The United Arab Emirates is on its way to Mars, claiming the title of first Arab country to launch an interplanetary mission, which it designed and built in just six years and dubbed Hope.

The Hope Mars orbiter launched toward Mars on a Japanese rocket on Sunday (July 19). Its name was carefully chosen to reflect the country's goal for the mission, which focused as on spurring space exploration and science in the UAE as on actually reaching the Red Planet. But like the name of NASA's own Mars mission launching this month, the Hope name has taken on a new resonance over the past months as the world navigates the throws of the coronavirus pandemic, which complicated launch preparations for both Mars missions. Nevertheless, both spacecraft made it to their rockets in time for the rare three-week launch window to the Red Planet.

"Whether it's the Mars Perseverance mission or the Mars Hope mission, all of us believe that this is critical for our nations to inspire the next generation, to provide hope, and demonstrate perseverance," NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said during a webcast held before launch.

Related: The United Arab Emirates' Hope mission to Mars in photos

"The naming of these two robots, if you will, I think is absolutely perfect," Bridenstine said. "Certainly I think what we're trying to do here is give people people want hope, and this mission, I think, is a perfect example of that."

The Hope mission's compact timeline, from idea to launch in just six years, prompted comparison to a different NASA program from Ellen Stofan, director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and a planetary scientist, during the same event.

"It reminds me of another country 50-some years ago now, that in eight and a half years made it from basically no space agency at all to sending people to the moon," Stofan said. "That spirit of Apollo is what I have really watched happening in the UAE, and they will get the same results that we got from Apollo: inspiring a generation to go out and do the impossible."

Related: The boldest Mars missions in history

The UAE's current ambassador to the U.S., Yousef Al Otaiba, struck a similar note in his remarks after the spacecraft successfully blasted off to begin its journey to Mars.

"A young Emirati who is watching for the first time, [an Arab-built] spaceship carrying a probe to Mars, they're going to grow up believing everything is possible, or they're going to grow up believing that there is indeed hope," Al Otaiba said. "I think it's really, really important to see that, because we see so much conflict and tension and disagreement, and I'm not going to put my political hat back on, but everything is polarized."

And for him, finding ways to collaborate despite that strained environment is vital, even for confronting the very same situation that threatened to derail Hope's launch.

"If we're going to focus on finding a cure for corona[virus], or the next pandemic, we're going to have to work together; if we're going to find a fix for climate change, we're going to have to work together," Al Otaiba said. "Some of these problems, frankly, are beyond any one country or any one institution to fix. People, especially young people need to grow up understanding the power of working together to accomplish greater things."

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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For Mars, Hope (and a little Perseverance, too) shines in UAE's 'Apollo moment' - Space.com

The United Arab Emirates is counting down to the launch of its first interplanetary space mission today one that will send a spacecraft called Hope to orbit Mars. The Emirates Mars Mission will aim to provide a global snapshot of the weather on the Red Planet. It will also be a source of pride for the UAE as the country celebrates the 50th anniversary of its founding in December of 2021.

To ensure that Hope is actually at Mars by the anniversary, the UAE must launch this summer. Planetary scientists have a very small window every two years to send spacecraft to Mars, when the Red Planet and Earth closely align on their orbits. If Hope launches in July, the spacecraft will spend the next seven months traveling to Mars, arriving sometime in February leaving it plenty of time in orbit before the anniversary.

Hope is launching on top of a Japanese H-IIA rocket out of Japans Tanegashima Space Center, located on an island off the southern coast of the country. At Tanegashima, the launch is taking place in the wee morning hours of July 20th, at 6:58AM. On the East Coast of the United States, the launch is at 5:58PM ET this afternoon.

About one hour after the launch, the H-IIA rocket will deploy Hope in space, putting it on its course toward Mars. The probe will then stretch out its solar panels and point them toward the Sun to start generating power. The Emirates Mars Mission team operating the spacecraft will also try to get in touch with the vehicle, while it attempts to stabilize itself and then heads out into deep space.

About 28 days after the launch, Hope will correct its course slightly by burning its onboard thrusters the first of many correction maneuvers it will do on the way to Mars. Such burns are necessary to keep Hope on track to meet a tiny window at Mars and then insert itself into the planets orbit. Its a very small target, Pete Withnell, the program manager for the mission at the University Colorado Boulder, which partnered with the Emirates Mars Mission, said during a press call ahead of the launch. Its equivalent to an archer hitting a two-millimeter target, one kilometer away. So this is not for the faint of heart.

The Emirates Mars Mission plans to provide multiple livestreams of the launch, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which operates the H-IIA rocket, will also provide a livestream. Most of the streams begin at 3PM ET and will provide plenty of coverage leading up to the UAEs first attempt to put a vehicle in deep space.

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Watch the United Arab Emirates launch its first mission to Mars - The Verge

It's been a few weeks of exciting space events, from Comet Neowise lighting up Cambridgeshire's skies to the SpaceX rocket launch many of us saw last month.

And NASA is now preparing for its next big mission: sending a rover to Mars, with a provisional launch date of July 30 set.

The mission is designed to better understand the geology and climate of Mars and seek signs of ancient life on the Red Planet, the NASA website explains.

It will use a "robotic scientist" weighing just under 2,300 pounds and the size of a small car, to collect and store a set of rock and soil samples that could be returned to Earth by future Mars sample return missions.

It also will test new technologies to benefit future robotic and human exploration of Mars.

NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, managed by Caltech in Southern California, built the Perseverance rover and will manage mission operations for NASA. The agency'sLaunch Services Program, based at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is responsible for launch management.

Mars 2020 Perseverance is part of Americas larger Moon to Mars exploration approach that includes missions to the Moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

Charged with sending the first woman and next man to the Moon by 2024, NASA will establish a sustained human presence on and around the Moon by 2028 through NASA'sArtemis program.

To get involved, you can send questions via social media with the hashtag #CountdownToMars, and Live launch coverage will begin at 7 a.m., on NASA Television and the agencys website.

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NASA prepares to launch rover to Mars on July 30 'to seek signs of ancient life'- here's how to watch - Cambridgeshire Live

Three countries the United States, China and the United Arab Emirates are sending unmanned spacecraft to Mars beginning this week, in an effort to seek signs of ancient microscopic life while scouting out places for future astronauts. (July 13)

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MARCIA DUNN: Earth is sending three robotic explorers to Mars-- US, NASA from here at Cape Canaveral, Florida, China, and the United Arab Emirates.

The whole plan is for this rover to not only look for signs of ancient microscopic life, but to pick the best samples where there might be some microscopic life preserved, stash them on Mars in these super sterile tubes, and NASA hopes to send another spacecraft to go retrieve them and bring them back to Earth possibly in 2031.

If there was life on Mars, then that opens up the whole possibility for planets and other solar systems. And I think that's the question that we all wonder every day, every night is like, "Are we alone in this huge universe or could there be other life out there that we just don't know about yet?"

More here:

Mars is about to be invaded by planet Earth - Yahoo! Voices

ALIENS are living in underground tunnels on Mars formed by lava billions of years ago, experts suspect.

They could be hiding out in them to escape the planets inhospitable surface, it is claimed.

2

There are more than 1,000 caves on the planet and researchers are calling on Nasa to send a robot to explore them.

Mars is about 33million miles away and cosmic radiation makes its surface inhospitable, which is why aliens may have delved underground.

In a lecture delivered to the third interplanetary conference in Texas, US in February, a team of stargazing academics set out their mission concept.

US scientist Charity Phillips-Lander said: If life exists there it will probably be best maintained in the sub-surface.

Her team of boffins want Nasa to explore whether there are any signs of past or present life inside the lava tubes.

They suggest sending either a rock climbing robot, two-wheeled robot or an unmanned drone to explore the caverns.

The boffins anticipate technological advancements will make the mission possible within the next decade.

2

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It is also hoped humans will one day be able to colonise the lava caves on Mars and the Moon.

Its also hoped humans will one day be able to colonise the lava tubes in Mars and the moon.

