Global Space Administration, video diary six.
We're trying to spend the rest of our lives in outer space.
But that's the tricky part.
Weird but true, the longest that anybody has ever spent in space
at one time is still less than a year and a half.
But the research happening at this Mars simulator
could make it possible for people to live in space.
Yeah. Weird but true, one day Martian soil could be used to grow crops.
Mm-hmm. And get this,
fertilizer made from human hair could be the key to making it work.
Luckily... (MUNCHES)
-I'm a crafter. I just need one. -What... what are you doing? No, Charlie.
-Need to grow some crops. -What? No way!
-Mine's not long enough. -Nope, too bad.
(GRUNTS) All right, guys, it's time for Weird But True!
Did you know there are more stars in the sky
than grains of sand on the whole planet?
Whoa!
-This is incredible. -I know, right?
CHARLIE: Charlie here.
-Yay! -CARLY: Carly here.
-Yes! -CHARLIE: We're best friends.
BOTH: Oh, let's go!
CARLY: We live here, in Chicago.
-CHARLIE: With a little imagination... -For the rest of time.
CARLY: And a whole lot of exploring.
(CHARLIE EXCLAIMS)
CARLY: This is so epic.
CHARLIE: We're discovering just how weird the world can be.
-Hey! -We made it.
CARLY: This is unreal.
(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)
BOTH: Our Solar System.
(FILM REEL WHIRRING)
CARLY: My name is Carly, and that is my best friend, Charlie.
Ever since we were old enough to hold a notebook and a magnifying glass,
we were out exploring the world.
As we got older, others joined us, like,
Charlie's sister, Casey, and our buddy, Patrick.
Even our mailman, Bob, was part of the fun.
It seemed like we'd be together forever.
Until today.
BUSTER INFINITY: The interplanetary expedition.
(GASPS) Carly, you gotta come see this.
Hey guys, glad you're here.
-What's up? -Come on, check this out.
(WHOOSHING)
Hello, there. I'm Buster Infinity, famous astrophysicist.
Introducing the Interplanetary Expedition.
A one-way trip to explore the entirety of our Solar System.
-Whoa! -We have to apply.
Oh, I don't know, Charlie, it's a one-way ticket.
Exactly. A lifetime of living in space.
Researching the wonders of the universe. It's perfect.
Come on, just... just hear it out.
Submit your video application today.
On behalf of the Global Space Administration,
good luck, and I'll see you in outer space.
Why stay here and unravel one single world
when we can go out and unravel an entire universe?
Well, Charlie, I don't know that much about the Solar System,
so I think we're gonna need to do a little research.
All right, guys, I guess that means today we're unraveling the world of...
BOTH: our Solar System.
Solar, Solar System.
We're doing our first take of our application video
and Charlie's a little nervous.
No! What are you talking about? I'm not nervous.
-Look at me, I'm fine. -Oh. Yup.
I got it. I'm ready.
Okay. Let's suit you up.
-Okay. -(WHISPERS) He's nervous.
-We're rolling? -CARLY: Mm-hmm.
Perfect. (CLEARS THROAT)
Our Solar System is enormous, but weird but true,
the entire thing fits inside this.
It's called the Oort Cloud. A giant spherical shape,
floating in space around nine trillion miles across.
Let's take a look inside.
Behold, our Solar System.
-It consists of... -CARLY: The Sun.
And everything that revolves around it. Including eight planets.
-CARLY: Venus... -This one's Mercury...
-CARLY: Sorry. -...remember? Mercury.
-Yeah. -CARLY: Mercury.
Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,
-and Neptune. -CHARLIE: But there's more.
Our Solar System also includes all of the moons orbiting these planets.
And a bunch of asteroids that are found here in...
-CARLY: The Asteroid Belt. -And way out there in...
-CARLY: The Kuiper Belt. -All of this stuff
that revolves around the Sun creates our Solar System.
And remember, it's all contained within this.
The Oort Cloud.
This is the perfect intro for our application video.
Yeah. All right. So, what should we film next?
Uh, I'm trying to remember what Buster Infinity said.
A perfect applicant must understand our relationship with our Solar System.
In the past, the present, and the future.
So we need to research how people have studied...
-(DOOR KNOCKS) -...our Solar System in the past.
-Right. -Hey, guys.
You have to see this thing that Patrick and I just saw
by the Global Space Administration.
Wait, you're not making an application video, are you?
-We are. -We're gonna get paid to go to space.
Me and Carly, living in space for the rest of time.
-Yup. -Yeah.
