Category Archives: Space Exploration

With the sensational exploits of the Mars rover, space reinscribes itself on our minds

Humans have always looked up. The verticality of our imagination helps us imagine what the worlds out there may be like.

Outer space is not just about NASA, ISRO and the superspecialised scientist. It has mattered from the ancient world to the present, from cosmographers to warmongers, philosophers to Christopher Nolan. Astroculture is science and fiction, imagination and data. It is as old as humanity.

Once the Copernican revolution altered forever the view of the universe, cultural imaginaries grew around it, exemplified in texts like Alexander von Humboldts Cosmos (1849). Telescopes, 20th century expeditions to the farther reaches of the solar system, satellites and the rapidly advancing sciences of astronomy, brought planets and other bodies literally into our ken.

With the sensational exploits of the Mars rover, Perseverance, space reinscribes itself on our minds as a new astroculture emerges which repeats, albeit differently, such a culture from the modern era.

How would earth look like from the Moon or outer space? Not until the Blue Marble photographs (1972) would we know. But humankind could certainly imagine. All imaginings of outer space emerge from the horror vacui: the fear of vast, sublime, inky emptiness. Humanity, therefore, wished to know what space contained which led to space explorations or imagined what it contained. Literature and later popular culture stepped in where no man had gone before (as the cult TV series, Star Trek, put it).

Ancient astronomers in various civilisations produced cosmographies, the first texts of astroculture. The earliest recorded observations in Europe date back to 2000 BC, with Egyptian, Indian and Mesopotamian cosmologies dating farther back. The Greeks may well have systematised cosmology. In more modern times, the astronomer Johannes Kepler wrote his Somnium in 1608, about how the earth would look from the moon. Francis Godwins The Man in the Moon (1638) visualised space travel and is often treated, alongside Somnium and Margaret Cavendishs The Blazing World (1666) as one of the first exercises in science fiction.

Keats spoke of astronomers rejoicing over a new planet. An entire English nursery rhyme, popular even today, is devoted to stars. Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Percy Shelley, Robert Frost and numerous canonical poets were influenced by and imagined astronomical developments. The moon and stars are ubiquitous in films and songs in Indian languages. UFOs are the stuff of everyday imagining through much of the 20th century, of course.

In the 20th century, Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov and, of course, Hollywood saw potential in outer space. Aligning current science with considerable imaginative ideas of what outer space was, these popular texts across media altered outer space into an extension of human geography, economics and politics. Space in these discourses was variously imagined: interplanetary space, deep space, interstellar space, the cosmos, and of course, the heavens. This imagining of space has produced major discourses and images: from our fates as determined by astronomical alignments to terraforming in which humanity modifies the atmosphere and conditions on other planets to make them amenable to human life.

It is the place of and for adventure, when there are no longer unexplored places on earth. It houses strange and often threatening creatures, from the Alien and Independence Day films to The Andromeda Strain (Michael Crichton), or creatures more intelligent than us so that when they arrive, they wish to understand us (Octavia Butlers Xenogenesis trilogy suggested this).

Space was the habitation of the Other of humanity, exactly how people from Africa and Asia were once the Other in colonial imaginings. Just as maps once marked distant areas of the earth with here lie monsters to describe people of other races, the literary-visual imagination of outer space maps it as monstrous. This is where astroculture repeats humanitys colonial histories. And as the human imagination moves towards the posthuman, cohabitation with alien species (we return to Octavia Butler here) becomes the subject of a new outer-space mythology.

However, as Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) would say, Sometimes I think the surest sign thatintelligent lifeexists elsewhere in theuniverseis that none of ithas triedtocontact us.

The visual construction of outer space not least in the form of artists rendering of Pioneer or Voyager spacecraft traversing the outer reaches of the solar system produced a space iconography that is comparable only to the Double Helix and the visuals of the human insides (that is a nice balance: the world within us, and the world out there). Outer space is mainly a visual journey, and an epic.

School textbooks with images of the solar system imprint the very idea of outer space, and its constituents, on growing children, so much so that we can envisage a space-pedagogy at work. Recognisable images of space heroes like Neil Armstrong, Rakesh Sharma or Kalpana Chawla enable such a pedagogy. Photographs of Apollo, Challenger, Chandrayaan produce the popular mythology of space.

Every Space Shuttle mission of NASA has a unique mission patch worn by the astronauts the patches are part of the American space iconography because later they are showcased in museums and enter space lore in popular culture. As Andrew Maclaren has argued in a 2019 essay in the journal Geopolitics, the patches underscore the American domination, and perhaps ownership, of outer space.

Then there is astronomical art, dating back to Neolithic times, with paintings of the night sky, the 14th century manuscript illustrations of the same, Durers famous globe, the paintings of astronomer-artist Lucien Rudaux, among others. The work of artists such as Arthur Woods (Cosmic Dancer, a sculpture) that have become fixtures on space stations, are a part of this visual iconography of space.

In the recent past, HubbleSite, from NASA, has presented images of the birth of stars in the Eagle Nebula. Evaporating Gaseous Globules (abbreviated appropriately as EGGs)take the form of towers of gases:

The columns dubbed elephant trunks protrude from the wall of a vast cloud of molecular hydrogen, like stalagmites rising above the floor of a cavern. Inside the gaseous towers, which are light-years long, the interstellar gas is dense enough to collapse under its own weight, forming young stars that continue to grow

With stunning images of supernovae, Neptune Dark Spots, and others, HubbleSite is space iconography taken to new heights. What is also interesting is that many of the images are artists reconstructions, based on both theory and data, of astronomical events such as how the exoplanet HD 106906b may have evolved over time, arriving at its current, widely separated, eccentric and highly misaligned orbit

Then there were the political imaginings. Nationalism began to extend into outer space at the height of the Cold War, and outer space, like Antarctica, was a domain to be explored, and perhaps owned. The pride in space exploration by any country that has ever sent up a satellite indicates that all nationalism is finally about territory, whether terra firma, the aqueous world or outer space.