Pascal Leem, a planetary researcher at NASA Ames Research Centre in Califgornia, added: On Mars and other places, lava tubes have the potential to have made the difference between life and death.

GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAILexclusive@the-sun.co.uk

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Aliens are living in underground tunnels on Mars formed by lava billions of years ago, experts suspect - The Irish Sun

Chocolate Confectionery Market with Insights and Key Business Factors:

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Based on regions, the Chocolate ConfectioneryMarketis classified into North America, Europe, Asia- Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and Latin AmericaMiddle East and Africa (GCC Countries and Egypt)North America (United States, Mexico, and Canada)South America(Brazil, Argentina etc.)Europe(Turkey, Germany, Russia UK, Italy, France, etc.)Asia-Pacific(Vietnam, China, Malaysia, Japan, Philippines, Korea, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and Australia)

Get a Sample copy (Table of Content, Charts and Figures)@https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/toc/?dbmr=global-chocolate-confectionery-market

Global chocolate confectionery market is expected to reach at a rate of 3.63% in the forecast period of 2020 to 2027. Chocolate confectionery market is driven by the increase demand for organic, vegan, functional, and gluten- free confectioneries. It is also evolving by the varied eating preferences for innovative chocolate products.

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Chocolate Confectionery Market Growth Overview, SWOT Analysis and Forecast to 2027 | Mars, Mondelez, Nestle, The Hershey Company and Ferrero - 3rd...

Northern Light Continuing Care

Front of the Northern Light Continuing Care facility in Mars Hill on Thursday, July 16. (David Marino Jr. | The Star-Herald)

Front of the Northern Light Continuing Care facility in Mars Hill on Thursday, July 16. (David Marino Jr. | The Star-Herald)

Two days after announcing that an employee at its Continuing Care facility in Mars Hill tested positive for COVID-19, Northern Light A.R. Gould said on Thursday that 198 residents and employees had tested negative.

MARS HILL, Maine Two days after announcing that an employee at its Continuing Care facility in Mars Hill tested positive for COVID-19, Northern Light A.R. Gould said on Thursday that 198 residents and employees had tested negative.

A total of 201 tests were conducted after the hospital was notified that an employee who made contact with residents and staff July 8-11 had tested positive for COVID-19. That person, whose name has not been released, is the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the Presque Isle area since the pandemic hit Maine in March.

Though the results of three tests remain, the announcement from A.R. Gould indicates that the virus had not spread inside the Mars Hill nursing home. Nursing homes have constituted some of the largest hotbeds for COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United States. Spread can occur quickly in a group home setting, affecting elderly residents who are most at-risk of dying from the virus.

According to federal data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 216,827 nursing home residents are confirmed or suspected to have contracted the coronavirus across the country; 37,213 have died. In Maine, there have been 197 total cases and 37 deaths.

Northern Light A.R. Gould President Greg LaFrancois said the lack of spread was a sign that the hospitals protocols including regular screening, use of personal protection equipment and mask requirements worked.

I am grateful to the community for its continued support, Northern Light Laboratory for their

immediate action, and the leaders and staff of Continuing Care in Mars Hill for keeping everyone safe, LaFrancois said.

A.R. Gould is working with the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention to determine which employees and residents would be tested a second time.

LaFrancois said contact tracing was also being done to determine if the employee who tested positive had contact with anybody outside the facility. He said he expects that number to be minimal.

Thank you for reading your 4 free articles this month. To continue reading, and support local, rural journalism, please subscribe.

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198 in Mars Hill nursing home test negative for COVID-19 after employee tests positive - The County

(Welcome toThe Quarantine Stream, a new series where the /Film team shares what theyve been watching while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.)

The Movie: Mars Attacks!

Where You Can Stream It: HBO Max

The Pitch: Based on the comic book of the same name, this sci-fi comedy modeled after classic B-movies finds Earth being invaded by some tricky aliens from Mars. An incredible, all-star ensemble cast tries to survive, including Jack Nicholson in dual roles, Annette Bening giving an all-time great comedic performance, and a whos who of supporting cast members all having an absolute blast.

Why Its Essential Viewing: If you look at the filmography of Tim Burton over the past 10 or 15 years, youd never know that he used to dabble in movies that didnt have anything to do with weird kids or strange, gothic circuses. But, believe it or not, there was a time when Burton delivered movies that were a lot more fun, digging into delightfully twisted satire rather than stories that seem tailor-made to sell Hot Topic merchandise. One of his best is the 1996 sci-fi comedy comic book adaptation Mars Attacks!, and it still holds up today.

The year before Mars Attacks! was released, Tim Burton made Ed Wood, a movie starring Johnny Depp as the infamous filmmaker behind Plan 9 from Outer Space, largely regarded as one of the worst films ever made. So its only appropriate that Mars Attacks! follows a lot of the same sci-fi B-movie tropes that make some classic movies from the 1950s and 1960s so hilarious to watch. But Burton presents them with a modern satirical lens, as well as visual effects that were very impressive at the time. In fact, because of their intentionally simplistic and classic aesthetic, they still look pretty damn good after nearly 25 years

Aside from the comedy that comes from our invaders from Mars, whose antics only get more cartoonish as the movie goes on, the real draw of Mars Attacks! is the massive, mind-blowing ensemble cast. The movie includes Jack Nicholson having having the time of his life as the President of the United States and a high-rolling, eccentric casino owner, Annette Bening as a flower child space case, Michael J. Fox as a cocky, smarmy reporter, Sarah Jessica Parker as his E! News-esque anchor girlfriend, Martin Short as a sleazy press secretary, Rod Steiger as a trigger happy general, as well as Lukas Haas, Glenn Close, Pierce Brosnan, Natalie Portman, Jim Brown, Pam Grier, Christina Applegate, Jack Black, and singer Tom Jones as himself.

Mars Attacks! not only serves as a fun send-up of classic sci-fi movies, but i arrived six months after the release of Independence Day, so it also felt like somewhat of a parody of the large scale alien invasion action flick too. Honestly, this might be the last truly fun movie that Tim Burton directed. And dont you dare try to bring up Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to prove me wrong.

Read the original post:

The Quarantine Stream: 'Mars Attacks!' Proves Tim Burton Didn't Always Need a Gothic Circus To Have Fun - /FILM

The global Mars, Incorporated group has joined with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), for a five-year research-in-development project, Sustainable Farming in Tropical Asian Landscapes (SFITAL), and World Agroforestry, (ICRAF) to support small-scale Indonesian and Philippines palm oil and cocoa producers.

As the business noted, it is aiming to explore environmentally sustainable ways to create greater links for farming communities to global supply chains, given that many of the worlds 500 million farmers living in poverty, as well as facing disruption from a number of major issues. These include climate change, increasing demand for food from growing populations, and degrading agricultural and natural landscapes.

The collaboration started this month and is supported financially and on the ground by IFAD, Mars and ICRAF through an investment of approximately $4 million.

Small-scale producers nevertheless produce much of the planets food. They therefore need to be at the forefront of any transformation of our food systems. SFITAL aims to explore how agricultural systems can be managed sustainably in entire landscapes in a way that respects the environment and enables the producers to thrive.

This agreement heralds a significant step in the transition to more sustainable food systems, said Tony Simons, director-general of ICRAF. We anticipate that millions of small-scale producers, consumers and the global climate system will benefit enormously from research in development of the tropical agricultural landscapes.

SFITAL will focus on palm oil in Indonesia and cocoa in Indonesia and the Philippines. These raw materials are major sources of livelihoods of those living in rural communities who rely on them for employment and business opportunities, yet they are cultivated in areas facing environmental threats, ranging from water stress to deforestation.

IFAD is committed to supporting small-scale producers to improve the sustainability and profitability of their farms through better practices, and this grant does that, said Fabrizio Bresciani, IFADs regional economist, Asia and the Pacific. Together with ICRAF and Mars, we will promote better farm management, lower transactional costs and higher production standards. We will establish innovative traceability systems so small-scale producers can participate in highly profitable and sustainable cocoa and palm-oil value chains.

