These Are the Beaches Travelers Can’t Wait to Return To – Reader’s Digest

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Southwest Floridas gentle Gulf Coast is where to find Sarasota County. Sarasota is a sophisticated coastal town, thats rich with the best of metropolitan art, music, media, performances, and galleries. Once the winter home of the Ringling Brothers Circus, Sarasota offers visitors an eclectic blend of arts and culture, history, fine dining, and of course the powder white sand of Trip Advisors 2020 Top Beach: Siesta Key. The beach itself is 99 percent pure quartz, and that pure white sand stays cool to the touch even in the Florida heat. The Gulf waters are calm and always perfect for a swim, but you can boat, fish, jet ski, and parasail, too. And all this wonderful beachside fun adds to the party atmosphere after the sun sets. Siesta Key Beach is so beautiful, its no wonder its one of the Florida beaches locals want to keep secret (although the MTV series Siesta Key may make that a lot more difficult now). Check into Sea Spray Resort, a favorite of visitors (it has a perfect five-star rating on TripAdvisor!) which puts you close to the sand and just a few blocks to all the action in town. There are beautifully landscaped grounds, a pool, and kitchenettes in the apartment-like rooms, providing everything you need for a relaxing beach vacation.

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These Are the Beaches Travelers Can't Wait to Return To - Reader's Digest

Entheogen – New World Encyclopedia

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This entry covers entheogens as psychoactive substances used in religious or shamanic contexts. For general information about these substances and their use outside religious contexts, see psychedelics, dissociatives and deliriants.

An entheogen, in the strictest sense, is a psychoactive substance used in a religious or shamanic context. Historically, entheogens are derived primarily from plant sources and have been used in a variety of traditional religious practices. With the advent of organic chemistry, there now exist many synthetic substances with similar properties.

More broadly, the term entheogen is used to refer to such substances when used for their religious or spiritual effects, whether or not in a formal religious or traditional structure. This terminology is often chosen in contrast with recreational use of the same substances. These spiritual effects have been demonstrated in peer-reviewed studies (see below) though research remains problematic due to ongoing drug prohibition.

Entheogens have been used in a ritualized context for thousands of years. Examples of entheogens from ancient sources include: Greek: kykeon; African: Iboga; Vedic: Soma, Amrit. Chemicals used today as entheogens, whether in pure form or as plant-derived substances, include mescaline, DMT, LSD, psilocin, ibogaine, and salvinorin A.

The word "entheogen" is a neologism derived from two words of ancient Greek, (entheos) and (genesthai). The adjective entheos translates to English as "full of the god, inspired, possessed," and is the root of the English word "enthusiasm." The Greeks used it as a term of praise for poets and other artists. Genesthai means "to come into being." Thus, an entheogen is a substance that causes one to become inspired or to experience feelings of inspiration, often in a religious or "spiritual" manner.

The word entheogen was coined in 1979 by a group of ethnobotanists and scholars of mythology (Carl A. P. Ruck, Jeremy Bigwood, Danny Staples, Richard Evans Schultes, Jonathan Ott and R. Gordon Wasson). The literal meaning of the word is "that which causes God to be within an individual." The translation "creating the divine within" is sometimes given, but it should be noted that entheogen implies neither that something is created (as opposed to just perceiving something that is already there) nor that the experienced is within the user (as opposed to having independent existence).

It was coined as a replacement for the terms "hallucinogen" (popularized by Aldous Huxley's experiences with mescaline, published as The Doors of Perception in 1953) and "psychedelic" (a Greek neologism for "mind manifest," coined by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond, who was quite surprised when the well-known author, Aldous Huxley, volunteered to be a subject in experiments Osmond was running on mescaline). Ruck et al. argued that the term "hallucinogen" was inappropriate due to its etymological relationship to words relating to delirium and insanity. The term "psychedelic" was also seen as problematic, due to the similarity in sound to words pertaining to psychosis and also due to the fact that it had become irreversibly associated with various connotations of 1960s pop culture. In modern usage "entheogen" may be used synonymously with these terms, or it may be chosen to contrast with recreational use of the same substances.

The meanings of the term "entheogen" were formally defined by Ruck et al.:

In a strict sense, only those vision-producing drugs that can be shown to have figured in shamanic or religious rites would be designated entheogens, but in a looser sense, the term could also be applied to other drugs, both natural and artificial, that induce alterations of consciousness similar to those documented for ritual ingestion of traditional entheogens.

Since 1979, when the term was proposed, its use has become widespread in certain circles. In particular, the word fills a vacuum for those users of entheogens who feel that the term "hallucinogen," which remains common in medical, chemical and anthropological literature, denigrates their experience and the world view in which it is integrated. Use of the strict sense of the word has, therefore, arisen amongst religious entheogen users, and also amongst others who wish to practice spiritual or religious tolerance.

The use of the word "entheogen" in its broad sense as a synonym for "hallucinogenic drug" has attracted criticism on three grounds:

Ideological objections to the broad use of the term often relate to the widespread existence of taboos surrounding psychoactive drugs, with both religious and secular justifications. The perception that the broad sense of the term "entheogen" is used as a euphemism by hallucinogenic drug-users bothers both critics and proponents of the secular use of hallucinogenic drugs. Critics frequently see the use of the term as an attempt to obscure what they perceive as illegitimate motivations and contexts of secular drug use. Some proponents also object to the term, arguing that the trend within their own subcultures and in the scientific literature towards the use of term "entheogen" as a synonym for "hallucinogen" devalues the positive uses of drugs in contexts that are secular but nevertheless, in their view, legitimate.

Beyond the use of the term itself, the validity of drug-induced, facilitated, or enhanced religious experience has been questioned. The claim that such experiences are less valid than religious experience without the use of any sacramental catalyst faces the problem that the descriptions of religious experiences by those using entheogens are indistinguishable from many reports of religious experiences which, are presumed in modern times to, have been experienced without their use. Such a claim, however, depends entirely on the assumption that the reports of well-known mystics were not influenced by ingesting visionary plants, a derivation which Dan Merkur calls into question.

In an attempt to empirically answer the question about whether neurochemical augmentation through entheogens may enable religio-mystical experience, the Marsh Chapel Experiment was conducted by physician and theology doctoral candidate, Walter Pahnke, under the supervision of Timothy Leary and the Harvard Psilocybin Project. In the double-blind experiment, volunteer graduate school divinity students from the Boston area almost all claimed to have had profound religious experiences subsequent to the ingestion of pure psilocybin. In 2006, a more rigorously controlled version of this experiment was conducted at Johns Hopkins University, yielding very similar results.[1] To date there is little peer-reviewed research on this subject, due to ongoing drug prohibition and the difficulty of getting approval from institutional review boards. However, there is little doubt that entheogens can enable powerful experiences that are subjectively judged as important in a religious or spiritual context. Rather, it is the precise characterization and quantification of these experiences, and of religious experience in general, that is not yet developed.

Naturally occurring entheogens such as psilocybin and dimethyltryptamine, also known as N,N-dimethyltryptamine, or simply DMT (in the preparation ayahuasca) were discovered and used by older cultures, as part of their spiritual and religious life, as plants and agents which were respected, or in some cases revered. By contrast, artificial and modern entheogens, such as MDMA, never had a tradition of religious use.

Entheogens have been used in various ways, including as part of established religious traditions, secularly for personal spiritual development, as tools (or "plant teachers") to augment the mind,[2][3] secularly as recreational drugs, and for medical and therapeutic use.

The use of entheogens in human cultures is nearly ubiquitous throughout recorded history.