Space museums mushrooming in these nations, the exhibition of space shuttles, the biographies of space heroes all signal an astro-nationalism. Astro-nationalism generates frenzied support for the space programme, and ignores the cost of astro-pride, as Gary Westfahl pointed out in his 1997 essay, The Case Against Space. Astro-nationalism sees potential in outer space, and the objects out there whether this was the harnessing of solar energies on earth or possible human colonies on a suitable planet.

Space iconography and the innumerable films about outer space notably, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gravity, The Martian, Interstellar, Contact generate myths and aspirations for the human future. As mankind evolves over/in time, these films propose that the evolution will also be an evolution in space: moving beyond the earth, outward.

Whether terraforming outer space will solve problems on earth is of course a moot point. (Carl Sagan supposedly said that all civilisations must become spacefaring or die)

But how we imagine outer space and its bodies determines how we extend our practices, from the political to the economic, to those regions. Terraforming is a subset of the human need to pantrope (a term coined by the science fiction author James Blish in 2001), which means changing everything. As the critic Chris Pak argues in his Terraforming: Ecopolitical Transformations and Environmentalism in Science Fiction, terraforming and pantropy can also be combined, such as when humans are genetically engineered to cope better with the climate of [alien planets].

Colonialism began with the European imagining of the distant parts of the world as available for conquest today outer space is represented in similar fashion. Hence, Klara Anna Capova in a pithy essay (2016) in the International Journal of Astrobiology observed that we can discern the making of an astro-capitalism in the form of exo-mining (from asteroids), exo-burials and exo-marketing. This too is a result of the imagining of outer space in particular ways, and labelled it the new space age.

Stars Wars (1977) may have been fiction, but space wars are most definitely not. With the uncanny ability to weaponise and militarise anything and everything, the arms race on earth extended into outer space.

In March 1983, Ronald Reagan underscored the importance of space for the American military-and-war modernisation programme: this Reagan speech came about six years after George Lucas extravagant astrodrama. Between these two events in 1978, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute released a study titled Outer Space: Battlefield of the Future? The distant world was never to be the same again.

Proceeding as the dark side of aerospace exploration, the militarisation of space occupied the better part of the 20th century. Although as of now no direct battle has ever been staged in space, the fact that satellites could be weaponised, or made to determine the nature of weapons (the premise of Geostorm) on earth ensures that we recognise the militarised nature of space.

There is one specific feature of this militarisation that the historians Alexander Geppert and Tilmann Siebeneichner in their Introduction to the neat volume, Militarizing Outer Space: Astroculture, Dystopia and the Cold War (2021) point to:

The militarization of outer space was thus notably geocentric, in stark contrast to those space wars of science fiction and science fantasy imagined in unspecified galaxies far, far away.

Earth, in other words, remains the centre of a militarised outer space.

The anthropologist Klara Anna Capova proposes that space fictions construct humans as extremophiles living in extreme conditions, with whole new challenges (physical, technological and emotional), such as exist on Mars. This itself is a prognostication of sorts: the course of human evolution, and is one more element in astroculture today.

Astroculture is one of the oldest cultural practices on earth. Alternating between the mythic and the fantastic, the improbable (who thought one could hear Mars?) and the triumphant, astroculture is a complex and complicated human practice. While the visual and cinematic fantasies generate hope and aspirations, it is now impossible to disentangle astroculture from its militaristic and political inflections.

All of us are now in the age of space fiction, aware of the possibilities, hopes and dreams that distant astronomical bodies carry. We agree with the novelist Doris Lessing: space or science fiction is the dialect of our time.

(The author is Professor, Department of English, University of Hyderabad)

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Rewind Astroculture: Mars and beyond - Telangana Today

Earlier this month, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) became the first Middle East country to successfully send a spacecraft into orbit around Mars and only the fifth country to do so.

The Amal probe, or "Hope" in English, was launched on 19 July 2020 and reached the Red Planet on 9 February. It carries three instruments that will be able to understand the Martian atmosphere.

On Monday, it beamed back its first picture of the planet, a product of the UAE's rapid entrance into the space sector in recent years.

UAE becomes fifth country to send satellite to Mars

Amal's success has helped rekindle memories of space programmes developed by other countries in the region.

Over half of the countries in the MENA (Middle East and Africa) region have, or have had, government space programme.

"While the UAE has positioned itself as the regional leader in space, other countries are also increasing their level of investment and ambition in space programmes," said Simon Seminari, principal adviser at Euroconsult, a consulting firm specialising in space markets.

Space spending in the MENA region has nearly doubled in the past decade, from a total of $755m in 2010 to nearly $1.3bn in 2020, according to Euroconsult's market intelligence report on government space programmes.

The roots of modern space exploration in the region date back to the early 1960s.

"In the Middle East, fascination with space exploration is a phenomenon of post-World War II," said Dr Jorg Matthias Determann, associate professor of history, science, technology and society at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar.

Determann recounts how Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser began to develop a national space programme in the early 1960s with the help of German expertise but which was shelved as a result of the 1967 war with Israel.

Despite that setback, Egypt has set a record in North Africa over the past three decades, launching nine satellites into space, with the main purpose of communication and TV broadcasting.

The African Union decided to create a space agency in 2017 headquartered in Egypt, which is supposed to be up and running in 2023.

"Conflicts in the Middle East encouraged countries in the region to invest in defence and rocket developments to get a qualitative edge over their neighbours," said Determann.

"Space programmes are also useful because they can hide rocket programmes and give them another form of legitimacy."

The success of space initiatives in the Middle East has varied in recent years as various countries have each shown a new dynamism and interest in the subject.

