we use -- television, satellites -- everything in our life today, much of it has come from the result of space technology.
So, there are of all these spin-offs that we don't know about. Every time we push the envelope, so to speak, and seek new frontiers, we never really know what we're going to find. But what we do know is that we always find a lot more than we ever expected.
So, when we go out into space and explore, we are looking for immediate benefits, but usually the benefits, they eventually are reaped thousands of times beyond our wildest imagination.
GUPTA: Well, given Columbia's recent tragedy as well, hopefully this will be a victory for NASA. We'll find out over the next month.
Really quickly as well, tomorrow night in the sky: a crescent moon and Venus. What are we going to be seeing tomorrow night right after dinner?
HORKHEIMER: Tomorrow night, just go outside just after twilight. Look southwest, and you will see the most exquisite pairing of a young crescent moon and the brightest planet we can see, beautiful 8,000- mile-wide Venus. It will be the kind of a sight that will make this Christmas night memorable.
This pairing of Venus and a crescent moon is so incredibly dramatic that every culture in history has portrayed it in their art. There are several flags that have this, the depiction of Venus and the crescent moon. We even find these depictions back in cave art thousands of years ago.
You'll also see a black full moon nestled within the crescent, and that's created by earth shine -- sunlight that bounces off our oceans on the earth and our clouds, bounces the light to the moon on the dark portion of the moon and bounces it back to us.
So, look for a beautiful, beautiful, brilliant Venus. No photograph can even explain it. You have to see it for yourself -- a beautiful, bright crescent moon and a black full moon nestled within it. The best Christmas gift from the cosmos we could have.
GUPTA: Jack Horkmeier, thank you very much. We know what you are going to be doing tomorrow after dinner. That's a great description. Thank you for joining us this morning.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