The best-known entheogen-using culture of Africa is the Bwitists, who used a preparation of the root bark of Iboga (Tabernanthe iboga).[4] A famous entheogen of ancient Egypt is the blue lotus (Nymphaea caerulea). There is evidence for the use of entheogenic mushrooms in Cte d'Ivoire (Samorini 1995). Numerous other plants used in shamanic ritual in Africa, such as Silene capensis sacred to the Xhosa, are yet to be investigated by western science.

Entheogens have played a pivotal role in the spiritual practices of American cultures for millennia. The first American entheogen to be subject to scientific analysis was the peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsii). For his part, one of the founders of modern ethno-botany, the late Richard Evans Schultes of Harvard University documented the ritual use of peyote cactus among the Kiowa who live in what became Oklahoma. Used traditionally by many cultures of what is now Mexico, its use spread throughout North America, replacing the toxic entheogen Sophora secundiflora (mescal bean). Other well-known entheogens used by Mexican cultures include psilocybin mushrooms (known to indigenous Mexicans under the Nhuatl name teonancatl), the seeds of several morning glories (Nhuatl: tlitlltzin and ololihqui) and Salvia divinorum (Mazateco: Ska Pastora; Nhuatl: pipiltzintzntli).

Indigenous peoples of South America employ a wide variety of entheogens. Better-known examples include ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi plus admixtures) among indigenous peoples (such as the Urarina) of Peruvian Amazonia. Other well-known entheogens include: borrachero (Brugmansia spp); San Pedro Trichocereus spp); and various tryptamine-bearing snuffs, for example Epen (Virola spp), Vilca and Yopo (Anadananthera spp). The familiar tobacco plant, when used uncured in large doses in shamanic contexts, also serves as an entheogen in South America. Additionally, a tobacco that contains higher nicotine content, and therefore smaller doses required, called Nicotiana rustica was commonly used.

Over and above the indigenous use of entheogens in the Americas, one should also note their important role in contemporary religious movements, such as the Rastafari movement and the Church of the Universe.

The indigenous peoples of Siberia (from whom the term shaman was appropriated) have used the fly agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria) as an entheogen. The ancient inebriant Soma, mentioned often in the Vedas, may have been an entheogen. (In his 1967 book, Wasson argues that Soma was fly agaric. The active ingredient of Soma is presumed by some to be ephedrine, an alkaloid with stimulant and (somewhat debatable) entheogenic properties derived from the soma plant, identified as Ephedra pachyclada.) However, there are also arguments to suggest that Soma could have also been Syrian Rue, Cannabis, or some combination of any of the above plants.

An early entheogen in Aegean civilization, predating the introduction of wine, which was the more familiar entheogen of the reborn Dionysus and the maenads, was fermented honey, known in Northern Europe as mead; its cult uses in the Aegean world are bound up with the mythology of the bee.

The extent of the use of visionary plants throughout European history has only recently been seriously investigated, since around 1960. The use of entheogens in Europe may have become greatly reduced by the time of the rise of Christianity. European witches used various entheogens, including thorn-apple (Datura), deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna), mandrake (Mandragora officinarum) and henbane (Hyoscyamus niger). These plants were used, among other things, for the manufacture of "flying ointments."

The growth of Roman Christianity also saw the end of the 2,000-year-old tradition of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the initiation ceremony for the cult of Demeter and Persephone involving the use of a possibly entheogenic substance known as kykeon. Similarly, there is evidence that nitrous oxide or ethylene may have been in part responsible for the visions of the equally long-lived Delphic oracle (Hale et al. 2003).

In ancient Germanic culture, cannabis was associated with the Germanic love goddess Freya. The harvesting of the plant was connected with an erotic high festival. It was believed that Freya lived as a fertile force in the plant's feminine flowers and by ingesting them one became influenced by this divine force. Similarly, fly agaric was consecrated to Odin, the god of ecstasy, while henbane stood under the dominion of the thunder godThor in Germanic mythologyand Jupiter among the Romans (Rtsch 2003).

An ancient entheogenic substance in the Middle East is hashish. Its use by the "Hashshashin" to stupefy and recruit new initiates was widely reported during the Crusades. However, the drug used by the Hashshashin was likely wine, opium, henbane, or some combination of these, and, in any event, the use of this drug was for stupefaction rather than for entheogenic use. It has been suggested that the ritual use of small amounts of Syrian Rue is an artifact of its ancient use in higher doses as an entheogen.

Philologist John Marco Allegro has argued in his book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross that early Jewish and Christian cultic practice was based on the use of Amanita muscaria which was later forgotten by its adherents, though this hypothesis has not received much consideration or become widely accepted. Allegro's hypothesis that Amanita use was forgotten after primitive Christianity seems contradicted by his own view that the chapel in Plaincourault shows evidence of Christian Amanita use in the 1200s.[5]

Indigenous Australians are generally thought not to have used entheogens, although there is a strong barrier of secrecy surrounding Aboriginal shamanism, which has likely limited what has been told to outsiders. There are no known uses of entheogens by the Mori of New Zealand. Natives of Papua New Guinea are known to use several species of entheogenic mushrooms (Psilocybe spp, Boletus manicus).[6]

Kava or Kava Kava (Piper Methysticum) has been cultivated for at least 3,000 years by a number of Pacific island-dwelling peoples. Historically, most Polynesian, many Melanesian, and some Micronesian cultures have ingested the psychoactive pulverized root, typically taking it mixed with water. Much traditional usage of Kava, though somewhat suppressed by Christian missionaries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is thought to facilitate contact with the spirits of the dead, especially relatives and ancestors (Singh 2004).

There have been several examples of the use of entheogens in the archaeological record. Many of these researchers, like R. Gordon Wasson or Giorgio Samorini,[7][8] have recently produced a plethora of evidence, which has not yet received enough consideration within academia. The first direct evidence of entheogen use comes from Tassili, Algeria, with a cave painting of a mushroom-man, dating to 8000 BP. Hemp seeds discovered by archaeologists at Pazyryk suggest early ceremonial practices by the Scythians occurred during the fifth to second century B.C.E., confirming previous historical reports by Herodotus.

Although entheogens are taboo and most of them are officially prohibited in Christian and Islamic societies, their ubiquity and prominence in the spiritual traditions of various other cultures is unquestioned. The entheogen, "the spirit, for example, need not be chemical, as is the case with the ivy and the olive: and yet the god was felt to be within them; nor need its possession be considered something detrimental, like drugged, hallucinatory, or delusionary: but possibly instead an invitation to knowledge or whatever good the god's spirit had to offer" (Ruck and Staples).

Most of the well-known modern examples, such as peyote, psilocybe and other psychoactive mushrooms and ololiuhqui, are from the native cultures of the Americas. However, it has also been suggested that entheogens played an important role in ancient Indo-European culture, for example by inclusion in the ritual preparations of the Soma, the "pressed juice" that is the subject of Book 9 of the Rig Veda. Soma was ritually prepared and drunk by priests and initiates and elicited a paean in the Rig Veda that embodies the nature of an entheogen:

Splendid by Law! declaring Law, truth speaking, truthful in thy works, Enouncing faith, King Soma!... O [Soma] Pavmana, place me in that deathless, undecaying world wherein the light of heaven is set, and everlasting lustre shines.... Make me immortal in that realm where happiness and transports, where joy and felicities combine...

