China is holding a 40-day public vote to help select the name for its Mars rover which is currently closing in on the Red Planet.

The public can now vote for their favorites from a shortlist of 10 names for the Tianwen-1 mission rover.

The 10 names Hongyi, Qilin, Nezha, Chitu, Zhurong, Qiusuo, Fenghuolun, Zhuimeng, Tianxing and Xinghuo are taken from ideas including Chinese mythological figures, Confucian concepts and legendary animals.

Related: China's Tianwen-1 Mars mission in photos

Notably Hongyi, from the Confucian Analects, can be translated to "persistence" or perseverance, giving a similar meaning to the NASA Perseverance rover also heading for Mars. Others meanings include:

The Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center belonging to the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced the shortlist on Jan. 18 after soliciting suggestions after the mission launched in July last year.

China's Tianwen-1 mission includes both an orbiter and a rover, and the spacecraft are due to enter orbit around Mars on Feb. 10.

The rover will not attempt its landing until around May. The orbiter will image the landing site and determine the conditions on the ground in preparation for the landing.

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If it lands successfully the roughly 530-lb. (240 kilograms) solar-powered rover will investigate the surface soil characteristics and potential water-ice distribution with its Subsurface Exploration Radar instrument. The rover also carries panoramic and multispectral cameras and instruments to analyze the composition of rocks.

The Tianwen-1 mission and the chance to name the rover have generated a fair amount of attention.

"More than 1.4 million entries have been received from 38 countries and regions since we initiated the naming campaign in July 2020. Over 200,000 of them are eligible. The netizens' active participation shows their great care for the Mars mission," Yuan Foyu, director of the naming campaign for China's first Mars rover, told CCTV.

The vote is being hosted by Chinese internet giant Baidu with a deadline of Feb. 28. Judges will then deliberate and announce a final name sometime before the landing.

Tianwen-1 is China's first independent interplanetary mission and it also draws its name from history, with "Tianwen" meaning "Heavenly Questions" or "Questions to Heaven," being taken from a poem written by Qu Yuan (around 340-278 BCE).

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China's 1st Mars rover will get one of these 10 names, and you can vote to select the winner - Space.com

Martian landslides might help explain mystery lines seen on the surface of the Red Planet, a new study finds.

For years, scientists analyzing the Martian surface have detected clusters of dark, narrow lines that seasonally appear on steep, sun-facing slopes in the warmer regions. Previous research has suggested that these enigmatic dark streaks, called recurring slope lineae (RSL), are signs that salty water regularly flows on the Red Planet during its warmest seasons.

Recent missions to Mars have revealed that the planet does possess huge underground pockets of ice. Prior work suggested that warmer temperatures during the Martian spring and summer could help generate salty brines capable, at least for a time, of staying liquid in the cold, thin air of the Red Planet.

Related: The search for water on Mars in pictures

However, geologists have discovered problems with the concept of brines causing RSL, explained study lead author Janice Bishop, a planetary scientist at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute and NASA Ames Research Center, both of which are in California's Silicon Valley. For example, the angle of slopes where RSL occur and the features surrounding where they start "largely are inconsistent with a liquid flow process," she told Space.com.

Now Bishop and her colleagues suggest that chemical reactions could make the Martian surface vulnerable to landslides that might explain RSL.

"Although the surface of Mars today is dry and harsh and cold and dominated by wind and abrasion, underneath the surface, micro-scale interactions of salts with tiny ice and liquid water particles can be still occurring today," Bishop said.

The scientists focused on chemical reactions between sulfate minerals such as gypsum with chloride salts, of which table salt is one variety. "On Earth, interactions between gypsum and chloride salts have caused collapse of parts of caves, sinkholes in soft sediments near salty lakes and ponds, and uplift of roads," Bishop said.

The researchers speculated that similar interactions could happen on Mars, although the cold and dry conditions there would slow these reactions down. "I am super excited about the prospect of active chemistry below the surface on Mars, albeit at a slow rate," Bishop said.

In the new study, the scientists conducted lab experiments on mixtures of sulfates, chloride salts, tiny ice particles and volcanic ash similar to Martian soil. They froze and thawed such mixtures at the kinds of low temperatures found on the Red Planet.

The researchers found thin films of slushy water formed on the surfaces of the mineral grains. They suggested these films could expand and contract over time, leading to upheavals and contractions under the Martian surface. Wind and dust on these unstable surfaces could then set off landslides, producing the lines seen on the Red Planet, Bishop explained.

The scientists noted that in the future, surface missions on Mars to recent RSL sites could help test their model. They detailed their findings online today (Feb. 3) in the journal Science Advances.

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Intriguing dark streaks on Mars may be caused by landslides after all - Space.com

Next month, three new spacecraft arrive at Mars. Two represent firsts for their countries of origin, while the third opens a new era of Mars exploration. The first is the UAEs Emirates Mars Mission, also known as Hope, which enters orbit on 9 February. Shortly after, Chinas Tianwen-1 settles into the red planets gravitational grip and in April will deploy a lander carrying a rover to the surface.

Both of these missions are groundbreaking for their countries. If they are successful, their makers will join the US, Russia, Europe and India in having successfully sent spacecraft to Mars. However, it is the third mission that is destined to capture the most headlines.

On 18 February, around 8pm GMT, Nasa will attempt to land the car-size rover Perseverance in Jezero crater. Its got a long list of science objectives to work through. We want to get a fuller understanding of how Mars formed as a planet, says Sanjeev Gupta of Imperial College London, who is part of the Perseverance science team.

On Earth, the constant shifting of the crust has mostly destroyed the very first surface rocks to form, but on Mars the oldest rocks are preserved, so there is an unbroken record stretching back more than four billion years. As well as telling us about the history of the planets formation, those primeval rocks could also contain clues as to whether life ever began on the red planet.

Yet what makes Perseverance unique is that it is also the first part of an ambitious 10-year plan between Nasa and the European Space Agency (Esa) to bring Martian rocks to Earth in around 2031.

Scientists really want rocks from Mars back on Earth, says Gupta. Samples can be analysed much more thoroughly on Earth than using even the most sophisticated Mars rover. And because laboratory techniques improve constantly, they can continue to be inspected year after year for new discoveries.

The value of sample return was demonstrated in the 1970s when the analysis of moon rocks brought back by the Apollo astronauts changed our understanding of the solar systems history and formation.

To replicate this success for Mars, Perseverance is equipped with more than 30 canisters, into which interesting-looking rocks will be loaded and then cached on the surface. If all goes well, a European rover built at Airbus Defence and Space in Stevenage will arrive on Mars in 2028 to collect the canisters. It will load them into a Nasa spacecraft known as the Mars Ascent Vehicle, which will blast them to a rendezvous with the European supplied Earth Return Orbiter that will bring the samples to Earth.

Whereas the lunar samples of the 1970s were from a barren world, Mars could once have been a habitable planet. So key investigations will involve looking for evidence of past or possibly present life and that is a whole new ballgame.

If you discover signs of life on Mars, you want to know thats Martian life, right? You dont want to accidentally discover E coli bacteria that hung on to your spacecraft, says Casey Dreier, chief advocate and senior space policy adviser for the Planetary Society, a non-profit organisation for space advocacy based in Pasadena, California.

To keep the scientific results as pure as possible, spacecraft and equipment are cleaned with chemical solvents or by heating.

When building a mission to Mars, you have to apply these biological controls that go beyond what we typically use for satellites that we build for, say, Earth observation, says Gerhard Kminek, a planetary protection officer for Esa. Hes been working since 2004 to make sure such precautions become standard practice at Esa for anything going to Mars including the Rosalind Franklin rover that will launch in 2022 and which carries life-detection equipment.

From working on Rosalind Franklin, European aerospace companies Airbus and Thales Alenia Space now have biologically controlled cleanrooms in which to build almost completely sterile spacecraft. Were in a very good position, says Kminek, so much so that Nasa sent a delegation late last year to visit the facilities and learn from them.

Kminek is also spearheading studies into the kind of containment facility needed to hold Mars samples on Earth. Working with organisations such as Public Health England, the Porton Down laboratory and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Controls, Thales UK and the University of Leicester have already built a prototype double wall isolation chamber under an Esa contract.

Such precautions are known as planetary protection, which is split into two components. Forward contamination is the introduction of Earth life on to other worlds; backwards contamination is concerned with the possibility, however remote, of extraterrestrial life brought back to Earth escaping into the biosphere.

It was initially discussed in the 1950s in the run-up to the launch of the first satellite, the Soviet Unions Sputnik 1, and the Committee on Space Research (Cospar) issued its first planetary protection guidelines in 1959. Back then, scientists thought the solar system was much more habitable. You read Arthur C Clarke novels written in the 50s that talk about native Martians and people dont see that as being an absurdity, says Thomas Cheney, lecturer in space governance at the Open University.

That all changed in 1971, when Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to enter orbit around Mars. The pictures it sent back were sobering. There was no vegetation and no visible signs of life. Indeed, there was not even an indication of past life. People were surprised at just how dead Mars actually turned out to look, says Cheney.

Closer investigation in more recent decades, however, has swung opinions back again. It is now thought that Mars could have been habitable and that microbes may still be clinging on in areas of the planet where liquid water is present. Planetary protection concerns mean that spacecraft cannot go to these areas. So, life-detection experiments cannot investigate the areas most likely to support life and therefore most concentrate on looking for the evidence of past life on Mars.

