Monthly Archives: May 2023

At this very moment, eleven robotic missions are exploring Mars, a combination of orbiters, landers, rovers, and one aerial vehicle (the Ingenuity helicopter). Like their predecessors, these missions are studying Mars atmosphere, surface, and subsurface to learn more about its past and evolution, including how it went from a once warmer and wetter environment to the freezing, dusty, and extremely dry planet we see today. In addition, these missions are looking for evidence of past life on Mars and perhaps learning if and where it might still exist today.

One particularly interesting issue is how the atmosphere of Mars primarily composed of carbon dioxide (CO2) is relatively enriched with Carbon-13 (13C), aka. heavy carbon. For years, scientists have speculated that the ratio of this isotope to light carbon (12C) might be responsible for organics found on the surface (a sign of biological processes!). But after analyzing data from the ESAs ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) mission, an international team led by The Open University determined that these organics may be abiotic in origin (i.e., not biological).

The study was led by Juan Alday, a postdoctoral researcher with The Open University (OU), and members of its Atmospheric Research and Surface Exploration group. They were joined by the Space Research Institute (IKI), the Laboratoire Atmosphres, Milieux, Observations Spatiales (LATMOS), and the Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Planetary Physics (AOPP) group at the University of Oxford. Their findings were represented in a paper titled Photochemical depletion of heavy CO isotopes in the Martian atmosphere, which recently appeared in Nature Astronomy.

Carbon dioxide accounts for about 96% of the atmosphere on Mars, with trace amounts of carbon monoxide (0.0557%). The relative abundance of the heavy carbon isotope in these gases (which accounts for just 1.1% of carbon isotopes in Earths atmosphere) has been attributed to the preferential escape of light carbon (12C) to space over several billion years. This is based in part on recent measurements by NASAs Curiosity rover that revealed a depletion of 13C in surface organic material (methane gas).

By analyzing this enrichment, scientists hope to learn more about the atmospheric processes contributing to the evolution of isotopic ratios between the upper and lower atmosphere. Since atmospheric CO and organic molecules share the same 13C-depleted isotopic signature, scientists hope to find clues as to whether organic processes (a possible indication of life) may have played a role. For the sake of their study, the team led by Dr. Alday examined CO vertical profiles obtained by the TGO Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS).

This suite consists of three infrared Echelle-spectrometers that gather information in the near-, mid-, and far-infrared (NIR, MIR, TIRVIM) channels. Since 2016, these instruments have gathered spectra from Mars atmosphere, using absorption lines that indicate the presence of different chemical elements to determine its composition. The team then combined this data with a photochemical model that predicts the depletion of carbon and oxygen in CO molecules in the atmosphere due to interaction with solar radiation.

Their results indicate (contrary to what was previously thought) that carbon monoxide (CO) in the Martian atmosphere is depleted of heavy carbon instead of light carbon. As Dr. Alday explained in an OU News press release.

The key [to] understanding why there is less 13C in CO lies in the chemical relationship between CO2 and CO. When CO2 molecules are destroyed by sunlight to form CO, 12CO2 molecules are more efficiently destroyed than 13CO2, leading a depletion of 13C in CO over long periods of time.

These findings help address the long-standing debate about whether biological or non-biological processes led to the presence of organic material on the surface of Mars. Despite the trace amounts of CO in the atmosphere of Mars, they have important implications for our understanding of how the Martian atmosphere and climate have evolved with time. On the one hand, they could provide insight into past conditions that allowed for flowing and standing bodies of water on the surface.

On the other, it helps refine the search for past life on Mars, even if the findings could be seen as a letdown. The ultimate goal, said Dr. Alday, is to determine if the conditions for life ever existed and if they lasted long enough for life to emerge:

We do not know what the atmosphere of early Mars was like nor what conditions allowed liquid water to flow on the surface. The isotopes of carbon on Mars atmosphere can help us estimate how much CO2 there was in the past. The new measurements by the ExoMars TGO suggest that less CO2 has escaped the planet than previously thought and provide new constraints on the composition of this early atmosphere of Mars.

This research was made possible thanks to support from the UK Space Agency, which funded the development of the ACS spectrometers and the Atmospheric Research and Surface Exploration groups research. The TGO is part of the larger ExoMars program, a collaborative effort between the ESA and Roscosmos. This program will send the Rosalind Franklin rover to Mars in the coming years to further assist in the ongoing search for past (and maybe even present) life on Mars.

Further Reading: Open University News, Nature Astronomy

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Life Probably Didn't Have a Hand in Creating Organic Deposits on ... - Universe Today

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Ever wonder what it would be like to live on Mars? Soon, UC Davis Health Advanced Practice Nurse Alyssa Shannon will have a pretty good idea. She was selected to take part in a one-year analog mission to simulate living on Mars for NASA.

Shannon will join three other crew members for NASAs Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) mission, the first of three planned one-year Mars surface simulations. The crew will simulate the challenges of a human mission to Mars, including resource limitations, equipment failure, communication delays, and other environmental stressors.

Research gained during the CHAPEA mission will be used by NASA to inform risk and resource trades to best support crew health and performance while living on Mars, Shannon explained. This research will provide their experts with valuable information that will help future Mars missions succeed.

