Author Minnie Vaid with Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi at the launch of the former's book - 'Those Magnificent Women and their Flying Machines: ISROS Mission to Mars' in Delhi in March 2019.

Remember the picture of a bunch of Kancheepuram saree-clad women hugging each other and celebrating the success of Indias Mars Orbiter Mission in 2014? The exuberant women in the photo were among those who led the Mars mission also known as Mangalyaan one of the most ambitious projects of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

The names of the women who were among the top leadership for the mission Ritu Karidhal, Nandini Harinath, Moumita Dutta, and Minal Sampat among them - were made familiar to the common man through news reports; but little more was known about their journeys. After all, the gender barriers in a male-dominated field are certain to have made their lives hard; add to it, all of these women have familial obligations that often restrict women from climbing up the career ladder.

Yet, when author Minnie Vaid approached Ritu, Moumita and Minal for writing a book on them, they were surprised Why us? What did we do? was their question. Minnie, who has been a journalist, documentary film-maker, and a published author, had to convince them about the respect they command, and how their stories can inspire generations of women to pursue Science and assume leadership roles.

After months of following up with the ISRO, Minnie was finally able to interview not just the leaders of the Mangalyaan but altogether 21 women at ISRO including the four women mentioned above, as well as N. Valarmathi and T.K. Anuradha, along with Rashmi Sharma, Shilpi Soni, and Harshita Tolani among others.

The book, titled Those Magnificent Women and their Flying Machines: ISRO'S Mission to Mars, was published by Speaking Tiger publishing house in 2019. It was launched in Delhi and Mumbai in March 2019 by Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi and actress Vidya Balan respectively. Its second edition has been published in January 2020.

Talking to MAKERS India on a Zoom call recently, Minnie Vaid recollected how the women of ISRO shattered the stereotypes of scientists she had had. They had very enriching lives, and yet they had great modesty. When I struggled with understanding the scientific terms (as part of the research for the book), the women I interviewed patiently explained those to me. Their only request was to call them scientists, and not women scientists, Minnie says.

Interestingly, Minnies previous book was also about women who were previously unheard of yet made a mark with their determination and resilience. In The Ant in the Ear of the Elephant: The Story of the People's Struggle Against the Koodankulam Nuclear Plant, published in 2016, Minnie had covered women at another end of the spectrum poor, unlettered women who conducted non-violent protests against the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) for around four years since 2011 in the coastal village of Idinthakarai, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

It was the proverbial fight between David and Goliath, according to Minnie, with the villagers living in the vicinity of the KKNPP (and hence most affected by it), pitted against the Central government. National media had not even covered the issue when I went to Idinthakarai in 2013 to interview the women who had been protesting for about three years by then. Thankfully, my publisher (Rajpal Publishing) was very supportive, she tells MAKERS India.

ALSO READ: Made in India: The Story Behind How a Wellness Brand Was Born in a Garden-Lab in Mohali

The launch of The Ant in the Ear of the Elephant in 2016 was attended by actor-filmmaker Nandita Das and veteran journalist Kalpana Sharma in Mumbai. For the launch, Minnie had invited two of those women who led the protests. She recollects, how the audience was enthralled by their stories (despite having to be translated from Tamil by an interpreter), and gave a standing ovation.

Mumbai-based Minnie, who has been a journalist and documentary film maker for about 30 years, says that justice is the underlying theme in her work. May be thats why the books she has written before The Ant in the Ear of the Elephant were also about individuals fighting for justice and giving hope to marginalised communities.

Minnies book Iron Irom: Two Journeys -published by Rajpal publishing house and launched by actor Abhay Deol in Mumbai and Sharmila Tagore in Delhi in 2012- was about Irom Sharmila, the Iron Lady of Manipur. Minnie recollected interviewing the renowned activist, and also how her previous stint at a journalist in the North East was instrumental in the writing of this book.

Notably, Minnies first ever book A Doctor to Defend: the Binayak Sen Story (translated in four regional languages) was on a controversial hero Dr.Binayak Sen, the Chattisgarh-based doctor and public health specialist who was imprisoned for supporting the Naxalite movement.

Minnie, who has produced, directed, and scripted over 30 films and television programs, some of which have won national and international awards, also produced a documentary on him under the same title. The book was launched in Delhi by Nobel Laureate Prof. Amartya Sen in January 2011.

Asked about her inspiration to base her first-ever book on Dr.Sen, Minnie says, It was very much in line with the kind of work I'd been doing in the past (stories) of a small person fighting against the might of the state. These kind of stories anyway have huge attraction to me. Justice is the underlying thread through and through.

ALSO READ: How This Chef-Turned-Techie From Uttarakhand Built a Startup in AI

However, Minnies latest work - the awesomely titled (and written) ISRO's Magnificent Women and Their Flying Machines - is about celebrating the spirit of women who overcame centuries of gender inequality and injustice to make history. Her dream is to see a woman chairperson at ISRO one day.

At ISRO, you get the work that you merit and deserve; your promotions are according to your work, not your gender. It is hierarchical, so you can't just skip over a person and jump ahead, she says, adding that there are less number of women in the senior roles at ISRO today because 30 years ago, very few women joined it. But more women have joined in the last 10 years; so we may see a woman chairing ISRO soon, Minnie hopes.

After all, every womans success story is an inspiration for a generation of women to come forward, and thats why telling womens stories are all the more important. It's impossible not to be favorably biased towards telling women stories because other people don't tell them. There are very few people telling women stories consciously, Minnie signs off.

ALSO READ: World Population Day is a Womens Rights Issue

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From The Women Who Led India's Mars Mission to The Women Protesters at a Nuclear Power Plant: Minnie Vaid's Pen Covers Them All - Yahoo India News

TOKYO - Final preparations for the launch from Japan of the United Arab Emirates first Mars mission were underway Monday, but there was a chance of a delay because of bad weather, a Japanese rocket provider said.

The liftoff of the UAEs Mars orbiter named Amal, or Hope, on a Japanese H-IIA rocket is scheduled for early Wednesday from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan, in what would be the Arab worlds first interplanetary mission.

A final decision will be made Tuesday before the roll out of the rocket, said Keiji Suzuki, launch site director for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

A seasonal rain front was expected to cause intermittent lightning and rain over the next few days, he said.

But this thunder is not expected to be severe or lasting, and our assessment is that there will be a chance for a launch, Suzuki told an online briefing Monday from Tanegashima. We will make a careful decision based on data.

Heavy rain has continued for more than a week in large areas of Japan, triggering mudslides and floods and killing more than 70 people, most of them on the southern main island of Kyushu.

Hope is set to reach Mars in February 2021, the year the UAE celebrates 50 years since its formation. A successful Hope mission would be a major step for the oil-dependent economy seeking a future in space.

Hope carries three instruments to study the upper atmosphere and monitor climate change and is scheduled to circle the red planet for at least two years.

Emirates Mars Mission Project Director Omran Sharaf, who joined Mondays briefing from Dubai, said the mission is not just a repeat of what other countries have done. It will provide a complete view of the Martian atmosphere during different seasons for the first time, he said.

Two other Mars missions are planned in coming days by the U.S. and China. Japan has its own Martian moon mission planned in 2024.

___

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Bad weather may delay 1st UAE Mars mission on Japan rocket - ThePeterboroughExaminer.com

Provided by CNET The Hope probe (Al Amal) will circle Mars on a 55 day orbit, analyzing its atmosphere. MBRSC

The United Arab Emirates will head to Mars for the first time on Tuesday. From Tanegashima, a Japanese island in the north Pacific ocean, a Mitsubishi H-IIA booster will carry a car-sized probe known as "Al Amal," or "Hope," to space -- and onto the red planet.

The probe is expected toreach orbit around the red planet in early 2021. It's designed to give a full picture of the Martian atmosphere, offering a holistic view of how Mars' climate varies during the year.