Beyond these purely pragmatic scientific issues, however, a larger debate is brewing that brings in an ethical dimension. Its something that is, I think, even more important in a sense, says Dreier. Its applying the lessons of horrendous mistakes that humans have made in terms of exploration in the past.

Perhaps the most widely known of these mistakes is the European colonisation of Hawaii in the 18th century. Various diseases devastated the indigenous population because of the bacteria and viruses that were introduced. While there is no real chance of animal life on Mars, Dreier thinks the same consideration should be extended to bacteria. If theres life there, we dont want to inadvertently introduce a competing form of life that could undermine or destroy that, he says.

In truth, this concern has always underpinned the planetary protection guidelines, but its re-emergence as a discussion point is because Nasa and its partners are on the brink of returning humans to the moon. They also have ambitions for sending astronauts to Mars sometime in the 2030s and wherever humans go, contamination is sure to follow. We are for want of a better word leaky, even when enclosed in space suits. There is no such thing as a perfect seal, so viruses and bacteria will be constantly escaping into extraterrestrial environments.

The way we currently try to minimise the impact is to say that all areas with the potential for water are off limits, even to biologically decontaminated rovers such as Perseverance. Yet this will not work for human exploration, because water is going to be an essential resource for astronauts to drink and to make oxygen and rocket fuel with. Such in-situ resource utilisation is hard written into everyones plans for exploration.

On the face of it, planetary protection rules out a human exploration programme and all the scientific exploration that could bring. It would have scuppered the historic moon landings if anyone had thought about it too much. The Apollo missions would have been entirely impossible if someone had tried to enforce planetary protection, says Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society, which advocates for human missions to Mars.

Those early astronauts left several hundred pounds of metabolic waste on the moon. This includes 96 bags of poo, urine, vomit and food waste. Apart from making the most historic feat of human exploration sound more like the aftermath of a student party, the point is that those waste products will have contained more than 1,000 microbial species usually found in the human gut.

Zubrin, whose book The Case for Mars is celebrating its 25th year in print, thinks that planetary protection is overcautious. He points to the subset of naturally occurring meteorites on Earth that have been shown to come from Mars and that this must have been happening since the formation of the solar system 4.6bn years ago.

One Martian meteorite in particular, ALH84001, aroused great interest in 1996 when a group of scientists claimed to have found microscopic fossils of Martian bacteria inside. Although that conclusion is still hotly contested, part of the analysis showed that the meteorite had never been subjected to temperatures above 40C. If there had been microbes in it, they could have survived the trip, says Zubrin, and billions of tons of such material have transferred from Mars to Earth in the last four billion years.

In other words, if nature does not respect planetary protection protocols, why should we?

Nasa recently commissioned a report on planetary protection. Published in October 2019, the Planetary Protection Independent Review Board recommended that different areas of a celestial body should be classified in different ways. Previously, the Cospar planetary protection rules applied to a celestial body as a whole. Now, specific areas can be protected while leaving others to be explored.

Its a stopgap at best because the water-rich areas necessary for the establishment of permanent bases remain off limits. To make progress, Cheney would like to see planetary protection become part of a wider discussion about space as an environment, so that we can decide what our priorities are for space exploration.

Its not just a place where you can do anything you want. What you do has consequences, he says. He points to space debris as something that could be rolled into a wider discussion of protecting the environment of space.

And theres no time to lose. The Cospar planetary protection guidelines are not part of international law, so while its recommendations are written into the fabric of Nasa, Esa and other major space agencies, there is nothing to stop the burgeoning private space sector sending anything they want into space. And as the flotilla of missions arriving at Mars demonstrates, the red planet is no longer as remote as it once seemed.

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Is there life on Mars? Not if we destroy it with poor space hygiene - The Guardian

En route to Mars.

July 2020 was a huge month for Mars. Taking advantage of its nearby position in orbit, three missions departed the Earth on a seven-month journey to the red planet. Now those spacecraft -- NASA's Perseverance rover, the Chinese space agency's Tianwen-1 and the United Arab Emirates' Hope -- are arriving at their destination. They're poised to uncover the secrets our celestial neighbor hides within its atmosphere and barren plains and may even reveal relics of ancient life on the planet's surface.

Although all three spacecraft will make it to orbit around Mars this month, NASA's Perseverance (or "Percy") gets to take center stage. It will be the only mission to land on the surface this month, with an expected arrival date of Feb. 18. Perseverancebuilds on an impressive historyof interplanetary exploration, with its sibling rover Curiosity coming up on nine years on Mars, deliveringbreathtaking photographs and somepuzzling data.

From the lab to your inbox. Get the latest science stories from CNET every week.

That's not to take anything away from the UAE's Hope, or Al Amal, and China's Tianwen-1. Both spacecraft are expected to perform Mars orbital insertion, or MOI, maneuvers within a day of each other on Feb. 9 and Feb. 10, respectively. Hope will remain in orbit and analyze the Martian atmosphere, but Tianwen-1 will attempt something only achieved by two other nations: landing on Mars' unfriendly surface. China is expected to release Tianwen-1's lander and rover duo sometime in May.

Here's a recap of the journey to Mars and what we can expect this month.

Every 26 months, the orbits of Earth and Mars line up in such a way that space agencies can take advantage of something known as a Hohmann transfer orbit.

"We do this kind of transfer orbit in order to use the least fuel," James O'Donoghue, a planetary scientist with Japanese space agency JAXA, told CNET last year. "It's like passing a football to a striker, you've got to aim where they're going to be."

In July 2020, everything lined up perfectly, and the three missions were out of here. Some fast facts:

The cadence of launches means Hope will reach Mars first in February. It's expected to perform its MOI on Feb. 9, slowing down from 75,000 miles per hour to just 11,200. At approximately 7:42 a.m. PT, the bus-length probe will arrive "at" Mars and will begin to transition to the science phase of the mission. The maneuver is totally autonomous, because communication doesn't quite work as quickly as it does here on Earth -- the interplanetary phone call has a more than 13-minute delay, so Hope will be flying on its own from a set of preset instructions.

Tianwen-1's arrival is slightly more mysterious. China's space agency doesn't typically reveal a lot of information about its activities, even for a potentially history-making mission such as this. According to Chinese news service CCTV, it will be the second craft to enter orbit, on Feb. 10.

Although the majority of the science will be performed when the spacecraft reach Mars, scientists and engineers have been testing the capability of their spacecraft on the cruise phase of the mission. The journey itself is a long one -- covering about 300 million miles (~480 million kilometers) -- and each agency has a chance to improve the trajectory of the craft for a perfect arrival. What else has been happening?

NASA's Perseverance rover will touch down on Feb. 18. Though NASA's got a good track record of landing on the red planet in the last few decades, there are no guarantees -- Mars is hard.

"Success is never assured," said Allan Chen, engineering lead on the entry, descent and landing phase of the mission, during a NASA press conference on Jan. 27. "That's especially true when we're trying to land the biggest, heaviest and most complicated rover we've ever built to the most dangerous site we've ever attempted to land on."

The space agency expects to have the best footage of landing ever, with a suite of cameras and a microphone ready to capture the entry, descent and landing. It's the first time we'll be able to listen to the sounds of a Martian landing, providing a completely new sensory experience for avid Mars fans. Sadly, there's no way we'll be able to watch live, as such, but NASA will provide coverage of the moment. We've got a comprehensive guide to Mars landing day and what you can expect.

If you're looking to catch Perseverance rover's touchdown on Feb. 18, we've got you covered and you can access the stream right here. And if you're interested in all the other great celestial events and rocket launches, we recommend syncing your calendar with CNET's Space Calendar -- you'll never miss a launch again.

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NASA's Perseverance, China's Tianwen-1 and UAE's Hope reach Mars this month - CNET

With less than two weeks before the country's first-ever interplanetary mission slips into orbit around Mars, United Arab Emirates scientists can't wait for the Hope orbiter's arrival.

The UAE launched Hope in July 2020, one of three missions taking advantage of an optimal window to head to the Red Planet, along with China's Tianwen-1 mission and NASA's Perseverance rover. Hope is an orbiter designed to study the atmosphere of Mars around the planet and from surface to space. The mission will conduct its Mars orbit insertion maneuver on Feb. 9 beginning at about 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT).

"Right now, the team has prepared as well as they can possibly prepare to reach orbit around Mars," Sarah Al Amiri, chairperson of the UAE Space Agency, said during a news conference held virtually yesterday (Jan. 28). "We're just counting down the final few days before we arrive to the Red Planet."

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

Fewer than half of Mars missions attempted to date have succeeded. In advance of the risky maneuver, which will involve Hope firing its thrusters for nearly half an hour to slow down enough to slip into orbit around Mars, the spacecraft is in excellent condition, mission personnel said.

"We are fortunate to have a very healthy spacecraft, and everything is looking very good at the moment," Pete Withnell, Hope program manager at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics program, which partnered with the UAE on the mission, said during the news conference.

"I'm optimistic; that would be my primary emotion right now," Withnell said. "But I can tell you many of the team are waking up at two o'clock in the morning in a cold sweat just thinking and rethinking about aspects."

If all goes smoothly on Feb. 9, the UAE will notch a major accomplishment, becoming just the fifth entity to successfully reach Mars, after NASA, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency and India. (China may follow fast on the UAE's heels; the nation's Tianwen-1 mission will complete its own Mars orbit insertion a day after Hope does.)

Before beginning the Hope mission, the UAE's space experience was limited to satellites in Earth orbit; the nation's first astronaut spent a week on the International Space Station in the fall of 2019. But in 2017, the country launched a century-scale Mars-focused initiative meant to build an oil-free economy and bulk up the nation's technical sector.