CHAPEA is a ground-based mission, set to begin in June at NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston. During the mission, crew members will live and work in a 3D-printed, 1,700-square-foot habitat. It includes private crew quarters, a kitchen, living areas, work areas and two bathrooms. There's also a 1,200-square-foot external environment complete with Mars murals and red sand. There, the crew will conduct simulated spacewalks accompanied by virtual reality.

Shannon will serve as the crew science officer during the mission.

As science officer, I will be working in a small lab in a resource-restricted environment, Shannon said. I will have to navigate communication challenges, including time delay communication with NASA and equipment failures that astronauts might experience on Mars.

Shannon will rely on her experience as an advanced practice nurse with interventional cardiology and cardiothoracic surgery. In her role, she leads continuous quality improvement projects, provides data management and data analysis.

Alyssa Shannon will serve as the crew science officer during the mission.

Shannon first heard about the CHAPEA mission in August 2021 on a radio commercial. When she realized she fit all the criteria NASA was looking for, she decided to apply.

I was genuinely surprised to make it through the selection process, she said. When I was a child, I dreamed on being a colonist on Mars obviously this hasn't happened, but I am so excited to participate in this way.

Shannon leaves for Houston on May 24 to begin training for the CHAPEA mission and will not return home until July 2024.

While 12 months might seem like a long time to spend in a Mars habitat, astronauts who travel to Mars will likely have to endure being away from home for much longer. A round-trip journey from Earth to Mars will take an estimated 21 months, given the time it takes to travel between the two planets, plus waiting for their alignment to be just right for the return.

Crew members will live and work in a 3D-printed, 1,700-square-foot habitat.

The time away will be hard, but the bigger mission is being able to help provide this invaluable research for space travel, added Shannon. In the future when humans actually land on Mars it will be so fulfilling to know that I played a small role in helping us get there.

Follow Shannon's experience during the CHAPEA mission on the Johnson Space Centers Instagram, Facebook and Twitter pages.

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UC Davis Health nurse chosen for NASA's yearlong Mars analog ... - UC Davis Health

Itll take a lot of work in order to grow rice on Mars. First, and most importantly, we need a mission to successfully get to Mars and set up camp, something NASA is hoping to do in the late 2030s or early 2040s. The distance to Mars from Earth is about 300 million miles (or roughly 500 days aboard a shuttle), so once those astronauts land, theyll need to cultivate their own food. Theres no ordering a pizza for those guys.

Germinating seeds and growing food on the red planet is difficult, particularly when it comes to Martian soil. The soil on Mars contains a high level of perchlorate salts, which are toxic for plants.

To simulate Martian perchlorate levels, a team of researchers from the University of Arkansas gathered soil from the Mojave Desert, where the desert earth is similar to that on Mars. The area was developed by NASA and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2007 as the Mojave Mars simulant (MMS). Researchers mainly use the area for soil sampling, but theyve also test-driven rovers and practiced using sampling equipment in icy conditions.

The research team grew three varieties of rice, including one strain of wild rice and two strains with gene-edited lines. The goal was to produce rice better suited to drought, salty conditions and a lack of natural sugars. All three rice strains were grown in three mediums: soil from the MMS, a regular potting soil mixture and a combination of the two. The plants were able to grow in the all-MMS soil, but they didnt thrive. Instead, the combined potting mixture provided the best results. Researchers found that a 75-percent MMS soil to 25-percent potting soil mixture created improved plants. They also discovered that plants could still take root with one gram of perchlorate per kilogram of soil, but three grams per kg was the upper limitpast that, nothing would grow.

The team presented its findings at the 54th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference last month. Its next steps will be to experiment with other Martian soil simulants and other rice varieties that tolerate high salt concentrations. The team will also work to determine how much perchlorate can leach into the plant from the soil.

Its not just potential Martian settlers that could benefit from this experiment. There are several regions on this planet that are covered with high-salinity soil, such as parts of the Australian desert.

But perchlorate salts is just one issue facing would-be Martian farmers. Martian soil is lighter and looser than soils on Earth, meaning they would drain water faster than our soil. Its also missing many nutrients on which we rely to grow crops, such as nitrogen. Plus, Mars has about a third of Earths gravity, which could be disorienting for plants that rely on gravity to root into the ground.

However, we may be closer than we think to providing astronauts with a semi-varied diet. In recent studies, wheat, mustard and tomatoes have all performed well in simulated conditions. Those on the mission to Mars may not be able to order a pizza, but they might just be able to make one themselves.

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How to Grow Rice on Mars - Modern Farmer

Oxia Planum is the site on Mars where the ESAs Rosalind Franklin rover is slated to land and analyze samples. Photo: NASA / JPL-CALTECH / UARIZONA

March 17, 2022, was a rough day for Jorge Vago. A planetary physicist, Vago heads science for part of the European Space Agencys ExoMars programme. His team was mere months from launching Europes first Mars rover a goal they had been working toward for nearly two decades. But on that day, ESA suspended ties with Russias space agency over the invasion of Ukraine. The launch had been planned for Kazakhstans Baikonur Cosmodrome, which is leased to Russia.

