Category Archives: Mars

Two national college ranking guides again have given Mars Hill University high marks. U.S. News and World Report lists Mars Hill among the top colleges in the south, as well as a strong performer in social mobility. Washington Monthly ranks Mars Hill among the top baccalaureate colleges in the nation and a Best Bang for the Buck among institutions in the southeast.

In its 2022 Best Colleges rankings, released this week, U.S. News rated Mars Hill University 29th in the category of Best Regional Colleges South. U.S. News defines regional colleges as those with a strong focus on the liberal arts and programs such as business and nursing, and with a primary focus on undergraduate education. The rankings are based on such criteria as graduation rates, faculty expertise, class size and incoming students college entrance exam scores.

The magazine also rated Mars Hill in the number 25 position for Top Performers On Social Mobility. That category focuses on institutions which enroll and graduate large proportions of students from economically disadvantaged families.

Its gratifying to see our hard work in this area paying off, said MHU President Tony Floyd. A key part of our mission is to serve students like this students who face financial and other challenges in their pursuit of a college education to not only help them get to college, but to persist to graduation.

Washington Monthlys 2021 rankings, released in its September/October 2021 issue, put Mars Hill University in the number 59 slot among Bachelors Colleges. It also places Mars Hill 68th among the Best Bang for the Buck institutions in the southeast, a category ranking of schools which the magazine says help non-wealthy students attain marketable degrees at affordable prices. Washington Monthly describes its rankings as a different kind of college ranking than that of U.S. News and World Report, focusing on social mobility, research and service opportunities for students.About Mars Hill University:

Mars Hill University is a premier private, liberal arts institution offering over 30 baccalaureate degrees, as well as masters degrees in criminal justice, elementary education, teaching, and management. Founded in 1856 by Baptist families of the region, the campus is located just 20 minutes north of Asheville in the mountains of western North Carolina.

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Rankings show Mars Hill University Continue to be a Leader in the Region - Mountain Xpress

Planetary physicist Shannon Curry is the new principal investigator for the MAVEN mission to Mars, which has been studying the atmosphere and magnetic field of the planet since 2014.

As a young girl growing up in Cincinnati, Shannon Curry repeatedly asked her parents about the night sky, especially the planets, but as non-scientists, they seldom had answers. That is what college is for, her parents told her.

So, she earned a B.S. in astrophysics from Tufts University and become a systems engineer at Lockheed Martin before entering the University of Michigan to complete a Ph.D. in atmospheric and space physics. Seven years ago, she joined the Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL) at the University of California, Berkeley, to focus on missions to the planets Mars and Venus.

Curry is now in a prime position to answer many of the questions she posed her parents more than 20 years ago. She has been appointed the principal investigator of MAVEN, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, one of three NASA satellite missions now orbiting the red planet and the only one run by a woman.

At the age of 38, she is also one of the youngest principal investigators of any NASA mission.

I never imagined I would lead a mission to Mars, said Curry, who is deputy associate director for planetary science and astrobiology at SSL. My focus is to continue executing our mission and achieving our science goals. We have a killer team, so I am looking forward to the next chapter of MAVEN.

Bruce Jakosky of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, was the first principal investigator of the MAVEN mission to Mars. (Photo by Merry Bullock)

Principal investigators are scientists or engineers outside of NASA who bear responsibility for a missions success. The role of MAVEN principal investigator until last month, a job filled by Bruce Jakosky of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder includes managing operations, the orbit, the data pipeline and processing, fuel usage, and just making sure the spacecraft stays up and running until the end of the decade, Curry said, in part to relay data from the rovers on the surface back to Earth.

As the youngest of the NASA satellites orbiting Mars the others are the 20-year-old Mars Odyssey and the 15-year-old Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) MAVEN is the main contact between Mars and Earth through the Deep Space Network.

There is enormous responsibility on MAVEN to make it to the 2030 goalpost, because at some point, Mars Odyssey will be decommissioned, and the same thing with MRO, Curry said.