Related: The UAE wants to rewrite what we know about weather on Mars

The UAE designed the Hope mission's science goals in conjunction with the international community and built international partnerships, particularly with the University of Colorado, to complete the spacecraft, then hired a Japanese Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-IIA rocket to execute the launch on July 19.

Hope is meant to spend one Martian year, or nearly two Earth years, studying the Red Planet; that timeline will begin in May. During the mission, the spacecraft will orbit high over the planet's equator to study the weather at the surface and how the layers of the planet's atmosphere interact.

Even as Hope was making the long trek out to Mars, the UAE announced its next mission beyond Earth orbit. In 2024, the nation intends to launch its first lunar rover, Rashid, which will focus on developing and evaluating space exploration technologies. As with the Hope mission, the UAE will contract out Rashid's launch rather than develop its own rocket technology.

But for the Hope team, the focus is all on Mars and all on the challenges of arriving safely.

"I think everyone on the mission understands the emotional roller coaster," Al Amiri said. "Every point of celebration is followed by several points of worry, waiting for the next point of celebration."

"I wish I could put it into words, but I'm probably every feeling that you can possibly think, both positive, negative and neutral."

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 UAE's Hope mission is nearly to Mars, and scientists can't wait - Space.com

NASAs Mars 2020 mission will have an autopilot that helps guide it to safer landings on the Red Planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The view of the Sea of Tranquility rising up to meet Neil Armstrong during the first astronaut landing on the Moon was not what Apollo 11 mission planners had intended. They had hoped to send the lunar module Eagle toward a relatively flat landing zone with few craters, rocks, and boulders. Instead, peering through his small, triangular commanders window, Armstrong saw a boulder field very unfriendly for a lunar module. So the Apollo 11 commander took control of the descent from the onboard computer, piloting Eagle well beyond the boulder field, to a landing site that will forever be known as Tranquility Base.

There had been Moon landings with robotic spacecraft before Apollo 11, said Al Chen, entry, descent, and landing lead for NASAs Mars 2020 mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. But never before had a spacecraft on a descent toward its surface changed its trajectory to maneuver out of harms way.

The Mars 2020 mission is facing the most challenging landing yet on the Red Planet. It will touch down on February 18, 2021, in Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer-wide) expanse full of steep cliffs, boulder fields, and other things that could boobytrap the landing. A new technology called Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN) will allow the spacecraft to avoid hazards autonomously. Its the closest thing to having an astronaut piloting the spacecraft, and the technology will benefit future robotic and human exploration of Mars.

On a test flight in Death Valley, California, an Airbus helicopter carried an engineering model of the Lander Vision System (LVS) that will help guide NASAs next Mars mission to a safe touchdown on the Red Planet. During the flight one in a series the helicopter (which is not part of the mission and was used just for testing) and its two-person crew flew a pre-planned sequence of maneuvers while LVS collected and analyzed imagery of the barren, mountainous terrain below. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Chen and his Mars 2020 colleagues have experience landing spacecraft on the Red Planet without the help of a steely-eyed astronaut at the stick. But Mars 2020 is headed toward NASAs biggest Martian challenge yet. Jezero Crater is a 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer-wide) indentation full of steep cliffsides, sand dunes, boulders fields and small impact craters. The team knew that to attempt a landing at Jezero and with a rover carrying 50% more payload than the Curiosity rover, which landed at a more benign location near Mount Sharp they would have to up their game.

What we needed was a Neil Armstrong for Mars, said Chen. What we came up with was Terrain-Relative Navigation.

Carried aboard Mars 2020, Terrain-Relative Navigation (TRN) is an autopilot that during landing can quickly figure out the spacecrafts location over and more importantly, calculate its future location on the Martian surface. Onboard, the rovers computer stores a map of hazards within Jezero Crater, and if the computed landing point is deemed too dangerous, TRN will command Mars 2020s descent stage to fly the rover to the safest reachable landing point.

To land an Apollo lunar module on the Moon required a crew of two (Armstrong had Buzz Aldrin feeding him information on their trajectory). Likewise, Terrain-Relative Navigation is actually two systems working together: the Lander Vision System and the Safe Target Selection system.

The first half of Terrain-Relative Navigation is the Lander Vision System [LVS], which determines where the spacecraft is over the Martian surface, said Andrew Johnson, guidance navigation and control subsystem manager for Mars 2020. If you say it quick LVS youll understand why the teams unofficial mascot is Elvis Presley.

LVSs operational lifetime is all of 25 seconds. It comes alive at about 13,000 feet (3,960 meters), commanding a camera on the rover to quickly take picture after picture of the Martian surface while still descending on a parachute. LVS scrutinizes one image a second, breaking each into squares that cover about 5,000 feet (1,520 meters) of surface area.

However, unlike Neil Armstrong, LVSs real-time analysis isnt looking for specific crater rims or mountain peaks. Instead, inside each of those boxes, or landmarks, the system looks for unique patterns in contrasting light and dark created by surface features like cliffs, craters, boulder fields and mountains. It then compares any uncommon pattern with a map in its memory. When it finds five landmark matches during Coarse Landmark Matching mode, it takes another image and repeats the process.

After three successful image-to-map comparisons, LVS kicks into a mode called Fine Landmark Matching. Thats when the system breaks the surface into boxes 410 feet (125 meters) across, scanning for unique patterns and comparing them with the map. LVS is looking for at least 20 matches in that one second of eyeballing an image but usually makes much more up to 150 in order to generate an even more accurate plot of Mars 2020s trajectory.

Each time a suitable number of matches is made in an image, in either Course or Fine Landmark Matching, LVS updates where the spacecraft is at that moment, said Johnson. That update is then fed into the Safe Target Selection system.

This second part of the Terrain-Relative Navigation system uses LVSs position solution, calculates where it will land and then compares it to another onboard map, this one depicting areas within the landing zone understood to be either good for landing or the kind with craters, cliffsides, boulders or rocks fields. If the plotted location isnt suitable, Safe Target Selection can change the rovers destiny, moving its landing point by up to 2,000 feet (600 meters).

While Safe Target Selection operations can be investigated in a computer testbed within the confines of JPL, to gather optical data, the team needed to go farther afield: the Mojave Desert and Death Valley.

Over three weeks in April and May of 2019, LVS flew 17 flights attached to the front of a helicopter, taking and processing image after image over the Mars-like terrain of Kelso Dunes, Hole-in-the-Wall, Lava Tube, Badwater, Panamint Valley and Mesquite Flat Dunes.

We flew flight after flight, imitating the descent profile of the spacecraft, said Johnson. In each flight we performed multiple runs. Each run essentially imitated a Mars landing.

All in all, the equivalent of 659 Mars landings took place during the test flights.

The data is in TRN works, said Chen. Which is a good thing because Jezero is where our scientists want to be. And without TRN, the odds of successful landing at a good location for the rover are approximately 85%. With TRN, we feel confident we are up around 99%.

But Chen is also quick to note that Mars is hard: Only about 40% of all missions sent to Mars by any space agency have successfully landed.

To go farther we have to look to the past, and in that respect who better than the first? said Chen. In an interview some 35 years after Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong said, I think we tried very hard not to be overconfident. Because when you get overconfident, thats when something snaps up and bites you.'

Mindful of that, the Mars 2020 TRN teams work will conclude only on February 18, 2021, a little after 12 p.m. PST (3 p.m. EST), when their rover alights on Jezero Crater. But it is also just a beginning: Terrain-Relative Navigations autonomous precision guidance could prove essential to landing humans safely on both the Moon and Mars.TRN could also be useful for landing equipment in multiple drops ahead of a human crew on either world or others to be explored down the road.

JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

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A Neil Armstrong for Mars: Landing the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover - SciTechDaily

It can be hard to conceptualize the total damage caused by Alzheimer's. The neurodegenerative disease is a leading cause of death in the U.S., killing more than 100,000 people each year. And as Alzheimer's progresses in the brain it not only erodes memory but also causes troubling symptoms like agitation, paranoia, and aggression.

These burdens fall not only on patients but also on their loved ones, doctors, and caregivers. Economically, the cost of caring for Alzheimer's patients hit an estimated $305 billion in 2020, according to a report from the Alzheimer's Association. And that figure doesn't include an estimated $244 billion in unpaid caregiving provided by family and friends.

The number of Alzheimer's patients in the U.S. is expected to double by 2050, affecting about 14 million people. That's one reason why hospitals and health professionals are already working to bolster how they care for the elderly and Alzheimer's patients. It takes 15 years to develop new treatments, so today's research needs adequate funding.

"Caring for our older adults is a big responsibility, one that we take great pride in," said Michael Dowling, president and CEO of Northwell Health. "Our aging population will face health issues, including and especially Alzheimer's, that will require the right care at the right time. That's why we have increased our services, including at Glen Cove Hospital, and research at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research."

... the real suffering comes from the changes that happen in the personality...

What causes Alzheimers disease?

While the costs of Alzheimer's are clear, its exact causes remain frustratingly mysterious. Currently, there's no cure for the disease, nor treatments that stop its progression.

"Alzheimer's is this brain problem, and everyone sort of knows what's probably causing the problem, but nobody's been able to do anything about it," said Dr. Jeremy Koppel, a geriatric psychiatrist and co-director of the Litwin-Zucker Alzheimer Research Center.