They told us we had to call the whole thing off, Vago says. We were all grieving.

It was a painful setback for the beleaguered Rosalind Franklin rover, originally approved in 2005. Budget woes, partner switches, technical issues and the COVID-19 pandemic had all, in turn, caused previous delays. And now, a war. Ive spent most of my career trying to get this thing off the ground, Vago says. Complicating things further, the mission included a Russian-made lander and instruments, which the member states of ESA would need funding to replace. They considered many options, including simply putting the unused rover in a museum. But then, in November, came a lifeline, when European research ministers pledged 360 million euros to cover mission expenses, including replacing Russian components.

When the rover finally does, hopefully, blast off in 2028, it will carry a suite of advanced instruments but one in particular could make a huge scientific impact. Designed to analyse any carbon-containing material found underneath Marss surface, the rovers next-generation mass spectrometer is the linchpin of a strategy to finally answer the most burning question about the Red Planet: Is there evidence of past or present life?

There are a lot of different ways that you can search for life, says analytical chemist Marshall Seaton, a NASA postdoctoral program fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and coauthor of a paper on planetary analysis in the Annual Review of Analytical Chemistry. Perhaps the most obvious and direct route is simply looking for fossilised microbes. But nonliving chemistry can create deceptively lifelike structures. Instead, the mass spectrometer will help scientists look for molecular patterns that are unlikely to be formed in the absence of living biology.

Hunting for the patterns of life, instead of structures or specific molecules, has an added benefit in an extraterrestrial environment, Seaton says. It allows us to not only look for life as we know it, but for life as we dont know it.

Packing for Mars

At NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center outside Washington, DC, planetary scientist William Brinckerhoff shows off a prototype of the rovers mass spectrometer, known as the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer, or MOMA. Roughly the size of a carry-on suitcase, the instrument is a labyrinth of wires and metal. Its really a workhorse, Brinkerhoff says as his colleague, planetary scientist Xiang Li, adjusts screws on the prototype before demonstrating a carousel that holds samples.

This working prototype is used to analyse organic molecules in Mars-like soils on Earth. And once the real MOMA gets to Mars, approximately in 2030, Brinckerhoff and his colleagues will use the prototype as well as a pristine copy kept in a Mars-like environment at NASA to test tweaks to experimental protocols, troubleshoot issues that come up during the mission and facilitate interpretation of Mars data.

This latest mass spectrometer can trace its roots back nearly 50 years, to the first mission that studied Martian soil. For the twin 1976 Viking landers, engineers miniaturised room-size mass spectrometers to roughly the footprint of todays desktop printers. The instruments were also on board the 2008 Phoenix lander, the 2012 Curiosity rover and later Mars orbiters from China, India and the US.

Anyone visiting Brinckerhoffs prototype must first pass a display case with a dismantled copy of the Viking instrument, on loan from the Smithsonian Institution. This is like a national treasure, Brinckerhoff says, enthusiastically pointing out components.

Mass spectrometers are indispensable tools that are used for analytical chemistry in laboratories and other facilities worldwide. TSA agents use them to test luggage for explosives at the airport. EPA scientists use them to test drinking water for contaminants. And drugmakers use them to determine chemical structures of potential new medications.

Many kinds of mass spectrometers exist, but each is a three-part instrument, explains Devin Swiner, an analytical chemist at the pharmaceutical company Merck. First, the instrument vaporizes molecules into the gas phase, and also gives them an electrical charge. These charged, or ionised, gas molecules can then be manipulated with electric or magnetic fields so theyll move through the instrument.

Second, the instrument sorts ions by a measurement that scientists can relate to molecular weight, so they can determine the number and type of atoms a molecule contains. Third, the instrument records all the weights in a sample along with their relative abundance.

With MOMA aboard, the Rosalind Franklin rover will land at a Martian site that roughly 4 billion years ago likely had water, a crucial ingredient for ancient life. The rovers cameras and other instruments will help to select samples and provide context about their environment. A drill will retrieve ancient samples from as deep as two meters. Scientists hypothesise thats far enough, Vago says, to be shielded from cosmic radiation on Mars that breaks up molecules like a million little knives.

Space-bound mass spectrometers must be rugged and lightweight. A mass spectrometer with MOMAs capabilities would normally occupy multiple workbenches, but its been shrunk substantially. To be able to take something that can be as big as a room to the size of like a toaster or a small suitcase and send it into space is a very huge deal, Swiner says.

The look of life

MOMA will help scientists look for telltale signs of life on Mars by sifting through molecules in search of patterns that are unlikely to be formed any other way. For instance, lipids compounds that include building blocks of cell membranes have a preponderance of even numbers of carbon atoms in nearly all living things, while nonliving chemistry produces a more equal mix of even and odd numbers of carbon atoms. Finding a set of lipids with carbon atoms that are multiples of a number rather than a random assortment is a potential signature of life.

Similarly, amino acids the building blocks of proteins can be created either by life or by non-biological chemistry. They come in two forms that are mirror images of each other but are otherwise identical, like left and right hands. On Earth, life overwhelmingly contains only left-handed amino acids. Nonliving chemistry makes both left- and right-handed varieties. In other words, a large excess of either left- or right-handed amino acids is more lifelike than a more even mixture.