-Forever? -CHARLIE: Yeah.
It's gonna be amazing.
Really?
Yes. Actually, it's good that you're here because we need you.
Come with me, we'll get you some costumes.
Back to work. Time for some history.
Scientists who study space are called astronomers, and throughout history,
there have been a lot of them.
Let's begin with Claudius Ptolemy.
An astronomer from Egypt around the year 140.
Behold, this is the universe.
Earth is at its center and everything else
travels in big giant circles around Earth.
CARLY: Weird but true, that's what people believed until...
Oh, no, no, no.
...Copernicus, an astronomer from Poland around 1514.
The Sun is at the center of the universe, and everything else in space
travels in large circles around the Sun.
CARLY: And that's what people believed until...
Uh, no.
...this guy. Angelo Secchi.
An astronomer from Italy in the mid 1800s.
Our Sun is not the center of the universe.
The Sun is the center of our Solar System,
one of countless planetary systems that exist out in space.
So, after years of research, we figured out that space
is full of lots of stars, tons of planets,
and a bunch of solar systems like our own.
Oh! This is perfect.
Yeah, but you do realize what this means, right?
This could be the very last time the we craft together.
The very last time we do any project together.
Look, Patrick, I know it's a bummer, but Charlie and I are meant for this.
This is our destiny.
Which means it is time for us to examine
the present state of Solar System exploration.
(GASPS) Oh! Ah! (SIGHS)
I wish we had a lava lamp, you know?
-CARLY: Uh... -I got this great idea where we, like,
-dress up in some costumes and then... -Mm-hmm.
...we need some, like, historical props, though. We'll craft something, right?
-(DOORBELL RINGS) -BOB: Mail's here.
ALL: Bob!
Got a package for you. One lava lamp.
Oh! Perfect! This is exactly what we need!
-Thanks, Bob. -CHARLIE: All right,
uh, you four get in some, like, mission control engineer type costumes,
-and I'll do the intro. Got it? -Okay.
-CHARLIE: All right. -PATRICK: On it.
Here's the deal, humans have traveled out into space plenty of times,
but honestly, we haven't gone very far.
Weird but true, humans have only traveled
-to about here. -(SQUEAKY SOUND)
There's a lot more Solar System to explore.
And how do we do that? Using one of these,
a space probe.
They're like tiny, little robot laboratories that NASA launches into space
with communication systems that use radio waves to relay
all of that information back to Earth.
In the world of space probes, this one rises above the rest.
It's called Voyager 1. And here's its story.
(RETRO MUSIC PLAYING)
CHARLIE: In 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1 into space.
(BEEPING)
-Yeah! -Yes!
-Groovy. -Right on, man.
It traveled further and further into our Solar System,
over a million miles a day. Past Mars, through the asteroid belt.
(HIP-HOP MUSIC PLAYING)
And by 1980, it was flying right by Saturn.
(BEEPING)
-Hey, we passed Saturn. -(ALL CHEERING)
-Righteous! -Totally tubular.
(ALL LAUGHING)
(BEEPING)
CHARLIE: Voyager 1 kept going, past Neptune, and into the Kuiper Belt.
Then, in 2017, NASA decided to test its thrusters
for the first time in 37 years.
(REVVING UP)
They work!
(ALL CHEERING)
Oh, incredible.
FEMALE VOICE: Hey, hey, NASA, you did it.
Yeah, come on in. Say it to the camera.
-Smile. -Goof... goofy face.
(CAMERA CLICKING)
CHARLIE: Voyager 1 has traveled through space for more than 40 years,
transmitting data back to Earth.
No human-made object has flown further into space.
And it's still flying out there to this day.
This is a great application.
-You just might get picked. -That's the plan.
Now, it's time to research the future of solar system exploration.
I have an idea for this one.
-Ready, Bob? -Ready.
(MAGICAL TINKLING)
Welcome to the magical universe of Madame Cosmos.
Wait. I know. You wanna travel into space?
Well, my dears, look into Madame Cosmos's crystal ball
and soon your fortunes will be revealed.
No human in this lifetime or the next could visit as far as Voyager 1.
Science and technology just isn’t advanced enough,
but, quick, pick a card.
Let's see, let's see.
Red, and... planet?
(GASPS) Your future points to Mars.
Mars is very cold with average temperatures
around negative 80 degrees Fahrenheit. But of the planets closest to Earth,
it presents the fewest challenges for a manned space mission.
You or any other human is most likely to visit Mars next.
(CHEERING, APPLAUSE)
Mm! Casey, great job. This looks excellent.
