Category Archives: Mars

NASA's Curiosity rover is still sending breathtaking images back to Earth nine years after it landed on Mars. On the red planet, 18,000-foot mountains and rocky, four-story-tall hills compete for attention with rippled fields of black sand and a horizon view that stretches 20 miles on a clear day.

Curiosity sent its latest pictures from 1,500 feet above the Martian plain, on its way up the side of Mt. Sharp. The peak's 18,000-foot height would make it America's second-tallest mountain, eclipsed only by Alaska's Denali formerly Mt. McKinley.

Mt. Sharp sits within Gale Crater, a 96-mile-wide basin. Scientists hope they can determine what happened to the liquid that geological features suggest was once everywhere on the red planet.

"The rocks here will begin to tell us how this once-wet planet changed into the dry Mars of today, and how long habitable environments persisted even after that happened," said Abigail Fraeman, Curiosity's deputy project scientist, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

NASA digitally stitched together 129 of the rover's snapshots from a single day July 3 into a single panoramic picture. The 360-degree look at the Martian surface, NASA says, is particularly sharp because it's wintertime, meaning there's not much dust in the air.

Curiosity also drilled the latest in series of 32 core samples into the Martian surface, part of an effort to understand what kind of material is on the planet's outer crust. NASA said readings from its network of spacecraft orbiting Mars show Curiosity is roving somewhere between a region enriched with clay minerals and one dominated by salty minerals called sulfates.

Analyzing what Curiosity pulls out of the holes it drills does not involve sending them back to a laboratory on Earth: It has its own on-board equipment. The mobile lab uses a drill to break samples down into a powder, and then moves them to Curiosity's chassis where instruments determine which chemicals and minerals are present.

NASA says the mountain's layers could reveal how, and how long ago, the ancient environment within Gale Crater dried up. Similar changes are seen across the planet.

Curiosity landed in the crater on Aug. 5, 2012, on a mission to study whether different Martian environments could have supported microbial life in the planet's ancient past when it was home to lakes and groundwater. The rover has moved 16 miles within the crater since it arrived.

Next up for Curiosity is a trip along a winding trail between Rafael Navarro Mountain and one of those four-story hills. Then it will return to the Greenheugh Pediment, a slope with a sandstone cap that it briefly visited in 2020.

NASA has sent five rovers to Mars since the 1970s. Three are no longer operational. Curiosity was joined on the planet's surface earlier this year by the Perseverance, whose first attempt to collect samples of Martian dirt was unsuccessful, according to NASA.

This story was provided to Newsweek by Zenger News.

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NASA Rover Captures Stunning Images of Mars' Giant Mountains, Black Sand and 20-Mile Horizon - Newsweek

In a Reggae music confederacy, bass player and producer Taddy P strummed up the acoustics for singer sensation Maxi Priest, and well-known Soca artist Teddyson John to re-style the previously released Leave The Door Open by Bruno Mars, Anderson Paak, and Silk Sonic and it may just be as good as the original.

Its no easy feat executing a cover of this years No. 1 love song, however, Maxi Priest, Teddyson John, and Taddy P added their own interpretation, yet allowing the quintessence of melodies to remain, which is nothing short of mesmerizing.

Maxi Priests signature vocals are among the most distinct in Reggae music and his work has been memorialized through his many musical contributions over the decades. He was the perfect addition to this trio in creating a Caribbean version of the cover for Leave The Door Open. The remake is reminiscent of the Caribbean with Reggae rhythm-infused undertones, thus producing a classic Lovers Rock ballad to get you moving.

St. Lucian born, Teddyson John was overwhelmed to be selected for this project as it was his first Reggae cover, and what better way to debut his first collaboration in the genre than with a great stalwart like Maxi Priest. The Soca star expressed how extremely honored he was.

I thought the Reggae version was a great idea because this track is the biggest love song in the world right now, No. 1 on Billboard, and its good to share our Caribbean version of that expression, Teddyson explained. Although he is mostly known for his contributions to Soca, his interest in music is vast and doesnt limit himself to any one genre but rather focuses on creating great music.