But in recent decades, researchers have zeroed in on likely contributors to the disease. The brains of Alzheimer's patients reliably show two abnormalities: build-ups of proteins called abnormal tau and beta-amyloid. As these proteins accumulate in the brain, they disrupt healthy communication between neurons. Over time, neurons get injured and die, and brain tissue shrinks.

Still, it's unclear exactly how these proteins, or other factors such as inflammation, may drive Alzheimer's.

"We are dealing with very complicated components," said Dr. Philippe Marambaud, a professor at the Feinstein Institutes and co-director of the Litwin-Zucker Alzheimer Research Center. "The actual culprit is not clearly defined. We know there are three possible culprits [tau, beta-amyloid, inflammation]. They're working in concert, or maybe in isolation. We don't know precisely."

Many Alzheimer's researchers have spent years developing therapies that target beta-amyloid, which can accumulate to form plaques in the brain. The Alzheimer's Association writes:

"According to the amyloid hypothesis, these stages of beta-amyloid aggregation disrupt cell-to-cell communication and activate immune cells. These immune cells trigger inflammation. Ultimately, the brain cells are destroyed."

Unfortunately, clinical trials of therapies that target beta-amyloid haven't been effective in treating Alzheimer's.

In brains with Alzheimer's disease, tau proteins lose their structure and form neurofibrillary tangles that block communication between synapses.

Credit: Adobe Stock

Currently, Feinstein Institutes researchers are conducting promising ongoing clinical trials with anti-tau antibodies, some of which are in phase III trials under the Food and Drug Administration. Patients receive these therapies intravenously over several hours and would undergo multiple rounds of treatment. It's similar to chemotherapy.

In the short term, it's more likely that anti-tau therapies would help to stabilize Alzheimer's, not cure it.

"Just stabilization of the disease's progression will save a huge societal, but also financial, burden," Dr. Marambaud said. "As research progresses, we would improve upon these stabilization approaches to make them more and more efficacious."

Even if anti-tau therapies don't prove to be the holy grail of Alzheimer's treatments, they could potentially alleviate severe behavioral symptoms of the disease, and potentially illuminate some of the mechanisms behind psychosis.

Credit: Getty Images

The future of Alzheimers treatments

Dr. Marambaud said the long-term goal of anti-tau immunotherapies is to prevent Alzheimer's. But that's currently impossible because scientists lack the biomarkers and diagnostic tools needed to detect the disease before cognitive symptoms appear. It could take decades before prevention becomes possible, if it ever does.

In the short term, stabilizing Alzheimer's is a more realistic goal.

"Our hope is that the treatments will be aggressive enough so that we can at least stabilize the disease in patients identified to be already affected by dementia, with cognitive tests that can be done by the clinicians," Dr. Marambaud said. "And even better, maybe reduce the cognitive impairments."

Dr. Marambaud said he encourages the public not to lose faith.

"Be patient. It's a very complicated disease," he said. "A lot of labs are really committed to making a difference. Congress has also realized that this is a huge priority. In the past five years, [National Institutes of Health] funding has increased tremendously. So the scientific field is working very hard. The politicians are behind us in funding this research. And it's a complicated disease. But we will make a difference in the years to come."

In the meantime, the Alzheimer's Association notes that physical activity and a healthy diet can reduce the chances of developing Alzheimer's, though more large-scale studies are needed to better understand how these factors interact with the disease.

"Many of these lifestyle changes have been shown to lower the risk of other diseases, like heart disease and diabetes, which have been linked to Alzheimer's," the association wrote. "With few drawbacks and plenty of known benefits, healthy lifestyle choices can improve your health and possibly protect your brain."

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NASA's Perseverance rover lands on Mars in 18 days - Big Think

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), on Jan. 31, 2021. This image is upside-down because of the orientation of MAHLI when it was taken. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. Download image

Today were doing another touch-and-go, fitting in a little bit of everything. And while we are planning for tomorrow on Mars, the science team is also busily analyzing the results of the triboelectric experiment that Curiosity did over the weekend (see the sol 3017 blog for details), looking at the images like the upside-down MALHI (shown), which are both beautiful and important for science. The image is upside-down because of the orientation of MAHLI when it was taken the arm was extended almost straight up, like a periscope, to get the desired angle of view; and to point back toward the sands from that position, the MAHLI camera needed to be upside-down.

First up in the plan is contact science with MAHLI and APXS on a bedrock target named Lunas, as part of our regular tracking of bedrock composition and changes. The target was a little tough to pick in order to avoid some discolored areas and the veins and try to get a good representation of the bedrock itself.

After we stow the arm, the rover will take several targeted science observations, including a ChemCam RMI mosaic of the sulfate unit and a large Mastcam mosaic of the contact with the sulfate unit. We are also doing some environment observations, including a crater rim extinction and a long dust devil movie.

The drive in todays plan is aiming to park us just before we transition out of the fractured intermediate unit (and before we enter the fractured rubbly unit). Once we get back into the rubbly unit, the driving will get a little bit tougher for the Rover Planners, because there are a lot more small and medium sized rocks that well need to avoid to minimize wheel wear. But, for this short drive of about 25 meters, the terrain is flat and clear of major hazards. The plan is to park where we can do one last contact science observation of this unit before leaving it behind. We are taking advantage of the short distance of the drive and the arm will be unstowed at the parking location. Well be taking extra workspace and drive direction imaging at this location as our last look at the unit.

On the second sol of the plan, we have more of our standard environmental observations, including another dust devil movie and a suprahorizon movie with navcam in the morning, and a long Mastcam sky survey and solar tau in the afternoon. Were also throwing in a late-afternoon Navcam optics monitoring activity to help us track the dust on the cameras.

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Sols 3020-3021: Saying Goodbye to the Fractured Intermediate Unit NASA's Mars Exploration Program - NASA Mars Exploration

A Department of Energy (DoE) physicist has a new nuclear fusion rocket concept that uses magnetic fields to make thrust. Its a far-out idea that could carry astronauts to Mars.

You like nuclear. So do we. Let's nerd out over nuclear together.

The mechanism is already at play in Earths nuclear fusion reactors, as well as the solar flares of the sun. Could we really use linking and unlinking magnetic fields to make the long trip to the red planet?

The device would apply magnetic fields to cause particles of plasma, electrically charged gas also known as the fourth state of matter, to shoot out the back of a rocket and, because of the conservation of momentum, propel the craft forward, DoEs Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) said in a statement.

Think of a person sitting in a wheelie office chair holding a huge Roman candle. When you light the firework, the chair is propelled by the outpouring of directional energy.

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Physicist Fatima Ebrahimi first thought of the idea after hearing of the speeds that particles reach inside PPPLs national Spherical Torus Experiment, a tokamak reactor. During its operation, this tokamak produces magnetic bubbles called plasmoids that move at around 20 kilometers per second, which seemed to me a lot like thrust, she said in the statement. Her thruster basically works as a tokamak with one side cut out to release energy.

Fatima Ebrahimi/PPPL/arXiv

Fusion reactor experiments are popular on Earth as the next generation of nuclear energy technology, but none has created more power than it uses ... yet. Spaceflight is a popular additional use case for plasma fusion ideas because fusion technology can, hypothetically, stay pretty lightweight while generating a ton of thrust. High-temperature elements in plasma form are confined and selectively released to propel a spacecraft.

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Ebrahimis device has three key differences from other designs in the mix, PPPL says. First, it uses electromagnets to adjust the thrust, like a magnetic gas pedal that astronauts could use to increase or decrease velocity. Second, this design uses both traditional plasma and an additional material called plasmoidsthese greatly increase the thrust potential.

And finally, Ebrahimis device design is flexible to work with any gaseous element, meaning both lighter, smaller atoms of gas and bigger, heavier ones. This gives spacefaring groups the option to choose different kinds of burns for longer or shorter flights, for example.

[C]omputer simulations performed on PPPL computers [...] showed that the new plasma thruster concept can generate exhaust with velocities of hundreds of kilometers per second, 10 times faster than those of other thrusters, PPPL says. That means the thruster could shorten the longest flight times by a factor of 10, bringing many more destinations into our field of feasibility.

This would also help to address a major factor that stands between humans and longer spaceflights: the cosmic radiation that will permeate almost any spacecraft. The faster we can travel in the dangerous radiation of space, the less astronauts will be exposed. Faster travel will reduce other, less tangible human costs, like the psychological and physical toll of long stays in interplanetary space.

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The Unusual Rocket Thruster That Will Send Humans to Mars - Popular Mechanics

A new convoy of low-flying satellites could beam high-speed internet to the rural Midwest later this year as a test run for launching broadband to Mars.

Joey Bahr walks out to the front of his yard along a blacktop county road. He stops in a ditch and points to an orange-and-black sign that marks a buried fiber-optic cable. But for Bahr, the cable running beneath his feet is off-limits. Its owned by a neighboring internet service provider and is merely passing through on its way to a nearby town.

Its just maddening, Bahr said. Were at the end of the line basically.

Joey Bahr stands near a sign marking the buried cable that he can't tap into for his home internet, even though it travels through his property. (Photo by David Condos, Kansas News Service)

Bahrs story illustrates just how out-of-reach broadband remains for tens of millions of people in rural America.Nearly 10% of Nebraska households roughly 78,000 still dont have access to high-speed internet. Yet the promise of a future with broadband for all those in the rural Midwest, no matter how remote, might rest in the wide-open skies over the Bahrs home and a plan to send Wi-Fi to a future Mars colony.

Beaming the internet down from satellites might leapfrog the logistical and financial barriers that leave so many rural homes and those just outside the city limits on the wrong side of the digital divide. But to do that, the next generation of satellite internet service will need to be better than the space-based stuff thats been around for a while.