Ooh, but what is this?
-Another vision from the future. -Charlie and Carly,
you will continue your research at an official Martian training habitat
in Hawaii.
-Wait, what? -CASEY: Yeah.
It's this thing that Bob, Pat, and I found.
It's called the HI-SEAS Mars Habitat in Hawaii.
NASA conducts research there to see what it would be like
to live on another planet.
-This is perfect. -This is exactly
what our application needs.
Pack your bags. You've gotta get going.
All right, guys. Looks like Carly and I are heading off to Hawaii
to see what it's like to live on Mars.
We'll meet you there? Perfect. We'll see you soon.
-All right. See you, guys. -CASEY: Bye, guys.
(UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING)
CHARLIE: We're off to the Big Island of Hawaii,
out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Weird but true, this one island is made up of five volcanoes.
Two of them, Kīlauea and Mauna Loa, are still active.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
-Aloha. -Welcome to Mauna Loa.
This is the location for the HI-SEAS Mars simulator.
It is a habitat that researchers use to study
what it would be like to live on Mars.
And the reason why it's here is because this place looks like
-the surface of Mars. -(CHUCKLES)
CHARLIE: But there are few key differences.
Like first off, the air on Mars is mostly made up of carbon dioxide.
So, if we were hanging around there, we'd probably be wearing oxygen masks.
CARLY: Yeah, not only that, you'd have to wear a suit to cover your whole body.
Earth has a magnetic field that protects us from the Sun's harmful radiation,
but Mars doesn't have that.
We're gonna go inside the simulator and talk to Michaela.
Let's go.
Dr. Michaela Musilova is the director of this habitat
and an astrobiologist who focuses on life in extreme environments.
Her favorite weird but true fact is, the Sun is so big
that one million Earths could fit inside of it.
-Whoa. -What? (CHUCKLES)
-This is so cool. -It's like a little a clubhouse.
It looks huge in here.
-Aloha, as we say in Hawaii. -Aloha.
-MICHAELA: This is the HI-SEAS Habitat
where we simulate missions to the moon and Mars.
-(CARLY EXHALES) -MICHAELA: Uh, people get locked up here
for up to a year. You can only go outside in a spacesuit.
You eat freeze-dried food and all that fun stuff astronauts have to do,
so you'll get to experience that over the next couple of days.
-Nice. -Well, how many people
-can live here at once? -MICHAELA: Up to six people.
-Can we take a look around? -Yeah.
Yeah, sure. Well... So, this main room is like a multi-functional room.
This area here is essentially used for exercising.
You have your work stations right here,
and here we have a kitchen. Pretty big, actually.
What are these little doors...
-CARLY: Oh, yeah. It's a closet. -CHARLIE: ...up top? Yeah.
MICHAELA: Well, it's kinda like a closet, but it's your bedroom.
Each crew member gets their own little room.
-They're all the same. -CHARLIE: Oh, nice.
-CARLY: Oh, it's cozy. -MICHAELA: It's pretty decent.
CHARLIE: It looks small from the outside, but you got a little desk,
you got a nice place to sleep. Put some photos on the wall over here.
Usually people bring pictures of their family,
friends that they're gonna miss.
All right. So we got a place to research, cook our dinners,
-bathrooms. Where do you go to bathroom? -Show us the bathroom.
This is the tallest toilet I've ever seen.
The reason it's so tall is because it's a composting toilet.
-Okay. -So, once you do your business,
there are microbes in there that help process
what you've just added to there, and then behind you, Charlie,
-there is the shower. -CARLY: Regular shower.
You're only allowed to take up to eight minutes a week of shower time.
-A week? -A week.
-(MICHAELA CHUCKLES) -CARLY: Whoa.
CARLY: Michaela leaves us to get settled in.
-Is it on? -All right. All right.
Video diary, take one. We've been here for three hours.
-Uh-huh. Right. -We've chosen our rooms.
-Yup. There's a treadmill. -Yeah.
There's a little window so we can see the outside world.
-Yeah. This is easy-peasy. -Yeah.
I think we're gonna be really, really good at this.
-(STATIC SOUND) -Hi. Hello.
-Welcome back. We are five hours in. -Yup.
And Michaela has a mission for us.
We are gonna suit up and head outside to collect some rocks
and then bring them back to study them.
-Let's go. Let's rock. -Okay.
CHARLIE: We're pretending to be on Mars, so we need to put on
lots of gear before we do anything outside the habitat.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)
CARLY: We're simulating a real Mars mission...
to collect rocks and soil samples.