The Kykeon that preceded initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries is another entheogen, which was investigated (before the word was coined) by Carl Kereny, in Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter. Other entheogens in the Ancient Near East and the Aegean include the poppy, Datura, the unidentified "lotus" eaten by the Lotus-Eaters in the Odyssey and Narkissos.

According to Ruck, Eyan, and Staples, the familiar shamanic entheogen that the Indo-Europeans brought with them was knowledge of the wild Amanita mushroom. It could not be cultivated; thus it had to be found, which suited it to a nomadic lifestyle. When they reached the world of the Caucasus and the Aegean, the Indo-Europeans encountered wine, the entheogen of Dionysus, who brought it with him from his birthplace in the mythical Nysa, when he returned to claim his Olympian birthright. The Indo-European proto-Greeks "recognized it as the entheogen of Zeus, and their own traditions of shamanism, the Amanita and the 'pressed juice' of Soma but better since no longer unpredictable and wild, the way it was found among the Hyperboreans: as befit their own assimilation of agrarian modes of life, the entheogen was now cultivable" (Ruck and Staples). Robert Graves, in his foreword to The Greek Myths, argues that the ambrosia of various pre-Hellenic tribes were amanita and possibly panaeolus mushrooms.

Amanita was divine food, according to Ruck and Staples, not something to be indulged in or sampled lightly, not something to be profaned. It was the food of the gods, their ambrosia, and it mediated between the two realms. It is said that Tantalus's crime was inviting commoners to share his ambrosia.

The entheogen is believed to offer godlike powers in many traditional tales, including immortality. The failure of Gilgamesh in retrieving the plant of immortality from beneath the waters teaches that the blissful state cannot be taken by force or guile: when Gilgamesh lay on the bank, exhausted from his heroic effort, the serpent came and ate the plant.

Another attempt at subverting the natural order is told in a (according to some) strangely metamorphosed myth, in which natural roles have been reversed to suit the Hellenic world-view. The Alexandrian Apollodorus relates how Gaia (spelled "Ge" in the following passage), Mother Earth herself, has supported the Titans in their battle with the Olympian intruders. The Giants have been defeated:

When Ge learned of this, she sought a drug that would prevent their destruction even by mortal hands. But Zeus barred the appearance of Eos (the Dawn), Selene (the Moon), and Helios (the Sun), and chopped up the drug himself before Ge could find it.

According to The Living Torah, cannabis was an ingredient of holy anointing oil mentioned in various sacred Hebrew texts.[9] The herb of interest is most commonly known as kaneh-bosm (Hebrew: -). This is mentioned several times in the Old Testament as a bartering material, incense, and an ingredient in holy anointing oil used by the high priest of the temple. Although Chris Bennett's research in this area focuses on cannabis, he mentions evidence suggesting use of additional visionary plants such as henbane, as well.

The Septuagint translates kaneh-bosm as calamus, and this translation has been propagated unchanged to most later translations of the Hebrew Bible. However, Polish anthropologist Sula Benet published etymological arguments that the Aramaic word for hemp can be read as kannabos and appears to be a cognate to the modern word 'cannabis',[10] with the root kan meaning reed or hemp and bosm meaning fragrant. Both cannabis and calamus are fragrant, reedlike plants containing psychotropic compounds.

Although philologist John Marco Allegro has suggested that the self-revelation and healing abilities attributed to the figure of Jesus may have been associated with the effects of the plant medicines [from the Aramaic: "to heal"], this evidence is dependent on pre-Septuagint interpretation of Torah, and goes firmly against the accepted teachings of the Holy See. However Merkur contends that a minority of Christian hermits and mystics could possibly have used entheogens, in conjunction with fasting, meditation and prayer.

Allegro was the only non-Catholic appointed to the position of translating the Dead Sea Scrolls. His extrapolations are often the object of scorn due to Allegro's theory of Jesus as a mythological personification of the essence of the psychoactive sacrament, furthermore they seem to conflict with the position of the Catholic Church in regards to the exclusivity of the non-canonical practice of transubstantiation and endorsement of alcohol ingestion as the exclusive means to attain communion with God. Allegro's book, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, relates the development of language to the development of myths, religions and cultic practices in world cultures. Allegro believed he could prove, through etymology, that the roots of Christianity, as of many other religions, lay in fertility cults; and that cult practices, such as ingesting visionary plants (or "psychedelics") to perceive the Mind of God [Avestan: Vohu Mana], persisted into the early Christian era, and to some unspecified extent into the 1200s with reoccurrences in the 1700s and mid 1900s, as he interprets the Plaincourault chapel's fresco to be an accurate depiction of the ritual ingestion of Amanita Muscaria as the Eucharist.

The historical picture portrayed by the Entheos journal is of fairly widespread use of visionary plants in early Christianity and the surrounding culture, with a gradual reduction of use of entheogens in Christianity.[11] R. Gordon Wasson's book Soma prints a letter from art historian Erwin Panofsky asserting that art scholars are aware of many 'mushroom trees' in Christian art.[12]

The question of the extent of visionary plant use throughout the history of Christian practice has barely been considered yet by academic or independent scholars. The question of whether visionary plants were used in pre-Theodosius Christianity is distinct from evidence that indicates the extent to which visionary plants were utilized or forgotten in later Christianity, including so-called "heretical" or "quasi-" Christian groups,[13] and the question of other groups such as elites or laity within "orthodox" Catholic practice.

James Arthur asserts that the little scroll from the angel with writing on it referred to in Ezekiel 2: 8,9,10 and Ezekiel 3: 1,2,3 and Book of Revelation 10: 9,10 was the speckled cap of the Amanita Muscaria mushroom.[14]

The substance melange (spice) in Frank Herbert's Dune universe acts as both an entheogen and a geriatric medicine. Control of the supply of melange was crucial to the Empire, as it was necessary for, among other things, faster than light navigation.

Consumption of the imaginary mushroom anochi as the entheogen underlying the creation of Christianity is the premise of Philip K. Dick's last novel, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, a theme which seems to be inspired by John Allegro's book.

Aldous Huxley's final novel, Island (1962), depicted a fictional entheogenic mushroomtermed "moksha medicine"used by the people of Pala in rites of passage, such as the transition to adulthood and at the end of life.

Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire novel refers to the religion in the future as a result of entheogens, used freely by the population.

In Stephen King's The Gunslinger, Book 1 of The Dark Tower series, the main character receives guidance after taking mescaline.

The Alastair Reynolds novel Absolution Gap features a moon under the control of a religious government which uses neurological viruses to induce religious faith.

All links retrieved August 22, 2017.

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Blade Is One of the Most Influential Movies of the Last 25 Years – ScreenCrush

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Wesley Snipes didnt play Blade. He became Blade. The stories of his refusal to break character while playing Marvel Comics vampire hunter are legendary, particularly from the set of the series final film, 2004sBlade: Trinity.According to co-star Patton Oswalt, Snipes was so deepinside Blades head that after the lines of communication with director David S. Goyer broke down, the star began sending him Post-It notes signed From Blade.

While thatmight have been the most extreme example of Snipes Method dedication, he was intensely invested in the character from the beginning. In 1998, he did at least one promotional interview forBladeas Blade. Im still looking for him to this day,Snipes growls about the vampire that killed Blades mother,moments before he refers to Wesley in the third person.

Agrown man talking with utter sincerity about being found as a child byKris Kristofferson and raisedas a vampire hunter is undeniably silly. Still, this clip shows just how ahead oftheir time Snipes and the firstBladewere. In 1998, practically no one in Hollywood took comic books seriously at all, much lessthisseriously. From the perspective of 2020, its clear thatBladeis one of the most important and influential movies of the last quarter century.