Existing satellite internet is better than nothing, said Daniel Andresen, a computer science professor at Kansas State University, but thats about all you can say about it.

He said customers often have to deal with web pages that load slowly due to bottlenecked bandwidth and video calls that appear choppy because of high latency, or lag times. They sometimes lose service completely if there is rain or snow.

Andresen said Kansans who live in towns even very small towns can generally skip satellite internet and connect their homes with fiber, cable or DSL.

But if somebody wants to live ... two miles outside of town, Andresen said, good luck getting any of the above.

The basic problem is that its not usually worth it to internet providers to string broadband lines out to places where people dont live close to each other. Each mile of fiber costs more than $27,000 to install. That might pay off in Wichita, which has 2,300 potential users per square mile, but not so much in Great Bends Barton County, with only 31 people per square mile.

Andresen says that leaves rural Kansans behind, especially as the pandemic moves so much of Americans personal and professional lives online.

Joey Bahr holds a map that shows how close his home is (represented by a blue dot) to a neighboring internet service area that offers cable broadband. (Photo by David Condos, Kansas News Service)

It used to be that, Internet access is kind of nice, but you go into town once a week and use the librarys and its fine, Andresen said. Now, its vital.

New 5G cellular technology might improve wireless internet speeds for some rural homes, but Andresen said its only likely to help someone who already has good 4G coverage. The high-frequency wavelengths that enable 5Gs fast speeds dont travel as far as 4G waves. And a tree or hill in the wrong place could block the signal.

5G could turn kind-of-haves into haves, but wont turn have-nots into haves, Andresen said. You end up with a situation where good connectivity tends to be pretty much no matter how much money youre willing to fling at it unavailable.

But the richest man on the planet, Elon Musk, has a plan to send humans to Mars. And almost accidentally, that plan might just open the door to getting a better YouTube feed to the ranches and farms of Kansas.

For Elon Musks aerospace endeavor, SpaceX, the Starlink project is part fundraiser, part test run. The company needs money from internet customers to fund its ambitions in the heavens, like space tourism and colonizing the red planet. SpaceX also wants to deliver high-speed internet to those future Martians who, like the people of rural Kansas, will be spread across a sparsely populated landscape.

Unlike traditional satellites that sit roughly 22,000 miles out into space, Starlink satellites beam data from a mere 340 miles above the Earth. Theoretically, these low-Earth orbit satellites could provide even better speeds than wired internet because light travels 50% faster through the vacuum of space than it does through the glass of fiber-optic cables.

So far, SpaceX has launched about 1,000 satellites floating above a thin strip of the U.S.- Canadian border. Kansans should be able to try Starlink for themselves later this year when SpaceX activates another belt of satellites over the Midwest.

But travel three states to the north of here, and that internet future already exists.

The speeds and the latency theyre advertising appear to be holding true, said North Dakota Chief Technology Officer Duane Schell. So, yeah, theres a lot of excitement about it.

Schell is talking with SpaceX about testing Starlink in state parks and wildlife management areas in North Dakota, where Starlink satellites already cover most of the state. But he also sees it as a way to shore up the future of the states rural economy, from telecommuting to high-tech farming.

Without that broadband, Schell said, youre simply not going to be able to compete.

Starlink isnt alone on the mission to bring satellite broadband to remote places like western Kansas. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos hired a former SpaceX executive to lead his companys satellite internet venture, Project Kuiper. HughesNet, already a major satellite internet provider in rural America, partnered with OneWeb to power a network of 650 satellites by the end of this year.

Derek Smashey, a financial analyst with Scout Investments in Kansas City, said satellite internet could eventually serve 15-20% of the population. So, Starlinks $99 monthly fees could cover the projects estimated $10 billion price tag.

It looks to us like that could be a $20 billion-plus dollar market just in the United States alone, Smashey said. I wouldnt want to bet against people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

Eventually, SpaceX plans to build a constellation of Starlink satellites that deliver broadband not only to rural America, but also to arctic research stations, tanker ships at sea and other remote locations around the globe. The company has federal approval to launch 12,000 satellites and has already filed paperwork for 30,000 more 10 times the number in the sky now.

But that worries some people who like the sky the way it is.

The thought of having to see the stars through a grid of crawling satellites, thats pretty horrifying to me, said Samantha Lawler, an astronomy professor at the University of Regina in Canada. This isnt like light pollution from a city where you can go camping in the mountains and see the stars perfectly. ... It will be everywhere.

Lawler lives on a farm in rural Saskatchewan, where shes teaching classes via video using a home hotspot similar to what Joey Bahr uses in Kansas. But shes afraid that advancing our connection to the internet could come at the expense of losing our connection to the stars.

An image from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory showing at least 19 streaks that astronomers quickly surmised were Starlink satellites. (Photo credit CTIO/NOIRLAB/NSF/AURA/DECAM DELVE SURVEY)

Humans have looked up at the stars since the dawn of humanity, Lawler said. Thats just sucha huge part of being human that we are very much in danger of losing.

In Barton County, Kansas, Joey Bahr said living in a place where his three sons can gaze up at the night sky was one of the reasons he and his wife, Anita, moved out here seven years ago. But living here means they have to connect to the internet through a cell tower a few miles away and try to stay under their data cap of 15 gigabytes per month.

It would take about six of those gigabytes to stream a single two-hour HD movie. If they go over that limit, he said their internet speeds can slow down to 600 kilobytes per second roughly 2% of the minimum speed in the federal definition of broadband.

The family reached a breaking point when their son tested positive for COVID-19 in the fall. Bahr and his wife suddenly needed to work from home, and their son used an iPad from school to keep up with his lessons. They decided to spend $200 on a second mobile hotspot just to get through the four-week quarantine.

Its a beautiful place. I love it, Bahr said of their property. Unfortunately, we are in kind of aninternet no-mans-land right now.

David Condos covers western Kansas for High Plains Public Radio and the Kansas News Service. You can follow him on Twitter @davidcondos..The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy. For more stories from the Kansas News Service, visitksnewsservice.org.

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How Elon Musk And A Mission To Mars Might Boost Internet Speeds In The Rural Midwest | netnebraska.org - NET Nebraska

UAE Mars Mission Image Credit:

Dubai: Aside from the UAEs Hope Probe, two more Mars missions are expected to rendezvous with the Red Planet this month.

Hope Probe, the first Arab interplanetary mission, will be the first to reach Mars on February 9 at 7.42pm (UAE time), to be followed by Chinas Tianwen-1 dual orbiter-rover on February 10, while Perseverance rover by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) will make a landing attempt in an area on Mars on February 18.

All three Mars missions were launched in July last year and each has its own mission to explore the Red Planet.

But why do we need to study our neighbouring planet Mars?

Other than our own Earth, Mars is the most explored planet in our solar system. Several missions have been sent to Mars and humans have been looking for answers to these fundamental questions: Did Mars once have life on it? What is the climate history of Mars? How did Mars evolve from its original state? Should Mars be the next destination for humans?

As a planetary orbiter, Hope Probe is expected to collect more than one terabyte (1,000GB) of new data, which will be shared with more than 200 academic and scientific institutions around the world for free. Hope Probe, with its three scientific instruments, will map a complete portrait of the Martian atmosphere and evaluate its seasonal and daily changes.

By studying the connection between current Martian weather and the ancient climate of the Red Planet, scientists will have deeper insights into the past and future of the Earth as well as the potential for human settlement on Mars and other planetary objects.

Scientists will understand the weather and learn how Mars lost some of its atmosphere over billions of years of its planetary history. Substantial geophysical evidence suggests that Mars was once a much warmer and more humid world, with a lot of liquid water on its surface that could have been optimal for some form of life to evolve.

Comparing Mars with Earth weather

But before talking about colonising the Red Planet and considering it for human habitat, there is an immediate reason for exploring Mars and that is to have a more comprehensive understanding of Earths weather.

In a recent interview with Gulf News, Maryam Yousuf, Hope Probe Science data analyst, said: Our goal is to study the diurnal (daily) data and investigate the atmosphere of Mars, which has never been done before. Studying Mars atmosphere will help us understand the atmosphere of other planets and provide a more comprehensive understanding of Earths weather.

Having day-to-night coverage of Mars atmosphere will give us advantage of knowing what happened to Mars ancient wet environment which has now become dry. We will also observe Mars weather phenomena, including its massive dust storms and compare these with dust storms here on Earth, Yousuf explained.

She added the data that will be collected by Hope Probe will provide scientists a deeper understanding of climate dynamics and also shed light on how energy and particles, like oxygen and hydrogen, have moved through the atmosphere and escaped Mars. This can be applied to understand the future of Earth.

Evidence oflife on Mars?

In a forum late last year organised by the Sharjah Research Technology and Innovation Park (SRTI Park), where NASA scientists and UAE engineers discussed why and how humans can get to Mars, Dr James Green, chief scientist at NASA, said the various Mars missions would look for evidence of past life on Mars.

He noted Mars has water in underground aquifers and frozen glaciers. It used to be a blue planet (like Earth) and its water may be down to only 13 per cent of what it used to have, but it is a wonderful resource to explore the planet, he added.

Green also explained one promising indication of life on Mars is that every summer, the planet gets grassy and the amount of methane gas present at the surface increases dramatically. The Curiosity Rover on Mars also detected molecular oxygen, which increases each spring and summer by up to 30 per cent before dropping again in the fall. That tells us life may be underground during the summer the soils heat and therefore loosen up such that the methane can leak out. We have all kinds of circumstantial observations that perhaps Mars has microbial life too, he continued.