Thelaunch from Tanegashima, Japan, opensTuesday, July 14, at 1:51 p.m. PT. It'lllaunch on a Mitsubishi H-IIA booster. The rocket isn't quite as famous as the likes ofSpaceX's Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rockets, but it does have a great launch history, with over 40 successful launches under its belt, mostly of Japanese satellite systems.

TheMohammed bin Rashid Space Centre will carry a livestreamof the launch from Japan, which you canwatch via this link. Or, tune into the livestream below:

Hope is the first interplanetary mission led by an Arab, Muslim-majority country and, if successful, will add another nation to the list of Martian explorers.

"The intent was not to put a message or declaration to the world," Sarah Al Amiri, chair of the UAE Council of Scientists and deputy project manager for the Emirates Mars Mission,told CNET in March. "It was, for us, more of an internal reinforcement of what the UAE is about." The historic launch is set to be livestreamed across the globe.

The satellite will study the connections between Mars' lower and upper atmosphere and examine what causes the loss of hydrogen and oxygen into space. It'll collect data for two years after achieving its orbit around Mars in February 2021. There's an option to extend the mission to 2025.

Aboard Hope are three instruments which will enable the probe to study the Martian atmosphere more intensely. There's a high-resolution camera known as the Emirates eXploration Imager (EXI), a UV imager known as the Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS), and a scanning infrared imager dubbed the Emirates Mars InfraRed Spectrometer (EMIRS).

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Hope mission to Mars: How to watch historic launch to the red planet Tuesday - MSN Money

A scramjetwhich features an engine that uses an engines forward motion to compress incoming air, which flows at supersonic speeds. PHOTO/NASA, Tony Landis.

Ivan Bermejo-Moreno likes his coffee with a touch of turbulence. But instead of mixingcoffee and cream with a spoon, when it comes to hypersonic jet planes planes that can flyfive times faster than sound he likes to mix oxygen from the air and jet fuel using something a bit stronger: shock waves.

Similar principles govern fluid mixing in aircraft engines, where oxygen from the air has tomix with fuel to help propel it at a certain speed. USC researchers in the USC Viterbi Department of Aerospace andMechanical Engineering, including Xiangyu Gao, aUSC Viterbi Ph.D. student who recently defended his dissertation, and his doctoral advisor,Assistant Professor Ivan Bermejo-Moreno,are studying how to achieve efficient mixing at high speeds. Bettermixing allows supersonic combustion enginesin which airflow is greater than the speed ofsoundto remain shorter in length while enabling vehicles to move hypersonically. One approach to achieve thisis to use shock waves.

A shockwave is characterized by an abrupt change in pressure, temperature and density ofa medium and moves faster than the local speed of sound. Without applying a shock wave, mixing will occur, as in the example with coffee and cream, but it will take much longer,Bermejo-Moreno said. Shock waves amplify turbulencesimilar to a spoon in the coffeeexampleand the more turbulence you have,the more rapidly mixing can occur.

The researchers recently published a study in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, which sharesconditions in which such rapid mixingwhich supports faster, more efficient vehiclescan occur. Once a shock wavea sudden and strong disturbance in a mediumis produced, thespeed of the fluid passing through it will be drastically reduced, also allowing more time formixing. This puts the fuel and air in a better condition for combustion, and will increase the temperature, making it easier to auto-ignite, the researchers said.

In conditions where mixing can be handled efficiently enough to support hypersonic vehicles, there are numerous implications, including commercial applications for the exploration of space.

Said Bermejo-Moreno: Imagine instead of a rocket you have something lighter and smaller that could take us all the way to Mars. The combination of scramjets and rotating detonation engines, both based on shockwaves and turbulence, may one day do just that.

The research team also includes Johan Larsson, associate professor of mechanical engineeringat the University of Maryland. The researchers conducted this study performing massivelyparallel numerical simulations on the supercomputers at USCs High PerformanceComputing Center and at Argonne National Laboratory.

Fundamental Building Blocks of Flow

The study isolated the physics the researchers were interested in exploring by using afundamental geometric set upessentially a boxand removing variables related tosurface friction on the nature of fluid or air flow. In the study, the flow would come in fromone side of the box and encounter a shockwave created by carefully controlling thepressure inside of the box. Then it exits through the opposite side of the box, Bermejo-Moreno said.

In this way, we isolated the interaction between turbulent flows and shockwaves, Bermejo-Moreno said. While people have studied the pure interaction of turbulence and shockwaves in the past, the researchers said only a few studies have focused on mixing in this configuration. Shockwaves are generated by the large (supersonic) speed of the air as it encounters air inlets, Bermejo-Moreno said. Geometric deflections, like corners, are usually enough to produce shock waves.

The researchers studied a greater range of parameters than in prior studies, as well, including variations in incoming speeds of air flow. The researchers also looked at different levels of turbulence.

To visualize turbulence, consider a faucet, Bermejo-Moreno said. When the faucet is barely on, the flow is slow, transparent and smoothknown as laminar. But as you keep opening the faucet up, the velocity of the water increases. The water stream becomes blurry and no longer transparentits what you would call turbulent. The same thing happens in the air and in mixtures of air and fuel we discuss in hypersonic vehicles.

The researchers said that they are most interested in turbulent flows, because they are most representative of what is actually happening in reality. Just like when you add milk to your coffee and do not stir it up, without a shock wave, which increases turbulence, mixing will occur but it will take much longer. In the study, the researchers found that while some quantities related to mixing levels will saturate after a certain amplification of turbulence, others will keep increasing, suggesting mixing continues to improve as turbulence increases.

Next the researchers hope to look at additional geometries and see how these impact mixing. In the future, one of the elements we want to investigate is how different shapes of turbulent structuresknown as eddiesimpact mixing. For instance, how a tube-like structure might impact the transport and mixing of fuel and air differently than a sheet-like structure. If you know the type of turbulent structures that are dominant in mixing, then you might want to produce more of these structures, Bermejo-Moreno said.

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Shock Waves Might Offer the Jolt Needed to Reach Mars - USC Viterbi | School of Engineering - USC Viterbi School of Engineering

The United Arab Emirates and China are looking to join the elite club.

The UAE spacecraft, named Amal, which is Arabic for Hope, is an orbiter scheduled to rocket away from Japan on Wednesday, local time, on what will be the Arab worlds first interplanetary mission. The spacecraft, built in partnership with the University of Colorado Boulder, will arrive at Mars in the year the UAE marks the 50th anniversary of its founding.

The UAE wanted to send a very strong message to the Arab youth, project manager Omran Sharaf said. The message here is that if the UAE can reach Mars in less than 50 years, then you can do much more. ... The nice thing about space, it sets the standards really high."

Controlled from Dubai, the celestial weather station will strive for an exceptionally high Martian orbit of 13,670 miles by 27,340 miles (22,000 kilometers by 44,000 kilometers) to study the upper atmosphere and monitor climate change.

China will be up next, with the flight of a rover and an orbiter sometime around July 23; Chinese officials arent divulging much. The mission is named Tianwen, or Questions for Heaven.

NASA, meanwhile, is shooting for a launch on July 30 from Cape Canaveral.

Perseverance is set to touch down in an ancient river delta and lake known as Jezero Crater, not quite as big as Floridas Lake Okeechobee. Chinas much smaller rover will aim for an easier, flatter target.

To reach the surface, both spacecraft will have to plunge through Mars' hazy red skies in what has been dubbed seven minutes of terror the most difficult and riskiest part of putting spacecraft on the planet.

Jezero Crater is full of boulders, cliffs, sand dunes and depressions, any one of which could end Perseverances mission. Brand-new guidance and parachute-triggering technology will help steer the craft away from hazards. Ground controllers will be helpless, given the 10 minutes it takes radio transmissions to travel one-way between Earth and Mars.