MICHAELA: So this way. Now watch your step.
CARLY: Let's go.
(INSECTS CHIRPING)
MICHAELA: This is very crumbly, so be really careful.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)
MICHAELA: Uh, the ceiling gets low here
and you have all these lava stalactites.
CARLY: Oh, whoa. This is incredible.
MICHAELA: Here we are. I found some thenardite.
Some of the NASA scientists I work with
even call it space snow. We should take a sample of it.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)
-CHARLIE: Oh, it scrapes really easily. -MICHAELA: Yeah.
-CARLY: Oh, it does. -MICHAELA: That's why they call it snow.
CHARLIE: So the reason why we're harvesting it,
because there's a chance it could be made by microbes.
This is the exact same type of experiment that they do
to see if there's life on Mars.
It's fun to be out conducting science and we wish we could explore some more.
CARLY: Yeah, but there's a limit on how long we can be outside the habitat.
So Michaela says it's time to head back.
All right. We just got back from our hike.
-Mm-hmm. Yeah. -It was pretty good.
-We got some space rocks. -Mm-hmm.
We heard from Mission Control
and it turns out that we cannot leave the habitat,
-uh, for the rest of the night. -Yeah. So we'll be hanging out
-and doing some missions here, I guess. -Yeah.
-Ten hours in. -Still on Mars.
-Mars is easy. -Mars is fun.
CHARLIE: We're killing it.
All right. We're 14 hours in, and we're doing flight simulation test.
-Time to cook. -Okay. These are our ingredients.
-This is a bucket of salmon. -Whoa.
-Okay. Look at this. -CARLY: What?
CHARLIE: This is a piece of salmon.
They have to prepare food a very specific way before sending it to space.
So let's look into that a bit more closely.
-Charlie, what are you doing? -We do craft and we like explain the food,
-everybody learns something, yeah. -I know.
But Charlie, we don't have any crafting supplies here.
-We... we can't make anything. -I'll call Bob.
-We'll send... He'll send... -Charlie, Bob can't come to Mars.
(GRUNTS, EXHALES) What are we gonna do?
There are no crafts in space. (GRUNTS)
-It's called freeze drying. -Yeah.
They freeze it to ice and they, like, pull out the ice
and you get salmon, that's how it works.
-That is true, so... -Yeah. Okay.
-...that works. -Let's... let's cook it.
-(MUSIC PLAYING) -(CUTLERY CLINKING)
CARLY: It's a balanced meal. We got veggies,
we got protein, we got fiber. We're the best Martian chefs ever.
-CHARLIE: Pasta. -CARLY: Sauce.
CHARLIE: Sauce.
-CHARLIE: Salmon. -CARLY: Salmon.
-Cheers. -Ah.
-What are you gonna try first? -I'm gonna mix it all together.
(BOTH CHUCKLING)
Could you imagine eating this for the rest of our lives?
-(SLURPS, EXHALES) -Mm.
-I miss Casey's food right now. -I don't like the salmon.
I'm not gonna eat it ever.
-Let's just go to bed. -Get some sleep.
-CHARLIE: Yes. -CARLY: Yeah.
-Good night, Charlie. -Good night, Carly.
It is the end of our first day here at the HI-SEAS Mars Habitat.
I'm still pretty hungry because dinner didn't really work out.
-This is hard stuff. -Definitely wasn't what I expected.
It's hard to be, um, away from the stuff and the people that I love.
Um, we're getting a lot of good footage.
Okay, now get up and do three jumping jacks.
-One... (GRUNTS) -(CARLY LAUGHS)
I feel like things will be better in the morning after I get some sleep.
-Okay. Good night. -We'll see you in the morning.
(STATIC SOUND)
(PLEASANT MUSIC PLAYING)
And, uh, cool.
Good morning.
-We ran out of power. -Uh-huh.
CHARLIE: We weren't paying attention to how much energy we were using.
-Right? -CARLY: We used it all up.
Yeah. Here's the problem though, it's overcast so the Sun's
not out right now, so it'll be a while before we get more power.
CARLY: So, we can't make breakfast.
-It's getting very cold. -It's... it's very, very cold.
Yeah. Rough start to the day, but we're gonna turn around.
-That's right. Nothing we can't handle. -Yeah.
CARLY: Out in space, the Sun is your main power source.
So, collecting and managing solar power using batteries is critical to survival.
-We're back and the power's on. -Yeah.
Michaela wants us to use my hair
to make fertilizer so we can grow food.