More generally, scientists think that chemical distributions similar to these would be indicative of life even if the molecules exhibiting the patterns dont exist in Earth biochemistry.

Previous Mars missions that included mass spectrometers ran into problems that hampered their ability to identify signs of life. Scientists took those hard-earned lessons and designed MOMA to overcome those hurdles, including one of the most troubling ones: the notorious molecule destroyer, perchlorate. Perchlorate, which also turns up in extreme Earth environments like South Americas Atacama Desert, can degrade organic molecules at high temperatures, obscuring potential signs of life.

In 2008, the Mars Phoenix lander discovered perchlorate ions in Mars soil. Two other missions, the Viking lander and the Curiosity rover, detected chlorinated hydrocarbons possible byproducts of perchlorate reacting with Martian molecules in the high-temperature ovens of their mass spectrometers. This meant that perchlorate may have obscured any evidence of organic molecules that could indicate life.

MOMA cleverly circumvents the perchlorate problem with an ultraviolet laser. The laser vaporises and ionizes samples in one go, with pulses of light lasting under two nanoseconds too quick for perchlorate reactions to occur.

The laser has another benefit: It leaves molecules largely intact when giving them a charge to create ions. Viking and Curiosity generated ions by bombarding them with electrons. Those collisions didnt preserve weak chemical bonds that can be important for determining the structures of molecules in a sample, whereas the laser keeps molecule fragmentation to a minimum. MOMA can then sort those relatively intact ions and deliberately fragment a single ion of interest in isolation, something neither Viking nor Curiosity could do. By analysing the resulting puzzle pieces of that ion, its possible to determine the chemical structure of the original molecule from the Martian sample and thus identify what it is.

It will be the first time this laser technique goes to Mars, but tests on Earth suggest it will work. The prototype found traces of organic molecules even in the presence of more perchlorate than Phoenix detected in Martian soil, Brinckerhoff says. And in Mars-like samples collected in Yellowstone National Park, it detected lipids and other molecules that are more complex than ones picked up on previous Mars missions.

MOMA, like its predecessors, also has high-temperature ovens and scientists can still opt to use these instead of the laser to vaporize samples. If the laser turns up hints of amino acids, for instance, the oven option could provide information the laser cannot. When in oven mode, MOMA uses three chemical reagents that stabilize molecules to facilitate mass spectrometry. One of these, which has never before been used on Mars, is there to tell apart left- and right-handed amino acids, enabling it to make a case for living or nonliving origins in a way that prior missions could not.

MOMA wont be the last word on whether life ever existed on Mars. Even the most tantalizing results would have to be confirmed by repeated experiments and lines of evidence from the rovers other instruments, Vago says. Some confirmatory work also could take place through other missions or even someday from analysis of Mars samples brought back to Earth. We will need to build a case, because otherwise nobodys going to believe us, Vago says.

The international team of scientists that has been working on the mission knows what they need to build that case, but until the Rosalind Franklin Rover lands on the Red Planets surface, they cant get started. All of those scientists shared the disappointment in March 2022 of seeing the long-stalled mission delayed once again.

But for Brinckerhoff, that disappointment is tempered with excitement: After all, the mission is still alive. This thing is the best of all of us, he says, and just to see it operate on Mars is going to be career catharsis.

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.

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The Long-Awaited Mission That Could Transform Our ... - The Wire Science

A recent study inNature Scientific Reports by Jonathan P. R. Scott and colleagues makes the case for sending exclusively all-female crews on long-duration missions. The reasoning here is simple: women have significant less body mass, with in the US the 50th percentile for women being 59.2 kg and 81.8 kg for men. This directly translates into a low total energy expenditure (TEE), along with a lower need for everything from food to water to oxygen. On a long-duration mission, this could conceivably save a lot of resources, thus increasing the likelihood of success.

With this in mind, it does raise the question of why female astronauts arent more commonly seen throughout Western space history, with Sally Ride being the first US astronaut to fly in 1983. This happened decades after the first female Soviet cosmonaut, when Valentina Tereshkova made history in 1963 on Vostok 6, followed by Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982 and again in 1984, when she became the first woman to perform a spacewalk.

With women becoming an increasingly more common sight in space, it does bear looking at what blocked Western women for so long, despite efforts to change this. It all starts with the unofficial parallel female astronaut selection program of the 1950s.

When the Space Age began in the 1950s, Western society was still struggling with emancipation, especially with the Cold War as a clash of cultures reinforcing many stereotypes regarding the role of the woman in society. Even as Soviet women were free to take up jobs even after getting married and manage their own affairs, the nuclear family, with the woman as the caretaker of the plentiful offspring was seen as the ultimate counterpoint to this, and a rejection of communist ideals.

One result of this was the corresponding drop in women following higher education, with the share of women college students falling from about 47% in 1920 to 38% by 1958 in the US. Although more financial aid was available via the government for education, societal pressures fed into most households being single-income, with the husband making money and the wife taking care of the family and household matters. This pattern didnt begin to change until the 1970s.