Produced by talented bass musicians Taddy P and Dwight DollaCham Yearwood, the Leave The Door Open collaboration was surprising as many would not expect a Soca artist on a Reggae track. The producers, however, believed the sound of the artists would definitely compliment the track excellently and were more interested in creating a great cover than playing it safe.

Its definitely a Caribbean fusion with these artists and the team. We wanted to ensure that the Reggae cover did justice to the original track and with Teddyson and Maxi Priests vocals its a slam-dunk and we are very proud of the finished product, Taddy P. said.

Press play on the Reggae cover for Leave The Door Open with Maxi Priest, Teddyson John, and Taddy P. above.

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Maxi Priest, Teddyson John Deliver Reggae Cover Of Bruno Mars Leave The Door Open - DancehallMag

File Photo: On January 15, 2021, in Dover, England, a truck will drive towards the entrance to Dover Harbor after the Brexit transition period.Reuters / John Sibley // File Photo

August 27, 2021

(Reuters) -British ministers are considering relaxing post-Brexit immigration rules to help end the shortage of truck drivers under increasing pressure from the supermarket chain, the Times reported.

The newspaper said it could address the estimated 100,000 driver shortage by reviewing the shortage list to give employers more flexibility in hiring new hires abroad, without mentioning government sources. Stated.

The review was scheduled for next year, but the report added that it could be tracked quickly to add a heavy-duty vehicle (HGV) driver to the list.

The Financial Times reported on Friday that the minister had instructed companies to hire UK-based workers to address the chronic shortage of truck drivers in the country.

UK retailers, cafes and restaurants are struggling to deal with shortages https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/britain-could-face-food-shortages-due-lorry-driver-crisis -2021-06-25 Percentage of drivers and food processing staff after COVID-19.

The problem isnt unique to the UK, but there is a shortage of truck drivers in the United States and other European countries, but Brexit makes things worse, industry groups say https://www.reuters. It says com / world / uk / fast-food-chain. -nandos-temporarily-shuts-over-40-uk-outlets-2021-08-17.

McDonalds, KFC, bakery chain Greggs, and chicken restaurant chain Nandos have all recently faced supply turmoil.

An unprecedented shortage of both staff and materials has hindered the post-blocking economic recovery in Britain, a carefully watched economic survey said Monday.

(Report by Kanishka Singh in Bangalore, edited by Michael Perry)

Britains Mars-Times relaxes Brexit immigration rules to end the shortage of truck drivers

Source link Britains Mars-Times relaxes Brexit immigration rules to end the shortage of truck drivers

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Britain's Mars-Times relaxes Brexit immigration rules to end the shortage of truck drivers - Texasnewstoday.com

The more people talked about Christianity Todays new podcast,The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, the more I knew I eventually would need to listen to it. In 2004, my wife and I left our families and friends behind to move across the country and help start a church in Denver, and the Mars Hill saga rang all too familiar to us.

The Rise and Fall of Mars Hilltells the story of how pastor Mark Driscoll planted and grew Mars Hill Church in Seattle to more than 15,000 members by weaving together Reformed theology, toxic masculinity, celebrity culture and power until it collapsed virtually overnight after Driscoll resigned amidst allegations of abuse.

But Driscolls story went far beyond simply his own local church. He also helped found theActs 29 church planting network, which was heavily involved with planting more than 500 Reformed, complementarian churches and shaping an entire generation of new conservative evangelical churches before Driscoll wasremoved in 2014.

Like the story of Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill, our story in Denver ended with scandal and abuse by a pastor obsessed with hierarchy and power. And like many whose stories have been told in this podcast, we felt we had to bear our wounds in silence for years.

Because our story involved leaders who were shaped by the Acts 29 and Mars Hill philosophies, I knew that listening toThe Rise and Fall of Mars Hillwould be triggering. And sure enough, despite some theological differences I have with certain moments of the podcast, I found myself seeing our story in every episode. For the first seven episodes, I felt seen, and I experienced some deepening levels of awareness and healing.