The challenges facing small-scale producers in tropical regions are numerous. Climate change and poverty, slow or unresponsive governance systems with little interconnectivity, environmentally unfriendly infrastructure, social conflict and limited access to financing mechanisms contribute to unattractive risk environments for investors.

Mars has a responsibility to the millions of small-scale producers in our value chains, said Barry Parkin, chief procurement and sustainability officer. And for many of these producers, meeting sustainability standards that are required for access to global markets is incredibly costly. We believe this landscape approach will demonstrate environmentally and socially viable models for more effectively integrating small-scale producers into global supply chains. We need thriving farmers in our collective supply chains to build a safer, more resilient food system for the long term.

In this context, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) is of paramount importance. SFITAL brings together public, private and research communities to tackle the complex challenges faced by small-scale producers. Through this partnership, SFITAL aims to advance other critical Goals, including Goal 2 on Zero Hunger, Goal 12 on Responsible Consumption and Production, and Goal 15 on Life on Land.

A collaborative effort by governments, industry, non-governmental organisations and others is needed to co-design and implement with small-scale producers new ways of operating. To address these complex challenges, SFITAL will draw on experience in the two countries with the two raw materials to Enhance both environmental and social management systems and/or production standards in whole landscapes to meet sustainability and strategic positioning in the global market; Increase participation of small-scale producers in value chains based on sustainably sourced raw materials; Expand the global scale of sustainable value chains of the two raw materials through strengthening enabling environments by inclusive involvement of local governments and others; and Generate and promote learning through integrated and effective knowledge and project management.

The progress of the project will be watched closely by governments, development agencies, farmers associations and the private sector. The SFITAL team encourages more multi-sectoral collaboration to help expand the scale of sustainable farming, ensuring the swift transformation of the worlds food systems.

Go here to read the rest:

Mars Incorporated joins key sustainable farming project for Asian palm oil and cocoa markets - Confectionery Production

ALIENS are living in underground tunnels on Mars formed by lava billions of years ago, experts suspect.

They could be hiding out in them to escape the planets inhospitable surface, it is claimed.

2

There are more than 1,000 caves on the planet and researchers are calling on Nasa to send a robot to explore them.

Mars is about 33million miles away and cosmic radiation makes its surface inhospitable, which is why aliens may have delved underground.

In a lecture delivered to the third interplanetary conference in Texas, US in February, a team of stargazing academics set out their mission concept.

US scientist Charity Phillips-Lander said: If life exists there it will probably be best maintained in the sub-surface.

Her team of boffins want Nasa to explore whether there are any signs of past or present life inside the lava tubes.

They suggest sending either a rock climbing robot, two-wheeled robot or an unmanned drone to explore the caverns.

The boffins anticipate technological advancements will make the mission possible within the next decade.

2

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It is also hoped humans will one day be able to colonise the lava caves on Mars and the Moon.

Its also hoped humans will one day be able to colonise the lava tubes in Mars and the moon.

Pascal Leem, a planetary researcher at NASA Ames Research Centre in Califgornia, added: On Mars and other places, lava tubes have the potential to have made the difference between life and death.

GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAILexclusive@the-sun.co.uk

View original post here:

Aliens are living in underground tunnels on Mars formed by lava billions of years ago, experts suspect - The Sun

With a five-meter-wide, 57-meter-tall rocket waiting to blast off from Chinas southern island of Hainan, the nation is quietly making final preparations for its first independent trip to Mars. When the launch window opens in mid-July, Chinese scientists will strive to send a probe to a planet that confused their ancestors with its constantly changing brightness and position in the sky.

The spacecraft, called Tianwen-1, or the Quest for Heavenly Truth, will carry 13 scientific instruments to examine the Red Planet from orbit and on its surface. Tianwen-1 will examine how water ice is distributed on Mars, as well as the planets physical evolution and its habitability over time. The missionconsisting of an orbiter, lander, and roveris the most ambitious thing one could do on a first attempt, says John Logsdon, a space policy expert at George Washington University.

The odds of a flawless mission are daunting: Of humanitys dozens of attempts to orbit or land on Mars to date, only about half have succeeded. After some high-profile setbacks, NASA has deployed five landers, four rovers and multiple orbiters that have brought the world to life for scientists and the public alike. But Chinas spacefaring experience beyond Earth orbit has been limited to several robotic moon missions and an orbiter that piggybacked on a failed Russian mission to the Martian moon Phobos in 2011.

Two major risks confront the five-metric-ton Tianwen-1, Logsdon says. First, Chinas most powerful heavy-lift rocket, Long March 5, has only launched three timesincluding a major failure in 2017, when the rocket started to malfunction shortly after takeoff. It took more than two years for scientists to fix Long March 5s core-stage-engine problem and score a successful flight in late 2019. Its track record makes observers nervous, however.

Second, Tianwen-1s lander must navigate the challenging Martian atmosphere, which is thick enough to overheat the probe but too thin to decelerate it sufficiently. The spacecrafts entry, descent and landing technology uses a heat shield, a parachute and a retro-engine to slow its descent, an arrangement resembling that of earlier U.S. missions. Yet when the vessel is just 100 meters above the surface, it will pause, take snapshots of the area and quickly calculate the best landing spot. Then it will shift horizontally to center above that spot and carefully touch down with the landers four legs.

In November 2019 China tested this part of the landing procedure, which the nation had previously used successfully in its moon landings, in the province of Hebei. Foreign officials were invited to watch the test on-site. It was the last major public event for Tianwen-1, however. Since then, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) has kept a low profile, and mission scientists have declined or ignored nearly all interview requests.

Should Tianwen-1 land successfully, its research could illuminate new aspects of Mars. For instance, both the orbiter and the rover are equipped with a ground-penetrating radar to chart geologic layers under the surface. The radar on the orbiter can see as deep as a few thousand meters, whereas the instrument on the rover has a shallower view but sharp centimeter-level resolution. Chinas main goal [with these radars] is to explore the water-ice layer under the planets surface, says Wlodek Kofman of the Institute for Planetary Sciences and Astrophysics of Grenoble in France.

Tianwen-1s ability to measure Marss magnetic field excites Jim Bell of Arizona State University, principal investigator of the main camera on NASAs Perseverance rover. One prevailing hypothesis is that the Red Planet used to have a global magnetic field like Earth's, he says. When its smaller molten iron core cooled down, however, Mars gradually lost this shield, exposing the world to solar wind and radiation, thinning its atmosphere and dooming any water that might have flowed on its surface. Since 2014 NASAs Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission has found ample evidence to support this scenario, but scientists crave a fuller picture. Tianwen-1 will be very useful in providing more evidence from a different orbit and from the ground, Bell says. He hopes the Chinese team will share data with the international community piecing together the environmental evolution of Mars.

Tianwen-1 will aim to land in the southern part of Utopia Planitia, a largely flat area between 25 and 30 degrees north of the Martian equator. Geologists have long suspected that this region is covered with ancient mudflows, pointing to stores of bygone water. Its an interesting place to investigate potential past subsurface habitability, says Alfred McEwen, a planetary geologist at the University of Arizona.

The rovers chance of finding water beneath Mars might be limited by its latitude, McEwen notes. Because it draws its power from solar panels, it must stay near the equator. Today water ice below the planets surface, most researchers believe, remains mainly at higher and cooler latitudes.

Tianwen-1s reliance on the sun compelled its team to design hardy instruments, says Rong Shu of the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since our rover does not have radioisotope power, all the instruments need to endure temperatures as low as 90 degrees Celsius while at rest, and they operate in the temperature range of 40 to 30 degrees C, he adds.

The rover's payload includes the Martian Surface Component Detector (MarSCoDe), whose design was led by Shu. Similar to ChemCam on NASAs Curiosity rover, MarSCoDe can fire short laser pulses to vaporize the surfaces of rocks from a few meters away. The instrument will sniff the ionized gas produced by these mini blasts and determine the type and quantity of chemical elements in the rocks.