As a planetary physicist, though, Currys primary interest is the science. In the seven years since MAVEN settled into orbit around Mars, it has contributed immensely to our current understanding of the planets history in particular, why it lost its atmosphere and what happened to the oceans of water that used to cover the planet. Curry said that an atmosphere is critical to maintaining liquid water on the surface of any planet, and as soon as it disappears something that happened on Mars some 4 billion years ago, early in our solar systems history so does the water. The question NASA has been asking about Mars for decades is: Where did that water go? The answer has implications for whether life ever arose on the planet, and if so, where it may be hiding today.

This illustration shows the MAVEN spacecraft and the limb of Mars (Image courtesy of NASA/GSFC)

We know 100% there was liquid water on the surface of Mars. We can see dry river deltas, we can see features on the surface that were carved or created in the presence of water, she said. So, with that geomorphic evidence, we know liquid water existed on the surface on a million-year timescale, though it could have even been a billion. That said, as the atmosphere eroded, as atmospheric pressure decreased, the water had to go either up or down. I think of MAVEN as on Team Up.

In other words, from its orbit less than 100 kilometers above the surface, MAVENs instruments monitor the escape of gases upward into space. Scientists then use these numbers to project back in time to estimate when and how much water evaporated into space, as opposed to the water that froze out underground or at the polar caps. These estimates also give a measure of how much total water once filled the now dried-up rivers and oceans.

An enormous amount got trapped in the crust, and an enormous amount escaped to space, Curry said. Given the current escape rate, we are looking at between half a meter and 10 meters of a global equivalent layer of water, that is, if the whole planet had been covered in water. That comes just from atmospheric and ionospheric measurements by MAVEN. When you fold in what the rovers are telling us, in terms of soundings and sample analysis on the ground, I think it is more than that.

As MAVEN principal investigator, Curry has already begun to outline MAVENs next chapter of science with the mission team, which involves not only atmospheric studies, but also measurements of the strength and distribution of magnetic fields on the surface.

One of our biggest goals will be to study the Martian atmosphere under extreme conditions, she said.

Space scientist Janet Luhmann, one of those who conceived the MAVEN mission, was a mentor to Curry.

These extreme conditions are created by the sun, which began a new solar cycle last year and will become much more active over the next five years. Coincidentally, at the peak of the solar cycle, the Martian global dust storm season will begin. Global dust storms occur roughly every three Martian years and can last anywhere from two weeks to two months.

Its rare for these two events to overlap at exactly the same time, Curry said.

The extreme activity of the sun during the first billion years of the solar system was what stripped away Mars atmosphere in the first place, she said, whereas Earth and Venus retained theirs. The reasons why these three planets suffered different fates have major implications for exoplanet studies, suggesting that planets may need more than just the right temperature being in the Goldilocks Zone, or habitable zone, that allows liquid water to persist in order to support life. Planets also may need a global magnetic field to protect the atmosphere from solar storms and perhaps volcanoes to replace the atmosphere eroded away by active stars like our early sun.

I am ecstatic for the leaps weve made in exoplanetary exploration and science, but there is a lot we can learn from our own planets, she said. It is important for all of us in the planetary community to take our expertise about our particular target and start to piece together a larger picture about how we all got here, figuratively and literally.

MAVEN was conceived by Jakosky, the late UC Berkeley physics professor Robert Lin, and Lins SSL colleague, Janet Luhmann, during an hour-long phone conversation in 2003 that ended with a decision to propose the mission to NASA. Jakosky assembled a MAVEN team that proposed and won the NASA MAVEN mission in 2007. The satellite was launched in November 2013, but Lin did not live to see this milestone: He died suddenly from a stroke in November of 2012.

The late Robert Lin, professor of physics, in 2008, upon his retirement as director of the Space Sciences Laboratory. Lin, Bruce Jakosky and Janet Luhman conceived of the MAVEN mission in 2003. (UC Berkeley photo by Peg Skorpinski)

So, while Lin recruited Curry to SSL even before she completed her Ph.D. her thesis was about what MAVEN would detect on Mars it was Luhmann who onboarded her and served as a mentor.