But then they released an interview titledI Kissed Christianity Goodbyewith Joshua Harris, the author who helped shape the 1990s purity culture under the direction ofCJ Mahaneyand eventually became a megachurch pastor before deconstructinghis views of datingand eventuallyleaving Christianity.

I have a unique glimpse into whats really going on in all three of these worlds. And I am deeply concerned about what I heard in this episode.

As somebody who spent more than a decade either in or around Driscolls Acts 29 churches and as a member of one of Josh Harris Sovereign Grace churches, and as someone who now identifies as an ex-evangelical, I have a unique glimpse into whats really going on in all three of these worlds. And I am deeply concerned about what I heard in this episode.

My concern about this episode is not about defending Harris. Harris is not a spokesperson for progressive Christianity, deconstructing Christians, ex-evangelicals or marginalized communities. In fact, many progressives have voiced their concerns overcontinued patriarchyin Harris public engagement, including over a controversy this past week in which Harris released a $275 course on deconstructing, then offered it for free, and thenpulledthe entire course after hearing feedback from ex-evangelicals.

Mike Cosper, who is the podcasts producer, begins early in the episode by setting Driscoll and Harris side by side, saying: The personalities of Josh Harris and Mark Driscoll couldnt be more different. If Driscolls Christianity was defined by masculinity, Harriss was defined by a vision of holiness. And if you wanted to think in terms of branding, Mars Hills was bold and aggressive, and Sovereign Grace Ministries, the network where Harris served, branded itself as friendly and humble. And still, theres a lot of common ground. Both men were talented, charismatic leaders who achieved a significant level of national attention before they turned 30. Their communities had a strong vision of pastoral authority, as well as a central emphasis on Reformed doctrine. Harris and Driscoll both served as council members for The Gospel Coalition, spoke at many of the same conferences, including Harris speaking at Mars Hill. They were both young, ambitious leaders in the same movement with many of the same influences around them who tried to help guide them on their way.

In other words, Cosper is painting a picture of these two seemingly different men being virtually the same at some deeper levels that are explored throughout the podcast.

At this point, Cosper details Harris deconstruction journey that included leaving the pastorate, apologizing for the impact of his book, announcing that he and his wife were getting divorced, and then sharing that he no longer identified as a Christian.

Then Cosper immediately pairs deconstructing Christians with Josh Harris, saying: That story has countless parallels in the lives of other Christians who experience ruptures in their churches, abusive leadership cultures, and other spiritual disasters that led them away from the church.

For Christianity Today to pair the people Harris teaching has wounded with Harris himself is completely inappropriate and abusive. Many of us have been listening toThe Rise and Fall of Mars Hillwith skepticism and a vulnerability to hear, process and grieve over the men who abused us. To draw us in with that story and then pair us together with our abusers that conservative evangelicalism platformed as celebrities is simply appalling.

We were hurt by these men. They are not our celebrities. They are yours.

The episode hints at where its going in the introduction when Colin Hansen, who wroteYoung, Restless, Reformed: A Journalists Journey with the New Calvinists, calls Harris one of the most spectacular boy wonders of evangelical history, a title that is given to Harris multiple times in the podcast.

Later in the episode, Cosper takes the opportunity to use the theme of celebrity to pair Harris and ex-evangelicals together again, saying: As Ive thought about Joshs story, there are two things that come to mind for me. The first is the degree to which its shaped by his status as a celebrity, or in more modern terms, an influencer . To what degree are Instagram posts from influencers a window into the divine for a secular age, ways of worshiping a little pantheon of gods that represent sex or money or beauty or power or spiritual enlightenment, including the enlightenment of having deconstructed?

By focusing on Harris social media skills and pairing ex-evangelicals together with Harris, Cosper categorizes those who have deconstructed their faith as worshiping the gods of sex, money, beauty, power or enlightenment. He also implies that those of us who deconstruct are being duped by Instagram posts. This is the same demonstration of ignorance about deconstruction thatThe Gospel Coalitionhas been putting out.