Tianwen-1 is expected to reach Mars in February 2021. It will spend about two months in a parking orbit, waiting for the best timing and surface conditions to land. Chinas expanding radio telescope network of tracking and receiving stations will sustain communications between Earth and the probe.

Already, Chinese scientists are preparing for more missions in the Tianwen series, including ventures to return rock samples from Mars and an asteroid, to perform a flyby of Jupiter and to explore the margins of the suns vast heliosphere. But if Tianwen-1 reaches Mars as planned, Logsdon says, it will put China in the space exploration business in a big way.

Here is the original post:

Chinese Spacecraft Poised for First Mars Mission - Scientific American

By Leah Crane

MBRSC

The United Arab Emirates is headed to Mars. The Emirates Mars Mission, which consists of an orbiter called Hope, is set to launch between 20 and 22 July and begin a seven-month journey to the Red Planet to study its atmosphere and weather. The launch had been set for earlier this week, but was delayed due to bad weather.

Hope will blast off from Tanegashima, Japan, aboard a Japanese rocket, and if all goes well it will arrive at Mars in February 2021. This will make the United Arab Emirates just the fifth spacefaring power to reach the planet, after the US, Soviet Union, European Union and India.

Once Hope is in orbit around Mars, it will measure the atmosphere daily to try to trace how the weather and climate there changes. The geology of Mars has been studied quite extensively. We are only just getting started on the atmosphere, says Sarah Al Amiri, the UAEs minister for advanced sciences and the science lead for the mission.

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The spacecraft carries three scientific instruments: a camera to take high-resolution images of Mars surface and look for water ice, an infrared spectrometer to measure dust, ice, and water vapour in the lower atmosphere and an ultraviolet spectrometer to measure the composition of the upper atmosphere.

Rather than simply circling the planet, Hope will follow an elliptical orbit that will bring it relatively close to the surface about 20,000 kilometres up every 55 hours. This will allow it to observe the same locations at different times of day, building up a model of how the weather responds to changes in sunlight.

Observing Mars weather in such detail will hopefully help researchers understand not only the day-to-day conditions on the planet, but also the more extreme weather events like the colossal dust storm that engulfed the whole planet and killed NASAs Opportunity rover in 2018.

It could also help us figure out how Mars has changed since its formation. Planetary scientists think that Mars used to be warm, damp and possibly habitable, but for some reason it lost the bulk of its atmosphere over the course of billions of years, which turned it into the dry, cold, inhospitable world it is today.

We want to find out how it went from a dense, much wetter atmosphere to a dry and very thin atmosphere, says Al Amiri. Hope will measure the gas that is still leaking away from the Martian atmosphere in an effort to understand how that process may have worked and how it is continuing now.

The mission marks the start of a busy summer for Mars. Right now, Mars and Earth are relatively close together, a conjunction that only happens once every two years. Later in July, Chinas space agency plans to launch an orbiter, lander and rover to Mars, and just after that NASA plans to launch its Perseverance rover. If any of these missions arent able to launch while Mars is nearby, they will have to wait until 2022 for another chance.

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The United Arab Emirates is launching its first mission to Mars - New Scientist News

NASA has unveiled new policies to protect the moon and Mars (and Earth) from contamination as human spaceflight advances.

The agency released two NASA Interim Directives (NIDs) today (July 9) that detail new requirements for human and robotic missions traveling to and from the moon and Mars. These directives were enacted to protect the planetary bodies from any possible biological contamination that could originate on Earth and ultimately interfere with scientific research (or additionally, in the case of Mars, to also prevent any possible biological material from being brought home to Earth.)

One of the newly announced NIDs addresses the potential issue of forward biological contamination contamination brought from Earth to another planetary object on future moon missions. The second NID deals with Mars and covers both forward and backward contamination (the type brought to Earth from another cosmic body).

These NIDs were created with the interests in three specific space communities in mind, NASA officials said.

Mars sample-return: What the coronavirus (& 'Andromeda Strain') can teach us

"We're trying to balance the interests of the science community, the interest of the human exploration community and the interest of the commercial community," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced today while revealing the NIDs during a "Moon Dialogs" webinar hosted by the nonprofit Secure World Foundation. NASA's Office of Planetary Protection, which is housed within the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance, will ensure that these directives are complied with, Bridenstine added.

It is important, the NASA chief explained, that future missions leave behind "a pristine environment so we have the ability to know that what we discover in the future was not something that was left there by us We have to make sure that we are inventorying every kind of biological substance and even nonbiological substance organics for example that could leave something behind on the moon that could be problematic for future research."

"We're gonna go to the moon and we're gonna, in fact, stay at the moon, and certain parts of the moon, from a scientific perspective, need to be protected more than other parts of the moon from forward biological contamination," Bridenstine continued.

"We are enabling our important goal of sustainable exploration of the moon while simultaneously safeguarding future science in the permanently shadowed regions," Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator of NASAs Science Mission Directorate, added in a NASA statement. (Permanently shadowed regions are the floors of craters near the lunar poles that are thought to harbor lots of water ice, a resource that astronaut pioneers will likely tap.)

"These sites have immense scientific value in shaping our understanding of the history of our planet, the moon and the solar system," Zurbuchen said.

The NID that focuses on the moon includes two different categories for different areas of the moon. The "vast majority" of the moon, Bridenstine said, would fall under Category 1, which would require the least planetary protection measures. Missions to sites in Category 2, which Bridenstine described as primarily "the very tips of the North and the South Pole," would have to pass stricter planetary protection measures.

Additionally, and interestingly, the sites on the moon where NASA's Apollo missions landed and equipment still remains, fall under the lunar NID.

Mars, on the other hand, is a little bit more complicated. Not only are both forward and backward contamination considered (just in case any Martian biological material or microorganisms exist that could make their way here to Earth, Bridenstine explained), but additionally, there is still much to be learned about the Red Planet. While the Mars-oriented NID explores the best ways to implement planetary protection with Mars, specific categories such as those identified for the moon are not yet solidified.

That being said, neither of the two NIDs is set in stone. Because the NIDS are interim directives and not policy directives, there's room for modification down the road.

"It's probably going to be modified a lot of times now and into the future," Bridenstine said.

Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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NASA unveils new rules to protect the moon and Mars from Earth germs - Space.com

As a girl growing up in Abu Dhabi, one of the United Arab Emirates, Sarah al-Amiri looked at an astronomy book with a photograph of Andromeda, the giant galaxy neighboring our Milky Way.

I cant describe it, Ms. al-Amiri said in an interview, but just to realize that something that was printed on a page was larger than anything that Ive ever seen and dwarfs the planet that I live on.

When she was in college, there were few opportunities in the Middle East to pursue studies of the universe, and Ms. al-Amiri majored in computer science instead. But now, the U.A.E. is aiming to inspire its youth to pursue science and technology careers, and Ms. al-Amiri has forged a career pursuing the heavens.

Just 33 years old, she is the head of science operations and the deputy project manager for a space probe that the U.A.E. is about to send to Mars.

A rocket lifting a spacecraft called Hope is to begin its journey to Mars soon. Bad weather at the launchpad postponed the scheduled liftoff on Tuesday. The U.A.E. Space Agency announced that the next launch attempt would be on Thursday at 4:43 p.m. Eastern time. (It will be already Friday in the U.A.E. and at the launchpad on Tanegashima Island in Japan.)

The launch will be the boldest move yet by a country that is looking to establish a future that will long outlive its oil wealth, and sees a space program as one way to accomplish that goal.

Coverage of the launch was to be broadcast on the web at https://www.emiratesmarsmission.ae/.

Mars will be much in the news for the next month, a once-every-26-month interlude when Earth and Mars line up to allow robotic spacecraft to make a relatively quick trip. After several delays, NASAs next Mars rover, Perseverance, with instruments to search for chemical signs of past life, is scheduled to launch on July 30. China will also try to launch an ambitious mission to Mars, Tianwen-1, in about a week.

A fourth mission, which would put a Russian-European rover named Rosalind Franklin on Mars, was pushed off the calendar because of technical hurdles that could not be cleared in time.