One of the first scientific experiments for space exploration in the Middle East was conducted in Lebanon from 1960 until 1964.

The country hosted the first civilian space programme thanks to a group of students from Beirut's Haigazian College who established a rocket society for scientific purposes.

Led by Professor Manoug Manougian, the Haigazian College Rocket Society (HCRS) launched several rockets during the period. Following the first launch, the Lebanese army cooperated with the HCRS.

"Every rocket launch was an event in Lebanon. It became a national phenomenon," said Mira Yardemian, public relations director at Haigazian University

"In 1963, around 15,000 people attended the launch of Cedar rocket IV, which reached a 140km altitude."

Lebanon even commemorated the event with a postage stamp.

But when Professor Manougian returned to the United States, the project ended, with the Lebanese army wanting to develop rockets for military purposes and both Manougian and the Haigazian College preferring to stick to scientific research.

To see the first Arab in space, the Middle East had to wait until 1985.

Saudi Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud became the first Arab to fly in space thanks to Nasa's Space Shuttle programme Discovery in 1985.

Saudi Arabia also became the main shareholder of the Arab Satellite Communications Organisation, also known as Arabsat, a communications satellite operator created to deliver satellite-based, public and private telecommunications services to its 21 member countries.

The kingdom's interest in space exploration was reignited in 2018, with the appointment of Prince Sultan as the chairman of the Saudi Space Commission.

Saudi Arabia has said it is plans to invest $2.1bn in its space programme by 2030.

Syrian military aviator Mohammed al-Fares became the second Arab in space two years after Prince Sultan.

In the 1980s, Syria sent Fares to the Soviet Union, from where he eventually flew as a research cosmonaut in the Interkosmos programme to the Mir space station in July 1987, spending almost eight days in space.

'When I was in space, I saw life from a different perspective because when you are in outer space everything is different'

- Mohammed Al-Fares, Syrian cosmonaut

"I went through 13 scientific experiments and conducted physical and chemical tests," said Fares.

"Also, I took some pictures of Earth from space to see the impact of air and water pollution.

"Furthermore, I had a machine built in Syria to study the different layers of the Earth sky up to 200km altitude."

Fares was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union on 30 July 1987. He was also given the Order of Lenin.

"When I was in space, I saw life from a different perspective because when you are in outer space everything is different," said Fares.

"Your body feels it is in an abnormal condition. But when I came back from space, I felt I had more empathy. I felt that Earth was like my mother. And we have to save it."

Like Egypt, another country that had to stop its space programme due to political turmoil in the region was former president Saddam Husseins Iraq.

Iraq's space programme lasted from 1988 until 1990 when it developed a solar-powered satellite, named Al-Ta'ir (Bird). In 1989, it launched a 25-metre-long rocket from a launchpad near Baghdad.

The following year it planned a second launch test named Al Kharief (Autumn), but the August 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait led to the suspension of all activities.

In 1988, Saddam had commissioned a space gunfrom the Canadian inventor and leading artillery expert Gerald Bull, who received a $25m down-payment. The Babylon Project was designed to produce a cannon aimed at shooting satellites into orbit.

Although he was able to deliver a shorter prototype of the cannon, named Baby Babylon, the project was halted following Bull's assassination in 1990, a killing attributed to Israeli intelligence.

With rocketry developments clearly having potential for non-peaceful applications, Iran's space programme, established in 2003, has been criticised by the US and Europe because of its military potential.

Iran has launched four research satellites and tested two space rockets, while claiming in 2013 that it had sent a monkey into space.

Unlike other countries in the region, Israel is one of the seven countries that have built satellites and launchers on their own.

The Israeli National Committee for Space Research (NCSR) was established by the government in 1960, and a space agency was formed in 1983. The agency, which develops satellites for reconnaissance and commercial purposes, is working on several projects, including space research.

Aliens exist and Trump knows it, says former head of Israeli space programme

Besides the national agency, the privately funded Israeli organization SpaceIL launched a lander named Beresheet that entered the moon's orbit on 4 April 2019. A week later, during its landing procedure, communications were lost with Beresheet, and the lander crashed on the moon.

Now, with the this month's Mars mission success, the eyes of the global space industry are firmly on the United Arab Emirates Space Agency (UAESA), which was established in 2014.

Its scientists will study Martian weather cycles, weather events in the lower atmosphere, and provide information about atmospheric hydrogen and oxygen loss and other possible reasons that have led to radical climate changes on Mars.

The agency, which has garnered about $5.2bn of funding from government, private and semi-private entities, also aims to send a compact lunar rover, dubbed Rashid, to study the moon in 2024.

Other countries in the region are developing research and space programmes, including Turkey, which this month announced a 10-year programme that includes a mission to the moon by 2023. The first stage of the mission would be "through international cooperation," while the second stage would utilize Turkish rockets, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on 9 February.

Countries in the Middle East have launched more than 20 satellites in the past few years, with many more in the planning phases. Oman aims to launch its first satellite in 2024.

Meanwhile, Euroconsult's Seminari said the new race for space propelled in recent years by western space agencies and private companies such as Elon Musk's SpaceX has had a positive impact on countries in the Middle East.

"There are many reasons which help explain this interest and dynamism, amongst which includes the desire to reduce reliance on oil and gas resources and diversify the economy," said Seminari.

The success of the UAE space programme seems to have boosted enthusiasm for investing in space and experts expect the strong dynamism of the Middle East in space to continue.

Seminari said there is also continuing hype in the commercial space economy, which Euroconsult valued at more than $300bn in 2020.

REVEALED: Turkey plans spaceport in Somalia for $1bn moon mission

"Investments by governments in space can increase business opportunities, and foster innovation, technological developments, and the creation of startups and businesses," said Seminari.

Such interest in space may also inspire young people to gain degrees in several fields, including science, engineering, maths and technology, raising the overall human capacity of the country's population.