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Look Out, Mars: Here We Come With a Fleet of Spacecraft - The New York Times

Mars may now be considered a barren, icy desert but did Earth's nearest neighbor once harbor life?

It is a question that has preoccupied scientists for centuries and fired up sci-fi imaginings.

Now three space exploration projects are gearing up to launch some of the most ambitious bids yet to find an answer.

Scientists believe that four billion years ago the two planets both had the potential to nurture life -- but much of Mars' intervening history is an enigma.

The new Mars probes from the United States, United Arab Emirates and China will launch this summer.

Their goal is not to find Martian life -- scientists believe nothing would survive there now -- but to search for possible traces of past lifeforms.

These vast and costly programs could prove futile. But astrobiologists say the red planet is still our best hope for finding a record of life on other planets.

Mars is "the only planet with concrete chances of finding traces of extraterrestrial life because we know that billions of years ago it was inhabitable," said Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of French space agency CNES in a conference call with journalists this week.

Le Gall is one of the architects of NASA's Mars 2020 exploratory probe, which is scheduled for launch at the end of July when Earth and Mars will be the closest for more than two years.

The more than $2.5 billion project is the latest -- and most technologically advanced -- attempt to uncover Mars' deep buried secrets.

But it is not alone, as enthusiasm for space exploration has reignited.

Read also: UAE to launch first Arab probe to Mars

'News from Mars'

Scientific inquiry of the red planet began in earnest in the 17th Century.

In 1609 Italian Galileo Galilei observed Mars with a primitive telescope and in doing so became the first person to use the new technology for astronomical purposes.

Fifty years later Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens used a more advanced telescope of his own design to make the first ever topographical drawing of the planet.

Mars -- compared to the "desolate, empty" moon -- has long seemed promising for potential inhabitability by microorganisms, wrote astrophysicist Francis Rocard in his recent essay "Latest News from Mars".

But the 20th century presented setbacks.

In the 1960s, as the race to put a man on the moon was accelerating towards its dazzling "Giant Leap", Dian Hitchcock and James Lovelock were putting a dampener on hopes of finding life on Mars.

Their research analysed the planet's atmosphere looking for a chemical imbalance, gases reacting with each other, which would hint at life.

"If there is no reaction, then there is probably no life there," Lovelock told AFP.

"And that was the case -- Mars has an atmosphere that is completely inactive as far as chemistry is concerned."

Their conclusion was confirmed a decade later, when the Viking landers took atmospheric and soil samples that showed the planet was no longer inhabitable.

This discovery was a "real tanker" for Mars research, Rocard told AFP.

Mars programs essentially paused for 20 years.

Then in 2000 scientists made a game-changing discovery: they found that water had once flowed over its surface.

Follow the water

This tantalizing finding helped rekindle the latent interest in Mars exploration.

Scientists pored over images of gullies, ravines, scouring the Martian surface for evidence of liquid water.

More than 10 years later, in 2011, they definitively found it.

The "follow the water, follow the carbon, follow the light" strategy has paid off, Rocard said.

Every mission since the discovery of water has brought "more and more evidence to light that Mars is not quite as dead as we thought," Michel Viso, an astrobiologist at CNES, told AFP.

The latest US rover to make the journey -- aptly named Perseverance -- is scheduled to touch down in February of next year after a six-month journey from launch time.

The probe is perhaps the most highly-awaited yet. Its landing spot, the Jezero Crater, may have once been a wide, 45-kilometer river delta.

Rich in sedimentary rocks, such as clay and carbonates -- the same types of rocks that hold fossil traces on Earth -- Jezero could be a treasure trove.

Or perhaps not.

"We know that water once flowed, but the question remains: for how long?" asked Rocard. "We don't even know how long it took for life to appear on Earth."

If the mission can bring these rocks back to Earth they might yield answers to the questions that have long confounded scientists.

But they will have to wait at least 10 years for the analysis to be available.

Viso said the results will likely be "a bundle of clues" rather than a clear answer.

Read also: NASA names next Mars rover 'Perseverance'

In the beginning

Scientists are also considering perhaps an even more profound question.

If life never existed on Mars, then why not?

The answer to this could enrich our understanding of how life developed on our own planet, Jorge Vago, the spokesperson of the European Space Agency said.

Due to shifting plate tectonics below the Earth's core, it is exceedingly difficult to find any traces of life here before 3.5 billion years ago.

Mars has no tectonic plates and so there is a chance that four-billion-year-old signs of life that "one could never find on Earth" may be preserved there, Vago said.

And if the latest Mars programs fail to find signs of ancient Martian life, there are always further frontiers to explore.

Encelade and Europe, two of Saturn's and Jupiter's moons, respectively are considered promising contenders.

Although reaching them remains more science fiction than reality.

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The quest to find signs of ancient life on Mars - The Jakarta Post - Jakarta Post

It's fair to say we humans haven't done a great job of looking after our home planet, and now NASA has published updated guidelines to try and ensure that we don't end up having a negative impact on the celestial bodies we visit next.

These guidelines are known as planetary protection policies instructions for preventing other planets from catching our bugs and indeed for preventing any contamination coming back the other way as well. Future NASA missions will have to abide by these recommendations before they get the all clear.

The updates are actually relaxing some of the previous rules, however, not tightening them it's long been argued that the guidelines have to change for crewed missions to proceed, as putting humans on the surface of the Moon or Mars without any microbes at all going along with them is just about impossible.

The first policy to get an update is the catchily named NID 8715.128 (NID stands for NASA Interim Directives), which covers human and robot missions to the Moon or "space vehicles intended to land, orbit, flyby, or otherwise encounter Earth's Moon", as the document itself puts it.

Part of the new report specifies different approaches to different parts of the Moon. Areas of greater scientific interest such as permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) where water might be lurking, or the area where the Apollo spacecraft landed. These sites can still be visited, but under more controlled conditions (so a complete biological inventory will be required for these trips, for example).

"We are enabling our important goal of sustainable exploration of the Moon while simultaneously safeguarding future science in the permanently shadowed regions," says Thomas Zurbuchen, the Associate Administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

"These sites have immense scientific value in shaping our understanding of the history of our planet, the Moon and the Solar System."

The second policy to be refreshed is referenced as NID 8715.129, and lays the foundation for human missions to Mars. It doesn't go into a great deal of detail, but it does set out a framework for new directives ones that allow humans to set foot on the Red Planet while still protecting it.

Despite the best efforts of the Curiosity rover, there's still a huge amount about Mars that we don't know, and that makes it difficult for NASA to figure out what precautions need to be taken. Those preparations are now being sped up.

"It's vital that NASA's regulations remain synchronised with our capabilities and plans," says NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.

"This NID will enable the human exploration of Mars, creating new opportunities for awe inspiring science and innovative commercial activities. I believe science and human exploration are complementary endeavours and I'm excited to see these policy reforms open up a new era of discovery."

The NID commits NASA to a process of investigating quarantine and waste disposal systems that can protect the Martian environment as much as possible, and to coming up with technologies to monitor the impact we're having on the surface so future changes can be made if necessary.

We're excited about where space exploration might lead us next, and these new directives should mean our journeys are as safe as possible as well both for our crews and anything else we might meet.

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NASA Issues Two New Directives to Stop Humans Contaminating Mars And The Moon - ScienceAlert

When the UAE was created, some countries were already sending things to space, says Omran Sharaf, the program manager for the Hope mission. To catch up requires us to be much faster than other nations. The moon is difficult, but Mars is much more difficult. And if a young nation like the UAE can reach Mars, then it shows you can do much more.