Cosper continues: The other thing that comes to mind for me is how the exvangelical phenomenon is itself an expression of evangelical culture. It has its own gathering of celebrities, its own code of ethics, its own sense of whos in and whos out, and its own gatekeepers.

In other words, Cosper seems to think those who have left evangelicalism after being deeply wounded by evangelicalism are virtually no different than the stories they left behind.

One of the common tactics conservative evangelicals use to delegitimize outsiders is to contrast between subjective experience and objective truth.

Today, youll often hear the word exvangelical in these conversations. That represents a pretty wide spectrum of people who no longer want to identify with evangelicalism, explains Cosper. Some simply want to reject the term. Others have rejected the faith altogether. And some of them going so far as to gather online around hashtags like #EmptyThePews, arguing that the church itself is a destructive force in the culture. What seems consistent, though, is the degree to which peoples stories and experiences have driven their process.

Cosper once again says: What I think is visible in the phenomenon is the centrality of peoples stories and experiences as the core impetus for the movement I hope that conservative evangelicals can listen to those stories before they go about defending their doctrine.

What Cosper and conservative evangelicals seem totally unaware of is how stories and experiences were the core impetus for the development of the doctrines they espouse. Sure, theyre willing to put defending their doctrine on hold long enough to listen to some tough stories. But eventually, they will get around to defending their doctrine without realizing how culturally situated the development of their doctrine was.

In one of the more confrontational moments of the interview, Cosper tries to paint Harris and deconstructing Christians as evangelists of a different kind of certainty: So you feel the confidence then that, as someone who was an evangelist before and now in a sense like youre still evangelizing, but youre evangelizing in another direction. You feel confidence, the convictions now are the right convictions.

Of course, while conservative evangelicals desire certainty, doubts will arise. Cospers desire is that when we face a crisis of belief, to see it as a challenge to not only address our pain, as essential as that is, but to address the doubts themselves by seeking truth. This isnt to say that we master our fears and our doubts, particularly on the other side of deep woundedness. But it does mean that theres a kind of faith filled willingness to look to God, to the Scriptures, to the church, and to seek the truth where it may be found.

By placing our doubts within the context of deep woundedness, Cosper delegitimizes doubt and labels ex-evangelicals as not able to see clearly because of their pain. It never seems to dawn on him that perhaps its our pain that has allowed us finally to see the reality of the theology conservative evangelicals have been abusing us with. By calling us to look to the Scriptures and the church, he tells us to submit to the tools and people that abused us. It never dawns on him that perhaps weve seen the hierarchical thread of power that runs through their culturally situated interpretation of God, the Scriptures and the church.

The episode then tells the story of Christian in Pilgrims Progress being tempted by Atheist who simply wants to entertain (himself) with the stuff (he) threw away when (he) thought there was a city, and then Christian ends up in Doubting Castle through Despair.

It does not occur to them that perhaps there are disconnections between the conservative evangelical theological narrative and the reality of the universe. And they certainly do not see any connection between their theology and their ethics.

The conversation the episode should have been about but ultimately missed was the gospel.

Cosper reflected on Harris days as a pastor: For as many times a week as you probably used the word gospel, there was a whole lot of law in the culture you were teaching and a very sort of moralistic set of expectations. The solution to your awakening could have been, Oh, I need the gospel, instead of the floor coming out.

The conversation the episode should have been about but ultimately missed was about the gospel.

After I left the independent fundamentalist Baptist world of my youth, I spent 17 years in conservative evangelical churches. We were consistently taught that eternal conscious torment was what we all deserved but that penal substitutionary atonement satisfied Gods wrath against us for being born in Adam and breaking the law. Our ethics were framed not as obeying the law to earn favor with God, but as living out the gospel.

In other words, conservative evangelicalism discipled us to believe that theology forms ethics. Their retributive, penal substitutionary theology was the gospel, and their ethics were living out the gospel. Now that so many of their leaders are being exposed for abusive ethics, they want us to pretend that abusive ethics are not a sign of abusive theology.

They say they want to grieve the pain and repent of the ways weve contributed to it. But then they are unwilling to examine the theology their leaders said fueled the ethics.