Inspiring the youth

For the Emirati engineers, scientists and analysts who are part of the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM), reaching Mars is about moving and inspiring the youth. Omran Sharaf, EMM Project Director, said the space project is not just about reaching Mars theres much more to it. Hope Probes success will create a disruptive change and a positive impact at home that will inspire not just the Emirati but the entire Arab youth.

During a press conference at Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) one week before Hope Probes expected meet-up with Mars, Sharaf said Hope Probe will not only make history as the first Arab interplanetary mission to reach Mars, the spacecraft will also be a showcase of the growing UAE space programme and Emirati design and engineering.

He noted the system, design and programme for Hope Probes deep space operation are all Emirati-made, in line with the directive from the UAE leadership to build and not to buy.

Global cooperation

Sarah Al Amiri, Minister of State for Advanced Technology and Chair of the UAE Space Agency, said in previous interviews Hope Probe mission has not only spurred a burgeoning scientific awakening in the UAE, it has also demonstrated the countrys commitment to global cooperation on space exploration.

She said: The UAE Mars mission opens new scientific horizons and turns the UAE into a knowledge-exporting country instead of an importer of knowledge, sharing with the world for the first time, unprecedented data that will be captured by Hope Probe.

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UAE Mars Mission: Why study the Red Planet? - Gulf News

Mars, Inc. has launched #HereToBeHeard, a campaign to raise the voices of women and advance gender equality in businesses and the workplace.

As part of the companysFull Potentialplatform for action on gender equity in its workplaces, sourcing communities, and the marketplace, #HereToBeHeard asks women everywhere: What needs to change so more women can reach their full potential? The responses will inform the concrete actions Mars will take both within its value chain and in broader society to close the gender opportunity gap.

Victoria Mars, Mars Board Member and ambassador of Mars Full Potential program:Women have played a powerful role in our history and leadership at Mars. But we have more to do. Were striving to empower more women within our workplace, and across our extended value chain.

The magnitude and urgency of gender inequality in society demands more action. If global business doesnt listen and step up now, then when? Business can have an outsized impact on driving change at scale. At Mars were seizing this opportunity to expand the conversation and drive action. The #HereToBeHeard movement is about ensuring that all womens voices have a chance to be heard and translating what we hear into impact plans that advance gender equality.

To kick off the conversation, Emmy award-winning actress and hostTamera Mowry-Housleyjoins a roster of inspiring women influencers includingPoppy Jamie,HaniSidow,Helen Wu&KellieGerardiwho will lend their experiences and invite women to share their voices and vision at beheard.mars.com.

Emmyaward-winningactress and hostTamera Mowry-Housley:Its unacceptable that so many women continue to face disproportionate barriers and roadblocks at work, at home and in their daily lives. If were really going to ensure every woman reaches her full potential, we have to consider the diversity of our backgrounds, our talents and our experiences. All our voices deserve to be heard.

I think its brave for a major corporation like Mars to say weve not done enough and that its time to listen up. Thats why Im excited to help Mars elevate the voices of many of the women who go unheard.

Currently, women make up 51 percent of the worlds population and could contribute$28 trillionto the global GDP, and yet so often their voicesgounheard. Even before the COVID-19 crisis, the United Nations estimatedit would take more than a century to close the gender opportunity gap. Now, the pandemic has set progress for gender equality back by 25 years. Its impact has been particularlydevastatingfor women in minority groups who for far too long have been overlooked in the conversation.

The initial phase of #HeretoBeHeard, where womens voices will be collected, will run through March; after which the submissions will be analyzed by the Oxford Future of Marketing Initiative (FOMI) atOxford UniversitysSad Business School. The results will be shared with the world in a study byOxfordthis summer and will inform the action plans of Mars Full Potential platform, including policies Mars can implement and advocate for in its commitment to unlock opportunities for women.

Launched last year, the Full Potential program aims to drive gender equality for all through a range of actions. By putting inclusivity and diversity at the heart of its efforts, Mars has:

We want to hear your voice. Visit beheard.mars.com to learn more, complete the short survey and continue the conversation with #HereToBeHeard.

The #HereToBeHeard Hub can also be found in the following translations:

#HereToBeHeard Quotes for Attribution

CEO of CARE,Michelle Nunn:In our work with Mars in the cocoa-growing communities in Cte dIvoire andGhana, we see first-hand how the voices of women are suppressed. Many face poor access to education, a lack of opportunity to gain dignified work and in some cases violence. At CARE we strongly believe that women should be given the simple right to voice their opinion on how to make the world a better place. That is why we are very proud to lend our voice to Mars #HereToBeHeard campaign.

Madeline Di Nonno, Chief Executive Officer of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media:We are proud tosupport #HereToBeHeard, an important global campaign which aims to give women and girls the opportunity to have their say. #SeeitBeit!

ProfessorAndrew Stephen, Associate Dean of Research, LOral Professor of Marketing and Director of FOMI at Oxford Sad: Were delighted to welcome Mars to the Oxford Future of Marketing Initiative, and thrilled to be working with them on #HereToBeHeard. The work will help to address elements of gender inequality in business and will inform tools and actions to help address these imbalances. We hope that these findings will become part of a meaningful and evergreen resource for the public and other communities in business and beyond.

ABOUT #HERETOBEHEARD#HereToBeHeard is a global campaign from Mars, Incorporated which drives change on gender inequality, in support of Goal Five of the UNs Sustainable Development Goals. It is part of Full Potential, Mars platform for action on gender which aims to empower women and close the gender gap in the places we work, the communities where we source our ingredients and in the way we create our advertising. For more information on the Full Potential platform and the #HereToBeHeard survey, visit beheard.mars.com andmars.com

For more information about Mars, please visitwww.mars.com. Join us onFacebook,Twitter,LinkedIn,InstagramandYouTube.

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Mars Aims to Empower Women With #HereToBeHeard Project - Philanthropy Women

FP TrendingFeb 03, 2021 19:11:24 IST

Rocks from the Gale Crater in Mars havegiven researchers a glimpse into whatthe region was like more than 3 billion years ago, and a new study suggests seasons in the crater must have been like those in Iceland today. A team of Rice University scientists compared data of the Gale Crater collected by the Curiosity rover with places on Earth with similar geologic formations. They made sure that these regions have experienced weathering in different climates. The comparison study found that Icelands terrain and temperature was the closest match to that of ancient Mars.

According to a statementfromRice University, temperature had the biggest impact on how rocks formed on the neighbouring planet all those years ago. Sediments were deposited by ancient Martian streams in the crater and these sediments weathered by climate over time. Now, Icelands basaltic terrain and cool weather where temperatures do not go above 38 degree Fahrenheit (3.3 degrees Celsius) is quite a reflection of the Martian phenomenon.

The landing site for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity was chosen for giving the mission access to examine the lower layers of a mountain inside Gale Crater. Image: NASA

The study was published in the journal JGR Planets and uses data from varying terrains on Earth like in Iceland, Idaho and other regions. While data collected from the NASA Curiosity rover was able to answer details about the chemical and physical states of mudstones formed in an ancient lake in Mars, it was not enough to suggest the possible climate conditions when the sediment eroded upstream. It is known that the crater housed a lake, but it is not known whether the planet was home to mostly rivers and lakes or snow and glaciers.

Michael Thorpe, who was part of study,explained that sedimentary rocks in Gale Crater suggest the actual climate was somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. The ancient climate was likely frigid but also appears to have supported liquid water in lakes for extended periods of time.

The researchers also said that similar techniques of comparing Mars samples with present day Earth can help us find a lot more and this can be done with the findings of Perseverance.

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Mars' Gale Crater 3 billion years ago resembled Iceland in terrain, temperature: study - Firstpost

As the countdown beigns for the first-ever Arab interplanetary mission to enter into the Red Planet's orbit, Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) said today that Hope Probe is now in its most critical stage as the spacecraft is set to enter into Mars orbit on February 9 at 7.42 pm UAE time.

Also read: UAE's Hope probe to reach Mars orbit in less than 2 weeks

At an MBRSC briefing on Tuesday, Omran Sharaf, Project Director of Emirates Mars Mission, said the Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI) is at a critical stage when the Hope Probe will have to slowdown sufficiently to enter into Mars orbit. As it approaches the orbit, the spacecraft will use its thrusters to reduce its speed.

"Precision is fundamental to success to avoid, God Forbid, Hope Probe crashing on Mars or missing its orbit and getting lost in deep space," he added.

"The design, system and software that will be used for the MOI are all Emirati-made. This is in line with the directive from the UAE leadership to build and not to buy," he added.

The Hope probes complex maneuver on February 9 will be the most critical part of the mission that will see the spacecraft rapidly reducing its speed from 121,000km/h to 18,000km/h to enter Mars orbit.

Upon arriving to Mars, after travelling 493 million km, in a seven-month journey since its launch on July 20, 2020 from Tanegashima Island in Japan, the probe will provide the first-ever complete picture of the Martian atmosphere.

The unmanned spacecraft will explore the climactic dynamics of the Red Planet in daily and seasonal timescales for a full Martian year (687 earth days), an endeavour that has never been pursued by any previous mission.

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UAEs Hope Probe at most critical phase ahead of landing on Mars - Khaleej Times

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on February 1 revealed an ambitious plan to get humans on Mars by 2026, which is seven years before US space agency NASA aims to land astronauts on the Red planet. While speaking on the audio-only social media app Clubhouse, Musk said that his goal was to establish a self-sustaining Martian civilisation. For the first time, he mentioned a time-line and said that he will get humans on the Red Planet in five and a half years.