Janet picked me up, and I came to work under her wing and tutelage, Curry said. I cant speak highly enough about her mentorship to me. She is absolutely the epitome of poise, grace and hard work when it comes to science.

As part of Currys transition to principal investigator, Luhmann will step down as deputy principal investigator, making way for SSLs David Mitchell to assume that position. Mitchell has been project manager of MAVEN since its inception.

She (Curry) brings energy and ideas that will take MAVEN into new science and applications territories, bringing its many types of observations to the attention of new audiences, Luhmann said.

Jakosky emphasized that Currys experience as a planetary physicist, mathematician, statistician and systems engineer makes her more than qualified to lead the MAVEN mission.

She knows how science and engineering work together, said Jakosky. She has a good thought process. During the various meetings, I watched her collect the information necessary to make thoughtful and intelligent decisions.

Since coming to SSL, Curry put these skills to use as project scientist for the ESCAPADE twin-satellite mission to Mars, where she teamed with SSLs Rob Lillis, and as the science lead for NASAs Parker Solar Probe during its many gravity-assist loops around Venus, which are an opportunity to probe the planet.

As she takes the helm at MAVEN, Curry is excited about seeing early career scientists use data from the mission, as she has done since before arriving at SSL.

In her free time, Shannon Curry is an avid runner and rock climber. (Photo courtesy of Shannon Curry)

You see graduate students and postdocs get really excited about their discoveries. Its sort of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get to work on data that no one else has ever seen from another planet and get to share that experience with others, she said.

When not working, Curry can be found on the running trails in the nearby hills she and her husband met at a local running club or at a local climbing gym. Or, as of early this year, caring for her newborn. When Curry interviewed for the MAVEN principal investigator job in December, she was 8 months pregnant and now has an eight-month-old boy, Jack.

Ive got my spacecraft baby and my human baby, and I love them both very much, she said.

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Planet maven Shannon Curry takes over MAVEN mission to Mars - UC Berkeley

Sometimes it feels like being a Pitt fan would be easier if they were just plain bad. Right now, the Panthers exist in limbo, never as perennially bad as the Vanderbilts or Kansases of the world, but also far from an equal of the elites. Instead, they float around seven and eight wins with an inexplicable or utterly maddening loss or three sprinkled throughout the season.

One of those seemingly regular letdowns came on Saturday, when Western Michigan marched into Heinz Field and shredded the Panther defense, winning in key moment after key moment on the way to a 44-41 upset victory.

The Panthers struggled mightily on Saturday afternoon against the Broncos to run, defend and play without penalties. Some outstanding individual performances kept them afloat, but were unable to cover for the fact that Pitt was thoroughly outplayed by Western Michigan.

This loss hurts more than just Pitts recordAfter Pitt topped Tennessee on the road last week, they broke an ugly pattern and passed what, on paper, looked like the only formidable test of the non-conference schedule. It looked like they were ready to take the next step and put together a special season. But they came crashing back to earth in week three.

Pitt was not ready to play. The Panthers refused to adjust, committed bone-headed penalties and handled the ball sloppily. They failed to show up and now, even if they turn things around and become the team that was expected entering 2021, the shadow of the WMU game will follow them for the remainder of the year. If we had just won the Western Michigan game, will become a common refrain because of the way it marred any momentum Pitt built when they defied recent history by taking down a Power Five non-conference opponent on the road.

This game is, in the grand scheme of things, pretty meaningless. Head coach Pat Narduzzi said after the game that there is still an ACC schedule left to play and hes right, but losing to a MAC team inflicts an added psychological toll on a Power Five team and its fanbase.

Pride was a casualty of Saturdays game. For a week, fans got to believe this team wouldnt confirm their worst expectations and seven days later, they are kicking themselves for giving in to the optimism.

