Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Mars Ingenuity's successful flight a ‘bad—s accomplishment'

Astrophysicist and the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, explains the signifcance of the Ingenuity helicopter flying on Mars.

Video transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: 40 minutes to the closing bell, NASA gave us all something to cheer about this morning when the Ingenuity helicopter became the first powered craft to fly on another planet. To help us talk about this and where we go from here, let's bring in to the stream America's favorite astrophysicist, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. He's also the director at the Hayden Planetarium. It's good to see you again, Neil. And--

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah, thanks for having me back on.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Those of us who are children of the '70s and used to cheer when the Apollo rockets would go up, it was the same thrill watching that little helicopter go up for 30 seconds today. What do you think this means, as we go forward in our exploration of space and other planets?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Well, it won't mean anything unless what we learned from this sort of engineering experiment takes taproot and then influences the design of future journeys to Mars. So, no one has ever flown anything in the atmosphere of another planet before. So that's first. Second, think of what they had to do. The Martian atmosphere is only about 1% the thickness of Earth's atmosphere. So in order to get the same thrust, you need big blades. They have to rotate fast. And you've got to make sure everything is as light as possible. So these blades were made of carbon fiber.

And so it's an engineering experiment. And think about the Rover, where suppose the Rover came to a cliff. You don't want it going over the cliff. So you send the copter. And then it can go over the cliff and down into the ravine and look around and then come back. So it's the natural extension of your exploratory wheels when you take to air.

SEANA SMITH: Neil, I'm curious just to get your reaction, just what was going through your head when you've been looking at this footage that we've been seeing today. Because there was so much hype, so much uncertainty just around how successful this mission would be. So what's your take on what we've seen so far?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah, it's just badass. I don't know what else-- it's an official scientific term. It's a badass accomplishment. And I want to remind people because you don't often get to see the engineers in the news. Because all the machines are in the service of a scientific question being asked. But science and engineering are important cousins on the exploration frontier. It doesn't matter how interesting or clever my scientific idea is. If I cannot execute it with brilliant design, engineering design, nothing happens.

So, for me, this is a moment where engineers get to shine. And like I said, it's the birth of a new era of powered aircraft on other planets, vastly extending the reach of Rovers. And I remembered when we went to Rovers from just Landers. I mean, think of what Landers are. They just pick a spot, land. Then you just dig and look around. And that's it. So Rover was a great improvement over a Lander, and no less of what an aircraft is relative to a Rover.

ADAM SHAPIRO: I have so many questions about this for you, but let me just-- when this thing is actually flying, for instance, in the analogy you gave us, into a crater, can just the pictures it will be able to take give us a better understanding if there was once water, life, those kinds of things on Mars, or do you need to land and take a sample?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: So you always want to get a sample. OK, that's the Holy Grail, if there were such a thing, for this enterprise. And the next best thing is to get a close up image of it. So right now, the best closeup images we have of dangerous cliff faces and ravines are from orbiting satellites that take sort of high resolution basically satellite maps of Mars. But there's no substitute for getting right up and close to it.

And in this engineering experiment, they had the rotors turn on, and by the way, there are two simultaneous rotors going in opposite directions that stabilizes the craft. You can't just have a craft spin one set of rotors into motion because the laws of physics require that the craft spin the other way. And so you don't want that. So you have two sets of rotors spinning opposite ways. That aspect of the momentum cancels. And then you just have pure lift.

So, when you do this, you can lift it up. And one of the things they had to test was, can it just, in place, can it redirect where it's looking and then come back down softly? Very important maneuvers, for the first time ever. This is what you would do in another place that is going over a ravine onto a cliff face. So, yes, whatever you could see from orbit, you'll see better up close. You'll see even better if the thing lands. So, I'm all in on this.

SEANA SMITH: Neil, if you could just give us a better idea, just how long are these types of flights? How long is this normally in the air? And then when you talk about the fact that this vastly extends the reach of Rovers, then pointing to your comments before just about what this means for the future and for future exploration here, where do you think Ingenuity will lead us then?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah, so there are people who analogizing this moment to the Wright brothers. And imagine if the Wright brothers had the first powered flight in Earth's atmosphere, and then no one did anything with it. So it's only a milestone if people keep moving. Now this particular craft is not sort of heavily clad with science experiments the way the Rover itself is because it's primarily an engineering demonstration. And so you want to make sure you don't want to risk very careful scientific instruments on something that could crash or not lift off at all.

So once this has been demonstrated, you're getting very good data on it. Oh, and by the way, Mars right now is 15 minutes away, something like that, round trip. So-- sorry, round trip signals. So if you want to tell it what to do, it doesn't get the signal until another 15 minutes, and then you don't know if it succeeded for another 15 minutes after that. So, some autonomy has to be built into all of these craft when the planet is at such a distance.

ADAM SHAPIRO: It was carrying a little bit, they said, of the fabric from the original Wright brothers' flyer. I want to look to the future. There was an article about this today, which talked about future missions to Mars, which will take samples, but then bring them back to Earth. Do we have the technology today to go beyond this to land and then take off again to come home?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah, so right now, the way we are conceiving such achievements is, you go there, look around, find a good sample, sort of package it, and lay it down there for a separate mission to come grab it, and then take it back to Earth. And that sort of divides the kingdom of what the tasks are. If you start piling on everything something has-- you got to go there, look around, grab samples, put it back in your pocket, take off, come back to Earth. That-- you're putting too much, at least for how we currently designed spaceships, space probes. That's-- you're putting too much-- too many tasks on it.

So right now, it's-- the most coveted thing out there is the sample return mission. And, yes, that's what you really want to do ultimately because there's no substitute for laboratories here on Earth's surface.

ADAM SHAPIRO: As long as we've got powerful dilithium crystals, as Scotty would say, [INAUDIBLE]. Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, [INAUDIBLE]

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: They make everything possible. The dilithium crystals, that's what you need. You know, what's the flying cars? We can fly on Mars. We can't fly our cars. I want the future that never came. Give it to me.

ADAM SHAPIRO: I'm listening to the hawk out on Second Avenue here in Manhattan right now. I'm with you. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the Hayden Planetarium director and all of the titles we could give you, but I think America's favorite astrophysicist says it best. Thank you. It was good to see you. We look forward to having you back.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Thanks a lot.