NASA is determined to get its life-hunting Mars rover off the ground this summer despite the coronavirus outbreak.
Space agency officials remain optimistic that the car-size Perseverance rover, the centerpiece of the Mars 2020 mission, will be ready to launch during a three-week window that opens on July 17. The stakes are high, because such windows come just once every 26 months, when Earth and the Red Planet align properly for interplanetary missions.
“We’re going to ensure that we meet that launch window in July,” Lori Glaze, the director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, said during a virtual town hall meeting on March 19, according to SpaceNews. “As of right now, and even if we go to a next stage of alert, Mars 2020 is moving forward on schedule. And everything is, so far, very well on track.”
For example, engineers recently integrated two key pieces of Perseverance hardware earlier this month at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, where the rover is being prepped for launch. Those pieces are both related to one of Perseverance’s core tasks: collecting pristine samples for eventual return to Earth.
One is the Bit Carousel, which harbors nine drill bits that the rover will use to bore into Red Planet rock. The other is the seven-motor, 3,000-part Adaptive Caching Assembly, which the rover will use to snag, seal and store samples.
“With the addition of the Adaptive Caching Assembly and Bit Carousel, the heart of our sample collection system is now on board the rover,” Mars 2020 deputy project manager Matt Wallace, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.
“Our final but most crucial elements to install will be the sample tubes that will contain the first samples that will be brought from another planet back to Earth for analysis,” Wallace added. “We will keep these pristine until we integrate them in a couple of months.”
Such progress has been hard-won, given how much the coronavirus pandemic has roiled NASA (along with the rest of society). Like most agency facilities, KSC is at Stage 3 in NASA’s “response framework,” meaning that telework is required for all employees, with the exception of “mission-essential personnel” such as those working on Perseverance. (Three NASA facilities — Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, Stennis Space Center in Mississippi and the Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana, are at Stage 4, the highest level. At Stage 4, facilities are closed, except to protect work and critical infrastructure.)
“The teams are doing, frankly, hero’s work to keep us on track for a July launch,” NASA Associate Administrator for Science Thomas Zurbuchen said in another virtual town hall on Friday (March 20).
“We’re working with Armstrong and Wallops to see if we can help find necessary personnel for KSC to help with processing — something that we refer to amongst ourselves as Perseverance Airlines,” he added, referring to NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California and Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
But Zurbuchen also stressed that the agency will suspend Perseverance launch prep if the coronavirus situation escalates to the point that workers’ health and safety are at risk.
If the rover does indeed launch this summer, it will land in February 2021 inside Mars’ 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater, which harbored a lake and a river delta billions of years ago. Perseverance will search the area for signs of long-dead Mars life and snag several dozen samples.
NASA and the European Space Agency will work together to bring these pristine pieces of Mars to Earth, which could happen as early as 2031. Scientists around the world will then examine the samples in great detail, looking for potential evidence of life and anything else that catches their curious eyes.
The Mars 2020 mission will do a variety of other work as well. For example, Perseverance is designed to help pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet. The rover carries a ground-penetrating radar instrument, which will hunt for deposits of near-surface water ice, and a technology demonstration that will generate oxygen from Mars’ carbon-dioxide-dominated atmosphere.
The mission carries another technology demonstration, too — a small helicopter that aims to show that rotorcraft can explore the Martian air.
Another life-hunting rover was supposed to launch toward Mars this summer as well — Rosalind Franklin, which is part of the European-Russian ExoMars project. But problems with the mission’s parachute system and other issues cannot be fixed in time to make this summer’s window, ExoMars team members announced this month, so Rosalind Franklin will now lift off in late 2022.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated byKarl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcom orFacebook.
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.