Musks deadline seems little ambitious as there is a long way to go. SpaceX is still working to finalise the prototypes, with a second high-altitude test flight due soon. Even NASA aims to get first humans on the Red Planet in 2033. It is also worth mentioning that it currently takes at least six months to get to Mars, however, Musk believes that could be down to as little as a month, with flights operating every two years.

READ:Price Of Bitcoin Jumps Again As Elon Musk Says The Cryptocurrency Is A 'good Thing'

While speaking on Clubhouse, the SpaceX CEO went on to say that over time one can make Mars Earth-like by transforming the planet by warming it up. He said that the first colony will be a tiny, dangerous, frontier-like environment as they begin to establish propellant manufacturing, food production and power plants. He said that there are a number of technological advances that need to be made between now and 2026 before humans can travel to Mars on Starship.

Further, when asked if he would allow his children to go to the Red planet on a future rocket trip, Musk said, if were talking about the third or fourth set of landings on Mars Id be ok with that. He added that so far none of them are jumping to go to Mars.

READ:Elon Musk's 'Cyborg Monkey' Triggers Memes, Netizens Say 'Planets Of Apes Has Begun'

Meanwhile, the latest 'SN9' Starship prototype is due to undergo a high altitude test flight in the coming days - similar to the test in December that ended in an explosion. The scientists are going to check how this prototype performs. SpaceX is aiming to launch the SN9 at the speed of 15 km, which is much higher than the speed used by any rocketto date. The previousthree engine prototypes named Star hopper, SN5,SN6 attained a minimum altitude of 500 during the test flight. The test flights were conducted in the past year. Elon Musk wants to use his SpaceX mission to help humanity and also plans to create a "Colony of Humans" on Mars.

Back in November, the tech mogul had even said that he wants to make his own laws on the Red planet. Musk said that once SpaceX reachesMars,it will colonize the planet as there are no universal laws on the planet. All Martian settlement will be dealt with using "self-governing principles, Musk said in a document that lists Terms of Service of its Starlink internet project, declaring himself the governing entity in space. Further, the rocket company's satellite-based internet service, Starlink suggests that it will not recognize the land-based international law that governs Earth on the red planet.

READ:'People Demand Answers': Elon Musk Grills Robinhood CEO Over GameStop Stock Drama

READ:Elon Musk Claims He Has 'a Monkey With Brain Implant To Play Video Games'

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Elon Musk reveals ambitious plans to get humans to Mars seven years ahead of NASA - Republic World

Elon Musk has mentioned his plans of taking humans to Mars for a while - and he finally has a timeline for it.

Elon Musk, the SpaceX and Tesla boss, appeared on the exclusive audio-only Clubhouse app Sunday night, joining The Good Time Show to talk all things Mars, memes and monkeys playing video-games in their heads.

About Mars specifically, for the first time ever, Musk has mentioned a time-line to get humans on the red planet. "Five and a half years," Musk told hosts Sriram Krishnan and Aarthi Ramamurthy at the beginning of the show, reports CNET.

While that's not a hard deadline. Musk listed a number of caveats -- there's a raft of technological advances that must be made in the intervening years.

"The important thing is that we establish Mars as a self-sustaining civilization," he said.

The strange thing is the deadline may be a little ambitious, as even USA's leading space agency, NASA, had a much more different date, one which is seven years after Musk's time. The Perseverance uncrewed rover will arrive later this month to take rock samples and search for signs of ancient life on the Red Planet - but the first humans aren't due to arrive on a NASA funded rocket until at least 2033.

That will be part of the Artemis - to the Moon and Mars - mission that will first see a sustainable presence established on the lunar surface.

Musk also answered other questions about Mars. 'Over time you can make Mars Earth like by terraforming the planet by warming it up,' said Musk.

When asked if he would allow his children to go to Mars on a future rocket trip he said 'if we're talking about the third or fourth set of landings on Mars I'd be ok with that,' adding that 'so far none of them are jumping to go to Mars'.

This isn't the first time Musk has spoken about civilization on Mars. A report in November last year found that SpaceX will not be recognising any international law on Mars and will instead follow a set of self-governing principles that will be laid down during the Martian settlement.

Elon Musk appears to have very subtly slipped in a clause into the terms of agreement of Starlink satellite broadband services that SpaceX will make its own set of rules on Mars.

The Starlink terms of agreement reads: For services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship, or other colonisation spacecraft, the parties recognise Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. Accordingly, disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.

Maybe with its own laws, Musk wanted to beat NASA at reaching the red planet from the start. If that's the case, he's right about his time: getting there much ahead of NASA.

Excerpt from:

Elon Musk Shares Plan of Getting Humans to Mars By 2026. That's 7 Years Ahead of NASA - News18

Gov. Tom Wolf picked the big lumber off his policy bat rack Wednesday, unveiling a $37.8 billion state budget proposal that calls for the kind of sweeping change that he started his tenure in office with six years ago.

Wolf proposed a major tax reform that also - and unfortunately for the governor and his allies - can be accurately described by his Republican critics as the single-biggest income tax increase ever seen in Pennsylvania, even though it would only ask the top one-third of state wage earners to pay more, according to the administrations numbers.

He has proposed a transformative increase in funding to Pennsylvanias public schools, boosting the main budget line for state aid that districts can use to support their basic education programs by $1.35 million, with a major shift in the formula that drives out those dollars to one that puts schools on more equitable footing.

He proposed a quick-turnaround, $3 billion investment in a variety of economic development programs designed to help Pennsylvania build back better, as President Joe Biden might say, from the pandemic-fueled recession; this one funded by a new severance tax on Marcellus Shale natural gas production.

You have to admire the guys ability to go into the policy laboratory and come up with ambitious ideas. But you might also wonder about his ability to read the political tea leaves in Harrisburg.

Pa. Gov. Tom Wolf delivered his ambitious $37.8 billion state budget proposal that did not draw many fans in the Republican majorities in the Legislature.Feb. 3, 2021Screenshot from Commonwealth Media Services video

Wolf, on this day, certainly rallied the spirits of his fellow Democrats, who felt like their policy requests were heard. They are convinced in the rightness of Wolfs plan, and now must hope they and Wolf can figure out a way to sell this as a tax cut wrapped in a $3 billion tax increase.

Theres no wrong time to do the right thing, said House Minority Whip Jordan Harris, D-Philadelphia. Members are going to have to go back to their districts and say where they are on one of the largest tax cuts for working Pennsylvanians.

The cut Harris refers to is embedded within the increase proposed in the personal income tax rate, from 3.07 percent now, to 4.49 percent as of July 21. Because of a dramatic expansion of the states tax forgiveness program that exempts some income from lower-wage workers, the administration says about 40 percent of all filers will see a cut in what they owe.

It [the tax cuts and school funding gains] shouldnt be the fine print, agreed Senate Democratic floor leader Jay Costa of Allegheny County. It should be discussed as part of a solution to a crisis that were dealing with in our schools - the funding - but also our structural deficit that we have.

Wolfs budget would have been pitch perfect were he delivering it in Albany, N.Y., Trenton, N.J., Hartford, Conn, or some of those other Eastern state capitals where the Democratic Party controls both the governors office and the Legislature. This, though, is Pennsylvania, where no Democratic governor has had even one chamber of the Legislature in his corner since 2010. Does someone need to tell Tom?

We found lots of volunteers at the state Capitol Wednesday.

The bottom line is were in the middle of a pandemic, said Rep. Stan Saylor, R-Red Lion and the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. And hes proposing a tax increase to implement this thing right now. He didnt do it before the pandemic. But all of sudden when everybodys suffering, he wants to increase taxes to do this. I just find it an absurd time to be doing this.

You know, look, I know hes a liberal governor and everything else, Saylor continued. But come on, you have to have compassion for the people of this commonwealth.

The Republicans did their part to make clear that everyone knew that after all the tax shifting is done, an individual making more than $49,000 a year will see a tax increase, as will the parents in a family of four making $84,000 a year. Not to mention all of the small businesses across the state who are taxed through the personal income tax structure.

The big box stores do not care about increases to the personal income tax, added Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, R-Centre County. The mom-and-pop stores will bear the brunt of this proposal. Small employers and middle-class families are what drives economic recoveries. Governor Wolf has put yet another target on their backs.

What about all that the educational funding? In the schools community, they see the governors plan as something that could really lift quality of programming and instruction across the state.

But Corman raised another priority altogether.

Where [Wolfs] proposal on education to me lacked was giving parents options to find the best educational environment for their children, which is the most important thing in education, Corman said. We are going to be looking at ways to develop opportunities for parents, no matter where they are on the income ladder, to find an educational environment best fitting their children... not just trying to find more money for schools.

And spiking the severance tax has become a point of pride for many legislative Republicans through the Wolf years.

The balance of power in Harrisburg - after all that political drama of 2020 - hasnt really changed.

So what happened to that governor who trimmed his policy sails for the last four years, and seemed content to focus on areas where he could find common cause with the Republicans: public pension reforms, legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes, or permitting wine and beer sales in groceries?

Daniel Mallinson, a professor of public policy and administration at Penn State Harrisburg, suggested there may be a method to Wolfs 2021 madness, despite the hard nos hes hearing at the start. Its sort of the ask for full loaf, so you might be able to at least get enough bread to make a sandwich approach.