Preparations for Hope, the smallest of the bunch, proceeded smoothly, and it was the first to be ready for liftoff.

Because the U.A.E. does not yet have its own rocket industry, it bought the launch for Hope aboard an H-IIA rocket from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, a machinery maker in Japan.

About the size of a Mini Cooper car, Hopeis to arrive in orbit around Mars in February. The spacecraft which cost about $200 million to build and launch will carry three instruments: an infrared spectrometer, an ultraviolet spectrometer and a camera.

From its high orbit varying from 12,400 miles to 27,000 miles above the surface Hope will give planetary scientists their first global view of Martian weather at all times of day. Over its two-year mission, it will investigate how dust storms and other weather phenomena near the Martian surface speed or slow the loss of the planets atmosphere into space.

That, however, is not the main reason that the Emirates government built Hope.

A lot of you might ask us, Why space? Omran Sharaf, the Hope project manager, said during a news conference on Thursday. Its not about reaching Mars.

Rather, Mr. Sharaf said, the countrys primary aim is to inspire schoolchildren and spur its science and technology industries, which, in turn, will enable the Emirates to tackle critical issues like food, water, energy and a post-petroleum economy.

Its about starting getting the ball rolling, Mr. Sharaf said, and creating that disruptive change, and changing the mind-set.

The Emirates previously built and launched three earth-observing satellites, collaborating with a South Korean manufacturer and gradually taking on greater shares of the engineering. The country even has a nascent human spaceflight program. Last year, the U.A.E. bought a seat on a Russian Soyuz rocket and sent its first astronaut, Hazzaa al-Mansoori, for an eight-day stay at the International Space Station.

For the Mars mission, the country took a similar approach to the earlier satellites by working with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder, where Hope was built before being sent to Dubai for testing.

By design, Emirati engineers worked side by side with their counterparts in Boulder, learning as they designed and assembled the spacecraft. One of the requirements that the government gave us since the beginning, Mr. Sharaf said, they told us, You have to build it and not buy it.

The science piece of the mission was an even bigger gap to fill for a country without Mars scientists, which until recently constituted an unfathomable career choice.

Ms. al-Amiri is the head of science even though she never formally studied planetary science.

After she graduated college with a computer science degree, the likeliest job prospects working at a networking company performing troubleshooting and maintenance did not enrapture her. She wanted to design and build new things.

She saw a job posting at what is now known as the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center in Dubai. She joined in 2009, working as an engineer on the satellite programs. When that assignment wrapped up in 2014, she moved on to her current roles on the Hope mission.

She now also serves as the countrys minister of state for advanced sciences and chairs an advisory council of scientists.

If the U.A.E. had tried to train planetary scientists from scratch to work on Hope, the mission would have been long over before the scientists were ready. Instead, Emirati officials took a quicker approach: converting some of the space centers engineers into scientists by offering apprentice-like training with researchers in the United States.

I was put there to develop scientific talents within the organization and be able to transfer knowledge in a nontraditional way, Ms. al-Amiri said.

The coronavirus outbreak tossed in more challenges.

Once construction of the spacecraft was complete in Colorado, a large Ukrainian transport plane ferried it to Dubai, where it was to undergo a round of testing before heading to the launchpad in Japan.

But at the end of February not long before the European Space Agency and Russia postponed the launch of the Rosalind Franklin mission in part because of the logistical hurdles created by the pandemic Mr. Sharaf and Ms. al-Amiri realized the outbreak could disrupt their carefully planned schedules if airports were shut down.

Based on that, we started working on a plan to get the team across to Japan as soon as possible, Ms. al-Amiri said.

They shuffled some of the tests in order to hurry the spacecraft to Japan, three weeks earlier than originally planned, and where some of the testing would instead be completed.

Travel restrictions meant team members could not travel back and forth. A small team went ahead in early April to wait out a quarantine. Two weeks later, the cargo plane with Hope flew to Japan with another small team from the Emirates.

In Japan, the people who flew with Hope then went into quarantine and then those who had gone ahead joined the spacecraft on the barge trip to the island that is home to the launch site.

Mr. Sharaf and Ms. al-Amiri said the mission was now ready, and the nations space program would continue regardless of the outcome.

The Emirates fully understand the risk associated with this mission, Mr. Sharaf said. So does the team. Lets be honest. Fifty percent of the missions that have been to Mars have failed.

The greatest success is the training of the people, he said.

For the Emirates, its more about the journey, Mr. Sharaf said. Its more about the impact. Reaching there is one of the goals. But that doesnt mean that the mission has failed, if we didnt manage to get there. So failure is an option.

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U.A.E. Sets Its Sights on Mars With Launch of Hope Orbiter - The New York Times

With the country eagerly waiting for its Mars probe's historic liftoff, the Dubai Crown Prince looked back on its six-year journey of building Hope and answered one big question: Why is the UAE going to Mars?

It wasn't only about exploring the cosmos and making new discoveries, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum said in a video he tweeted on Wednesday. Going to Mars is about shaping the future and creating a culture of conquering the impossible, he said.

In the moving two-minute video, Sheikh Hamdan laid out five key reasons behind the Hope probe mission, the first interplanetary mission of the Arab world.

"We are going to Mars because space programmes are the gateway to science and talent development. There's no future without science and no future without knowledge," he said, stating the first of five.

Launching the unmanned probe to the Red Planet has taken 5.5 million hours of work - and counting, with the dedication of 200 Emirati engineers. It is a milestone that has inspired the country, especially the youth, to make space dreams come true.

"We are going to Mars because we want to solidify a principle for our youth that the impossible is possible for the UAE and the people of the UAE. When we are determined, we execute. When we dream, we make our dreams come true," Sheikh Hamdan said, citing the second reason.

The country was supposed to send its Hope probe to Mars on July 17, after a 48-hour delay from the original launch date of July 15. However, the liftoff had to rescheduled again because of adverse weather conditions at its launch site on Tanegashima Island, Japan. A new date is expected in the next 24 hours, the country announced earlier today.

Read on:UAE's Mars probe team lists 3 reasons for liftoff delay

Lending proof to the country's determination to beat all odds to realise its dreams, the Mars mission team achieved its targets even as the pandemic brought the world to a standstill.

The UAE will go to Mars not only for its seven emirates, but for the rest of the Arab world, he added. "Our journey to Mars is a message of hope to all Arabs that we can compete with the world in science and technology. The UAE today leads the Arab knowledge transformation."

Sheikh Hamdan's video also featured snippets of the country's beloved founding fathers and leaders, as he narrated the vision that fuelled the UAE's space journey.

"We are going to Mars because Mars is the means to greater aims. Our aim is not merely to build a probe and launch it but build the foundation for tomorrow. This is the journey that Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Rashid had started, and the journey that Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid and Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed are carrying on today to empower people with knowledge, capabilities and ambitions that reach the sky," the Dubai Crown Prince said.

The final reason, he said, is to start "a new journey". "The journey of the next 50 years and the last 50 years that passed in the history of our nation: We started from the desert of our country, and we want the next 50 years to start from the desert of Mars, because we are people who don't know the impossible, and nothing can stand ahead of our rising ambitions."

The Mars Mission will carry the flag of the UAE and the aspirations of its people to the Red Planet, Sheikh Hamdan said.

It will be a long journey that will take seven months of travelling more than 490 million kilometres into space, with a cruise speed of 121,000 kph. The UAE is set to become the fifth country to reach Mars.

Thanking the team behind the Emirates Mars Mission, the Dubai Crown Prince said "the mission has succeeded before the journey begins".

"We are immensely proud, and our achievements continue. We are blessed with leadership that only knows the first place.Congratulations to our men and women, Congratulations to our champions. Today is a day of celebrations in the UAE."

reporters@khaleejtimes.com

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Sheikh Hamdan explains why the UAE wants to go to Mars - Khaleej Times

Last month, a 3D printed house that can float on a pontoon was unveiled in the Czech Republic. Last year, work started on a community of 3D printed houses for low-income families in Mexico. While building homes with 3D printers is becoming more scalable, its also still a fun way to play around with unique designs and futuristic concepts for our living spaces.