If everything goes according to plan, the UAE will become just the fifth country to successfully put a spacecraft on or around Mars. But the Hope mission will also be marked by a number of firsts. Its the first interplanetary mission launched by a majority Arab country, it will be the first time a Japanese rocket has launched a spacecraft to Mars, and if all goes well, Hope will be the first spacecraft to get a comprehensive understanding of the tenuous Martian atmosphere. Planetary scientists believe that Mars was once sheathed in a thick layer of carbon dioxide, but that this atmosphere was rapidly stripped away by solar winds in the early days of the solar system. Once Hope arrives in orbit next February, it will track seasonal atmospheric changes over the course of a full Martian year, which is the equivalent of two Earth years, and give researchers better insight into this process.

Hope will help fill in the gaps in understanding left by NASAs Maven orbiter, which has been studying the Red Planets atmosphere since 2014. Maven was built to observe the dynamics of the upper atmosphere, says Bruce Jakosky, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Mavens lead researcher, but its instruments werent designed to get a good look at what was happening closer to the surface. Hope is outfitted with three instruments that will allow it to study the lower Martian atmosphere at different wavelengths to understand how it interacts with the upper atmosphere and the rest of the planet to create seasonal weather patterns.

Maven couldnt do everything, says Jakosky, who was a scientific adviser for the Hope mission. In designing the Hope mission, we wanted to pick areas that were important, yet not really addressed by earlier missions. And our experience with Mars is that every time you make a new type of measurement, you make fundamental discoveries about the behavior of the system.

For example, Hope will shed light on a Martian mystery uncovered by Maven, which detected large plumes of hydrogen escaping from the planet. The hydrogen likely comes from atmospheric water vapor split apart by sunlight in the lower atmosphere, but the processes that cause it to escape into space arent well understood. Theyre worth figuring out, though. Geological evidence collected by Martian orbiters and rovers suggests that a younger Mars may have hosted vast oceans of liquid water on its surface around 4 billion years ago. But today the planet is cold, dry, and barren. Studying its atmosphere may tell us how it became this way, and whether conditions were ever conducive to life.

We know that Mars used to have a much thicker atmosphere, it was warmer, and it was wetter, says Tanya Harrison, the science programs manager at Planet, an Earth-imaging satellite company, who previously worked on NASAs Curiosity Mars rover. The big questions are, how did the atmosphere get to the point its at today, and whats causing it to blow into space?

The Hope spacecraft may be on a mission to Mars, but its architects also underscore its importance for people back on Earth. The Emiratis and their neighbors are expected to be hit especially hard by climate change; some projections forecast that large swathes of the Middle East will be uninhabitable by the middle of the century due to drought and soaring temperatures. Sharaf says that the skills gained from launching and operating Hope will help Emirati scientists and engineers develop the technical skills they need to deal with climate change on Earth.

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The UAEs First Mars Mission Is a Robo-Meteorologist - WIRED

I thought this was horrible. I love The National Geographic Channel, they have some amazing programs. This is not one of them. To be fair, I have only seen the premier episode but from slugging through that I am not 1 bit interested in watching another episode.

They tried a new concept of mixing present day education of space travels past, present and possible with a fictional drama of an actual mission to Mars. The show bounces back and forth from documentary or classroom to fiction moving from past present to future, it's very disjointed. I think I would quite enjoy the documentary part on it's own. I would not enjoy the fictional drama on it's own because it's just plain bad. If you want to see a fictional mission to Mars there are several good Hollywood movies that cover this subject and they do a much better job, watch one of those instead.

The dramatic part of the show is incredibly slow moving, things move along so slowly I had trouble keeping my eyes open, it made me want to take a nap. The filming of the dramatic section was weird, the camera was too close to the actors, I suppose the director thought that would impart a feeling of claustrophobia and cramped spaces, I could have gotten the same idea if the camera had been pulled back. Being so close to everything kind of creates a dizzying effect and made me even more uncomfortable watching.

I was so excited to see this series so when I actually saw it and how bad it was it was extra disappointed. I felt like the Drama part was very unrealistic, it seemed like they got a lot of things wrong, I never felt like the actors were actually on Mars, it looked and felt like they were in a desert in Arizona or some such place.

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Mars (TV Series 20162018) - IMDb

NASA's next Mars rover is in the home stretch now.

The launch of NASA's Mars rover Perseverance, the life-hunting, sample-caching Red Planet explorer, is just a month away. The car-size robot is scheduled to lift off atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station during a window that runs from July 20 through Aug. 11.

Getting to this point has not been easy. Mission teams have had to prep the rover and rocket for liftoff while the coronavirus pandemic swirled around them, forcing the closure of many NASA facilities. But the space agency prioritized getting Perseverance to the pad on time (while protecting workers' safety as well), given that Mars-mission launch windows open just once every 26 months.

"If we have to take Perseverance and put it back into storage for a period of two years, it could cost half a billion dollars," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said during a news conference last Wednesday (June 17).

Related: NASA's Mars 2020 rover Perseverance in pictures

That would be on top of the $2.7 billion total price tag for Perseverance's mission, which is called Mars 2020.

Whenever the six-wheeled rover lifts off during the coming window, it will land on Feb. 18, 2021, inside the Red Planet's 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater. Jezero harbored a lake and river delta billions of years ago, and Perseverance will use its seven science instruments to characterize that potentially habitable ancient environment and look for evidence of long-dead Mars life, among other things.

No robot has hunted for signs of life on the Martian surface since NASA's twin Viking landers, which touched down in the mid-1970s to look for extant organisms.

But, as the Vikings' ambiguous results show, making a definitive detection of alien life is a tall order for a lonely robot on a faraway world. So, Perseverance will also collect and cache several dozen pristine samples, which will be brought to Earth by a joint NASA/European Space Agency effort in 2031, if current plans hold.

"On the Perseverance side, we see it as our job to identify potential biosignatures things that are worthy of additional study here on Earth, with the full arsenal of analytical capabilities that we have here in our own laboratories," Mars 2020 deputy project scientist Katie Stack Morgan, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said during Wednesday's news conference. "I think that's how we're going to approach that question of the surface of Mars."

Perseverance will also test out tech for future exploration efforts. For example, one of the rover's instruments will generate oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, which is thin and dominated by carbon dioxide. Such tech could help human pioneers live and work on the Red Planet someday, NASA officials have said.

The Mars 2020 mission also features a tiny helicopter named Ingenuity, which will travel to the Red Planet on Perseverance's belly. Ingenuity will make a few short test flights in the Martian sky, potentially paving the way for future rotorcraft that could serve as rover scouts and/or gather lots of data on their own.

"Getting it to Mars, getting it safely off the vehicle we're going to learn a lot," Mars 2020 deputy project manager Matt Wallace said of Ingenuity. "We are not looking for an extensive and ambitious return from this technology; we're looking to learn those first few things that we need to learn."

The nuclear-powered Perseverance is also outfitted with 23 cameras and two microphones. If all goes according to plan, the mission will capture high-definition video of Perseverance's dramatic sky-crane landing and record the sounds of the Martian surface. Both types of data collection would be unprecedented.

"Perseverance is the most sophisticated mission we've ever sent to the Red Planet's surface," said Lori Glaze, the director of NASA's Planetary Science Division.

Two other NASA robots are active on the Martian surface at the moment: the InSight Mars lander, which has been monitoring marsquakes since its November 2018 touchdown, and the Curiosity rover, which has been exploring the 96-mile-wide (154 km) Gale Crater since August 2012.

Curiosity is Perseverance's forebear in multiple ways. Perseverance's chassis is based heavily on that of the older rover, which also pioneered the sky-crane landing strategy that Mars 2020 will employ. And Curiosity has determined that at least some parts of Mars were capable of supporting Earth-like life in the ancient past, paving the way for Perseverance to take the next step and hunt for signs of native Martian organisms.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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NASA's next Mars rover is just one month away from launch - Space.com

NASA is asking for your help to guide its Curiosity rover around sand traps, sharp rocks and other obstacles on the Red Planet.

