If everything goes as planned on Thursday, NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover will blast off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on its way to search for signs of past life on the Red Planet.
This is no run-of-the-mill rover. Perseverance is equipped with HD cameras to record what NASA refers to as the rover’s “seven minutes of terror,” its descent through the Martian atmosphere. Perseverance is also bringing microphones and a small helicopter to Mars.
The rover’s mission is to collect samples of the Martian soil and leave them on the surface where they will be collected at a later date by a separate rover and then returned to Earth.
Choosing where and what to dig for is no easy task. And that’s where a team of scientists — including the University of Alberta’s Chris Herd — comes in.
“This rover is different from anything that’s been sent to Mars before, specifically because it can collect samples,” said Herd, a geologist and professor in the university’s faculty of science.
“Our task is to help the mission to choose and decide the specific locations to get samples from after we land.”
This artist’s concept shows the Mars helicopter Ingenuity flying, with the Perseverance rover in the distance. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Recent research suggests Mars was once home to an ancient ocean. It had rivers and lakes and could have been suitable for life. Yet, none of the previous landers and rovers sent to the surface of the planet was equipped to search for any past traces of life.
That’s what makes Perseverance unique.
“There is that big question whether life was ever there. Around three and a half to four billion years ago, Mars went through this quite dramatic change, globally, we think, from being relatively warm and wet with fairly neutral waters at the surface to sort of acidic waters and then drying out,” Herd said.
“We don’t really understand why that transition happened. Why did Earth go one way … whereas Mars went a different way?”
Landing location
Not every location on Mars will have the same story to tell. So it was extremely important that a site that was once wet and that held the best promise for finding traces of past life be chosen.
After going through a list of candidate sites, the Jezero Crater was eventually selected.
Billions of years ago, a river flowed into the 50-kilometre–wide crater, depositing sediment into the lake that is now the dusty and rocky Jezero Crater.
But within those rocks, there’s the potential to preserve the ancient environment where life could have once existed, Herd said. Those sediments formed a delta, and here on Earth, we know that deltas can preserve organic matter that could have been carried from upstream.
An elevation map of the Jezero Crater on Mars, the landing site for NASA’s 2020 Mars Perseverance rover. Lighter colours represent higher elevation. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/JHU-APL/ESA)
“Those layers don’t necessarily preserve the individual fossilized bacteria, but they preserve kind of the work that the bacteria did to make layers as they sort of climbed up through the sediment to try to stay close to the surface of the lake, closer to the sun,” Herd said.
The rover has seven different instruments to assist in its detective work, including radar, X-ray and ultraviolet equipment, and one device that will even create oxygen from Martian atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Returning samples to Earth
Perseverance has 43 tubes for collecting samples as it trundles along the surface of Mars. The minimum goal is to collect 20 samples.
The rover is also equipped with what are known as witness plates, where tubes will be opened and exposed to collect any material that might be coming from the spacecraft. This is a method of monitoring any contamination that might have been brought from Earth, though NASA makes every effort to ensure that doesn’t happen.
So when will the samples be collected and transported to Earth?
At the moment, the Mars Sample Return mission is still in its early planning stages, though the current goal is to return them by 2031. And once again, Canadians are part of the historic endeavour.
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Kim Tait, curator of mineralogy at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, is involved in the Mars Sample Return mission, particularly figuring out how to treat the samples once they arrive on Earth.
“We have to protect the samples from us as much as we have to protect us from the samples,” said Tait. “How do we do that safely and how do we handle them so that we could actually get the science answers that we want?”
The entire effort is a global one, Tait said. The Canadian Space Agency has provided funding for Herd’s work and the European Space Agency is partnering with NASA in planning the rover that will collect the samples.
For now, who gets access to those samples is in discussion, though Tait said they will likely be shared internationally.
“This is a global investment. It’s a global endeavour, just because of the complexity of the whole mission,” she said.
But Tait said she certainly hopes she will get a crack at it.
“What’s really exciting is that this is going to be samples coming from Mars that are from a deltaic system where it was rich with clays and we can see sedimentary structures,” she said. “I want to be the first one to crack open those tubes.”
Herd is similarly anxious to delve into ancient Mars and look for signs of life. He said he’s been dreaming about this since he was a teenager.
“Somewhere around the age of 13, I said, ‘I want to be there when samples come back from Mars. I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be awesome, not only to be a geologist but to learn about the geology of another planet,'” he said.
“Now we’re embarking on this first step and bringing samples back … It’s hard to contain the excitement.”
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