Both sides agree theres going to be a multi-billion dollar deficit [because of the hit the recession has put on tax collections], Mallinson said, so theres a window here where Governor Wolf can put out some of these bigger ideas he has and see if he can get any traction on any of them with the General Assembly.

It may end up that the governor might not get everything he wants. But hes going to use whatever leverage he can ... to try to pull Republicans away from where they are. That may bring up the palatability for things like marijuana [legalization] and severance tax, Mallinson said.

One great big wild card lurking in the shadows of everyones position - and one that could really stand this entire budget cycle on its head - is the possibility that the new Biden Administration may deliver on a large package of fiscal relief to state and local governments.

Such relief is a foundation piece of the aid package that Biden and his Democratic allies in Congress want to deliver, and it could bring billions of dollars to Pennsylvania, tax-free.

Time will tell how that works out.

But in the meantime, Wolf seemed to signal Tuesday that he wants to strive to be a little bit more than that manager / governor of the past several years.

The new 2021-22 legislative session marks the final half of Wolfs second and last term in office. Muhlenberg College political science professor Chris Borick said the last two years of a governors administration are tough because people are starting to look past you.

You layer that in with the challenge of crisis governing which has taken a toll on his standing. Hes had to make a lot of unpopular choices. Those choices have led to increased battles with the Legislature and diminished public standing. You bring all those things together and you think: OK what moves are available to him? One is to think big and come out and look for something thats impactful. Thats probably part of this, Borick said.

Wolf took advantage of the unique format of a video address Tuesday that was aimed, this year, as much at Pennsylvania voters and taxpayers as it was lawmakers, to appeal to Pennsylvanians to raise their voices and call your representatives if they agree their family would be better off in a Pennsylvania with fairer taxes and better schools.

I know that folks on the other side of the aisle are going to point to this budget and tell you all the things it does wrong or all of the things they dont like, Wolf said Tuesday. But you know what? Were not in the chamber today... So Im not talking to them. Im talking to you.

Public crusades on tax increases are hard to win in Pennsylvania.

If Wolf is to have any chance, Borick said its going to hinge on his ability to sell residents on the good that this plan could do for their school districts, which will see some of the biggest education subsidy increases in history, and could in turn, lower property taxes as well as possibly their personal income tax bills.

Given the proposed income levels where the personal income tax forgiveness and reduction are set, he pointed out some of the benefactors of the tax shift could include folks living in rural areas where lots of the Republican legislators are from. While the folks with higher incomes live in parts of the state that tend to vote much more Democratic will be the ones to bear the impact of the tax increase but see benefit from increased state subsidies for schools.

Id be shocked if thats not a big messaging point coming out of the governors office as they are pushing for it, Borick said.

But Republicans have their counter-argument all set.

Tax increases are not the answer. They never have been, said House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, R-Centre County. As you look out throughout history, no one has ever been able to tax themselves to prosperity.

Our caucus is about jobs, jobs and more jobs because we know and weve seen that a robust economy - like we had 10, 12 months ago - allows people to do the American dream. Go to work, earn a paycheck and be proudly able to go home and take care of their families, not just wait for other government dollars.

Charles Thompson may be reached at cthompson@pennlive.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ChasThompson1. Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy.

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As Pa. budget shows, the governor is from Venus, the Legislature is from Mars - PennLive

NASAhas been sending land rovers for nearly a decade on Mars to find more details about this red planet. The latest addition is the Perseverance, which will land on Mars on February 18. According to an article published on space.com, this land rover was launched by NASA by using the Atlas V Rocket on July 30, 2020. This land rover is a crucial part of the ambitious Mars 2020 mission, which is costing $2.7 billion.

Also read:'Brilliant Curtains Of Light': NASA Shares Pic Of Jupiter's Northern And Southern Auroras

According to space.com, the perseverance mars rover at present has a mission cycle of one Martian year, which is equivalent to 687 Earth days. It is 10 ten feet long, 7 feet tall, and 9 feet wide rover, which is nearly the size of a regular size car. The perseverance rover weighs 1050 kilograms and is weighed less than a regular car.

Also read:NASA Astronauts 'celebrate America' From ISS On Biden-Harris Inauguration Day

This Mars rover looks familiar as it is based on the design of the earlier Mars land rover named the Curiosity. The new rover comes with the framework based on this old model, and scientists at the Mars science laboratory used the old technology alongside new ones to create this new rover.

Also read:NASA DeclaresInsight mole Probe Defunct After It Fails To Burrow Mars 'deep Enough'

NASA released an official statement in 2017 regarding this land rover launched on Mars. Jim Watzin, who is the Director of the Mars Exploration Programme, said that reusing old hardware and models often helps NASA to minimize the chances of a failed mission and also cuts down the cost. Just like the Curiosity Land Rover, Perseverance also has six wheels, one robotic arm, and one hand alongside multiple cameras, machines, and a drill to collect rock samples from the surface of Mars.

It also has some advanced machines since it is ground-penetrating radar. It will dig holes on the Martian surface and will study and sample the rock layers, ice layers, and water layers up to 10 meters deep from the surface.

Also read:'Like Sands Through The Hourglass': NASA's Curiosity Rover Completes 3,000 Days On Mars

The mission of this new land rover is different than its predecessors. Its main mission is to find ifthere is anykind of life on Mars. It will try to find biosignatures on Mars from its past. TheX-ray spectrometer and the ultraviolet laser will aid this rover to find any traces of the erstwhile life forms living on Mars.

Also read:Did NASA Find New Planet? An Abandoned Gas-giant Planet With 3 Star System

Science.com quoted George Tahru, who is the executive head of the Perseverance mission, as saying, "Our next instruments will build on the success of MSL, which was a proving ground for new technology.". He also said that this mission would make it easy for the upcoming missions on Mars to find life on Earth.

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Car size Perseverance Rover to land on Mars soon, to start Red Planet exploration - Republic World

New York City quartet Signals of Bedlam have been pumping out hypnotic progressive/alt rock gems for roughly a decade. Comprised of vocalist Cero Cartera, bassist Chika Obiora, guitarist Tom Hoy, and drummer Rich Abidor, the quartet were drawn together by their affinity for noise (as Hoy puts it) and impeccable ability to marry aggressive theatrics with contemplative transitions. That blend of dexterity and passion resulted in two stellar LPs: 2013s No Gods, No Monsters and 2016s Escaping Velocity.

On February 26th, Signals of Bedlam are set to outdo themselves once again when their follow-up full-length, Liars Intuition, is unleashed. Luckily, fans wont have to wait until then to hear (and see) new material, as Signals of Bedlam have revealed the music video for the LPs fourth track, Red Sunflower. Unsurprisingly, its an awesome preview of what to expect.

The band describes the track as a group favorite and the most collectively challenging to realize. Cartera elaborates:

Each of us has a unique take on art, politics, religion, etc., and this has been an integral part of our creative process. We debate, deconstruct, challenge, and fight to the death (metaphorically) because we often have conflicting opinions. However, those conflicts have given us some of our favorite songs. Here, we have the story of a journey to find, at great personal risk, what was once easily within reach. Its a reflection of the behavior that led to this state.

Without a doubt, "Red Sunflower" sees them firing on all cylinders, with dynamic rhythms, multilayered destructive guitarwork, and powerfully emotive vocals colliding into an irresistible fusion reminiscent of Leprous, Caligulas Horse, System of a Down, and Haken.

The video was done in collaboration with Long Island director Tom Flynn, whos previously worked with Lamb of God, Moontooth, and Covet (among others). Theyd planned to film it last spring, but as youd guess, COVID-19 got in the way; fortunately, they were able to get it all done within the subsequent few months, with the help of Amazon for the props and wardrobe. Set around a future Earth on which humanity has ravaged its resourcesas Cartera explainsit looks like a more narrative-focused continuation of their last Liars Intuition video, Pendulum in Swing (also directed by Flynn). Specifically, its depiction of scientists doing agricultural experimentations in forests and deserts on Marshence the red sunflowersis ripe with psychedelic oddities. In fact, it resembles the trippy look of recent Nicholas Cage movies Mandy and Color Out of Space, so its visuals match the alluring vibrancy of the music.

As for Liars Intuition (which sees the return of producer Frank Mitaritonna), Signals in Bedlam see it as a return to familiar territory thats also a bold step forward, into darker and moodier territory. Cartera also reveals that it was written in a time when truths that were once considered immutable, like equality and justice, suddenly came into question. On the surface, it looks like a natural result of opposing forces clashing, but when you peel back the layers, you start to see that this collective confusion, The Great Confounding, is the product of deliberate deception. Hoy adds that they spent at least a year of twice-weekly sessions to create it, resulting in the first record that . . . we wrote fully collaboratively.

Let us know what you think of Red Sunflower in the comments section below, and be sure to pre-save the single now for when it releases this Friday! Of course, you can also preorder Liars Intuition here.

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SIGNALS OF BEDLAM Brings Prog Metal Madness to Mars in "Red Sunflower" Music Video - Metal Injection

1. Water on Mars: discovery of three buried lakes intrigues scientists  Nature.com
2. Salty ponds may be under Mars' icy surface, raising prospect of Martian life  The Guardian
3. Liquid water on Mars? New research indicates buried 'lakes'  NBC News
4. On Mars, 4 supersalty lakes may be hiding under the south pole ice cap  Space.com
5. Mars may be hiding tantalizing lakes beneath its glaciers  National Geographic
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Water on Mars: discovery of three buried lakes intrigues scientists - Nature.com