Isnt it worth asking how the cultures of Anselm and Calvin affected their interpretation of the gospel?

Isnt it worth wondering about the connection between hierarchical theology and hierarchical ethics?

Harris tried to point this out, saying, Its still good news that, if you dont receive, you go to hell forever. If that is at the very core of the message, does that justify the kind of manipulative, controlling, abusive behavior?

Cosper responds with: Part of the reason were in this project is to try to sort of as strongly as we can say that it absolutely doesnt. Notice how uneasy those words are. Hes not denying that theology. Hes simply disconnecting the ethics from that theology, as if a justice of violence and power is merely coincidental to a people formed to celebrate and embrace violence and power. Harris should have recognized how uncomfortable Cosper was and focused in on this point.

But Cosper then immediately pivots back to reflecting on celebrity culture, claiming that its about a syncretism around cultural power and influence the phenomenon of celebrity. And rather than putting Cosper on the defensive about conservative evangelical theology, Harris falls for the rabbit trail, and they end up comparing Jesus to Kim Kardashian.

What if the abusive ethics these men lived out actually were born from the abusive theology they claimed they were living out?

But what if the abusive ethics these men lived out actually were born from the abusive theology they claimed they were living out? And what if those of us who are deconstructed have, through the abuse we suffered at their hands, recognized this power dynamic? If our wounds have allowed us to recognize this hierarchical power game, then what else can we do other than leave it behind and open up to something better?

In a totally unexpected twist of irony, Cosper concludes: Christians have been wrestling with deconstruction and doubt from the very beginning. Maybe the most famous example of how to reckon with it comes in the Catholic mystical tradition.

If you have read many of my articles, you may have noticed that I often quote the likes of Ilia Delio, Richard Rohr, Meister Eckhart, St. Francis of Assisi and others. These are all leaders within the Catholic mystical tradition.

I believe the path forward for Christianity is to marry the Catholic mystical tradition with liberation theologies. But Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition cannot marry the Catholic mystical tradition of the relationality and belonging of all things with their Reformed tradition of the hierarchy and power dynamics of all things. You cant simply quote a mystic for a podcast and feel better about your hierarchy.

The episode ends with a song about wounded people who are lost. But were not lost. Were here. We finally see the hierarchy of your power games. And were done with it. Weve kissed it goodbye.

Well never unfeel what weve felt. Well never unsee what weve seen. And because of that, were free to open up to ourselves, our neighbors and God with a complexity, depth and union that we never had in your hierarchy.

Rick Pidcockrecently served as a Clemons Fellow with BNG. He is afreelance writerbased inSouth Carolina and recently completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five kids, produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder and may be found at his website.

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I lived in the culture of 'The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill,' and there's one part of the story that's wrong - Baptist News Global

The Science Team

While the rover has significant autonomous capabilities, such as driving itself across the Martian landscape, hundreds of earthbound scientists are still involved in analyzing results and planning further investigations.

There are almost 500 people on the science team, Beegle said. The number of participants in any given action by the rover is on the order of 100. Its great to see these scientists come to agreement in analyzing the clues, prioritizing each step, and putting together the pieces of the Jezero science puzzle.

That will be critical when the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover collects its first samples for eventual return to Earth. Theyll be sealed in superclean metallic tubes on the Martian surface so that a future mission could collect them and send back to the home planet for further analysis.

Despite decades of investigation on the question of potential life, the Red Planet has stubbornly kept its secrets.

Mars 2020, in my view, is the best opportunity we will have in our lifetime to address that question, said Kenneth Williford, the deputy project scientist for Perseverance.

The geological details are critical, Allwood said, to place any indication of possible life in context, and to check scientists ideas about how a second example of lifes origin could come about.

Combined with other instruments on the rover, the detectors on the arm, including SHERLOC and WATSON, could make humanitys first discovery of life beyond Earth.