A new online tool called AI4Mars, hosted on Zooniverse, allows anyone to label parts of the terrain in the landscape surrounding Curiosity, which has been roving on Mars since 2012.

The tool is a form of "machine learning" that allows rover planners assisting with Curiosity's movements to train the rover's intelligence for safe route planning. Picking an appropriate pathway is a pressing problem for Martian rovers. Curiosity's wheels wore down in the early years of its mission from driving over sharp rocks, while another Mars rover called Spirit got permanently stuck in a sand trap in 2010.

Related: How do you drive a Mars rover from home?

The first stage of training the algorithm, called SPOC (short for "Soil Property and Object Classification"), will allow it to distinguish between different types of terrain. SPOC is already used by Martian rover drivers, but bringing in the public will provide more training information at a faster pace. Curiosity's challenges are distinct from the self-driving car algorithms available, for example, as the rover isn't working with roads, pedestrians or traffic signs. So more help is needed to get the algorithm trained quickly.

"In the future, we hope this algorithm can become accurate enough to do other useful tasks, like predicting how likely a rover's wheels are to slip on different surfaces," Hiro Ono, an artificial intelligence researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

A typical rover drive takes about four to five hours to plan, including several people writing and reviewing hundreds of lines of code, JPL said in the statement. Coders aren't the only ones involved in the process. Geologists look at the terrain for safety issues, planners make sure the rover's high-gain antenna has a clear line of sight to Earth so the rover can communicate with mission control, and teams also consider how shadows may interfere with the rover's distance measurements. (Curiosity uses visual odometry, a technique that compares camera images to landmarks in the vicinity, so shadows can make the process more difficult, NASA said.)

"It's our job to figure out how to safely get the mission's science," Stephanie Oij, one of the JPL rover planners involved in AI4Mars, said in the same statement. "Automatically generating terrain labels would save us time and help us be more productive."

Curiosity's training will also give a boost to the Perseverance rover, which is expected to launch no earlier than July 20 for a landing on Mars in 2021. More than 8,000 Curiosity images are available on the AI4Mars site already, allowing the public to start labeling images to help Curiosity and eventually, Perseverance.

Images from the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity who have both ended their missions may be available on AI4Mars in the future, Ono added. More languages are also expected shortly on AI4Mars to assist volunteers, including Spanish, Hindi and Japanese.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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NASA needs your help teaching its Curiosity rover how to drive on Mars - Space.com

Every 18 to 24 months, Earth and Mars align in such a way as to make deep-space travel that little bit easier, or at least a bit faster. That reduces a trip or "trajectory" to the Red Planet from about nine months down to seven.

That means that July is shaping up to be a very busy time for missions to Mars.

There are three all launching within days of each other the Emirates Mars Mission, with its atmospheric probe, Hope or "Al-Amal," NASA's Mars 2020, carrying a lander called Perseverance, and China's "Tianwen-1", a collection of orbiters and landers. In fact, there would have been a fourth mission in Europe's ExoMars 2020.

Read more:A question about race in space

"If they don't go know, they will have a very long wait," says Malcolm Macdonald, a professor of space technology at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. "That's why the Americans, for instance, through the current pandemic, prioritized Demo-2, the SpaceX crewed mission to the International Space Station, and their Mars mission."

How the coronavirus pandemic has affected the Chinese mission is hard to know. And Europe's ExoMars 2020 was already heading for delays.

As for the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM), failing to leave now would set a 100-year plan for national and interplanetary transformation back by two years. So, after a round of ultra-fast thinking, which predicted the lockdown and those closed international borders, the team dispatched its spacecraft, Hope, and a team of Emirati engineers for the launch in Japan before it was too late.

A sense of urgency

There is a sense of urgency in the UAE that harks back to when the nation was established in 1971, starting from a point where infrastructure like transport and education were underdeveloped.

It was "evident then that you needed to do things rapidly to get on a par with the world," says Sarah Al-Amiri, the EMM's Science Lead, in an interview with DW.

Read more:SpaceX rocket ship blasts off on historic flight to International Space Station

And you can see that in the way the EMM has grown. The UAE has been developing Earth Observation spacecraft since 2006, which is a short time in itself. But the Mars mission has gone from a feasibility study in 2013 to its announcement a year later, and now a launch in 2020. Six short years.

Emirates Mars Mission - Al-Amal Probe in construction and testing

"We don't have a hundred years to sit around and grow organically. It's always been that way, developing in leaps and bounds," says Al-Amiri.

That culture of rapid growth has been hastened by a dwindling demand for oil.

"There is a drive to diversify," she says. "And the way to do that is use today's oil, which is knowledge and expertise that's routed in science and technology."

For Al-Amiri and mission manager, Omran Sharaf, seeing UAE's space sector blossom is a long-held passion. They were perhaps among the more fortunate, being able to study abroad. But they are back and among the country's pioneers.

Read more:Our first InSight into the interior of Mars

Al-Amir says she "never dared to dream of space, just for a lack of existing opportunities" at home, but she had started programming by the 5th Grade at school, studied computer engineering, and is now UAE's Minister of State for Advanced Sciences.

Meanwhile, Sharaf says he was always curious about satellites "I wished I could work on a space program." He studied electrical engineering in the US, came back to the UAE and joined a team of young Emiratis charged with setting up that space program. They started gathering experience in South Korea, working on Earth observation satellites, DubaiSat-1 and 2.

Why not the moon?

It's not only about getting to space. The mission is designed to establish the UAE's space capabilities to encourage homegrown innovation and inspire new generations of scientists, with job prospects and a sustainable future.

As such, it's reasonable to ask, "Why not go to the moon?" It is closer after all.

The answer lies in the science.

"We're not underestimating the moon it's difficult, too. Getting there is not easy," says Sharaf, in the same interview. "But Mars is the next level. When it comes to the scientific questions and the purpose of exploring Mars, we can build a better rationale behind it. It's a planet that scientists believe was once alive and became a dead planet. Understanding what happened there and why it lost its atmosphere will help us understand our own planet."

Mars is an active area of research that relies on data collected "at the planet," says Al-Amiri, rather than via telescopes and other forms of observation. So, she says, the EMM will deliver data that is actually needed by the global science community.

The team has collaborated with universities in the US and UK, and they have consulted the NASA-affiliated Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG).

Some roam, some drill The InSight lander collects seismic data by drilling into Martian ground

MEPAG is a gathering of experts that publishes scientific "vision papers," detailing scientific goals and questions that need to be answered about the planet.

Key scientific objectives for Hope

The Hope Probe aims to be the first to provide a complete picture of the Martian atmosphere. It will try to explain why or how Mars loses hydrogen and oxygen gases into space over the span of a Martian year.

Significantly, Hope will explore Mars' "diurnal," or day-to-night cycle, which has never been done before.

Using three instruments an ultraviolet spectrometer, a digital camera and an infrared spectrometer, they will overlay images to create a picture from the lower to upper atmosphere. But Hope's orbit will be central to getting the data they want.

The EMIRS InfraRed Spectrometer one of three instruments onboard the Emirates Hope Probe that will orbit Mars

As Franois Forget, an astrophysicist at the Laboratoire de Mtorologie Dynamique in Paris, France, puts it: "The instruments are not revolutionary, but the orbit is completely new."

A new Martian orbit

"Mars rotates, like Earth, but in 24 hours and 38 minutes, and the spacecraft will have an elliptical orbit of about 20,000 kilometers at its lowest to 43,000 kilometers at the top," says Forget, who is also involved in the Emirates Mars Mission.