It doesnt get much more futuristic than living on Marsand guess what? Theres a 3D printed home for that, too. In fact, there are a few; last year saw the conclusion of a contest held by NASA called the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge.

The long-running competition, started in 2015, tasked participants with creating homes that would be viable to build on Mars. Teams had to consider not just the technology theyd use, but what type of material will be available on the Red Planet and what kind of features a Martian home will need to have for a human to survive (and ideally, to survive comfortably); the structures need to be strong enough to make it through a meteor collision, for example, and able to hold an atmosphere very different than the one just outside their walls.

The top prize ($500,000) went to AI Space Factory, a New York-based architecture and construction technologies company focused on building for space exploration. Their dual-shell, four-level design is called Marsha, and unlike Martian habitats weve seen on the big screen or read about in sci-fi novels, its neither a dome nor an underground bunker. In fact, it sits fully above ground and it looks like a cross between a hive and a giant egg.

The team chose the hive-egg shape very deliberately, saying that its not only optimized to handle the pressure and temperature demands of the Martian atmosphere, but building it with a 3D printer will be easier because the printer wont have to move around as much as it would to build a structure with a larger footprint. That means less risk of errors and a faster building speed.

Its important to be structurally efficient as a shape, because that means you can use less material, said David Malott, AI Space Factorys founder and CEO. If you think about an eggshell on Earth, [its] a very efficient shape. The eggshell can be very, very thin, and still it has the right amount of strength.

The homes layout is like a multi-level townhouse, except with some Mars-specific tweaks; the first floor is both a preparation area, where occupants can get suited up before heading outside, and a wet lab for research. Theres a rover docking port just outside the prep area, attached to the house.

On the second floor is what Id consider the most important roomthe kitchenand the third floor has a garden, bathroom, and sleeping pods that take the place of bedrooms (sorry, no space for your antique dresser or Ikea desk here). The top floor is a rec area where you can recreate either by watching TV or exercisingor perhaps both simultaneously.

It took 30 hours to build a one-third scale model of the home, but this doesnt mean it would take 90 hours to build the real thing; printing during the contest was done in 10-hour increments, and since the model contains all the same structural aspects of the full-size home, the 3D printer would just need to expand its reachable surface area and height to print the real thing.

If all goes as planned (which, really, there are no plans yet; just ideas), there will be plenty of material on hand to build the real thing in the real place (Mars, that is). AI Space Factory collaborated with a materials design company called Techmer PM to come up with a super-strong mix of basalt fiberwhich would come from rocks on Marsand a renewable bioplastic that could be made from plants grown on Mars. In NASAs tests, the material was shown to be stronger and more durable than concrete and more resistant to repeated freezes and thaws.

The company was set to open an Earth version of Marsha, called Tera, in upstate New York this past March, and people leaped at the chance to pay $175-500 to sleep in the structure for a night; but the plans were derailed by the coronavirus pandemic, and the company hasnt yet announced a re-opening of the Earthbound cabin.

Image Credit: AI Space Factory

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The 3D Printed Homes of the Future Are Giant Eggs on Mars - Singularity Hub

This summer, the United Arab Emirates aims to join the ranks of just a handful of elite space-faring countries around the world by launching its first interplanetary mission to Mars. For the last six years, the small Middle Eastern country has worked tirelessly to build a spacecraft that can orbit the Red Planet to study its atmosphere and weather. Now, the mission is set to launch on top of a Japanese rocket.

Know as the Emirates Mars Mission, the project will kickstart a busy summer of missions to Mars. Following this launch, China also plans to launch an orbiter, rover, and lander to the Red Planet on July 23rd. Shortly after that, on July 30th, NASA is set to launch its next rover to Mars, called Perseverance. All of these missions are trying to get off the ground during a very small window this summer when Earth and Mars come closest to one another on their orbits around the Sun. This planetary alignment only happens once every two years, so if any of these missions cant launch this summer, theyll have to wait until 2022 to try again.

For the UAE, launching during this window is extra important, as the country is laser-focused on getting to Mars by next year. The 50th anniversary of the founding of the UAE is coming up in December 2021, and the UAE wants to celebrate with something big. Back in late 2013, UAE Prime Minister Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum asked the nations top space engineers to pull off the ambitious space mission by 2021 to commemorate the occasion. The timeframe that we had was very, very strict, Omran Sharaf, the project manager for the Emirates Mars Mission, tells The Verge.

Getting to this point has certainly not been easy. The UAEs space program has only been in operation for the last 14 years, and the programs main focus has been building and launching satellites to observe Earth. For this mission, UAEs space engineers had to design, for the first time, a spacecraft that could handle the harsh journey through interplanetary space. And that meant partnering with various academic institutions in the US to help get the job done. There was a lot to learn, Sharaf says. And the thing is... we didnt want to start from scratch; we had to learn from others.

Now, the UAEs spacecraft called Hope is complete and ready for takeoff. If all goes well with its launch, it will travel through space for the next seven months and reach Mars in February 2021. After it arrives, it will attempt to insert itself into orbit around Mars, something only a handful of spacecraft from four international space organizations have been able to achieve.

Before work could begin in earnest on the mission, the UAE had to decide what its spacecraft was going to do at Mars. When issuing the challenge, the UAE government specified that the scientific mission should be unique. One of the objectives that we had... was ensuring that the science of this mission was complementary to other missions, Sarah bint Yousif Al Amiri, minister of State for Advanced Sciences in the UAE, tells The Verge, adding that they wanted to gather data that could help answer scientific questions about Mars that have been left unanswered by previous missions.

Most of the spacecraft that have been sent to study Mars are tasked with analyzing the planets geology by taking high-resolution images of the Martian surface. Only a few Mars satellites are equipped with tools to study the planets atmosphere including NASAs MAVEN spacecraft and the European Space Agencys Trace Gas Orbiter but no mission has been able to get a global view of the Martian atmosphere closer to the surface.

The Hope spacecraft will give scientists a better understanding of whats happening in Mars lower atmosphere all over the planet and help people learn how the weather evolves throughout the year. The UAE is hailing Hope as Mars first weather satellite since it will monitor the weather throughout the day in as many locations as possible on Mars.

Such a tool could help planetary scientists learn more about the extreme events on Mars, such as the global dust storms that sometimes engulf the planet. In 2018, a massive storm took over much of Mars, cutting off communication permanently with NASAs Opportunity rover. Why does this planet have global dust storms? And why does it go on for such a long period of time? says Al Amiri. Thats among the other scientific questions that can be addressed now by this mission.

Hope is designed with three instruments to study the Martian atmosphere in detail: two will analyze the planet in infrared and ultraviolet light, while an imager will take visible color pictures of the planet.

Hope plans to take a highly elliptical path around the Red Planet. The orbit will bring the spacecraft in close to the surface ever 55 hours, allowing the vehicle to observe roughly the same parts of the planet at different times of the Martian day. Youre able to cover all local times, all areas of Mars, and that gives us the consistency that we require to be able to come and say that we do cover the day-to-night cycle for Mars, Al Amiri says.

Not only did the UAE team face a hard deadline, but they also had to adhere to other tough restrictions in order to build Hope. The UAE government gave them a set budget for the project of just $200 million, and the prime minister wanted the engineers to build the spacecraft themselves not buy it from someone else. Given all of these stipulations, the UAE team knew they couldnt do it all on their own.

The Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre, which built the Hope spacecraft, teamed up with the University of Colorado at Boulder a college thats been designing Martian instruments since the 1960s. Engineers in the UAE worked closely with researchers at UC Boulder every day as if they were all on the same team to design and test the Hope spacecraft. Thats whats unique about this project, Sharaf says. At the end of the day, you had US team members reporting to Emirati and you had Emirati reporting to US team members.

The Emiratis also received guidance from researchers at Arizona State University and the University of California, Berkeley throughout the course of the spacecrafts development. Thanks to these more experienced partnerships, the UAE team was able to build a unique and robust spacecraft without building brand-new infrastructure. To communicate with Hope, the Emiratis will also rely on NASAs Deep Space Network, an existing array of antennas throughout the world designed to connect with interplanetary spacecraft.