The Panthers have bonafide stars in the passing offense

Senior quarterback Kenny Pickett has lived up to his preseason hype so far this season. Through three games, hes on pace to shatter career records in passing yards, completion percentage, passing touchdowns and rushing yards for a single season. Hes also in the top 20 nationally in completions and passer rating.

Pickett recorded a career day against the Broncos, throwing for 382 yards and six touchdowns a personal, single-game high that doubled his previous ceiling while using his feet to extend plays and drives. Pickett also passed Dan Marino and Tino Sunseri on the all-time passing yards leaderboard at Pitt with a 67-yard touchdown strike to sophomore receiver Jordan Addison. He almost single-handedly kept the Panthers in the game, matching the Broncos blow-for-blow accounting for every Panthers score.

And Addison had a spectacular day of his own. He caught six passes for 124 yards and three touchdowns the best single-game touchdown total of his young career, and he hit that mark before halftime. Senior tight end Lucas Krull also continued to be a valuable asset in the red zone. He managed just three catches but two of them were for touchdowns. Junior receiver Jared Wayne didnt score, but reached the century mark in receiving yards for just the second time in his career and made clutch catches late in the game while the WMU defense was focused on trying to contain Addison.

Pitt will go as far as Pickett and the passing offense does. The aerial attack is a clear strength for the Panthers on that side of the ball. They are the 25th-best offense in the country by yards per game and the 11th-best by points per game, thanks in large part to their nearly 364 pass yards per game.

Coaches and players have said throughout preseason and the first three weeks of the regular season that they want to run the ball better. Its a noble goal, but Pitt shouldnt turn to the ground just for its own sake. The game plan is already pass-heavy and every time a big play is needed, offensive coordinator Mark Whipple should put the ball in the hands of Pickett, his leading man.

This secondary is the Achilles heel of a good defense

For the second straight week, the Pitt secondary was burned often and didnt make a shift from their primarily man-to-man defensive scheme. Sophomore receivers Skyy Moore and Corey Crooms caught 19 of their 26 total targets for a combined 285 yards and a pair of touchdowns, beating the Panthers top corners redshirt senior Damarri Mathis and redshirt junior Marquis Williams early and often.

The Panthers got away with some blown coverages last week against Tennessee because Volunteer quarterbacks were repeatedly inaccurate on deep balls. But against WMU, they had no such luck. Redshirt sophomore quarterback Kaleb Eleby was deadly accurate, striking for three touchdowns in a span of eight passes.

The Panthers continued to press the Broncos nonetheless and paid for it dearly. Two-thirds of WMU plays that went for 15 or more yards came through the air.

One of the calling cards of Narduzzis defenses at Pitt has been a tendency to commit more bodies to stopping the run and challenging his defensive backs to win in one-on-one matchups.

Entering this season, that seemed like a good strategy. Its been effective in recent years Williams and Mathis were considered two of the better corners in the conference and redshirt sophomore safety Brandon Hill was considered a rising star. But the unit was instead sloppy on Saturday, responsible for five of the defenses six penalties and 41 of 42 penalty yards.

It was clear from the get-go that the secondary was not going to be one of the weaker arms of this Pitt team, but now they have become an unexpected liability. They will need to improve their play on the backend to support their defensive line and linebacking corps, who is holding opponents under 100 yards per game on the ground so far this year.

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They are who we think they are: WMU loss mars hopeful start for Pitt - The Pitt News

Rolls-Royce is currently working on a power source for mining resourcing on the Moon and even Mars.

The firm recently released a joint study with the UK Space Agency into nuclear reactor development for space rockets and mining. The firm is taking a look at how a micro-nuclear reactor could be implemented into a rocket and then redeployed as a power source for mining on the Moon and mining on Mars. The head of Rolls-Royce's defense division, Dave Gordon, said that the firm can utilize its 60-years of development experience making nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Navy and apply it to nuclear rocket/space mining development.