However, Determann said that international cooperation is essential for a successful space programme.

"What is still lacking in the region is the international expertise, which is hugely needed," he said.

"Even a country like the United States needs foreign expertise to develop its space programme. The Emirates Mars mission needed American expertise."

In terms of scientific research, former Syrian astronaut Fares thinks that any discovery outside Earth will be useful for humanity.

"I hope the UAE Mars mission will come back with positive results and that they will find something beneficial for Earth," he said.

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'Investment and ambition': A history of Middle Eastern space exploration - Middle East Eye

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WIAT) Gov. Kay Ivey released a statement following the Inspector Generals decision to name the Redstone Region a preferred location for Space Command headquarters.

Alabama welcomes the Inspector Generals review of the decision to name the Redstone Region the preferred location for the permanent headquarters for Space Command, a decision made after a thorough review, and a selection process was conducted. Our state was chosen based on merit, and an independent review of a decision of this magnitude will confirm this. We remain confident that just as the Air Force discovered, Huntsvilles Redstone Region will provide our warfighters with the greatest space capability at the best value to the taxpayers.

Alabama has played an integral role throughout the history of our nations defense and civil space programs. Deep Space Exploration is part of our DNA in Alabama, from building the rockets to first take man to the moon, to producing the Atlas V rocket that took the Perseverance Rover to Mars just last week! Alabama is winning on every page when it comes to furthering our nations space exploration and defense and we are a natural fit for the permanent headquarters of U.S. Space Command.

This update comes after Huntsville was named among other cities as a possible location for its headquarters. Redstone Arsenal was chosen out of 60 sites across the U.S. as the best location for the space command headquarters.

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Ivey: We are a natural fit for the permanent headquarters of U.S. Space Command - WKRG News 5

NASA's Perseverance Rover Lands Successfully on Mars: After a seven-month-long journey, NASAs Perseverance Rover successfully touched down on the Red Planet on Feb. 18, 2021. Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California celebrate landing NASA's fifth -- and most ambitious -- rover on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Download video

The agencys latest and most complex mission to the Red Planet has touched down at Jezero Crater. Now its time to begin testing the health of the rover.

The largest, most advanced rover NASA has sent to another world touched down on Mars Thursday, after a 203-day journey traversing 293 million miles (472 million kilometers). Confirmation of the successful touchdown was announced in mission control at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California at 3:55 p.m. EST (12:55 p.m. PST).

Packed with groundbreaking technology, the Mars 2020 mission launched July 30, 2020, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The Perseverance rover mission marks an ambitious first step in the effort to collect Mars samples and return them to Earth.

This landing is one of those pivotal moments for NASA, the United States, and space exploration globally when we know we are on the cusp of discovery and sharpening our pencils, so to speak, to rewrite the textbooks, said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk. The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission embodies our nations spirit of persevering even in the most challenging of situations, inspiring, and advancing science and exploration. The mission itself personifies the human ideal of persevering toward the future and will help us prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

About the size of a car, the 2,263-pound (1,026-kilogram) robotic geologist and astrobiologist will undergo several weeks of testing before it begins its two-year science investigation of Mars Jezero Crater. While the rover will investigate the rock and sediment of Jezeros ancient lakebed and river delta to characterize the regions geology and past climate, a fundamental part of its mission is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. To that end, the Mars Sample Return campaign, being planned by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency), will allow scientists on Earth to study samples collected by Perseverance to search for definitive signs of past life using instruments too large and complex to send to the Red Planet.

Because of todays exciting events, the first pristine samples from carefully documented locations on another planet are another step closer to being returned to Earth, said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA. Perseverance is the first step in bringing back rock and regolith from Mars. We dont know what these pristine samples from Mars will tell us. But what they could tell us is monumental including that life might have once existed beyond Earth.

Some 28 miles (45 kilometers) wide, Jezero Crater sits on the western edge of Isidis Planitia, a giant impact basin just north of the Martian equator. Scientists have determined that 3.5 billion years ago the crater had its own river delta and was filled with water.

The power system that provides electricity and heat for Perseverance through its exploration of Jezero Crater is a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, or MMRTG. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) provided it to NASA through an ongoing partnership to develop power systems for civil space applications.

Equipped with seven primary science instruments, the most cameras ever sent to Mars, and its exquisitely complex sample caching system the first of its kind sent into space Perseverance will scour the Jezero region for fossilized remains of ancient microscopic Martian life, taking samples along the way.

Perseverance is the most sophisticated robotic geologist ever made, but verifying that microscopic life once existed carries an enormous burden of proof, said Lori Glaze, director of NASAs Planetary Science Division. While well learn a lot with the great instruments we have aboard the rover, it may very well require the far more capable laboratories and instruments back here on Earth to tell us whether our samples carry evidence that Mars once harbored life.

Paving the Way for Human Missions

Landing on Mars is always an incredibly difficult task and we are proud to continue building on our past success, said JPL Director Michael Watkins. But, while Perseverance advances that success, this rover is also blazing its own path and daring new challenges in the surface mission. We built the rover not just to land but to find and collect the best scientific samples for return to Earth, and its incredibly complex sampling system and autonomy not only enable that mission, they set the stage for future robotic and crewed missions.

The Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing Instrumentation 2 (MEDLI2) sensor suite collected data about Mars atmosphere during entry, and the Terrain-Relative Navigation system autonomously guided the spacecraft during final descent. The data from both are expected to help future human missions land on other worlds more safely and with larger payloads.

On the surface of Mars, Perseverances science instruments will have an opportunity to scientifically shine. Mastcam-Z is a pair of zoomable science cameras on Perseverances remote sensing mast, or head, that creates high-resolution, color 3D panoramas of the Martian landscape. Also located on the mast, the SuperCam uses a pulsed laser to study the chemistry of rocks and sediment and has its own microphone to help scientists better understand the property of the rocks, including their hardness.