Since Hope is headed so far away, it has to be much more reliable and autonomous than any spacecraft the country has built before. A one-way radio signal can take up to 15 or 20 minutes to reach Mars, depending on where the planet is on its orbit. That means Hope must perform most of its functions on its own, including inserting itself into Mars orbit. When the vehicle reaches Mars, it will have to fire its onboard engines for 30 minutes, slowing itself down from 121,000 kilometers and hour to about 18,000 miles an hour. You go too fast, you crash on Mars, Sharaf says. You go too slow, it skips [on the atmosphere]; its a critical phase in the mission.

And if the technical challenges werent hard enough, the UAE team had to deal with a pandemic during the final stretch to launch. The engineers had to get the spacecraft to Japan three weeks earlier than planned to adhere to Japans quarantine rules. Engineering crews arrived early to go through two-week quarantines before they could receive the spacecraft and eventually help mount the spacecraft to the rocket. There was a real risk that, after six years of work, we could end up missing our launch window, Sharaf says. It was the last thing we had expected to encounter. The transfer was supposed to be routine and now it was mission critical.

The UAE team is optimistic that the Hope spacecraft will be able to make some significant new discoveries while at Mars. They hope theyll be able to announce scientific results in time for the countrys 50th anniversary in December.

But even before that happens, the Emirates Mars Mission has already had a significant impact on students in the UAE. One of the biggest motivations for the Hope mission was to inspire Emirati teens to go into STEM fields and to make UAE space scientists role models for children. So far, that mission has been a success, and Sharaf says that more students have been going into STEM fields than ever before. We saw students switching from international relations and finance, going into sciences; we saw universities that didnt have any science programs, starting science programs, because of the mission, Sharaf says. So that ripple effect of the mission and the impact of the mission actually was quite something that we can see and its tangible.

The UAE team hopes to keep that momentum going but first, Hope has to launch successfully. The spacecraft is slated to take off in the early morning hours on top of a Japanese H-IIA rocket out of the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan on Wednesday, July 15th, in the country. On the East Coast of the United States, liftoff is scheduled for 4:51PM ET on July 14th.

With the launch so close, the team is feeling a mixture of emotions after working so hard on this project after the last six years. I personally cant describe them at the moment, Al Amiri says. Perhaps ask us after we launch.

Excerpt from:

The UAEs first interplanetary mission to Mars set for launch - The Verge

1. Countdown to Mars: three daring missions take aim at the red planet  Nature.com
2. Join NASA for the Launch of the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover  NASA Mars Exploration
3. Will We Recognize Life on Mars When We See It?  WIRED
4. It's the month of Mars! 3 Red Planet missions set to launch in July  Space.com
5. Summer on Mars: NASA's Perseverance Rover Is One of Three Missions Ready to Launch  Scientific American
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Countdown to Mars: three daring missions take aim at the red planet - Nature.com

(CNN) A mission 10 years in the making, NASA is one month out from launching the Perseverance rover to Mars. This rover, launching during a pandemic, will carry a tribute to health care workers around the world.

The 3-by-5-inch aluminum plate, installed on the left side of the rover chassis, shows Earth supported by the ancient symbol of the serpent entwined around a rod to represent the global medical community. A line represents the rovers trajectory from Central Florida to Mars, according to NASA.

We wanted to demonstrate our appreciation for those who have put their personal well-being on the line for the good of others, said Matt Wallace, Perseverance deputy project manager at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a statement.

It is our hope that when future generations travel to Mars and happen upon our rover, they will be reminded that back on Earth in the year 2020 there were such people.

WhenAlexander Mather, a seventh grade student in Virginia, entered his submission in a nationwide contest last yearto name the rover, a pandemic wasnt on the horizon. But his winning entry for Perseverance has proven to be the perfect name for a rover launching during unprecedented times.

These last few months of preparing the rover for launch have happened during the constraints of safe operation during a pandemic. But the teams rose to the challenge, and the launch remains on schedule.

The team never wavered in its pursuit of the launch pad, said Michael Watkins, director of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement. It was through their dedication and the help of other NASA facilities that we have made it this far.

The launch window opens on July 20 and extends until August 11, in case bad weather or other issues prevent the 9:15 a.m. ET launch on July 20. That date has been projected since the rover was announced in December 2012.

But launching during this window is critical during a time when Mars and Earth are on the same side of the sun, otherwise the spacecraft could be delayed from launching for two years until September 22.

The delay would cost the agency $500 million and impact the long-term goals of NASAs Mars Exploration Program, according to NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.

I hope people watch this mission and that theyre inspired that we can strive and achieve even in the midst of challenging times, he said during a NASA press conference on Wednesday.

The July 20 date has other significance; its when NASA astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon.

Fifty-one years ago today, NASA was deep into final preparations for the first Moon landing, Bridenstine said. Today we stand at the threshold of another monumental moment in exploration: sample collection at Mars.

As we celebrate the heroes of Apollo 11 today, future generations may well recognize the women and men of Perseverance not only for what they will achieve 100 million miles from home, but for what they were able to accomplish on this world on the road to launch.

Perseverance is targeted to land in Mars Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021. The crater is 28 miles wide and the site of a lake that existed 3.5 billion years ago. Traces of a river delta can be seen in images captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. And the rover may be able to find signs of ancient life in this intriguing location on Mars.

The mission has one launch, 314 million miles of interplanetary space and seven minutes of terror to get safely onto the surface of Mars, said Lori Glaze, director of NASAs planetary science division, in a statement. When we see the landscape at Jezero Crater for the first time and we truly begin to realize the scientific bounty before us, the fun really begins.

Perseverance is the heaviest payload NASA will have ever landed on Mars, if all goes as planned, and its parachute system has gone through rigorous testing to ensure it can land the rover, which weighs 1 metric ton.

This will be NASAs ninth spacecraft to visit the Martian surface, but its the first that will collect samples to be returned to Earth by future missions.

Perseverance will take core samples of rock and regolith, or broken rocks and dust, using its Sample Caching System, the most complex and cleanest mechanism ever sent into space, according to NASA. It was imperative that the system be clean so theres no confusion over any potential biosignatures Perseverance may find and collect.

The system will stow samples in metal tubes dropped at collection sites across the crater. Later missions will retrieve these and return them to Earth in about 10 years from now, a complex endeavor that will be the result of NASA partnering with the European Space Agency.

Using its suite of scientific instruments, Perseverance will also study and characterize Mars climate and geology. Experiments on the rover will also help with preparation to eventually land humans on Mars.

Perseverance is also armed with 23 cameras, most of which will be able to capture color images and even high-definition video. The cameras will be active during the rovers entry, descent and landing.

Well be able to watch that big parachute inflate and watch the rover deploy and touch down, Wallace said. Its the first time we have ever been able to see a spacecraft land on another planet.

The video wont be available in real time for people tuning in as NASA monitors the rovers data during entry, descent and landing. But it will be shared in the weeks after landing.

The first priority will be data on how the rover is doing after landing, but we hope to have video back in the weeks after touchdown, said Andrew Good, JPL media relations specialist. Data will be coming back in pieces from multiple orbiters, which of course are shared by our other missions on the ground, Curiosity and InSight.

The rover is also carrying a couple of microphones, which will also be active during entry, descent and landing. The rover teams look forward to hearing the sounds of the rovers wheels on the Martian surface and the sound of wind on Mars.

Im excited to hear the sounds of Mars and the sounds of the rover interact with its environment, said Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance deputy project scientist at JPL. She also suggested that interesting science could stem from the sounds theyll be able to hear as the rovers laser is aimed at rocks.

And stowed beneath the rover during its journey to Mars isIngenuity,which will be thefirst helicopterto fly on Mars or any planet in our solar system outside of Earth. The helicopter is scheduled to have three test flights during its time on Mars.