Before talking aboutBladeitself, its important remember the cinematic landscape in which it was created. In 1998, comic-book movies were at their lowest ebb in years. The two DC Comics adaptations the year prior to Blades release Joel Schumachers camptacularBatman and Robin and Shaquille ONealsSteel were such critical and commercial flops that Warner Bros. wouldnt make another DC Comics movie for seven years. For all intents and purposes, the DCMovie Universe was dead.

That was still significantly better than Marvels box-office track record at that time. While the company had been one of the two biggest names in comics for more than 30 years, just one of their properties had ever been adapted into a theatrically-released feature film and it was the disastrous live-action version ofHoward the Duck. The previous attempt at a Marvel movie beforeBlade was Roger CormansFantastic Four, a production so atrocious the filmhas never been officially released to this day. In 2020, the Marvel Studios logo is practically a license to print money. Back then, it was box-office poison. (Or rather it would have been considered box-office poison if Marvel had their acts together enough to have their own movie logo at all; one wouldnt arrive until 2002sSpider-Man.)

Although Tim BurtonsBatmanhad become an enormous blockbuster in 1989, almost all the superhero and comic movies made in its wake were critical or commercial flops or both. The rare success stories 1991sThe Rocketeer, 1996sThe Phantom were period pieces. Comic books were about as far out of the zeitgeist as you could get. They did not speak to contemporary ideas, at least as far as movies were concerned. Superheroes were relics; hokey, old-fashioned adventure stories for kids.

NotBlade. This was a comic-book movie setina present-day world filled with vicious vampires and modern hip-hop and technomusic. The very first action sequence literally showers an underground rave with blood.Bladeearned its R rating unheard of in its day, and almost as rare now, even in a landscape dominated by comic-book movies with extensive blood and gore. Its hero even dropped the occasional F-bomb when the mood struck him:

Whats also evident inthe scene above is that Blade has no concern about a secret identity. He strolls into a hospital, shoots at vampires, tells off cops, and leaves with an important witness with no attempt to hide his face. This was another major break with superhero movies to that point, which were entirely consumed with Supermans and Batmans and assorted other costumed do-gooders who expended enormous energy (and screen time) disguising their true identities.

Althoughthis might not seem like a huge change, most Marvel movies followedBlades lead. The X-Men ditched the masks that had been a key part of many of the characters costumes for decades.Sam RaimisSpider-Man trilogy maintained Peter Parkers secret, but then firstIron Manended with Robert Downey Jr.s Tony Stark declaring to the world that he was his armored alter ego. From that point on, the Marvel Cinematic Universe rarely considered secret identities again.

Blades armor which debutedaboutsix months beforeThe Matrixmade leather and black overcoats the de facto costume for an entire generation of action heroes also broke from the tradition established by the Burton Batman movies of encasing superheroes in mountains of stiff latex.Wesley Snipes Blade costume is elaborate but it doesnt restrict his movement, allowing director Stephen Norringtontodelivercomplex action sequences highlightinghis stars martial-arts skills.

Lets take a look at the difference in action between BurtonsBatmanand NorringtonsBlade.During Batmansbig action finale, Michael Keaton mostly stands in place while bad guys jump and kick around him. In the most extremeexample, one of theJokers goons performs an absurd gymnastics routine,flipping down an entire hallway,then leaps at Batman with a kick. Keaton watches all of this transpire without moving a muscle, then drops the guy with one punch and some kind of Bat-gadget he extends from his hand. Fight over.It might be more accurate to call this an inaction scene.

Compare that with part of the finale fromBlade, where Snipes takes on a whole army of vampires working for the evil Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff):

Keatons Bat-costume gave him the illusion of an outlandish comic bookphysique in exchange for all of his mobility. Snipes, in contrast, needed no help in the muscle department. When hes stripped down to the waist late in the film,he isabsolutely jacked.Huge muscles were standard operating procedure in action moviesduring theyearsdominated by Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and Van Damme. After Batman, they were far less common in comic-book movies untilBlade.

The very first shot of that fight scene shows Snipes landing in a three-point stance, amodern cliche of Marvel moviesthat was a total rarity in live-action whenSnipes did it. In general, Snipes movement as Blade was way ahead of his time. Without a bulky rubber costume, he was able tostrike with equal amounts of grace and violence,like a cross between Bruce Lee and Mikhail Baryshnikov.Superheroes of that era could sometimes look impressive at rest; thinkVal Kilmer ominous looming over the Batcave in his jet-black armor. But they rarely seemed impressive in motion. Snipes Blade looked faster and more agile than everyone else on screen. He really sold the idea that this guy is more than human.

Amusingas that in-characterinterview with Bladefrom 1998 looks,it clearly shows that all of these elements were deliberate onSnipes and Norringtons part.Playing a comic-book character is the best of all worlds because anything goes,Snipes says in Blades signature snarl during the Bladeinterview. You create a different voice, create a different look, different sound, different way of moving, talking.

Snipes concludes that interview with a prediction. I think were creating a shadow world, he says, where the bridge between what is reality and the unreal is very small. Not only didBladedo exactly that, but that shadow world (and Snipes attitude and physicality) became the template for nearly every Marvel movie that followed. Wesley Snipeshad a goofy way of showing it, buthe saw the future. InBlade, hehelped build a bridge to a new way ofbringing comic books out of the shadows.

Gallery How Every Avengers Costume Evolved From Movie to Movie:

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Blade Is One of the Most Influential Movies of the Last 25 Years - ScreenCrush

Big Tech chiefs get brief reprieve from govt hearing into their growing power – ARNnet

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A congressional hearing in the United States on digital marketplace competition featuring the chief executives of four of the largest American tech companies has been rescheduled for Wednesday, a US House subcommittee said on the weekend.

The CEOs of Facebook, Amazon.com, Alphabet's Google and Apple were to have testified on Monday before the House Antitrust Subcommittee. But the hearing was postponed for the lying in state at the Capitol Building of the late Representative John Lewis, an icon of the civil rights movement.

A subcommittee announcement issued on Saturday said the session now would be held on Wednesday and that witnesses and members could appear in person or virtually.

All four tech company CEOs -- Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook -- are to appear virtually, the announcement said.

The subcommittee of the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee is investigating whether the companies actively seek to harm and eliminate smaller rivals.

"Given the central role these corporations play in the lives of the American people, it is critical that their CEOs are forthcoming," Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler and David Cecilline, the subcommittee chairman, said in a joint statement.

The CEOs are expected to deflect criticism of their use of market power to damage rivals by saying they themselves face competition and by debunking claims that they are so dominant.

(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

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Big Tech chiefs get brief reprieve from govt hearing into their growing power - ARNnet

Congressional antitrust probe of Big Tech expected by early fall – The Globe and Mail

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A Congressional deep dive into antitrust allegations against America's largest tech companies could be released by early summer.

DAMIEN MEYER/AFP/Getty Images

A much-anticipated deep dive into antitrust allegations against four of the United States largest tech companies and recommendations on how to tame their market power could be released by late summer or early fall from the House of Representatives judiciary committees antitrust panel, senior committee aides said.

The committee has received 1.3 million documents from the companies so far, they said in a call with reporters on Thursday.

The panel will question the chief executives of Facebook Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Google parent Alphabet Inc. and Apple Inc. as part of its investigation into whether the companies business practices hurt smaller rivals. The hearing was supposed to be held on July 27 but has been delayed.

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On Thursday, Reuters reported that the CEOs will defend themselves by saying their companies face intense competition and by pushing back against claims they are dominant.