Located on a turret at the end of the rovers robotic arm, the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) and the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals (SHERLOC) instruments will work together to collect data on Mars geology close-up. PIXL will use an X-ray beam and suite of sensors to delve into a rocks elemental chemistry. SHERLOCs ultraviolet laser and spectrometer, along with its Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering (WATSON) imager, will study rock surfaces, mapping out the presence of certain minerals and organic molecules, which are the carbon-based building blocks of life on Earth.

The rover chassis is home to three science instruments, as well. Radar Imager for Mars Subsurface Experiment (RIMFAX) is the first ground-penetrating radar on the surface of Mars and will be used to determine how different layers of the Martian surface formed over time. The data could help pave the way for future sensors that hunt for subsurface water ice deposits.

Also with an eye on future Red Planet explorations, the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) technology demonstration will attempt to manufacture oxygen out of thin air the Red Planets tenuous and mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere. The rovers Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) instrument, which has sensors on the mast and chassis, will provide key information about present-day Mars weather, climate, and dust.

Currently attached to the belly of Perseverance, the diminutive Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is a technology demonstration that will attempt the first powered, controlled flight on another planet.

Project engineers and scientists will now put Perseverance through its paces, testing every instrument, subsystem, and subroutine over the next month or two. Only then will they deploy the helicopter to the surface for the flight test phase. If successful, Ingenuity could add an aerial dimension to exploration of the Red Planet in which such helicopters serve as a scouts or make deliveries for future astronauts away from their base.

Once Ingenuitys test flights are complete, the rovers search for evidence of ancient microbial life will begin in earnest.

Perseverance is more than a rover, and more than this amazing collection of men and women that built it and got us here, said John McNamee, project manager of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission at JPL. It is even more than the 10.9 million people who signed up to be part of our mission. This mission is about what humans can achieve when they persevere. We made it this far. Now, watch us go.

More About the Mission

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

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA, will send spacecraft to Mars to collect these cached 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 approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission and the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter technology demonstration for NASA.

For more about Perseverance:

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

and

https://nasa.gov/perseverance

News Media ContactsAlana Johnson / Grey HautaluomaNASA Headquarters, Washington202-672-4780 / 202-358-0668alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov / grey.hautaluoma-1@nasa.gov

DC AgleJet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.818-393-9011agle@jpl.nasa.gov

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Touchdown! NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover Safely Lands on Red Planet NASA's Mars Exploration Program - NASA Mars Exploration

But some space leaders on Capitol Hill hope to change that and give the Mars Sample Return Mission a better shot at outliving any one congressional term.

Were not the president. We cant be John Kennedy and say at the end of the decade, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who chairs the House space subcommittee, said in reference to Kennedys moonshot speech that birthed the Apollo program. But we can do the congressional equivalent.

Beyer, who was elected head of the House space panel last week, said he is eager to talk to the full committee leaders right away about passing a congressional resolution to show bipartisan support for funding the remainder of the Mars Sample Return effort, a three-part mission thats expected to cost about $4 billion, in addition to the $2.7 billion already spent on the Perseverance rover.

No Congress can commit another Congress to [a] budget, Beyer said in an interview. But why not get a huge bipartisan vote in Congress committing to the idea that future appropriators can look back at and say, This was the intent of Congress.

Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), the ranking member of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, said he would enthusiastically support such a proposal, adding that he is concerned about support and funding for the mission decreasing because the payoff of bringing the samples home is so far away.

Lucas pointed to NASAs track record to show why he's worried, including the cancellation of the later Apollo missions because the nation lost focus and because of the gap in the agencys commitment to deep space exploration when the Constellation program was scrubbed under the Obama administration.

Other nations racing to the Red Planet should motivate hesitant lawmakers on board, Lucas argues. For example, China has launched an aggressive space program, including robotic exploration of the far side of the moon and plans for a space station orbiting Earth. Most recently, a Chinese spacecraft that arrived in Mars' orbit this month will send a rover to the surface in a few months.

Its easy to get distracted by challenges, Lucas said in an interview. There will always be those kinds of challenges but we have to keep our eye on the ball. We have competitors out there who are going to take advantage of the opportunities that exist on asteroids, the moon and Mars. Do we want to get left behind?

The Perseverance rover is the first in a proposed three-step effort to bring samples of the Red Planets dust back to Earth to study. Perseverance will place samples into small tubes that can sit on the surface for decades waiting for their return trip, Kenneth Farley, the project scientist for Perseverance, told POLITICO ahead of the mission launch.

NASA will partner with the European Space Agency for the second part of the mission. A rover named Fetch will pick up the tubes and load them into a spacecraft about the size of a soccer ball that will blast off from the surface. That small orb will rendezvous with a larger spacecraft orbiting Mars in the third leg of the program. The larger vehicle will drop the sample-holding ball somewhere in the Utah desert.

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), the top Republican on the appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA, said its important to see the mission through now that the first chapter has begun.

This mission has been years in the making, and unless determined otherwise by the team, would be a waste of talent and resources to not see this mission through and ensure the return of scientific samples the rover obtains, Moran said in a statement.

Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), the top Republican appropriator for NASA in the House, agreed that Mars draws the attention of members in both parties.

"This really goes beyond Democrat and Republican, he said. When we have debt like we have, we don't have money to spend like water. But I think we have got to keep a robust exploration into space in our budget.

Studying the dust with high-tech equipment on Earth could answer big-picture questions, including whether life ever existed on Mars. But its also a crucial step toward sending people to the Red Planet, a long-term goal that was often raised by former President Donald Trump, but also has support from both parties.

President Joe Biden has so far not laid out a robust space policy, but White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration fully supports NASAs Artemis mission, which prioritizes returning American astronauts to the moon as a stepping stone to the ultimate goal of crewed Mars flights. Reaching Mars is also mentioned in the Democrats' 2020 platform, and has bipartisan support on Capitol Hill.