-It's cool. -Yeah.
But also, like, what?
(MUSIC PLAYING)
We're in the lab and we are gonna be cutting a piece of my hair
to make fertilizer.
The main idea behind that is when humans
go on long duration missions, your hair is gonna grow.
Why don't we use it for something useful?
There's actually nutrients in hair, like nitrogen and sulfur,
-that we could use to help plants grow. -BOTH: Wow.
Now, it's time to sacrifice some hair for science.
Ah. Perfect.
-Ready? -Yeah.
(CARLY SCREAMS)
-Whoa! -Hold on tight.
Let me see it.
-Whoa! -Oh (LAUGHS)
MICHAELA: Put it into that glass bottle there.
CARLY: Next, we add potassium hydroxide and some water to dissolve my hair.
In a few hours, it will turn into this nice brown liquid,
and that's when we'll want to measure the pH
and see if it's not too alkali, so we may need to add
some citric acid to kind of lower the pH a little bit.
And when it'll be ready, we can actually use it to add to soil.
Cool science tool, pH strip.
It's what a scientist uses to figure out how acidic or basic something is.
So, a couple hours have passed
and it's turned into, like, a bunch of brown goop.
-Used to be my hair. -(CHUCKLES)
CHARLIE: What does it smell like?
-Oh, no. Whoa! -(LAUGHS)
-What... It smells like something... -Like a... a...
-a basement. -Like an old carpet?
-Yes. Yes. -Yeah.
We are preparing our dirt so that we can plant some seeds.
CHARLIE: You do as much research as you can here on Earth,
but once you go to Mars, you're doing it for the first time.
That's a little scary to me, I have to be honest.
CHARLIE: And this is the place to make mistakes.
-Better here than on Mars. -Exactly. Exactly.
So you can try to find a solution, you know.
Now, we have spinach growing, thanks to your hair.
So thank you so much for your contribution.
-Uh. It's going all right. -It's going okay.
We just kind of got a little bit curious about what Casey and Patrick are up to
and it's kind of weird that we can't ask them.
It's a little trickier than we thought to do stuff.
Yeah. It's not bad. It's just not what I expected.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
All right, guys. Well, mission's over. How was your time on Mars?
The people that go into space are so brave and so strong.
The longer we were here, the more we missed basically everything from home.
Yeah, and it helps you appreciate everything
back on Earth just a little bit more.
Thank so much, Michaela.
-We had an absolutely great time. -CARLY: Thank you.
Oh, you're very welcome. You did a great job, guys.
-Have a safe journey back to Earth. -CHARLIE: Thanks.
-Carly, I think I've got an idea. -Yeah?
We should call Casey, Patrick, and Bob, tell them to meet us back at HQ, right?
-Okay. -You, too, we'll meet you there.
All right? See you soon.
-CASEY: Hey, guys. -Oh, hey.
-CHARLIE: Hey. -What's going on?
-I just finished editing our video.
-CASEY: All right. -Let's see it.
The video that will send you guys into space.
CARLY: Hmm.
This whole time, we've been doing a lot of research on our Solar System,
but there's one place that we realized we kind of overlooked.
-Earth. -CARLY: The Earth sits
right between Venus and Mars in a section of our Solar System
that astronomers call the Goldilocks Zone.
It's called that because it's the perfect distance from the Sun to support life.
If Earth was closer to the Sun,
it would get too hot and all of its water would evaporate.
If it were further from the Sun, it would be too cold
and the water would be locked in ice.
That's what makes the Earth and the Goldilocks Zone so special.
CHARLIE: There's an endless amount of information to unravel
right here on our own planet.
But the real reason it's our favorite place to be is,
weird but true, Earth is the only planet that has our best friends.
Casey, Patrick, Bob, and you.
We can't imagine a better place in this entire universe
than a planet where we can share everything we learn with you.
(SIGHS)
You're staying?
-Yeah. -We're staying.
-(CHEERING) -They're staying!
The super team is sticking together.
-Yes. -Yup.
I had a vision this would happen all along.
ALL: Oh!
CARLY: That was a pretty close call, but now it looks like we're here to stay.
Crafting together, researching together,
and discovering more things that are weird, but true.
We'll see you next time.
(THEME MUSIC PLAYS)
The Global Space Administration has selected the following applicants
to be launched deep into our Solar System
as part of the Interplanetary Expedition.
Alabama Cones. Dr. Bill.
And a bajillionaire, Chet Megabit.
Thank you, and good luck.
(MUSIC PLAYING)