All four companies will testify voluntarily and no subpoenas have been issued, the committee aides said.

In May, Representative David Cicilline, chair of the judiciary committees antitrust panel, had demanded Jeff Bezos testify and threatened Amazon with a subpoena after reports surfaced that Amazon employees tapped data from small sellers in the companys marketplace to make decisions about the online retailer launching its own competing products, despite telling lawmakers it did not engage in such practices.

Addressing questions about the format of the high-profile hearing, the aides said, there will be a single panel with all four CEOs attending virtually. Members of the subcommittee led by Mr. Cicilline, however, will attend either in person or online.

The number of rounds of questioning is up to the discretion of the chair, one committee aide said.

Asked if the hearing would uncover new information, a senior aide said that despite the risk of companies not always answering questions fully it was important to hear from decision makers.

This is not like a normal oversight hearing, where we hear from the CEOs and move on.

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Congressional antitrust probe of Big Tech expected by early fall - The Globe and Mail

Antitrust Hearing Involving Apple Chief Tim Cook and Other Big Tech CEOs Reportedly Postponed [Update:… – MacRumors

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An antitrust hearing held by the U.S. House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee where Apple chief Tim Cook was set to join other big tech CEOs is likely to be postponed, according to a report on Thursday.

The hearing involving Cook, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was supposed to happen next Monday, but two sources told CNBC that it was now unlikely to take place due to a conflict with the memorial service for the late representative John Lewis.

The hearing is meant to be the culmination of a more than year-long investigation into the four tech giants. After the hearing, lawmakers plan to publish a report based on their findings and propose legislation to bring antitrust laws up to date to deal with issues unique to digital marketplaces.

A recent report by The Information underlined Cook's initial reluctance to take part in the hearing, and how under the pressure of a potential subpoena, Cook ultimately agreed to participate.

Cook is said to have spent the better part of a month preparing for the hearing, which may touch on a wide range of subjects from App Store policies to Apple's disputes with the FBI over providing methods for law enforcement to access locked devices to Apple's relationships with China.

Update: The antitrust hearing with Apple CEO Tim Cook and other tech CEOs has been officially postponed. A new date has not been announced.

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Antitrust Hearing Involving Apple Chief Tim Cook and Other Big Tech CEOs Reportedly Postponed [Update:... - MacRumors

Big tech antitrust probe report from US Congress likely by early fall – Times Now

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Big tech antitrust probe report from US Congress likely by early fall  |  Photo Credit: BCCL

Washington: A much-anticipated deep dive into antitrust allegations against four of America's largest tech companies and recommendations on how to tame their market power could be released by late summer or early fall from the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel, senior committee aides said. The committee has received 1.3 million documents from the companies so far, they said in a call with reporters on Thursday. The panel will question the CEOs of Facebook Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Google parent Alphabet Inc, and Apple Inc as part of its investigation into whether the companies' business practices hurt smaller rivals. The hearing was supposed to be held on July 27 but has been delayed.

On Thursday, Reuters reported that the chief executives will defend themselves by saying their companies face intense competition and by pushing back against claims they are dominant. All four companies will testify voluntarily and no subpoenas have been issued, the committee aides said. In May, Representative David Cicilline, chair of the Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel, had demanded Jeff Bezos testify and threatened Amazon with a subpoena, after reports surfaced Amazon employees tapped data from small sellers in the companys marketplace to make decisions about the online retailer launching its own competing products, despite telling lawmakers it did not engage in such practices. Addressing questions about the format of the high-profile hearing, the aides said, there will be a single panel with all four CEOs attending virtually. Members of the subcommittee led by Cicilline, however, will attend either in person or online.

"The number of rounds of questioning is up to the discretion of the chair," said one committee aide. Asked if the hearing would uncover new information, a senior aide said that despite the risk of companies not always answering questions fully it was important to hear from decision-makers. "This is not like a normal oversight hearing, where we hear from the CEO's and move on."

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Big tech antitrust probe report from US Congress likely by early fall - Times Now

Mint Lite | India covid tally, protests across globe, big tech CEOs & other news – Livemint

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With 48,661 people testing positive for the novel coronavirus in a day, Indias covid-19 tally crossed 14 lakh on Sunday. Recoveries touched 8.85 lakh, and the death toll is at 32,063 with 705 fatalities in a day, the health ministry said. Meanwhile, an eight-day total lockdown began in Dimapur, the commercial hub of Nagaland, from Sunday to stem the spread of the virus. Kohima has been under lockdown from 25 July. Sikkim reported its first covid-related death, while Arunachal Pradesh has also seen a spike with more than 900 cases in the past three weeks. For the rest of the national and world news, heres Mint Lite.

Protests rise across globe

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For the past few weeks, Jerusalem residents have been protesting against the governments handling of the covid-19 crisis, with police even arresting 12 people on Sunday to disperse demonstrators. Corruption charges against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have further fuelled the demonstrations. After reopening of the economy in May, infections shot up with the average number of new cases 2,000 a day. In Russias Khabarovsk city, thousands took to streets to protest the arrest of regional governor Sergei Furgal on murder charges, which they see as unsubstantiated. Daily protests have gone on for two weeks reflect residents simmering discontent with Vladimir Putins rule. From New York to Los Angeles, thousands marched through cities over the weekend, injecting new life into protests over racial injustice and police violence that had largely waned in recent weeks.

New date for big tech CEOs

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Four big tech CEOsFacebooks Mark Zuckerberg, Apples Tim Cook, Amazons Jeff Bezos and Googles Sundar Pichaiwere to appear remotely before a congressional subcommittee on Monday, but the antitrust hearing has been moved to Wednesday. The hearings go into the effect of the Big Techs dominance on consumers, and on whether their business practices have been detrimental to smaller players. The committee will determine whether century-old competition policies need review. Author Scott Galloway says since the onset of covid-19, nearly every sector has shed substantial value but the four companies and Microsoft have increased in value by an average of 35%, while the remaining 495 firms in the S&P 500 are down 5%. Every firm... appears to have incurred a transfer in value and power to your firms," he says, adding that it is cause for concern that their considerable advantage pre-covid" now seems unassailable.

747s ferry more cargo now

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The iconic Boeing 747s are slowly being phased out. Last week, Qantas and British Airways retired their fleets, citing the pandemic-related downturn in air travel. Over the last few years, new generation twin-engine Airbus A350s and Boeing 787 Dreamliners have proved to be more spacious, and cost- and fuel-efficient than the four-engined 747s. The Airbus A380 superjumbo and the Airbus A340 are the other four-engined craft that are being phased out. Delta and Air France retired their 747 fleets earlier this year. That leaves Lufthansa as the passenger airline with the most 747s still in service (see chart), though Cathay Pacific and Korean Air still use them too. Most of the 400 747s still in service are cargo transporters as their size makes them ideal for the purpose.

The universe in 3D

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After five years of work, more than 100 scientists across the world have pulled together 20 years of data to create the largest 3D map of the universe. Its a map of more than two million galaxies, stretching from the Milky Way to objects that are more than 11 billion light years away. It shows how the universe has changed and expanded over billions of years .The project, Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), is an international quest to map the expansion of the observable universe. The hope is to find answers to a number of cosmic questions and help astronomers piece together what happened at a period of the universes expansion known as the gap". We know both the ancient history of the universe and its recent expansion history fairly well, but theres a troublesome gap in the middle of 11 billion years," Kyle Dawson, the lead researcher, said in a statement. For five years, we have worked to fill in that gap."