Gordon said rockets and submarines are similar in the following ways, "non-air breathing environments, long-endurance, super reliable with a very dense power source." Gordon goes on to say that there aren't very many rare metals on Earth and that other objects in space have an abundance of these metals. Mining these metals will require a power source, and Gordon argues that the power source will have to be nuclear and not solar. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

Jak Connor

Jak joined the TweakTown team in 2017 and has since reviewed 100s of new tech products and kept us informed daily on the latest news. Jak's love for technology, and, more specifically, PC gaming, began at 10 years old. It was the day his dad showed him how to play Age of Empires on an old Compaq PC. Ever since that day, Jak fell in love with games and the progression of the technology industry in all its forms. Instead of typical FPS, Jak holds a very special spot in his heart for RTS games.

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Rolls-Royce to power Moon and Mars mining with nuclear reactors - TweakTown

With sensors seemingly ubiquitous in machines and electronics, it seems appropriate to celebrate their place in the tech world now that Fierce Electronics is about to kick off Sensors Converge in San Jose, California, a showcase of sensors and related applications.

Did you know that commercial off-the-shelf sensors are being used on Mars to help the inertial guidance system of the small Ingenuity drone helicopter? Thats something coming up Tuesday at Sensors Converge in a video presentation by Havard Grip, pilot of Ingenuity.

Sensors on their own are amazing enough, but engineers are using them inside an array of aerospace and industrial applications. Some consumer applications are equally dazzling, not to mention helpful.

Take the FIXD Sensor, a small device that fits into the OBD2 port under the drivers side dash of cars built after 1996. A connected smartphone app can read out hundreds of error codes, including the dreaded check engine light.

The $20 device first appeared in 2016 and 2.7 million have been sold, FIXD recently said. A premium app for $6 a month has received 100,000 subscribers.

According to the company, co-founders of Atlanta-based FIXD were tired of seeing friends and family stress over the check engine light. Co-founders John Gattuso, Frederick Grimm and Julian Knight were engineering students who met at Georgia Tech.

The FIXD Sensor example makes it easy to see how sensors when combined with processors in applications can be powerful, whether in medical devices, microwave ovens, product manufacturing lines, gas fields or weather satellites.

Sometimes it hard to know where the sensor in an application stops and the processor starts.

In a recent smart farming example, STMicroelectronics announced its STM32WLE5 SoC, the worlds first LoRa SoC, is being used in a robot from CIHEVEA that automates extraction of latex from 200,000 rubber trees on a rubber-tree plantation in Hainan, China.

The robot has two precision motors and a series of environmental sensors that monitor weather, including temperature, air pressure and humidity. While clamped to a rubber tree, the SoC transmits the sensor data to a mesh gateway via a dedicated LoRa network server. That server in turn monitors and coordinates the robots. If conditions are right, the SoC triggers rubber-tapping motors to being autonomous cutting, usually in early morning when the latex sap is rising.

Plantation officials estimate the robot increases latex yield by up to three times while limiting damage to trees and lessening the need for human workers who face dangers doing the tapping work.

As all these examples make clear, sometimes the innovative uses of sensors in applications are so numerous that they can be overlooked and under-appreciated. We dont always see the trees for the forest.

Editor's Note: Sensor Converge starts runs Sept. 21-23 in San Jose, California, and streaming globally. Registration is free.

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Sensors are everywhere: On Mars, in cars and even rubber tree robots - FierceElectronics

To minimize the cost of building Mars colonies, scientists at the University of Manchester have developed a way for astronauts to make their own concrete on the Red Planet using space dust and human blood.

The challenge: If we want to establish Mars colonies, were going to need to construct buildings on the Red Planet where colonists can live and work.

However, sending construction materials from Earth to the Red Planet would be way too costly every extra pound of payload increases the cost of a Mars mission by at least $2,400.

Scientists suggest astronauts build Mars colonies out of their own blood, sweat, and tears literally.