More About the Mission

A key objective for Perseverances mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planets geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASAs Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

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

For more about Perseverance:

mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

and

nasa.gov/perseverance

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Mars . Signs of Life on Mars? NASA's Perseverance Rover Begins the Hunt - Jet Propulsion Laboratory

More About the Mission

JPL manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission.

A number of European partners, including France's Centre National d'tudes Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain's Centro de Astrobiologa (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors.

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News . Journey to the Center of Mars With the InSight Lander Team - Jet Propulsion Laboratory

On May 14th, 2021, the China National Space Agency (CNSA) achieved another major milestone when the Tianwen-1 lander successfully soft-landed on Mars, making China the second nation in the world to land a mission on Mars and establish communications from the surface. Shortly thereafter, China National Space Agency (CNSA) shared the first images taken by the Tianwen-1 lander.

By May 22nd, 2021, the Zhurong rover descended from its lander and drove on the Martian surface for the first time. Since then, the rover has spent 63 Earth days conducting science operations on the surface of Mars and has traveled over 450 meters (1475 feet). On Friday, July 9th, and again on July 15th, the CNSA released new images of the Red Planet that were taken by the rover as it made its way across the surface.

Since the rover deployed to the surface of Mars, it has been traveling southward to explore and inspect the terrain and has taken daily images of rocks, sand dunes, and other features using its Navigation and Topography Cameras (NaTeCam). Meanwhile, other instruments like the Mars Rover Penetrating Radar (RoPeR), Mars Rover Magnetometer (RoMAG), Mars Climate Station (MCS) have also been collecting data on Mars magnetic field, weather, and subsurface.

Whenever the rover came across notable landforms, it relied on its Mars Surface Compound Detector (MarSCoDe) and Multispectral Camera (MSCam) to carry out fixed-point scans to determine their composition. Among the new images are the two Martian rocks shown above (courtesy of CNSA via Xinhuanet) that revealed the rocks texture features, the thick layers of dust covering them, and impressions left by the ruts of the rover.

Other images (shown below, also from CNSA via Xinhuanet) include a landscape shot that was taken by Zhurong on June 26th, the rovers 42nd day on the Martian surface (Sol 42). On this day, the rover arrived in a sandy area and took images of a red dune located roughly 6 meters (~20 ft) away. As you can see (top gallery image), the dune has several rocks strewn about it, the one directly ahead of Zhurong measuring 34 cm (13.4 inches) wide.

The next image (bottom left) was taken on July 4th, Zhurongs 50th day on the Martian surface (Sol 50), after the rover drove to the south side of the dune which measures 40 m (~130 ft) long, 8 m (26.25 ft) wide and 0.6 m high (2 ft). The fifth and final landscape image (bottom right) was taken when the Zhurong rover was at a distance of 210 m (690 ft) from its landing site and 130 m (~425 ft) from the landers back cover and parachute.

These components were part of the Tianwen-1 missions Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) module. Whereas the back cover ensured that the rover and lander safely made it through deep-space and survived the turbulent ride through Mars atmosphere, the parachute was what allowed for their controlled descent through the atmosphere so they could make a soft landing.

These components are just visible in the upper right corner of the top image while a cluster of stones of various shapes is visible on the left. More recent images acquired by the rover were released on July 15th, 2021, which showed the rover inspecting the back cover and parachute more closely (see below). The first image (top left) was acquired three days prior and shows these two components on the rovers left side as it continued on its southbound patrol.

As the CNSA indicated in a press statement that was released along with the images:

The picture shows the full view of the parachute and the complete back after aerodynamic ablation. Cover structure, the attitude control engine diversion hole on the back cover is clearly identifiable, the rover is about 30 meters away from the back cover and about 350 meters away from the landing site during imaging.

The second and third images (black and white) were taken by the front and rear obstacle avoidance cameras as the rover made its approach and departure from the back cover and chute. The fourth image shows the parachute after it was deployed during the landers descent over Utopia Planitia (where it landed) on May 15th. Yet another image was released by the CNSA the following day, which shows Tianwen-1s landing site.