Art is suffering too

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Global sales of the leading auction houses, Christies, Sothebys, and Phillips, nearly halved from the start of this year to 10 July due to the pandemic, according to a report, 2020 In Review, by London-based art market analysis firm ArtTactic. The total auction sales fell to $2.9 billion this year from $5.7 billion in the same period last year. However, since the auction houses were quick to leverage their mobile platforms, online auctions helped generate $412 million in the first half of this year, an almost 500% increase from the $69 million raised during the same period last year. Last year was also tough for the art industry, with total global auction sales falling 19% year-on-year. Christies was the hardest hit in the first half of 2020, with its auction sales falling 60% compared to the same period last year. Phillipss auction sales declined 46.7% year-on-year, while Sothebys posted a more modest decline of 37.6%.

Curated by Shalini Umachandran and Pooja Singh. Have something to share with us? Write to us at businessoflife@livemint.com or tweet to @shalinimb

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Mint Lite | India covid tally, protests across globe, big tech CEOs & other news - Livemint

Overzealous government officials should stay out of big tech’s way – Washington Times

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ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Free enterprise is fundamental to preserving freedom. Former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Mark Fowler once said on The Mark Levin Show: I believe as President Reagan did, that the electronic press and youre included in that the press that uses air and electrons, should be and must be as free from government control as the press that uses paper and ink, Period. He was a champion of removing the so-called fairness doctrine, which opened the door to the growth of talk radio.

Imagine if Rush Limbaugh had to give equal time on his show to the radical left? Over the years, liberals have tried to revive the fairness doctrine in hopes it would neuter the influence of talk-radio voices. Conservatives have correctly countered with arguments upholding free speech and free enterprise.

The same standards should apply to new forms of technology even though I do not always agree with some of their points of view. Conservatives must be consistent in the application of our principles.

Plus, taxpayers oppose wasteful government spending. Specifically, they believe that continuing probes of Americas technology sector are a poor use of time as well as tax dollars. Policymakers have been warned repeatedly about the lasting negative impact of antitrust investigations on economic innovation, consumer welfare and the development of technologies that make the government more efficient, more productive and more accountable to the taxpayers. Prospective antitrust investigations are a waste of time and government resources, and almost always end up making government officials look foolish.

Attention is on the federal government, but many of the threats of antitrust investigations are coming from the state level. State attorneys general have been colluding with federal lawmakers to send a signal to many of the most successful companies in the United States that they need to be worried about the heavy hand of regulators reaching into their businesses.

State policymakers should be cautious. Taxpayers across the country dont support these kinds of fishing investigations and generally hold tech innovators in much higher esteem than they do their own elected representatives. The biggest technology companies have positive approval ratings by up to 20 points approval ratings that politicians would dream of having.

New polling out of more than 3,000 voters across the country finds that investigating big tech is one of the lowest priorities that constituents have for their elected officials. The traditional responsibilities of attorneys general fraud, human trafficking, criminal prosecution and others are what voters want their officials to focus on going forward.

The coronavirus crisis is placing a significant strain on state budgets, and with limited resources, officials would be wise to heed public sentiment. Large majorities of voters in every state said that it is either not a priority at all or only a minor priority to investigate big tech. While lawmakers may be looking to score cheap points on antitrust investigations during an election year, these provocations may backfire: big tech is popular, and voters dont want to see these kinds of actions taken.

Murmurs of monopoly and antitrust always seem to crop up right at a tipping point when companies that look like monopolies begin to falter. MySpace was called a monopoly in 2007 and is now merely a blip in the memory of technology companies. Walmart was said to have been a monopoly right when Amazon began its rise. Blockbuster Video in 2005 backed out of a merger with Hollywood Video due to concerns over a Federal Trade Commission antitrust investigation and now only one Blockbuster store remains in the entire country.

Our antitrust policy should apply a light touch, not a heavy hand, and examples abound of companies that looked like monopolies and were targeted for antitrust only to have those cases collapse like a house of cards. Overzealous politicians love to focus on big business, and the most successful businesses in the new century have far and away been technology companies. These companies, however, are much more popular than politicians and the politicians could end up looking foolish.

Overall, the largest group of voters in these most recent polls suggested that a focus on combating human trafficking and price gouging were the most important priorities for their states top prosecutor. The share of voters focused on investigating companies for antitrust violations fell below the margin of error. On the flip side, voters thought the least important priorities for the state attorneys general were suing the drug manufacturers over addiction to painkillers and investigating companies for antitrust violations.

Bottom-line: Free enterprise thrives when the government gets out of the way. Overzealous regulators shouldnt try to use big government to over-regulate individuals, families and employers. Using the heavy hand of the government through antitrust investigations or similar means is a waste of taxpayers money. And the latest poll shows that the voters agree.

Scott Walker was the 45th governor of Wisconsin. You can contact him at [emailprotected] or follow him @ScottWalker.

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Overzealous government officials should stay out of big tech's way - Washington Times

Big Tech feels the heat from Washington and small agency leaders dish: Tuesday Wake-Up Call – AdAge.com

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Welcome to Ad Ages Wake-Up Call, our daily roundup of advertising, marketing, media and digital news. If you're reading this online or in a forwarded email, here's the link to sign up for our Wake-Up Call newsletters.

While Google prepares for the U.S. Department of Justice, which is building an antitrust case against the search giant, Facebook has its own case to worry about, coming out of the Federal Trade Commission, Axios reports. The FTC is pursuing an antitrust probe into Facebook and other investigations, including a review of 10 years of tech firms' acquisitions. If the agency wants to unwind deals or take other strong action, it will need a strong legal theory demonstrating harm to consumers and markets, Axios writes.

Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple have all been in regulatory crosshairs as Washington, D.C. debates what to do about the power of Big Tech. Googles case is reportedly advancing rapidly, and will look at its dominance in areas including digital advertising. Washington is also worried about how Facebook grew so powerful through acquisitions of companies including Instagram, WhatsAppand, most recently,Giphy.

Next week, the public will get a sense of what lawmakers are after when CEOs of Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple appear before Congress.

Meanwhile, Facebook has been trying to distance itself from the Trump administration, after CEO Mark Zuckerbergs relationship with the president was thought to be too cozy. Axios spoke with Zuckerberg who shot down claims that Facebook has a secret handshake with Trump. The whole idea of a deal is pretty ridiculous, Zuckerberg said.

At the same time, Popular Information reports that Facebook policies seem unusually sympathetic to conservative causes. The online publication investigated an instance in which Facebook allowed a dubious report about climate science from the conservative Daily Wire to escape its normal fact-checking process.

Also, Politico reports that Democratic lawmakers asked the FBI for help protecting against foreign interference in the 2020 election, after social media was ground zero for outside influence operations in 2016.

Zuckerberg is doing his best to shield himself from all this heat, at least. The Facebook CEO was spotted in Hawaii over the weekend with a thick layer of sunscreen while out riding waves.

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Big Tech feels the heat from Washington and small agency leaders dish: Tuesday Wake-Up Call - AdAge.com

Lily Allen says she feels sad and calls out big tech amid Wiley antisemitism row – The Independent

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Lily Allen shared an Instagram story in which she said she feels sad seeing the row over Wileys antisemitic rants on social media.

The Metropolitan Police said yesterday (25 July) that they are investigating the posts from Wileys Twitter and Instagram accounts.

He was also dropped by his management and has been temporarily suspended from Twitter over the comments, which included one tweet that compared the Jewish community to the Klu Klux Klan.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

A number of prominent MPs and Wileys fellow musicians have spoken out to condemn his remarks.