"When it's at 20,000 km, it will stay above the same [location on Mars], rotating with the planet for 8 hours and that will let us monitor what's going on throughout the day so, for instance, we'll see morning fog disappearing here, a storm start there," says Forget, " and then it will move up again, and when it's higher, the spacecraft moves slower, while the planet keeps rotating below it. When it returns to the lowest altitude, it will rotate with the planet again. So, we'll see what's happening over time."

Read more:NASA taps first woman to lead human spaceflight

With each swing of the orbit, Hope will track different locations from its lower and higher orbits. In the end, all the data will be stitched together to make a complete picture of those locations over a full 24-hour period, day and night. But it may take three orbits of a particular location to accumulate a full diurnal cycle, says Forget.

Weather patterns and dust storms

The data will be open to the scientific community, allowing it to be combined with other data, like seismic information collected by the InSight lander or other atmospheric data from the MAVEN probe.

Collaborators in space the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) probe is focused on the Martian upper atmosphere

There are so many questions to answer and no single mission can answer them all.

But, ultimately, scientists want to know how Mars became uninhabitable for humans, why its atmosphere wouldn't protect us like the atmosphere on Earth.

Mars' atmosphere is thin like Earth's, but it mostly consists of carbon dioxide (CO2), and there's only a small amount of oxygen and water vapor. So, finding out more about why that little oxygen which humans need to live and breathe escapes Mars is crucial to our understanding of the planet.

Read more:After Apollo: A new era for American human spaceflight

"MEPAG has set questions for the community, things we need to learn to understand Mars' evolution, and one of those things is historical atmospheric change," says Al-Amiri. "That's understanding the weather system, the day-to-night cycle, and the dynamics there what are the seasonal changes?"

Or why Mars gets global dust storms. "We get localized, regional dust storms. But Mars gets global dust storms. So, what factors allow a planet to be engulfed by a single dust storm," asks Al-Amiri.

What role does Mars play in its own atmospheric loss?

Then there's the specific question of why the planet is losing its atmosphere.

Scientists have looked at whether that's due to space itself for instance, that the atmosphere is being "stripped" by solar winds streams of charged particles that shoot out from the sun at speeds of up to 900 km per second.

The Emirates Mars Mission probe, Hope, spreads its solar panel wings

But some other theories suggest Mars may play its own role.

"There are dust storms, cloud formations, water vapor cycles, and we're asking how much impact that has on the loss of hydrogen and oxygen from Mars into its exosphere," says Al-Amiri.

The mission will do that by taking simultaneous measurements infrared technology in the lower atmosphere, where Hope will study temperatures and ice clouds, and ultraviolet technology for the Martian ozone in the lower atmosphere and hydrogen and oxygen loss in the upper atmosphere.

Finally, there's a simple camera that will enable Hope to take full "disc images" of the planet, which may reveal "interesting phenomena," says Forget.

"For example, a couple of years ago, we found these elongate clouds forming near the top of Olympus Mons [the largest volcano on Mars]. They went for 2,000 kilometers, and this had never been seen, because we were always looking at Mars in strips from the same local time," says Forget. "So, a full disc image can be spectacular, fun and scientific."

Mission to collaborate

Much has been made of the mission's launching from Japan. But the Japanese space agency, JAXA, points out that the mission is "UAE's independent program."

Japan has an overall good track-record for space launches a H-IIA rocket, similar to the one for the EMM, launched from Tanegashima Space Center

Even the launch on a Japanese H-IIArocketfrom JAXA's Tanegashima Space Center will be operated not by the agency but by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

But the Japanese connection is interesting to note because Japan has its own interests in Mars.

In an email to DW, JAXA's Nobuyoshi Fujimoto writes that Japan's MMX mission in 2024 will "survey Mars's two moons and collect a sample from one of them and bring it back."

There is also a good chance that data from the Emirates Mars Mission will flow into Japan's MMX moons mission.

"The Japanese have got fantastic capabilities, but they've never been to Mars," says Macdonald, "so, working as partners in the international community will give them more confidence for the next time they decide to go."

Read more:Why isn't Germany taking over the moon?

The EMM is all about international collaboration, which, Sharaf says, has been good with American teams at the University of Colorado Boulder, Arizona State University, and University of California, Berkeley.

"Getting some of the knowledge for our mission was not easy and we had to think about how it could be done in a way that serves everyone our national interests, that of our partners, and humanity," says Sharaf. "So, this is a case study from which other nations can learn. For instance, how we collaborated in 2006 with Korea a very different mindset and system and in 2014 with the US."

Hope's high-gain antenna dish for communicating with MBRSC Mission Control on Earth

That collaborative spirit will possibly also seep into other areas of research as the UAE moves towards a "post-oil" economy.

"Our space program is a tool for other goals," says Sharaf. "It's linked to national challenges like food and water, and clean energy is an issue, but also economic opportunities. Those are the pillars that dictate our program. It's not just about getting to space. So, if asteroid mining or rocket fuel addressed one of those pillars, we would look into it."

Read more:Of 'white guys on the Moon' and black America

All that's left

The only question that's left for now is whether the UAE and its first Mars mission will succeed.

"Going to Mars is difficult, not a lot of people have successfully gone to Mars," says Macdonald. "The Americans, Europe, Russia and India have orbited it. But Russia's had a lot of failures trying to land on Mars, and the Japanese have failed before."

So, what are the UAE's chances?

"Well, the launch vehicle tends to be a fairly big stumbling block, but the Japanese have a good heritage there, so you'd expect the launch to work and for the spacecraft to get to Mars," Macdonald says. "And as long as it wakes up and gets onto its correct trajectory But you can't expect success, because space is difficult."

The new NASA Mars rover has arrived. It will support the currently operating Curiosity rover in its work on the red planet. The new rover weighs just over 1 tonne (2,000 lbs) and is therefore 100 kg heavier than its predecessor. And, at 3 meters in size, it is also 10 centimeters longer. It can load more research equipment and sensors, and its gripper arm with cameras and tools is also stronger.

This is what the rover looks like when it travels. On board a C-17 Globemaster, it traveled from California to Florida in the US. From there, it will set off to Mars on July 17. The new rover is able to collect samples from Mars. It is equipped with 23 cameras and many other instruments. Among other things, it aims to find out whether oxygen can be extracted from the Martian rocks.

Curiosity is the largest and most modern of all Mars rovers currently deployed. It landed on August 6, 2012 and has since traveled more than 21 kilometers. It is much more than just a rover. Its official name is "Mars Science Laboratory," and it really is a complete lab on wheels.

For example, it contains special spectrometer, which can analyze chemical compounds from a distance with the help of a laser; a complete meteorological station that can measure temperature, atmospheric pressure, radiation, humidity and wind speed; and most importantly, a chemistry lab that can run detailed analyses of organic compounds and is always on the hunt for traces of alien life.

Curiosity has shown that life would theoretically be possible on Mars. But it hasn't discovered any life, yet. The robot's arm is equipped with a full power drill. Here, it's taking a sample in "Yellowknife Bay" inside the Gale Crater.

The Mars dust is processed by a large number of instruments. First, it's filtered and separated into different-sized particles. Then, those get sorted and sent off to different analytical laboratory machines.

Curiosity's predecessors were much smaller. On July 4, 1997, the small Mars rover Sojourner left its first tire tracks behind in the dust of the red planet. It was the first time a mobile robot had been left to its own devices there, equipped with an X-ray spectrometer to conduct chemical analyses and with optical cameras.

Three rover generations. (The tiny one up front is Sojourner.) At 10.6 kilograms (23 pounds), it's not much bigger than a toy car. Its top speed: 1 centimeter per second. Opportunity weighs 185 kilograms roughly the equivalent of an electric wheelchair. Curiosity is as big as a small car, at 900 kilograms. The big ones travel up to 4 or 5 centimeters per second.

