OPPORTUNITY EXPLORES FOR 14 YEARS
DISCOVERS EVIDENCE OF ANCIENT FLOWING WATER
NARRATOR: Over 50 years of Mars exploration has revealed intriguing clues, suggesting Mars has a surprisingly watery past.
ASHWIN VASAVADA: There’s a lot of evidence for ancient flowing water on Mars. For one thing, there’s a lot of rivers that once coursed across the surface that are now dry, today. There’s also evidence for floods that catastrophically scoured the surface.
JOHN GROTZINGER: It’s undeniable that the early history of Mars was much wetter than it is today.
STEVE SQUYRES: The surface of Mars is littered with an uncountable number of little round things. These “blueberries,” as we nicknamed them, are what geologists call “concretions.”
PBS Airdate: February 6, 2007
NARRATOR: 1939: A chemist at a midwestern paint company makes a startling discovery, one that could improve the health of millions of people. The company wants him to stick to making paint, but this man has always gone his own way. He was the grandson of Alabama slaves, yet he went on to become one of America s great scientists.
HELEN PRINTY (Julian Laboratories Chemist) : He had to fight to overcome the odds of being a black man in America.
JOHN KENLY SMITH (Historian) : The chemical world was a club, and outsiders were not really all that welcome.
PETER WALTON (Julian Laboratories Employee) : We lived, for the most part, in a highly stressed, very competitive environment.