In light of all this, there wasnt so much a single reason why US women did not generally make it into high-up places including the skies and space but rather the fallout from a complex patchwork of societal expectations, poor scientific practices and an astounding amount of cognitive biases that led to this widespread discrimination. This was a practice that was reflected in the US military, with the Womens Army Corps (WAC, established as the WAAC in 1942) as well as the 1948 established Women in the Air Force (WAF) heavily limiting the duties that could be performed by the women in either.

Ultimately, when it came to selecting the first US astronauts, these would be selected from ideally the most fit candidates, preferably from the Air Force and similar extreme fitness backgrounds. That only male candidates were considered was in light of all this therefore both a logical result and par for the course. This did not mean that it was an absolute, however, with William Randolph Lovelace IIs efforts while working as head of NASAs Life Sciences being instrumental in unofficially qualifying female astronaut candidates alongside the male candidates for Project Mercury.

The name for the group of thirteen women who went through this selection process, the Mercury 13, was coined in 1995 by Hollywood producer James Cross as a comparison with the Mercury 7. Even so, it essentially captures the parallel nature of this program within Project Mercury. Even as the male astronaut candidates went through the rigorous testing program, so did the female candidates under guidance of Dr. Lovelace and his team, starting with Jerrie Cobb, a highly accomplished aviator.

Although Jerrie Cobb and twelve others with similar qualifications as her passed the tests with flying colors, NASAs requirement for the Project Mercury astronauts was that the candidates were all military test pilots, experienced with high-speed flight and with an engineering background. This precluded all of the potential female candidates and despite lobbying attempts by Lovelace, Cobb and others, ultimately only male astronauts would fly.

After Valentina Tereshkovas solo space flight in 1962, she would ridicule the US and its purported freedoms, where a woman was denied the opportunity to compete equally with men. It would still take twenty-one years after that comment before the first female US astronaut would make it to space. Ultimately none of the Mercury 13 would fly to space, although Wally Funk would fly on a suborbital flight with Blue Origins New Shepard vehicle at the age of 82, making her the only one of the thirteen women to make it nearly to space.

Although the logic of the modeling performed by Jonathan P. R. Scott and colleagues in their paper on the benefits of a female crew makes objectively sense, its important to consider the main concerns that were raised despite these female candidates passing the same tests as their male counterparts, as summarized in a 1964 paper by J. R. Betson & R. R. Secrest titled Prospective women astronauts selection program in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (doi:10.1016/0002-9378(64)90446-6).

Essentially the concern raised was about the suitability of a woman in the operating of complex machinery while she would be on her period, and the effect this might have on her mental faculties, as well as the complications of having to deal with the menstrual flow. Males would be more optimal in this regard, with a stable endocrine system and no complications to consider.

As we have found since the 1960s, women can most definitely function in space, and there are a number of ways to deal with a period while in space, including not having periods at all. The latter is accomplished with contraceptives that suppress ovulation, where instead of having an off week each month the contraceptive is constantly supplied, possibly as a subdermal system for flights to Mars. Although on the ISS dealing with waste and having sanitary products shuttled up from Earths surface is doable, for long-term missions its obvious that it is an aspect that has to be considered as well.

As for the emotional stability and similar aspects, none of these were found to be valid concerns over the decades that female astronauts, cosmonauts and taikonauts have spent time in space. There is after all no fundamental difference between men and women beyond their biological sex and the associated endocrine system. As demonstrated by e.g. Daphne Joel et al. in a 2015 study involving fMRI scans of male and female volunteers, despite the physical (size) differences between male and female brains, they are not sexually dimorphic. Rather than personality being determined by the biological sex, it is a purely unique, individualistic pattern.

What this means is that the typical selection procedures for astronauts involving not only physical challenges but also psychological tests apply equally, regardless of the candidates biological sex.

Considering the scientific evidence, it is in a sense rather tragic that a headline like all-female Mars mission crew should even make the headlines. Many decades after the Mercury 13 tried to make their case, and after a few decades now of both male and female astronauts working side by side, it should be clear that the goal for any mission is to pick the right crew for the job. If that means picking the astronauts who have the lowest body mass and resulting lowest energy, water and oxygen requirements, and they also happen to be overwhelmingly female, then that is good mission design.

Especially when it comes to a highly dangerous mission, such as a long-duration mission to Mars, the primary concern ought to be what would give the crew the highest chances of success. If hundreds of kilograms of supplies could be cut, or be kept back as emergency supplies because the crew is composed solely of individuals slim in stature, then that makes sense in any logical way. Even if the trauma of generations of anti-intellectual and pseudo-scientific nonsense regarding certain groups in society insist that we should discuss it in great length once again.

While it is great to see that things have definitely changed since the 1960s, the struggles of the Mercury 13 women and the countless others like them over the decades should not be forgotten.

(Heading image: Astronaut Tracy Caldwell in the International Space Station. (Credit: NASA) )

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Making The Case For All-Female Exploration Missions To Mars And ... - Hackaday

By: Jerin SteeleWednesday, May 17, 2023 | 9:23 PM

The Fox Chapel baseball team has been close in recent years, and after six seasons a breakthrough in the WPIAL postseason happened Wednesday night.