Sojourner travelled about 100 meters during its lifetime and delivered data and pictures until September 27, 1997. This is one of the last pictures of it, taken nine days before the radio connection broke down. Sojourner probably died because the battery did not survive the cold nights.

Without the experience of Sojourner, newer rovers could have hardly been envisaged. In 2004, NASA landed two robots of the same model on Mars: Spirit and Opportunity. Spirit survived for six years, travelling a distance of 7.7 kilometers. The robot climbed mountains, took soil samples and withstood winter and sandstorms. Its sibling, Opportunity, lost contact on February 13, 2019.

Opportunity passed the marathon distance of 42 kilometers back in 2015, and to this day, it has covered much more ground than Curiosity. It can take ground probes with its arm. It has three different spectrometers and even a 3D camera. It was last operating in "Perseverance Valley," an appropriate workplace for the sturdy robot, before being incapacitated by a sand storm.

This panorama was taken by Curiosity's mast camera. The most modern of the rovers will stay in service as long as possible hopefully at least another five years and much longer. The Martian landscape looks familiar somehow, not unlike some deserts here on Earth. Should we give in to our wanderlust, then or would it be better leave Mars to the robots?

Author: Fabian Schmidt

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What's the science on the Emirates Mars Mission? - DW (English)

UFO enthusiasts believe they have spotted a mountain carving - similar to that of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota - in the cliffs of Mars. The figure appears to be human-like with an elongated head, which some self proclaimed alien experts believe is the typical characteristics of a Martian. One alien hunter believes this is proof of life on Mars, and that intelligent aliens also hold high-standing members of civilisation in high regards.

Prominent conspiracy theorist Scott C Waring spotted the supposed statue in NASA images, and believes this is the elusive proof that intelligent life once existed on the Red Planet.

Mr Waring explained on his blog ET Database: "I found this figure in a hillside on Mars in the latest NASA rover photo.

"The figure could be male or female, because often on Earth ancient warrior chest armor of warriors often has an enhance chest area to make them look more muscular in battle and put fear into the enemy.

"The tall hat looks to be part of the armour and could be filled 30 percent with the person's head. Some aliens have an enlarged or elongated cranium compared to humans.

"It's placed on the side of a hill and reminds me of the time I lived near Mount Rushmore and saw the presidents faces on the side of the mountain.

"It's a typical thing to do for intelligent species, because being proud of certain individuals in your culture and carving them into stone makes them last forever. Their memory will last forever as we see her today."

However, sceptics and NASA would say the statues and other similar findings are just the effects of pareidolia a psychological phenomenon when the brain tricks the eyes into seeing familiar objects or shapes in patterns or textures such as a rock surface.

Another recent finding which supposedly supports the argument of life on Mars was that of a supposed statue of a Martian god.

READ MORE:Aliens in New York: UFO hunter shares bizarre Google Maps sighting

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Alien hunters spot carving on Martian warrior in cliffs of Mars - claim - Express.co.uk

The Mastcam is the same tool the rover has used to take stunning panoramaslike the incredibly high-resolution image of the Martian landscape it took late last year.

The goal of the image wasn't just to spot Earth but to get a look at the twilight brightness on Mars. It's spring in Mars' southern hemisphere where Curiosity is hanging about. "During this time of year on Mars, there's more dust in the air to reflect sunlight, making it particularly bright," said Mastcam co-investigator Mark Lemmon from the Space Science Institute.

Toward the bottom of the images, you can see the top of a rock formation called Tower Butte. Curiosity has been exploring this region for more than a year. This image should get people excited about NASA's next rover mission to Mars, Perseverance, which will land on the red planet in February 2021. It's currently scheduled to launch on July 20, 2020.

Read more:

NASA's Curiosity Rover Took a Picture of Earth and Venus in the Mars Sky - Thrillist

Artist illustration of a Pulsar

Just as lighthouses have helped sailors navigate safely into harbour for centuries, future space travellers may receive similar guidance from the steady signals created by pulsars.

Scientists and engineers are using the International Space Station to develop pulsar-based navigation using these cosmic lighthouses to assist with wayfinding on trips to the Moon under NASA's Artemis programme and on future human missions to Mars, the US space agency said on Wednesday.

Pulsars, or rapidly spinning neutron stars, are the extremely dense remains of stars that explode as supernovas. They emit X-ray photons in bright, narrow beams that sweep the sky like a lighthouse as the stars spin.

From a great distance, they appear to pulse, hence the name pulsars.

An X-ray telescope on the exterior of the space station, the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer or NICER, collects and timestamps the arrival of X-ray light from neutron stars across the sky.

Software embedded in NICER, called the Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology or SEXTANT, is using the beacons from pulsars to create a GPS-like system.

This concept, often referred to as XNAV, could provide autonomous navigation throughout the solar system and beyond.

"GPS uses precisely synchronised signals. Pulsations from some neutron stars are very stable, some even as stable as terrestrial atomic clocks in the long term, which makes them potentially useful in a similar way," said Luke Winternitz, a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The stability of the pulses allows highly accurate predictions of their time of arrival to any reference point in the solar system.

Scientists have developed detailed models that predict precisely when a pulse would arrive at, for example, the centre of Earth.

Timing the arrival of the pulse to a detector on a spacecraft, and comparing that to when it is predicted to arrive at a reference point, provides information for navigating far beyond our planet.

"Navigation information provided by pulsars does not degrade by moving away from Earth since pulsars are distributed throughout our Milky Way galaxy," said SEXTANT team member Munther Hassouneh, navigation technologist.

"It effectively turns the G' in GPS from Global to Galactic," added team member Jason Mitchell, Director of the Advanced Communications and Navigation Technology Division in NASA's Space Communication and Navigation Program.

"It could work anywhere in the solar system and even carry robotic or crewed systems beyond the solar system."

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Cosmic 'Lighthouses' to Help Space Travellers Find Ways to Moon, Mars - The Weather Channel

At least 110 humans would be needed to start a new civilization on Mars, a study has calculated.

That number would ensure enough tools and commodities could be produced before supplies run out.

Any human colony would have to set up home in an oxygen-filled dome and start their own agriculture and other industries.

The study assumes support from Earth has been cut off due to war, failing resources, or settlers declaring an independent republic.

In 2015s The Martian, Matt Damons character Mark Watney was stranded there.

But space expert Professor Jean-Marc Salotti estimates he could have set up a permanent home if he had 109 colleagues.

The scientist, at Frances Bordeaux Institut National Polytechnique, used a mathematical model to determine the feasibility of survival on another planet and being self-sustaining.

He said survival would depend on access to natural resources, work conditions and other assumptions.

Elon Musks SpaceX program hopes to one day colonize Mars, which is around 140 million miles away.

Prof Salotti added: This question is of particular importance for the future of space conquest and perhaps also for the future of humanity in general.

Read more:

Scientist calculates 110 humans would be needed to start new civilization on Mars - New York Post

America is getting excited about space again.

That was one of NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstines chief takeaways from a recent phone call from movie star Tom Cruise.

He said he was interested in doing a movie on the International Space Station and wanted to talk about that, said the Tulsan, who takes it as another good sign that a renewed national emphasis on space exploration is inspiring people.

Bridenstine, a former U.S. congressman representing Tulsa who now heads the nations space agency, was the guest Tuesday for a virtual discussion hosted by the Tulsa Regional Chamber.

Fresh off the historic SpaceX launch and with NASAs sights set on both the moon and Mars Bridenstine said he couldnt be more excited to be leading the agency at this time in history.

We have a presidential administration right now that is putting space on steroids, he said. They really see this as part of American greatness. We need to do stunning achievements. The world needs to see it. The world needs to partner with us on these things.

Bridenstine added: Its hard to lead on earth if youre not leading in space. And I think thats as true today as it was in the 1960s. We havent had this much support for space activities since John F. Kennedy.