This image was taken by the orbiter element of the mission on June 2nd, days after the lander and rover element safely landed. The locations of the lander, the rover, the parachute, and back cover, and the heat shield are all indicated in white. The two white dots at the top right corner are the lander and rover, the parachute and back cover are almost directly beneath it (the elongated white mark being the chute) while the heat shield is at the bottom right.

The Tianwen-1 mission was quite the feather in the cap of the CNSA, and not just because it was Chinas first mission to Mars. By successfully deploying this mission, China became the first nation to reach Mars with a mission that included an orbiter, lander, and rover element. Prior to this, every space agency that successfully sent a robotic mission to Mars began with orbiters, followed by surface missions landers first, then landers with rovers.

On top of that, the Zhurong rover makes China the second nation in the world (after the US) to land and operate a rover on the Martian surface. This will be followed in the near future by the Rosalind Franklin rover (part of the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars program) which will launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome sometime this September and is expected to arrive at Mars on June 10th, 2023.

These missions will help pave the way for human exploration, which China is now hoping to do (alongside NASA) during the 2030s. Much like all the crewed lunar missions planned for the near future, the human exploration of Mars is expected to be a multinational affair!

Originally published on Universe Today.

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New Images of Mars From Chinas Zhurong Rover - SciTechDaily

"That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind," said Neil Armstrong on this date in 1969 in the gender biased language of the era. There is a new space race today. A Chinese rocket has landed on Mars and deposited a rover vehicle capable of doing all sorts of exciting science. This means that the Americans are no longer the only nation to have sent a vehicle to another planet. More significantly, the Chinese have announced their plan to send people to the Martian surface in the year 2033 and to eventually build a base there.

Meanwhile, NASA, in conjunction with Elon Musk and other contemporary space cowboys, have plans to build an inhabited base on the Moon and, eventually, on Mars. At stake in this new space race: space mining rights, being the first to discover new science, and just being first; one thing that has not changed since the 60s.

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WeatherTalk: There is a new space race to Mars and beyond - The Dickinson Press

NASA's Curiosity rover might be sitting near a wealth of information that might hint at signs of life on Mars. New Scientist and Space.com note that Caltech researchers have identified six locations for methane "burps" (that is, emissions blips) on the planet, including one just a few dozen miles west southwest from Curiosity. Ideally, the rover could investigate the emissions and determine their true nature.

Curiosity has detected the methane spurts six times since landing on Mars in 2012, but scientists haven't had success locating their sources until now. Europe's Trace Gas Orbiter has also failed to spot methane at atmospheric levels. The Caltech team narrowed down the on-the-ground sources by modelling methane particles as packets and tracing their routes based on historical wind velocity.

The research hasn't yet been peer-reviewed, so we'd take it with a grain of caution. It's also entirely possible that the gas has non-organic origins. Even if that's the case, though, the burps could be tied to geological activity linked to liquid water. Early Mars reportedly held massive amounts of water even if there's no active water at these sources, a close-up study could help illustrate Mars' history.

All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

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Curiosity rover might be sitting near microbe 'burps' on Mars - Engadget

We have a Rover driving around Mars sending us sights and sounds of an alien world that is truly a technical marvel. So why, with this level of technology,cant we devise a hi-tech voting system?

Instead of expanding a stone-age, paper mail-in voter system presently, asnowunder consideration, why not voter ID cards with multiple security features similar to credit cards thathave been protecting untold trillions of transactions securely for years? Voters could cast their ballots securely and then also be able to check their ballots integrity throughout the election process.

A secure, digital, and transparent voting system could eliminate our present-day, divisive suspicions of voter fraud and conspiracies born out of archaic, paper ballots. Or do we want to retain our ancient, stone-age, mail-in systems with their inherent risks of suspicious, smoke-and-mirrors, behind-the-curtain fraud and nefarious activities that can further inflame, weaken, and split our nation apart?

We are preparing to spend trillions on infrastructure and national security, but we are unable or unwilling to address and develop a more secure and transparent voting system that is absolutely vital to our precious democracy?!

John Weiglhofer

Hadlyme

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We can put a vehicle on Mars. Can't we fix voting integrity? - theday.com