Space dust: Rather than sending everything we need to build Mars colonies to the planet, experts suggest astronauts make use of the resources already there, such as its rocks and water deposits.

Now, University of Manchester scientists are suggesting astronauts build Mars colonies out of their own blood, sweat, and tears literally.

Scientists have been trying to develop viable technologies to produce concrete-like materials on the surface of Mars, but we never stopped to think that the answer might be inside us all along, researcher Aled Roberts said in a press release.

When they added urea, the material became stronger than ordinary concrete.

Constructing Mars colonies: For a new study, the Manchester team simulated Mars dust and combined it with a common blood plasma protein to produce a material that, once dried, has about the same compressive strength as concrete meaning it would be able to hold about the same load.

When they added urea a waste material that could be extracted from human urine, sweat, and tears during water recycling to the mix, the materials compressive strength increased up to 300%, making it stronger than ordinary concrete.

The scientists dubbed their creation AstroCrete and calculated that six astronauts could produce about 1,110 pounds of the high-strength kind during a two-year mission.

If the material was used to bind together sandbags, they predict each astronaut could expand a Mars habitat enough during their mission to accommodate an additional colonist.

The cold water: The scientists note that more research is needed before AstroCrete can be considered a viable building material for Mars colonies.

In addition to testing the material under simulated Mars conditions to see how it would hold up, they also note a need to consider how donating plasma twice a week in microgravity might affect astronauts health.

Still, were likely decades away from building any Mars colonies, so they have time to dig further into their unique solution to the problem of off-world construction.

Wed love to hear from you! If you have a comment about this article or if you have a tip for a future Freethink story, please email us at tips@freethink.com.

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Mars colonies could be built from astronauts blood and urine - Freethink

Three-year-old Lila Yilmaz sang the song Talking To The Moon in viral video. (Image courtesy: Instagram)

Remember 3-year-old Lila Yilmaz whose rendition of Cover Me In Sunshine became crazy viral on social media? Guess what, yet another video of the little girl has been doing the rounds of the internet. This time she has left netizens in awe with her version of the song Talking To The Moon, which has been originally sung by Bruno Mars. If you are an avid Instagram user, you will know that this song is often used in the background of several videos. The little girls version is sure to melt your heart.

In the short Instagram video, which appears to be recorded by her mother, Lila can be seen standing on the balcony and singing beautifully. Wearing a blue dress, the little one can be seen crooning the soulful number and at the end, she walks up to her mother and says, The birds must love my singing.

I imagine every parent blessed with the love of offspring must feel that their own is the cutest and most incredible being in the world. I myself am blown away by this spectacular being and feel like my heart may explode as I watch her become more amazing each day. Lilam, annem, one day you will spread your wings and fly out of our nest to do marvellous things. You will watch these videos and read these captions, I sure hope I am doing the right thing for you by sharing your beauty with the world. I am beyond proud of you my sweet little girl, your light is breathtaking (sic), the video caption read.

The comments section is replete with delightful remarks from users who loved Lilas rendition of the song. She brings me so much joy (sic), a user wrote. She's so precious (sic), another user wrote.

Check out more comments below:

Cute, no?

ALSO READ| Little girls rendition of Cover Me In Sunshine is crazy viral with over 10 million views. Dont miss

ALSO READ| Little girl sings Bohemian Rhapsody in viral video. Adorable, says Internet

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Little girl sings Bruno Mars's Talking To The Moon in viral video. Cuteness overloaded, says Internet - India Today

People love watchingadorablevideos of children performing several different activates, and if you love those videos then this clip of a little girl willdefinitely removeyour Monday blues. A 3-year-oldLila Yilmaz went viral on the internet after she sang a song byBruno Mars. She has wowed the netizens with her rendition of 'TalkingToTheMoon'. Ifyou'rea frequent Instagram user thenyou willnotice that this song byBruno Marsappears in the backdrop of several video clips, yet,theversion of this little one is sure to warm your soul.