A collaboration between NASA and Elon Musks SpaceX firm, the spacecraft launch on May 30 carried two NASA astronauts, Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, to the International Space Station.

The pair were the first astronauts the U.S. had launched into space in almost a decade since the space shuttle program ended in 2011.

Bridenstine said NASA is also moving forward with the Artemis program, the goal of which is to return to the moon by 2024, establish a sustainable presence there and let it pave the way for a mission to Mars.

Artemis, he added, will involve another milestone: the first woman to set foot on the moon.

We love the Apollo program. History loves the Apollo program, said Bridenstine. But in those days all of our astronauts came from a fighter pilot or test pilot background and there were no opportunities for women, and very few opportunities for underrepresented minorities.

This time, we have a very robust, very capable, very talented and very diverse astronaut corps.

The SpaceX launch marked the first time a commercial aerospace company carried humans into Earths orbit.

Bridenstine said private-sector partnerships will be the model for how space is explored in the future, and that SpaceX has demonstrated its potential.

Asked about Oklahomas possible future role in space exploration, Bridenstine highlighted the University of Oklahomas GeoCarb program, for which it was awarded a $161 million government contract.

OU has got the absolute best weather scientists, he said, adding that they are going to help NASA better understand the correlation between carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and weather events.

He said, If the program is successful and we can get good science out of it, I think theres going to be a lot of missions that come after that at the University of Oklahoma, and then we build from there.

He added that the Choctaw Nation, which has a test range, is playing a role in urban air mobility.

I know it sounds like science fiction, he said of whats been described as a flying taxi service. But theres billions of dollars of investment going into that right now.

Speaking of Elon Musk, whose automobile company Tesla is reportedly looking at Tulsa as a possible site for a new factory, Bridenstine was asked if hed had a chance to plug Tulsa with the entrepreneur.

I have not personally pitched him on it, he said, adding that he has to be careful as the head of a government agency.

What Ill tell you is that certainly Elon Musk knows that Im from Tulsa. He knows that I love Tulsa and I live here by choice.

I think Tulsa would be a great selection, Bridenstine added.

The virtual audience on Tuesday included area school students, chamber officials said.

Bridenstine said he hoped that young people are motivated by all the exciting things happening.

If you go around the country and talk to the engineers and the scientists that work for us, who are of age, they will tell you exactly where they were when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, he said. Those are moments of inspiration that transform lives.

He said he hopes the SpaceX launch and upcoming Artemis mission can provide those moments for a new generation.

Heres this whole generation of young people that dont remember the last time we flew humans into space from American soil, he said.

But if all goes as planned, the next generation should have some inspiring memories all its own. Asked where the space program will be in 20 years, Bridenstine said:

There is a very real chance, depending on budgets and how they materialize, that we could have a crew on Mars, or maybe even coming home from Mars.

Original post:

'Leading in space': NASA chief Bridenstine talks SpaceX, Mars and the first woman on the moon with Tulsa Regional Chamber - Tulsa World

Humanity would need to send at least 110 people to Mars to build a self-sustaining civilisation there, according to research.

A study has attempted to understand just how many people and resources would be required to settle elsewhere in the universe.

The paper, written by Jean-Marc Salotti from the Bordeaux Institut National Polytechnique, attempted to solve the question using mathematical modelling. It tried to find out both the minimum number of people that would have to live on the planet as well as the way of life they would have to pursue if their life there was to be self-sustaining.

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He found that 110 would be the minimum number of individuals required, although having more people would change the calculations.

He also noted that the success of those people would depend on a range of factors, including how well they would be able to work together and share their time and resources.

Professor Salotti noted that the question was largely theoretical at the moment, but could have considerable effects for the future of humanity. Life on Earth could one day be threatened by some cataclysmic event, he noted, and it would be possible that the only way humanity would survive would be to head to Mars or some other planet.

Some companies, including SpaceX, have attempted to build ways to ensure this could happen, with rockets made to carry people on the long journey to Mars. But any attempt to do so will inevitably be limited in the number of people that it can take, which Prof Salotti noted will lead people to make important calculations about the minimum number of people that could survive there and create enough resources and tools to allow their life to become self-sustaining.

The research attempted to understand the work the people would have to do to make that possible, and how much time they would have to do that work. The number of 110 people is the minimum number who would be able to do that work, Prof Salotti found.

The study Minimum Number of Settlers for Survival on Another Planet is published in Scientific Reports this week.

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We need to send at least 110 people to Mars to build a civilisation, study finds - The Independent

SpaceX founder Elon Musk speaks at a post-launch press conference after the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. (Image: Reuters)

Seoul: Multi-billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk on Sunday took to the Twitter to describe his relationship with Mars by calling the red planet his souldog.

"Mars is my souldog," Musk said in tweet.

Responding to Musk, a user tweeted, "Elon is from Mars. The Galactic Federation has no say. They agree with his awakening tactics."

"Why Mars? There's plenty of planets out there," mentioned another user.

Another user posted to him, "YOU are my souldog I don't even care how many other people have said this already."

Meanwhile, Musk is building floating spaceports at least 35 kms from the coastline and would be used for launching starship rockets to the Moon, mars and even hypersonic travel around Earth.

The floating spaceports would be accessed via tunnels dug under the water and Musk-owned The Boring Company would construct those.

Musk had earlier tweeted that most Starship spaceports will probably need to be around 35 kms offshore for "acceptable noise levels".

SpaceX is currently hiring "offshore operations engineers" to help develop floating spaceports for Starship.

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Elon Musk Loves Mars so Much That He Called it His Souldog - News18

Mars Wrigley and Sankalp Beautiful World join hands with Sourav Ganguly Foundation to salute the Covid Warriors

Kolkata, 20th June 2020: Mars Wrigley recently joined hands with Sourav Ganguly Foundation, Sankalp Beautiful World and A Satadru Dutta Initiative to express gratitude to doctors, health care providers and caregivers during the pandemic.

Health care workers have been on the frontline of the current crisis to ensure safety and wellbeing of others. In an effort to appreciate and acknowledge their relentless spirit and hard work, Sourav Ganguly, President of BCCI, handed over a token of gratitude including Mars Wrigley products such as SNICKERS, GALAXY, BOUNTY, TWIX and M&MS to Dr Saptarshi Basu, Dr Sanjoy Holme Choudhury and Dr Shovon Das from the West Bengal Doctors Forum. Other heroes who were lauded included Briti Kar and Rudranil Raha, who fed 100 people daily throughout the lockdown, Rupa Das, a social worker, Rabi Mukherjee who has been actively involved in sanitization during the lockdown and Sree Basu. Chocolates were also distributed to the entire COVID department of Medica Super Specialty Hospital.

At Mars Wrigley, the purpose is to create beautiful moments to make the world smile. This small gesture to the everyday heroes was a collective way to say, Thank You.

About MARS Wrigley:

Mars is a family-owned business with more than a century of history-making diverse products and offering services for people and the pets people love. With almost $35 billion in sales, the company is a global business that produces some of the worlds best-loved brands: M&Ms, SNICKERS, TWIX, MILKY WAY, DOVE, PEDIGREE, ROYAL CANIN, WHISKAS, EXTRA, ORBIT, 5, SKITTLES, UNCLE BENS, MARS DRINKS and COCOAVIA. Mars also provides veterinary health services that include BANFIELD Pet Hospitals, Blue Pearl, VCA and Pet Partners. Headquartered in McLean, VA, Mars operates in more than 80 countries. The Mars Five Principles Quality, Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency and Freedom inspire its more than 100,000 Associates to create value for all its partners and deliver growth they are proud of every day.

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Mars Wrigley and Sankalp Beautiful World join hands with Sourav Ganguly Foundation to salute the COVID Warriors - IBG NEWS