Its considered a demonstration payload, meaning that NASA can learn a lot from this experience and apply that to future missions. And Perseverance will be able to image Ingenuity as it flies over Mars, capturing the historic flight on another planet.

NASA said, We have already surmounted many obstacles on our way to the Red Planet, but as humans, we will not give up. We will always persevere.

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NASAs Perseverance rover will launch to Mars next month with a global tribute to health care workers - WHNT News 19

Studying Mars has been by turns tantalizing and heart-breaking, a constant dance as improving technology builds or dims hopes of finding life on our red neighbor.

Sarah Stewart Johnson, a planetary scientist at Georgetown University, shares the story of that quest and how the science of searching for life on Mars has progressed in her lyrical new book, "The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World" (Crown, 2020). (Read an excerpt from "The Sirens of Mars.")

Johnson tells of how Mars turned from a red speck in Galileo's first observations to the harsh but vivid, recently static but geologically dynamic world that we know it as today, after decades of work by orbiters, landers and rovers. She also charts the tides of optimism and emptiness as humans have looked for life on our neighboring world.

Space.com talked with Johnson about the search for life on Mars in the past, present and future. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Related: Best space and sci-fi books for 2020

Space.com: How did this book come about, and why did you want to write this particular book?

Sarah Stewart Johnson: The book is about the search for life on Mars, but it's not just the science of it; it's about our human relationship to the planet as well. There were just so many things that were poignant and beautiful and compelling about the endeavor that will never really find expression in the pages of scientific journals. That's a large part of why I decided to write the book: this idea that Mars deserved a different type of treatment, something that kind of captured the mystery and the wonder, and just of the entire quest.

I would go to lectures and seminars and those types of things and I'd have my notebook and in the back, I would scribble down these things that I just thought were so interesting and compelling. And slowly those kind of came together and they became passages, and those passages became chapters, and then suddenly there was a book

Space.com: Can you talk about the decision to make it so personal?

Johnson: When I originally conceived of it, I was going to write a personal prologue. But as the narrative sort of moved along, I found that there were places where it felt like things resonated with me at this really personal level as well.

I open it with a scene of my dad when he was 18 years old [in 1965 when the first successful Mars mission, Mariner 4, flew by the Red Planet]. It just felt like, here he was, sort of every man, every human, watching this incredible thing unfold up in the sky. And it seemed like a nice way to open the book. Then there was another scene a few chapters later when I was 18 and we were actually returning to Mars for the first time in 20 years, and that seemed like a nice thing to add in.

Slowly, it just ended up being different things interwoven together, from my personal story and why I found Mars so endlessly fascinating, to the scientists that came before me and all of my predecessors and the lengths that they were willing to go to, to try to figure out if we're alone in the universe. And then there's also the science of it: how we get out of the darkness to a truer understanding of what this world really is. And so it all sort of blends together.

Space.com: What was the process of researching the book and choosing what to include like?

Johnson: I think something that really struck me was how so many Mars scientists have come from completely different walks of life Folks came at this from all different backgrounds with all different initial thoughts people that were really interested in wilderness or people that were really interested in benevolent civilizations. You sort of see this reflection in some ways of what they most longed for in their theories about Mars, and I just found that very poignant It was a paring down; there are lots of people and lots of passages that ended up in the graveyard of text that didn't quite make it into the book

I had this box filled with things that I would find when I was, in my spare time, thinking about the book things like old letters or photographs, or scientific articles where you could really see scientists struggling with trying to understand something that is very evident today but wasn't in their historical period.

I still feel really moved when I look back through that box. It just seems like this collection of all of these individuals, and they brought all of their humanity to the project, and they were just all in in this way that was really, really amazing.

Space.com: Could you talk about one object in that box that particularly speaks to you?

Johnson: I think there's one that I've been thinking about more lately, perhaps because of this moment with everything going on in the world. There was one scientist named William Pickering, and on the eve of World War I, he began writing these weather reports from Mars from this high plateau in Jamaica.

You've got menace gathering across Europe and he is describing these ideas, that what he saw were belts of clouds that were sweeping the sky or the greening of the southern maria [basins]. He has these incredible descriptions in these weather reports of what he imagined was taking place on the planet, and he depicted it as this just complete wilderness.

It was following on the heels of [Percival] Lowell and all these people that had believed that there were canals on the surface of Mars, and he depicts it as this place that's free of suffering and of injustice and of difficulty. It's just a refuge almost; it's just weather and it's just vegetation I think it was something that he most longed for this world that was free from all of the horrible things that were happening in his world, on his planet.

Space.com: Is this a tricky book to be publishing right before the launch of NASAs Mars 2020 mission?

Johnson: This project has really been percolating for a while The book, in many ways, just filled pockets of spare time here and there It seemed like a point where even though we didn't have the data [that the Perseverance rover will gather], that this would be a time where people might be curious about Mars. It's only every 26 months that the planets swing together on the same side of the sun, and it's a really exciting time for the Mars community with these three missions launching in the next couple of weeks.

Related: The search for life on Mars (a photo timeline)

Space.com: Why is looking for life on Mars a valuable endeavor regardless of the result?

Johnson: Even the discovery of simple life beyond Earth, I think, really stands to make a tremendous impact. We've had these massive advances over the last decades, but biology is still this rather descriptive science. It's because we have this one data point: We've got life on Earth and we don't have a second data point.

Especially if we found evidence of a second genesis [a case where life arose independently of life found on Earth, rather than migrating between the two worlds], I just think it'd be as revolutionary as any breakthrough that's been made in terms of thinking about ourselves and our existence.

But I think that we do it for reasons that are beyond just the science. It's one of the things I tried to capture in the pages of the book, that there are these really deep questions associated with the search. It touches on, 'Why are we here?' and, 'Why is there something and not nothing?' and 'Did that something from nothing happen once, or did it happen time and again?' 'Are we alone in the universe?'

I think those are the kinds of questions that we're hardwired to ask as a curious species, as human beings.

Space.com: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

Johnson: I guess one of the things for me is that when you think about your life on a planetary timescale and in the context of this enormous universe that we're part of, I think it really makes clear just how short our time here is and how important it is to make the very most of it. I hope that readers can take away a new perspective on our place in the universe

I'm hoping that the book is able to connect with folks from all different walks of lives to see this common entity in a new way.

Space.com: Do you think it's possible we'll hit the point at which scientists can confidently say there is no life on Mars, and if so what happens next?

Johnson: It's certainly possible there is no life on Mars, that we'll search and search and, like the moon, we can conclude pretty conclusively that that's it. But fortunately, there are lots of other targets, even in our own solar system, that are really exciting to think about

All these other astrobiological destinations Enceladus and Europa, and Titan's a place that we're really excited about in my laboratory. A lot of our work is trying to imagine life as we don't know it and how we might detect lifeforms that are almost inconceivable within the confines to their current thinking

One of the things that I tried to write about too in the book is just this idea that Mars is our near neighbor. It's this harsh place, but it's right there. And even if we were able to find life, just right next door, right there, like it would immediately suggest that the universe is just teeming with different types of biology. And that biology, especially if it's a separate genesis, is just a consequence of energetic systems. And if it's happened again right here, then surely it's happened everywhere

But I guess your main drive of the question was about, would it be sort of a disappointment? Or how would it fundamentally change the way we interact with Mars? What I've tried to do with the book is write a bit of a natural history of Mars, and I do think that the big question is there life there, is there not will have a big impact on how we think of the planet, and also how we move through the coming decades in terms of exploration

Who knows what we will find, but that's the one of the great things about Mars. It's accessible, and we have developed so many tools and techniques where we can really do such good science on the planet, we can get there quickly and we can deploy really capable robots to do really capable, scientific, tremendously sophisticated science on the surface

At some point, I think that we would be able to say we've looked at every nook and cranny and we can move on to another destination. We can continue this search deeper into our own solar system or to one of the tremendous gazillions of other planetary bodies that we've detected in the universe.

We can't be done.

You can buy "The Sirens of Mars" on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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'The Sirens of Mars' tells of the search for life on Mars - Space.com