But its important to study dust from Mars before sending people there, said Briony Horgan, an associate professor at Purdue University and a member of the rovers science team. Dust on the moon is like tiny shards of glass, and can be harmful both to people breathing it in and to equipment on the lunar surface. While scientists dont expect Martian soil, or regolith, to have similar properties, theres also much about it thats unknown.

It would be helpful to design equipment to mitigate it and to understand if there are health hazards of it, Horgan said. We dont know a lot about its chemistry, or how reactive it is.

The sample return mission will also test whether engineers can launch something off the Red Planet, which will be an important capability if the astronauts on Mars missions ever want to come home, Horgan said.

The return mission also has the benefit of being named a top priority in NASAs most recent decadal survey, a report prepared every 10 years by the National Academy of Sciences that lays out the must-do missions and is closely followed by Congress.

Congress has a history of supporting these large scale missions. We see that with Mars rovers. We see that with the big space telescopes, said Jared Zambrano-Stout, director of congressional and regulatory policy at lobbying firm Meeks, Butera and Israel and former chief of staff at the White House National Space Council. I dont think theres a problem getting Congress bought in on flagship missions.

He pointed to the James Webb Space Telescope, a behind-schedule and over-budget project, as evidence that Congress will stand by a program if they see the scientific value. Its an obvious example of where folks have said, We should just cancel James Webb, and Congress has said, No, the science that will come from it is too important.

Even if politics isnt a barrier, a technology malfunction could still threaten NASAs Mars efforts for the next decade. If Perseverance has difficulty collecting dust on the surface, it would have wide implications. NASA is already planning for the two next phases to deliver more than a dozen vials of regolith back to Earth.

If something goes seriously wrong with Perseverance, theres no reason to fly those two additional missions, and NASA has no Mars missions in the pipeline, according to Casey Dreier, chief advocate at the Planetary Society.

With all the money going into sample return, this is it. All the eggs are in this basket, Dreier said.

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NASA's rover is on Mars. What happens next is up to Washington. - POLITICO

19 February 2021

NASA's Perseverance rover successfully touched down on Mars yesterday, 203 days after being launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The rover, which is powered by a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG) developed and fuelled in partnership with the US Department of Energy (DOE), will explore the Jezero Crater and collect samples that will eventually be returned to Earth.

The successful touchdown was announced in mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California at 3:55pm EST. The rover - described by NASA as a "robotic geologist and astrobiologist" - will undergo several weeks of testing before it begins its two-year science investigation of the crater, where it will investigate the rock and sediment of the ancient lakebed and river delta to characterise the region's geology and past climate. The Mars Sample Return campaign, which is being planned by NASA and ESA (the European Space Agency), aims to return samples collected by Perseverance to Earth where they will be studied for definitive signs of past life.

"This landing is one of those pivotal moments for NASA, the United States, and space exploration globally - when we know we are on the cusp of discovery and sharpening our pencils, so to speak, to rewrite the textbooks," acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk said. The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission "personifies the human ideal of persevering toward the future and will help us prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet," he added.

"Perseverance is the first step in bringing back rock and regolith from Mars. We don't know what these pristine samples from Mars will tell us. But what they could tell us is monumental - including that life might have once existed beyond Earth," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA.

"It is so exciting seeing Perseverance, powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator successfully land on Mars today! This is just one more example of the many ways in which nuclear science and technology contributes to the advancement of humankind," World Nuclear Association Director General Sama Bilbao y Lon said.

The MMRTG providing Persevance with electricity and heat was provided to NASA through an ongoing partnership with the DOE to develop power systems for civil space applications. The radioisotope power system was developed at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and converts heat from the decay of plutonium-238 (Pu-238) fuel - supplied by Oak Ridge National Laboratory - into electrical power. It has an operational lifespan of 14 years.

Pu-238 is made by irradiating neptunium-237, recovered from research reactor fuel or special targets, in research reactors but the USA lost its domestic capacity to produce the material in the late 1980s after the closure of reactors at Savannah River. The DOE, with NASA, in 2015 re-established production ORNL's High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR), which has now produced 1 kg of the heat-source material.

The DOE this week said it is working to scale up its production of Pu-238 to support NASA's goal of producing 1.5 kilograms per year by of the material by 2026. A second assembly of seven targets of neptunium oxide and an aluminium metal powder has now been loaded into INL's Advanced Test Reactor (ATR), where it will be irradiated for 55 to 58 days, the DOE said. The irradiated targets will then be sent to ORNL to extract the plutonium and confirm the quality and quantity of the heat source material produced. INL expects to generate around 30 grams of Pu-238 heat source material from its first two campaigns. Seven targets were initially loaded into ATR in July 2019.

"While the United States has enough fuel to support space missions through the next decade, this continued partnership between the DOE and NASA ensures that there will be an ample supply of domestic plutonium to support future missions," the DOE said.

Earlier this week, INL management and operating contractor Battelle Energy Alliance LLC announced it is partnering with NASA and the DOE to seek industry engagement to further the design of a new power system it says will be the "next step" for space exploration.

The Dynamic Radioisotope Power System (RPS) will use Pu-238 as a heat source and will be designed for a potential lunar demonstration mission by the late 2020s. The technology demonstration project aims to develop and demonstrate performance of a system that is three times more efficient than the current RPS technology. Dynamic power conversion is more efficient than thermoelectric conversion used in current systems such as that in the Perseverance rover, INL said. This will allow a Dynamic RPS to produce the same amount of electric power with less plutonium-238, and extend radioisotope power to larger systems.