And they needed all facets to do so, fittingly enough against a Mars team that has been a thorn in the Foxes sides in recent years.

The Foxes came ready to hit, got a lead early, received a solid start from ace pitcher Jeremy Haigh and played strong defense behind him. It was enough to get No. 8 Foxes past Mars, 6-4, in the first round of the Class 5A playoffs at Plum.

This feels good, said Fox Chapel coach Jim Hastings.We played (Mars) in section for years and actually lost to them in 2019 in the first round of the playoffs. It was nice to get a win and move on.

The Foxes (13-8) advanced to play top-seeded Shaler in next weeks quarterfinals.

Mars finished 9-10.

Fox Chapel scored three runs in the first, all coming with two outs. Haigh doubled, and Dom Cassol followed with an RBI double. Then, Benny Demotte worked a nine-pitch walk, and Jack Resek followed with a line shot into the gap that scored both. Resek was credited with a two-run double but was thrown out trying to stretch it into a triple.

That was huge for us to get up top three early because we knew, with Jeremy going, if we could get three to five runs, we were going to be pretty solid, Hastings said.

The Foxes added another in the second when Logan Hoffman hit a one-out triple and was brought home by a Joey Gellar sacrifice fly to left field.

Mars punched back with a pair of runs in the third. Chase Winstead led off with a triple, Benji Astbury followed with a single and Jake Johnson had an RBI groundout. Astbury later scored on a wild pitch.

Following the single by Astbury, Haigh retired the next 10 in a row until an error on a Luke Goodworth grounder in the sixth.

The error proved costly as Zach Orosz scored Goodworth on an RBI double to right field, and Charlie Bickel followed with an RBI single, which cut the Fox Chapel lead to 5-4.

The Foxes got an insurance run in the bottom of the sixth. Troy Susnak was hit by a pitch, pinch hitter Franco Pistella sacrificed Susnak to second and Zach Johnston drove him in with a single.

With the tying run at the plate in the seventh, Haigh induced a ground ball to third, which turned into an around-the-horn double play from Susnak to Demotte to Cassol to end the game.

Haigh pitched a complete game and had four strikeouts.

I thought he settled in well after the second inning, Hastings said. The sixth inning we had an error, which hurt, but getting that run in the sixth was huge. We got a little breathing room and got it done from there.

Fox Chapel played Shaler on March 20 and fell 3-1.

We know they are one of the top programs in the WPIAL and have some big time players, but well be ready, Hastings said.

Jerin Steele is a freelance writer

Tags: Fox Chapel, Mars

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Fox Chapel baseball breaks through with playoff win over Mars - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Today, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Mars, Incorporated announced that Mars, Incorporated will donate $4 million to support the Agencys mission to ease the strains on Ukraines health system caused by the Russian Federations brutal war against Ukraine.

The donation, provided by Mars, Incorporated to USAID, will help to expand access to basic healthcare services, including mental health and rehabilitation for victims of the war, as well as supporting Ukrainians who have been displaced by the violence or affected by the Kremlins continued targeting of critical infrastructure. The donation will also help meet the health needs of discharged veterans and other war victims, who require increased access to primary and mental healthcare services due to the physical injuries and the mental trauma they have experienced.

The Russian Federations brutal, full-scale invasion has placed enormous strains on Ukraines healthcare system. The Russian Federations Armed Forces have killed or injured tens of thousands of people, damaged more than 1,500 healthcare facilities and pharmacies, made it difficult for healthcare providers to access the medicines and equipment they need to provide high quality care, and forced thousands to make harrowing journeys simply to access treatment. Moreover, as the Russian Federations military assault inflicts trauma on Ukrainians across the country, the need for mental health services has risen exponentially.

In response, the United States government has doubled its annual health assistance to help Ukraine maintain its public health system and restore essential services like treatment for tuberculosis and HIV. Through direct budget support to the government of Ukraine, USAID is also supporting the continuity of health services by supporting the salaries of more than 517,000 health workers. In May 2022, just months after the full-scale invasion, USAID also launched a new five-year activity to help Ukraine increase preparedness for public health threats, strengthen immunization services, and expand mental health services. These efforts are in addition to the nearly $96 million USAID has provided to humanitarian partners who are delivering healthcare services across Ukraine.

USAID is grateful for the pledge Mars, Incorporated has made to support those who have been directly impacted by Russias senseless war. USAID remains committed to working with partners to respond to the immediate health needs of Ukrainians while also helping Ukraine to emerge from this war stronger, including by supporting the government to build a health system that is transparent, efficient, and responsive to the needs of the Ukrainian people.

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USAID and Mars, Incorporated Announce Donation of $4 Million to ... - USAID

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

While San Antonians celebrated the achievement of securing the No. 1 pick in the 2023 NBA Draft on Tuesday, May 16 night, thousands of their city counter parts took to the Boeing Center at Tech Port to lay witness to Mars Volta and their hardcore, psychedelic rock.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet. Special guestTeri Gender Bender also made an appearance during the performance, opening for the group with music that embodies so many genres that they almost blur together.