In the Instagram video posted on Saturday 25 July, Allen sat in bed as she said she had seen Wileys tweets, and commented: Oh dear.

Im really worried about everyone just going for each other on the internet, she said.

Were all being egged on by big data and big tech. Its just really sad watching communities that should be coming together and helping each other out turn against each other.

Allen received criticism from people on Twitter for appearing to express concern for Wiley, rather than condemning his antisemitic tirades against the Jewish community.

The Independent has contacted Allens representative for comment.

(An earlier version of this story reported that Allen appeared to have deleted her video. The video was removed automatically from Instagram after Allen's story expired.)

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Lily Allen says she feels sad and calls out big tech amid Wiley antisemitism row - The Independent

Was There Life On Mars? NASAs $2 Billion Bot Launches This Week On Unique Sample Return Mission – Forbes

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NASA's Mars 2020 rover will store rock and soil samples in sealed tubes on the planet's surface for ... [+] future missions to retrieve, as seen in this illustration.

NASAs most complex Mars rover so far will this week launch into space and begin its seven-month journey to the Red Planet.

Strapped to the belly of the Perseverance rover will be Ingenuity, a 1.8kg demonstration helicopter thats getting a lot of headlines.

However, whats being overlooked is Perseverances core mission, which is about as exciting as it could beits going to search for traces of ancient life on Mars.

Then, incredibly, its going to prepare samples to be brought back to Earth by astronauts or robotic probes in the 2030s.

Perseverance will thus become the first planetary mission to collect and cache Martian rock core and dust samples.

Its being played-down, but Perseverance could be instrumental in achieving something quite remarkablethe first evidence of the existence of life beyond Earth.

Perseverance sets a new bar for our ambitions at Mars, said Lori Glaze, planetary science director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. We will get closer than ever before to answering some of sciences longest-standing questions about the Red Planet, including whether life ever arose there.

Heres everything you need to know about the Perseverance rover, from where it will land to what it will do on Mars.

Illustration of NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover studying a Mars rock outcrop (not to scale).

Part of NASAs Mars 2020 mission, Perseverance will be the largest, heaviest, most sophisticatedrover ever sent to the Red Planet. Thats because verifying ancient microscopic life on Mars carries an enormous burden of proof.

Its mission will be to analyze rock and sediment samples to see if Mars may have had conditions for microorganisms to thrive. It will drill a few centimeters into Mars and take core samples, then put the most promising into containers. It will then leave them on the Martian surface to be later collected by a human mission in the early 2030s.

Perseverances SuperCam spectrometer will make a contactless geochemistry analysis of Martian rocks and soil by using a pulsed laser.

However, only laboratories back on Earth would be able to prove definitively that Perseverance has found evidence of past life on Mars.

Perseverance is scheduled to launch on Thursday, July 30, 2020 at 11:50 UTC/07:50 EDT/12:50 BST/13:50 CEST on board an Atlas V launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

This map of the Red Planet shows Jezero Crater, where NASA's Mars 2020 rover is scheduled to land ... [+] in February 2021. Also included are the locations where all of NASA's other successful Mars missions touched down.

Perseverance is due to land on the red planet on February 18, 2021. It will land in a nearly four billion-year-old river delta in Mars 28 miles/45 kilometers-wide Jezero Crater.

Jezero Crater is on the western side of Isidis Planitia, a giant impact basin just north of the Martian equator.

NASAs Perseverance rover is designed for a mission duration of one Mars year. Thats about two Earth years, though in practice its expected to last much longer than that.

Jezero Crater on Mars, the landing site for NASA's Mars 2020 mission. It was taken by instruments on ... [+] NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

Its selection as the landing site is no accident; this region contains some of the oldest and scientifically most interesting landscapes on Mars. Its thought likely that Jezero Crater was home to a lake as large as Lake Tahoe more than 3.5 billion years ago.

Theres no water there todayand nor is there much of an atmosphere on Marsbut its possible that ancient rivers flowing in and out of Jezero Crater, carrying organic molecules and possibly even microorganisms.The region is known to be home to clay, which could contain preserved traces of life.

The science team has had many discussions internally and externally about where the next Mars rover should go, said Ken Farley, the missions project scientist, based at Caltech in Pasadena. We ultimately chose Jezero Crater because it is such a promising location for finding organic molecules and other potential signs of microbial life.

Does the ancient river delta contain preserved evidence of ancient microbial life? If Perseverance succeeds in its mission it will go down in historyand the hunt for more life beyond Earth can begin.

We stand at the threshold of another monumental moment in exploration: sample collection at Mars, said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine in June as the coronoavirus-hit preparations for Perseverance ramped-up. Future generations may well recognize the women and men of Perseverancenot only for what they will achieve 100 million miles from home, but for what they were able to accomplish on this world on the road to launch.

However, you spin it, theres no doubt that the launch of Perseverance could be a monumental moment in space exploration.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

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Was There Life On Mars? NASAs $2 Billion Bot Launches This Week On Unique Sample Return Mission - Forbes

Rock from Mars heads home after 600,000 years on Earth – The Guardian

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A small piece of rock will be hurled into space this week on one of the strangest interplanetary voyages ever attempted. A tiny piece of Martian basalt the size of a 10p coin will be launched on board a US robot probe on Thursday and propelled towards the red planet on a seven-month journey to its home world.

This extraordinary odyssey, the interplanetary equivalent of sending coals to Newcastle, will form a key part of Nasas forthcoming Mars 2020 expedition. Space engineers say the rock which has been donated by the Natural History Museum in London will be used to calibrate detectors on board the robot rover Perseverance after it lands and begins its search for signs of past life on the planet.

Some of the Martian meteorites we have are very fragile, but we chose this one specifically because its as tough as old boots

When you turn on instruments and begin to tune them up before using them for research, you calibrate them on materials that are going to be like the unknown substances you are about to study. So what better for studying rocks on Mars than a lump that originated there? said Professor Caroline Smith, the Natural History Museums curator of meteorites.

Scientists were confident that the rock they were returning to Mars originated on the planet, added Smith, who is also a member of the Mars 2020 science team. Tiny bubbles of gas trapped inside that meteorite have exactly the same composition as the atmosphere of Mars, so we know our rock came from there.

It is thought that the Martian meteorite was created when an asteroid or comet plunged into the planet about 600,000 to 700,000 years ago, spraying debris into space. One of those pieces of rubble swept across the solar system and eventually crashed on to Earth. That meteorite now known as SAU 008 was discovered in Oman in 1999 and has been in the care of the Natural History Museum since then.

Among the instruments fitted to the Perseverance rover is a high-precision laser called Sherloc, which will be used to decipher the chemical composition of rocks and determine if they might contain organic materials that indicate life once existed or still exists on Mars. The inclusion of a piece of SAU 008 is intended to ensure this is done with maximum accuracy.

The piece of rock we are sending was specifically chosen because it is the right material in terms of chemistry, but also it is a very tough rock, added Smith. Some of the Martian meteorites we have are very fragile. This meteorite is as tough as old boots.

Once Perseverance has selected the most promising rocks it can find, it will dump them in caches on the Martian surface. These will then be retrieved by subsequent robot missions and blasted into space towards Earth for analysis.

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Rock from Mars heads home after 600,000 years on Earth - The Guardian

From Earth to Mars: Rosalind Franklins Century of Science – SciTechDaily

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Artistic illustration of Dr. Rosalind Franklin by artist Tami Wicinas. Credit: Tami Wicinas

If Rosalind Franklin had had a birthday wish, she probably never would have dreamed of having her name roving on Mars.