The video was shared on Instagram from the account named itseceyilmaz.In the Instagram profile,Lila Yilmaz also sang the songs like 'Cover me to the sunshine' as well as'a whole new world'.In the video, it can be seen that thelittle girl,Lila is standingon the balcony and looking outside. She then started singingwonderfully in a brief Instagram video. The tiny one is seen singingthe soulful tune while wearing a blue outfit. She was even seen dancing and at the conclusion, the little girl came forward and told the person recording that The birds must love my singing.

The video captioned, I imagine every parent blessed with the love of offspring must feel that their own is the cutest and most incredible being in the world. I myself am blown away by this spectacular being and feel like my heart may explode as I watch her become more amazing each day.

Lilam,annem, one day you will spread your wings and fly out of our nest to domarvellousthings.You will watch these videos and read these captions; I sure hope I am doing the right thing for you by sharing your beauty with the world. I am beyond proud of you my sweet little girl, your light is breathtaking.

Take a lookat the 'talking to the moon' video:

The video has received more than 8Klikes since it was published on Instagram. Several people have expressed their feeling in the comment thread. One of the users has written, She melts my heart, the cutest,while another has written, Bless u my baby and the third commented, Adorable.Several others have commented with heart emojis.

A remarkable video of a five-year-old child climbing walls like Spider-Man has been widely circulated on social media. The video clip has made everyone perplexed. The 55-second film was shared by a Twitter handle calledFunnyOMGVideos.The young girl can be seen climbing walls like a spider without needing any assistance. With no safety gear, the girl climbs the high wall of her bedroom with her arms and legs.

Take a look at the video:

(Image: Instagram/itseceyilmaz)

Get the latest entertainment news from India & around the world. Now follow your favourite television celebs and telly updates. Republic World is your one-stop destination for trending Bollywood news. Tune in today to stay updated with all the latest news and headlines from the world of entertainment.

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Three-year-old girl croons Bruno Mars' 'Talking To The Moon'; wows netizens - Republic World

China's Zhurong rover snapped this broad panorama of the Utopia Planitia area of Mars.

August has been quite the month for Mars panoramas. First, NASA's Curiosity rover celebrated nine years on the red planet with a rock-studded view of the Gale Crater. Now China's Zhurong rover is getting in on the action with a sandy scene from its Martian home in Utopia Planitia.

Zhurong, part of the China National Space Administration's Tianwen-1 Mars mission, is scoping out a broad plains region. CNSA released a panorama view on Monday that also shows off the rover's solar panels. The landscape is full of small rocks, along with some lovely sand dunes visible on the right side of the panorama.

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

While Curiosity is marking its Mars time in years, Zhurong has proudly outlasted its original three-month life expectancy and is now on an extended mission as it continues to work its way across Utopia Planitia. CNSA announced the extension earlier this month. So far the rover has covered nearly 3,500 feet (1,064 meters) since landing in May.

The panorama adds to Zhurong's impressive photo album. In June, the rover delivered one of the finest Mars portraits ever taken thanks to an assist from a remote camera.

China's Tianwen-1 mission consists of an orbiter, a lander and a rover. Zhurong's presence brought the number of active Mars rovers up to three along with NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance, which are off exploring different parts of the planet. That means we currently have an embarrassment of rover riches giving us windows onto the red planet's wild and rocky vistas.

FollowCNET's 2021 Space Calendarto stay up to date with all the latest space news this year. You can even add it to your own Google Calendar.

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Chinese Mars rover snaps sweeping sands in red planet panorama - CNET

At one time, the idea of sending humans to Mars either seemed like a distant prospect or something out of science fiction. But with multiple space agencies and even commercial space companies planning to mount missions in the coming decade, the day when humans will go to Mars is fast approaching the point of realization. Before this can happen, several issues need to be resolved first, including a myriad of technical and human factors.