Along with their new song "Blacklight Shine," Mars Volta announced a string of North American tour dates in 2022. After rocking out in the Countdown City, the El Paso-bred rock band will travel to the Orpheum Theatre in New Orleans on Thursday, May 18, before making their way back to the Lone Star State for the 713 Music Hall in Houston on Friday, May 19.

Take a look at Tuesday night's performance below:

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Coming off a ten-year hiatus, guitarist-composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala showered San Antonio rock fans with new music for the first time since 2012's Noctourniquet.

Go here to read the rest:

Mars Volta showers San Antonio with new music during their tour - mySA

Theres a lot of buzz right now about the potential for the Institute of Education Sciences to finally get the resources and authority to support major breakthroughs in teaching and learning. Some of that is due to $30 million in funding included in the end-of-the-year spending package for fiscal year 2023 to support a stronger R & D infrastructure at IES. The big excitement, though, is around the NEED Act, a bill sponsored by Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and about to be reintroduced in the current Congress, which would create a National Center for Advanced Development in Education (NCADE)or, as others are calling it, ARPA-ED, modeled after the Defense Departments DARPA program. Heres how IES director Mark Schneider describes its potential:

In the heart of every federal agency lies a dream of becoming the next DARPAthe folks that brought us advances like GPS and the internet. I want to bring you up to speed on our most recent efforts to create ARPA-ED and open a discussion with our stakeholders about where we will go from here as we pursue its creation.

While ARPA-ED won't create a new internet, there are many questions a DARPA-like unit might tackle: How will we identify the new literacy skills Americans need and develop them in learners across the lifespan? How do we even conceive of appropriate literacy and writing skills in a modern, AI-dominated world? How can we best harness innovations to create a personalized system of education so that instruction is tailored to the needs of learners? How can we use new technology to relieve the paperwork burden on teachers, freeing them to do what they do bestteach students?

I am proud to be a member of the Alliance for Learning Innovation, a coalition that advocates for ARPA-ED and similar initiatives, and I certainly hope that IES will receive a Congressional charter to do more to balance its impressive research agenda with an equally impressive development one. And I hope Director Schneider is right that an ARPA-ED could lead to a wave of instructional innovations. (Fordham and the Center for American Progress highlighted what some of those might look like through our Moonshot for Kids initiative in pre-pandemic times.)

But beyond all the razzle and dazzle, let me admit that I am desperate for something even more fundamental, starting with basic information about what the heck is going on in Americas classrooms. We arguably know less about the typical American school than about the dark side of the moon. Indeed, what we desperately need is a sort of Mars Rover for our classrooms.

More on that in a bit. But first, contemplate just how little information our policymakers and education leaders can tap about the impact of their decisions in the real world of teachers and students, desks, and books.

Take a simple example. Like many states, Ohio is on the verge of significantly strengthening its literacy policies to align them with the science of reading. The hope is to improve teaching and learning in the subject, in a way that will eventually be apparent via higher student achievement and greater student success.

How will we know if that new policy package works? Most likely, we wont. Yes, policymakers might commission an evaluation, and we will be able to see which reading programs districts and charter schools say they have adopted, and we can gauge how well those programs are aligned with the science of reading. But we wont have any trustworthy information about whether those adoptions are embraced and faithfully implemented by individual classroom teachers, nor whether those teachers get the support and ongoing professional development they need to shift their practice. (Perhaps we could survey teachers about this, but self-reports are famously unreliable.) Well know almost nothing about whether this rubber actually hits the road.

Someday, to be sure, well be able to look at test scores, but we will have a hard time knowing if the policy reforms can explain any changes in student achievement. That is always a challenge, what with so many confounding factors in education, but the pandemic has made it more so. If reading scores for young Ohio students continue to slide over the next several years, will that be a sign that the reading policy failed? Or will it simply be because lots of todays elementary school students missed out on preschool, as well as key developmental milestones during the pandemic? On the other hand, if test scores go up, will that mean that the new reading policy was a success? Or would that have happened anyway, as post-pandemic students enter the system?

What will be missing from a look back at Ohios reading reforms, as with any evaluation-type study in education, is the most important part. The middle stuff between policy enactment and its impacts. In other words, what actually changes (or not) in the classroom, in terms of teaching and learning.

In the case of Ohio, it would be great to know, ideally for every classroom, or at least for a representative sample: Which reading programs do teachers stop using and start using after enactment of the new reading law? Did those teachers thoroughly implement the new programs? Did they get skilled support in training? How much time did students spend with the new materials? What about interventions for students who were struggling? How frequent were those, and what was going on in them? Which programs were used for the interventions? Were they different than what teachers had used before? How adept were the interveners? Did teachers have students use any online programs to help support their reading? Which ones? How often and for how long? What else was happening in the classroom and around the school that might have impacted students achievement, experience, and engagement? For example, are schools spending more, less, or the same amount of time on English language arts than before the policy shift?

Those are critical questions, but are very difficult to answer because they call for nuanced and precise data collection. In the old days, researchers would hope for a multi-million-dollar federal grant to be able to send out graduate students to sit in the back of classrooms and collect such information by hand, systematically coding what they saw. Even then, it was exorbitantly expensive and extremely time-consuming, so inevitably you could only visit a relative handful of schools and classrooms.