Over the next seven years, the project will progress through additional phases to fabricate and qualify a Dynamic RPS for future science exploration missions, which could include small lunar experiments, rovers or small spacecraft, INL said.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

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Perseverance starts exploration of Mars : New Nuclear - World Nuclear News

Ezzy PearsonWilliam Collins2020 | 288pp | 20ISBN 9780750990899

Buy this book on Amazon.co.ukBuy this book on Bookshop.org

I remember being pulled from my bed early one morning in 1986 so that I could see Halleys Comet flying past. I have watched the news eagerly in anticipation for the Mars rovers sending back their first images of the red planet. More recently, I sat in awe at the mind-boggling accomplishment of the Rosetta mission landing the small rover Philae on an asteroid travelling through space at 135,000km/hr. I find the discoveries and accomplishments of space exploration utterly brilliant.

Robots in Space by Ezzy Pearson is a wonderful read about the history of space exploration from a robotics point of view. It covers the space race to the moon, visits to the inner planets and our first steps into the outer solar system.

As well as having a PhD in astrophysics, Pearson is also a space journalist this really shows in her style of writing. As well as understanding the science behind the missions, she also knows how to tell a good story. Something that I find is not always the case with non-fiction authors.

The book itself is broken into sections based on destination: the moon, Venus, Mars and others (asteroids, comets and icy moons), and charts the various orbiters, landers and rovers that have been sent there. There is quite a lot of technical and scientific information on what each mission hoped to accomplish, but the book avoids being overly complicated.

One of the best bits is the section of glossy colour photos in the middle. It was great to see what these machines actually look like. It also contains some of the amazing photos sent back from these other worlds.

The book does not shy away from talking about failures as well as successes. I never realised how much can go wrong before a mission is finally successful nor quite how many robots we have sent to our nearest planets. It must be heartbreaking to work on a mission for years, only for something to go wrong in the last seven minutes, though this is exactly what happens sometimes. But we continue to explore. Nasa has just landed a new rover on Mars, aptly named Perseverance. Those that study the far reaches of space certainly need a lot of it.

I really enjoyed Robots in Space and found myself having trouble putting it down. I believe anyone with an interest in space will find this an enjoyable read.

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Robots in Space: The Secret Lives of Our Planetary Explorers - Chemistry World

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. - NASA's Perseverance rover landed on Mars Thursday, and the journey of hundreds of millions of miles through space and the mission ahead is in part thanks to the work of a William & Mary professor and his students.

Joel Levine is a research professor in applied science at William & Mary, as well as a consultant for the NASA Engineering and Safety Center at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton.

Levine spent 41 years working full-time for NASA and has a long history of being involved with the Mars missions and space exploration, enlisting the help of William & Mary students along the way.

Before Perseverance landed on the surface of Mars Thursday afternoon, Levine admitted earlier he would be watching nervously.

"I know what has to happen precisely at the same time, at the correct time, and the order, and it's very nerve-wracking," he said.

"The supersonic parachute that will open up, a 70-foot parachute, will slow down the spacecraft that comes into Mars at about 12,000 miles per hour. In seven minutes, it has to land. It lands between one and two miles an hour," Levine explained in an interview Thursday morning with News 3 anchor Todd Corillo.

"That seven minutes is called 'seven minutes of terror' because the spacecraft has to go from 12,000 miles an hour down to one or two miles an hour. There are probably well over a thousand things that have to work at the precise time within a fraction of a second to be successful. It is a unique procedure, and the United States is the only country in the world that successfully soft-landed on the surface of Mars," he continued.

More than just understanding what is going on during the mission, Levine played an important role in selecting what's landing on Mars with Perseverance.

"In 2014, I was asked to serve on the committee that selected the instruments that will land on Mars later today. There were probably over 50 experiments and instruments, and we had to pick the top 12 or 13."

Levine says the instruments on Perseverance will help to answer one of the most vexing questions humans have asked: Are we alone?

"The instruments will tell us whether there is any evidence for life on Mars, in the past or in the present," Levine said. "We're very interested to know whether life is widespread in the solar system in the galaxy and beyond, and this mission today will provide a lot of information to tell us about the likelihood of life presently or in the past on Mars."

Throughout the years, Levine has made it a point to include William & Mary students in his research.

In 2017, NASA asked Levine to organize a workshop on Martian dust and how it might impact robotic and human exploration. Several William & Mary students took part in the workshop at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

For years, students in the William and Mary planetary geology course have also been investigating possible landing sites for the first human mission to Mars.

"They spend almost half the term doing a geological analysis of the terrain and and where they should travel, what they should do and so on."

A year ago, Levine worked on another NASA workshop entitled "Lunar Dust and Its Impact on Human Exploration."

The proceedings book from that workshop was recently published and examines what has been learned about lunar dust, the impact on human health and how to reduce effects for future human exploration.

The work is crucial for the return of manned missions to the moon, planned for 2024.

At a conference on the subject in February 2020 at the Johnson Space Center, a number of William & Mary students participated and presented papers.

"What we're trying to do at William & Mary is to get students, both undergraduate and graduate, that have an interest in planetary exploration and NASA and give them an opportunity to do independent research...and to get involved in a meaningful way with the U.S. space program."

Levine has also been involved in the 2012 Curiosity rover mission as well as the 2014 Mars Atmospheric and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) Mars orbiter.

Now that he can add Perseverance landing on Mars to the list, Levine is hopeful.

"I'm very optimistic that we'll be celebrating later this afternoon," he said before the landing, adding, "I think that when we land on Mars, we're going to learn about Mars, but I think we're also preparing for the security and the future of the United States of America."

Watch Todd Corillo's full interview with Professor Joel Levine in the video player above.

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William & Mary professor continues streak of helping with Mars exploration - wtkr.com

Grand Valley State University, in collaboration with the Grand Rapids Public Museum (GRPM), successfully held its fifth annual Roger That! conference. Called Roger That! V, GVSU noted that the V is not only meant to represent the Roman numeral for the number five, but that this year, The V is for Virtual.