In any discussion about crewed missions to Mars, there are recurring questions about whether or not we can mitigate the threat of radiation. In a new study, an international team of space scientists addressed the question of whether particle radiation would be too great a threat and if radiation could be mitigating through careful timing. In the end, they found that a mission to Mars is doable but that it could not exceed a duration of four years.

The research was led by Mikhail Dobynde, a researcher from the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology and the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow. He was joined by members from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences at the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam in Germany, the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

For the sake of their study, the team considered the threat posed by the two main types of radiation sources: Solar Energetic Particles (SEP) and Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR). The former consists of fast-moving protons, electrons, and high-energy atomic nuclei that can negatively affect electronics and living tissue. The latter consists of the same range of energetic particles but originate beyond the Solar System and are attributed to supernovas.

The intensity of both of these radiation sources depends on the level of solar activity, where SEP levels are least intense during a solar minimum, but GCR activity is most enhanced. The reverse is also true, where GCR activity will be lowest during solar maximum, but SEP will be elevated. To gauge the threat posed by these sources, the team combined geophysical models that considered how particle radiation varies during the 11-year solar cycle.

These were combined with models of how radiation will affect human passengers (including different bodily organs) and their spacecraft. The team then ran a series of Monte-Carlo simulations of radiation propagation that took into account 10 different types of SEP radiation and 28 types of fully-ionized GCR elements. From this, they determined that the best time to send a Mars-bound mission would be during the six to twelve months after solar activity peaks (aka. solar maximum).

At this point, GCR activity is at its lowest, and SEP begins to decrease from its highest intensity. The situation slowly reverses during the next six and a half years, with GCR activity slowly increasing until it reaches maximum intensity (coinciding with a solar minimum). Given that the average flight time to Mars is about nine months, a crewed return-mission to Mars could be done in less than two years.

According to their findings, Dobynde and his colleagues found that this would ensure that the mission made it home before the radiation environment became too hazardous. But a mission that lasted up to four years would be pushing it since they would be forced to return home amid higher levels of GCR activity. Hence, their modelling also indicated that the spacecrafts shielding would need to be relatively thick to ensure the crews health.

However, these same results also indicated that having shielding that is too thick might actually increase the amount of secondary radiation to which the crew is exposed. This phenomenon, where high-energy particles collide with shielding to produce a cascade of secondary particles (aka. a particle shower), has been studied extensively aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

According to Yuri Shprits, the head of space physics and space weather at GFZ Research Centre for Geosciences (and a co-author on the paper), these results could be of great value to future mission planners. This study shows that while space radiation imposes strict limitations on how heavy the spacecraft can be and the time of launch, and it presents technological difficulties for human missions to Mars, such a mission is viable, he said.

These considerations are vital given that there are multiple plans to conduct regular missions to Mars in the near future. This includes NASA and its Moon to Mars mission architecture, Chinas plans to send crews to Mars by 2033 (and build a permanent research outpost there), and Elon Musks plan for sending payloads and crew every two years using the SpaceX Starship and Super Heavy launch vehicle.

These are just a few of the visions for Martian exploration (and settlement) that have been articulated of late. With all of the robotic missions currently exploring the planet and the possibility of human exploration on the horizon, Mars is looming in the public imagination once again. Since the Apollo era, Mars has come to be viewed as the next great leap that could lead to a new era reinvigorated space age!

The fact that Mars is the most habitable celestial body beyond Earth has also been a source of inspiration to scientists, mission planners, astronauts, and futurists alike. Despite the challenges that going there would entail, there is currently no shortage of people willing to sign-up for a one-way trip. For these adventurous souls, the prospect of breaking ground on Mars the next great frontier has a certain romance to it.

But what is especially exciting is when realistic appraisals show that these adventurous notions are actually feasible, given the right preparations, technology, and mitigations strategies. When scientific fact and romance come together to make plans for the future, great things can happen!

Further Reading: UCLA, Space Weather

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A Human Mission to Mars Should Last a Maximum of 4 Years - Universe Today