Solving this evaluation challenge is a tough problemprecisely the type of problem that DARPA and its clones are supposed to tackle.

So enter my Mars Rover idea. (Be warned: This is going to sound far-fetched!) Imagine that we could design a small robot that could be sent into a classroom for a week or a month or even a whole school year to collect all of this information and more. It would be tricked out with high-tech gizmos that would collect data and beam it safely to the cloud. Then AI would make sense of those data, giving scholars, leaders, and policymakers an accurate, comprehensive picture of what was happening in our schools.

First and foremost, our rover would record everything going on in the classroom. As Ive written before, video would be most powerful, but audio could work if that made people more comfortable in terms of student and teacher privacy.

Given that modern classrooms tend to have lots of movement and activity, the rover might have a sensor that could make sense of it allfor example, tracking the composition of student groups, and how much time the teacher spent with each one. Were those groups reshuffled frequently, as students made progress? Or were low-achieving students getting stuck in slow-moving instruction?

The rover should also have a little scanner built into it so every night teachers could insert any paperwork they had students complete, along with their own feedback and grades, so researchers would get some insight into what kind of work students were being asked to do, and the standards that teachers were holding that work to.

Since many assignments and grading (and even instruction) happens online now, our rover would also have the ability to track any digital activity of students in the classroom, seeing, for example, which programs they were using, how engaged they were, and the dosage.

To be sure, designing such a marvelous rover would be no small feat. Yet the toughest nut to crack would likely be political: How to get educators and families to buy in? Strong privacy protections would go a long way, but teachers especially would need to get something out of participating in a rover-assisted evaluation. Perhaps they could get real-time feedback about their instructional practices and/or grading standards. Or maybe they simply need to be paid for their involvement.

With the blizzard of information generated by our rovertied to particular teachers, students, and schools, and then connected to other data from test scores, student surveys, and beyond, and analyzed by AIscholars, leaders, and policymakers would actually have some insight into whats going on in our schools and whether their policies and decisions were making things better.

This is, of course, how most modern organizations already operate, with a deluge of data, allowing them to fine-tune and adjust and continuously improve. As far as I can tell, flying blind is something that has been relegated just to our education system.

Im just a policy wonk, and something of a dreamer, so Im sure there are many reasons that make what I have described here technically challenging. Even with the use of artificial intelligence and high-tech sensors, it might be impossible for anyone or anything to make sense of what the heck is going on in an American classroom, given the cacophony that is so typical.

Then again, a lot of people were skeptical that we could land a rover on Mars.

See the article here:

What we need from a DARPA for education: A Mars rover for schools - Thomas B. Fordham Institute

A Mars game coming to PC in 2024 will get a big boost from a planetary scientist.

Konstantin Batygin, who is best known for his search for the mysterious Planet Nine that may be far out in the solar system, will join the team behind "Mars Horizon 2," an upcoming game that has players search for fictional Red Planet life.

Batygin, a California Institute of Technology planetary scientist, has pledged to help the gaming team with Mars mission design and fact-checking the research, developer Auroch Digital and publisher Secret Mode wrote in a release (opens in new tab).

"His invaluable knowledge and expertise will ensure that'Mars Horizon 2'is as authentic as possible, accurately portraying space exploration and extrapolation beyond present day as the search for life in the universe continues," the statement added. For his own part, Batygin retweeted the announcement (opens in new tab) Thursday (May 11) from the official Mars Horizon 2 Twitter account.

Related: Hunt for alien biosignatures in 'Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life' on PC

Mars Horizon 2 is the successor to the "space race"-like Mars Horizon, which released in 2020. The original game allowed players to design virtual rocket programs based on real-life space hardware from NASA, the European Space Agency and other worldwide space groups.

Of the successor game, the developers wrote on March 7, players will "race to make discoveries ahead of rival agencies, using established scientific methodology in tandem with modern and near-future technologies to seek, recover, and analyze alien biosignatures."

Both Mars Horizon games are somewhat similar to the popular Kerbal Space Program (KSP) series; KSP 2 released on Feb. 24 and is still delivering early access updates for players. Kerbal also has players managing space programs, but focuses a little more on real-life physics. The Mars Horizon games hone in on Mission Control elements like managing staff, building facilities or making difficult decisions when missions face issues in space.

Real-life space agencies also have numerous Mars missions on the go in the quest to find ancient life on its surface. For example, NASA and the European Space Agency are engaging in a sample return campaign aiming to bring Red Planet rocks to Earth as soon as 2033.

The Perseverance rover has already collected and stored 10 twin samples of material, one set on the surface of the Red Planet and one inside its belly. The mission design, still being reviewed, for now suggests that Perseverance may deliver the samples to a spacecraft that will relay the material back to our planet. If the rover is disabled, two fresh fetch helicopters would do the planetary deliveries themselves.

Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of "Why Am I Taller (opens in new tab)?" (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book about space medicine. Follow her on Twitter@howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcom (opens in new tab)orFacebook (opens in new tab).

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'Mars Horizon 2' lets players search for Red Planet life with real ... - Space.com