Held on Feb. 19 and 20, the Roger That! conference is meant to celebrate the life of Grand Rapids native, Roger B. Chaffee, and his love for space exploration.

Chaffee was a former American naval officer and aviator aeronautical engineer, as well as a NASA astronaut in the Apollo program. He died in 1967 during an Apollo I pre-flight test when a fire broke out in the cockpit.

Although the conference began in 2017 to mark the 50th anniversary of Chaffees death, Deana Weibel, event co-organizer and GVSU professor of anthropology, said the conference has become more of a way to celebrate his birthday (Feb. 15) than to commemorate his tragic death.

This year GVSU and the GRPM offered a multitude of speakers and events as well as some educational opportunities for K-12 students.

Weibel said the event being held virtually this year was actually a huge advantage, and that it expanded the opportunities of the conference by a great deal.

Typically we would bring in one or two keynote speakers, usually an astronaut as one of them, often a scientist or artist as the other, Weibel said. This year, we werent limited by the costs of transporting guests, so we reached out to friends and acquaintances in the space world for suggestions and ended up with quite a fascinating lineup.

Some of the most distant presenters this year were Katarina Damjanov and David Crouch from Australia, and Brother Bob Macke from Vatican City (a section of it in an Italian town called Castel Gandolfo).

GVSU also decided that since Roger That! was virtual this year, they should invite some masters of the virtual. So, they brought in a very special panel of special effects and space artists.

The line-up included Vincent Di Fate, Ron Miller, Robert Skotak and Rick Sternbach, luminaries whose numerous achievements include Oscars and Emmys for visual effects and Hugo awards for imagery.

Another guest speaker, Margaret Weitekamp, the Curator and Department Chair of the Department of Space History at the Smithsonians National Air and Space Museum, presented on the ways that space-loving communities have been connecting with each other even when they cant be together in person for years on end.

Weitekamp said she hoped that following her presentation, people would be able to look at how they connect with others in a new way.

I hope they think a little bit differently about the ways they connect with people and how creative people can be in finding communities, Weitekamp said. Its an important message for people to hear when being polarized and thrown into our own houses. Its nice to remember that for a very long time people have been finding like-minded folks with core interests, and it gives us additional ways to think of how we connect now.

Aside from the virtual panels GVSU offered, the GRPM also offered their own virtual and in-person events.

GRPM held a special virtual Organ Concert accompanied by the 1925 sci-fi German silent film, Our Heavenly Bodies, as well as a webinar by Brent Bos, a West Michigan native and senior research physicist at the NASA Goddard Flight Center.

As for in-person activities, GRPM held showings of the new planetarium show, Incoming! exploring asteroids, comets and meteors at their Roger B. Chaffee Planetarium. A live show created by the GRPM also accompanied Incoming! in partnership with Bos.

On top of all of this, the GRPM and Bos created a set of new interactive experiences outside of the Chaffee Planetarium including a lunar crater station, meteors under a microscope, and a meteor pinball machine.

The Planetarium lobby also featured an exhibit with Roger B. Chaffee artifacts.

Christie Bender, GRPM Director of Marketing and Customer Service, said the conference and exhibit are special because of everything they encompass.

Combined with telling the story of Chaffee, this shows that kids today in West Michigan can also grow up and fulfill their dreams of becoming astronauts and more, Bender said. This event brings other professionals to the community to speak to this, as well as about space discoveries and the ever-growing knowledge base about our universe. Its fantastic to see all ages get energized around space and continue the legacy of Roger Chaffee.

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GV, GRPM gather voices from around globe to participate in Roger That! virtual conference - Grand Valley Lanthorn

Lifeforms from Earth could temporarily survive a Mars-like atmosphere, according to a new Nasa study, which will help scientists to further understand the possibility of exploiting environments beyond our own planet.

The joint study by Nasa and German Aerospace Centre (DLR) scientists tested the endurance of microorganisms after launching them into conditions similar to the Red Planet through balloons that floated up to high altitudes, finding that at least some of them survived the journey.

"We successfully tested a new way of exposing bacteria and fungi to Mars-like conditions by using a scientific balloon to fly our experimental equipment up to Earths stratosphere," said DLRs Marta Filipa Corteso, joint-lead author of the study.

Published in Frontiers in Microbiology, the study picked microorganisms associated with life on Earth and launched them into the stratosphere in order to create conditions closest to those on Mars and almost impossible to recreate on Earth itself.

"With crewed long-term missions to Mars, we need to know how human-associated microorganisms would survive on the Red Planet, as some may pose a health risk to astronauts," says joint first author Katharina Siems, also based at the German Aerospace Centre.

"In addition, some microbes could be invaluable for space exploration. They could help us produce food and material supplies independently from Earth, which will be crucial when far away from home," she said.

The microbes were launched inside MARSBOx (Microbes in Atmosphere for Radiation, Survival and Biological Outcomes experiment) which was maintained at a pressure equivalent to the atmosphere of Mars and filled with an artificial atmosphere throughout the mission.

"The box carried two sample layers, with the bottom layer shielded from radiation, explained Ms Corteso. This allowed us to separate the effects of radiation from the other tested conditions: desiccation, atmosphere, and temperature fluctuation during the flight.

The top layer samples were exposed to more than a thousand times more UV radiation than levels that can cause sunburn on our skin," she said.

The study found that while not all the microbes survived the trip, the black mould Aspergillus niger could be revived after it was brought back. The same mould has previously been detected on the International Space Station.

The research emphasises the importance of microbes in exploring possibilities for life and human survival outside our planet.

It also comes just after the arrival of Nasas Mars rover Perseverance on the surface of the Red Planet, a landmark in a mission that is considered one of the most ambitious ever attempted by the US space agency.

The rest is here:

Life from Earth could survive on Mars, finds Nasa study - The Independent