As the world celebrates the 100th anniversary of the prominent scientist behind the discovery of the structure of DNA tomorrow, the ExoMars rover named after her prepares to leave her symbolic footprint on the Red Planet.

Rosalind Franklin with a microscope in 1955. Rosalind Elsie Franklin was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer who contributed to unraveling the double helix structure of our DNA. She also made enduring contributions to the study of coal, carbon, and graphite. Credit: MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology

The robotic explorer will drill down to two meters into the Martian surface to sample the soil, analyze its composition and search for evidence of life buried underground. The mission is set for launch in 2022.

Rosalind Franklin was a leading crystallographer, who looked into how atoms are arranged. She produced the best double helix image of DNA strands with X-rays, and that transformed our world, leading to the biggest advance in biology in the past century DNA technology, says Jim Naismith, director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute, a national research center for life sciences in the UK.

She was not an undiscovered gem in her time, but a really influential scientist for her pioneering work in viruses. We regard her as the first structural biologist of viruses, adds Jim.

The scientists working to send ESAs Rosalind Franklin rover to Mars do not expect to find either DNA or viruses on our neighboring planet. DNA molecules and viruses are probably too fragile to last for four billion years on the ground, explains Jorge Vago, ESAs ExoMars project scientist.

But we hope that our rover will help write a new page in Mars exploration by allowing us to study organic molecules at depth, and perhaps find some suggestive traces of past life, says Jorge.

Rosalind Franklins legacy lives on a hundred years after her birth on planet Earth. Born on 25 July 1920, her family is touched by the worldwide recognition of her scientific work.

Many people have this vision of a solitary woman who was robbed of a Nobel Prize and was never acknowledged for helping discover the structure of the DNA helix, says her niece, also named Rosalind Franklin in her memory.

Rosalind meets Rosalind. After learning that the rover had been named in honor of her aunt the result of a public competition led by the UK Space Agency and also sharing the same name, Rosalind Franklin reached out to ESA, curious to learn more about the mission. Last month, she visited ESAs technical center in the Netherlands and is pictured here meeting the 1:1 scale model of the Rosalind Franklin ExoMars rover for the first time. Credit: ESAG. Porter

She is committed to fighting off that conflictive image and representing her legacy bringing her out as a woman with a place in history. She inspires me to think that all of us, as individuals, have the power to make a difference.

The technical team behind the ExoMars spacecraft involves companies across more than 20 countries. This map highlights in red ESA Member and Cooperating States within Europe that are contributing to ExoMars. Participating countries outside Europe are listed at bottom right. Credit: ESAS. Poletti

Dr. Franklin was on a trip to America when she had difficulty fastening her skirt over her swollen stomach the first sign of an advanced ovarian cancer. She died two years later at 37 years old, working almost to the very end of her life.

A series of online talks and events, including a commemorative coin, is underway around the globe to celebrate the centenary of this woman of integrity who went after scientific discovery for the betterment of humankind, as her niece described her from her home in California, US.

Rosalind believes her aunt would have loved the ExoMars team spirit. The work of ESA engineers on the rover struck me they really do it for the results, not for themselves. This is what Rosalind Franklin was all about: commitment and dedication to science, she said after a visit to ESAs technical center in the Netherlands last year.

The scientist never conceived science as a race for awards.

As Mars exploration prepares for an international reawakening this year, the ExoMars mission that would have marked Dr Franklins centenary had to be postponed because tests to make all components of the spacecraft ready for the Mars adventure needed more time to complete.

On top of that, the coronavirus pandemic has halted the completion of several tests and verifications since March 2020.

ExoMars rover during environmental tests. Credit: Airbus

The fitness of the Rosalind Franklin rover to launch to the Red Planet in 2022 is currently being assessed during the qualification and acceptance review by ESA and dozens of industrial partners.

The rover successfully proved it can endure martian conditions during the environmental test campaign completed earlier this year in Toulouse, France.

The flight model awaits a more robust set of solar panels at Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy. In the same city is a full-scale model of Rosalind Franklin.

A team of engineers will simulate the roaming of the laboratory on wheels from the Rover Operations Control Centre (ROCC) at ALTEC, right next to one of Europes largest Mars yards.

While the ExoMars rover tunes up its gear and software for the challenges ahead, parachute tests are expected to resume in October in Oregon, US.

Further tests on the electrical and mechanical elements of the spacecraft will take place in Cannes, France, also in the autumn.

The ExoMars program is a joint endeavor between the Roscosmos State Corporation and ESA. Apart from the 2022 mission, it includes the Trace Gas Orbiter launched in 2016. The TGO is already both delivering important scientific results obtained by its own Russian and European science instruments and relaying data from NASAs Curiosity Mars rover and InSight lander. The module will also relay the data from the ExoMars 2022 mission once it arrives at Mars.

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From Earth to Mars: Rosalind Franklins Century of Science - SciTechDaily

Perseverance will seek signs of life on Mars | Stanford News – Stanford University News

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Despite a global pandemic and some technical delays, NASAs 2020 Mars Rover the aptly named Perseverance is scheduled to launch this summer (currently slated for July 30) on a groundbreaking endeavor. Traveling from Earth to Mars is best done when the planets orbit nearest one another, providing only a narrow window of opportunity (rover pun intended) between mid-July and mid-August to start the journey. Its success will be the opening salvo in an ambitious series of missions designed to bring samples of Martian crust to Earth for the first time for study.

Go to the web site to view the video.

Kurt Hickman

NASAs 2020 Mars Rover the aptly named Perseverance is scheduled to launch this summer on a groundbreaking endeavor.

Rovers are the closest we can get to having a geologist on Mars at the moment, so any new rover data is really valuable, said Mathieu Laptre, an assistant professor of geological science at Stanfords School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth) who researches the geological processes that shape planetary surfaces. Every time we have a rover like this, a wave of discoveries follows. Its a very exciting time.

Stanford scholars have a long history of contributing to NASAs space missions including the design of technologies sent into space, guidance and control of spacecraft. That tradition continues with this latest Mars mission. For example, Marco Pavone, a former research technologist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), helped develop algorithms to optimize the selection of landing spots on Mars in the case of Perseverance, an ancient meteorite impact site known as the Jezero Crater, or the Jezero Delta.

Even though NASA has an impressive track record of landing rovers on Mars, Pavone cautions against underestimating the adventure ahead. Landing on Mars is a tremendous challenge, said Pavone, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics and director of Stanfords Autonomous Systems Laboratory. Even if we did it successfully in the past, it is certainly not a done deal.

Perseverance is the fifth Mars rover from NASA, following Curiosity, Opportunity, Spirit, and the original Mars rover, Sojourner, named for civil rights activist Sojourner Truth. That first trailblazing rover arrived on Mars in 1997 equipped with few instruments and only able to venture roughly 40 feet from its lander, Pathfinder. But the key requirement to demonstrate mobility on another planet was met, said Scott Hubbard, an adjunct professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford; Hubbard was the first Mars program director at NASA Headquarters, where he earned the nickname of Mars Czar.

Each rover since Sojourner has been sent to Mars with more sophisticated instruments, expanded capabilities and more ambitious goals. Curiosity directly preceded Perseverance and has the most in common with it, including size which is roughly that of a small SUV. To save money, the Perseverance rover was required to be a near duplicate of Curiosity wherever possible, even using leftover parts, said Hubbard, who also authored Exploring Mars: Chronicles from a Decade of Discovery.

Perseverance will pick up where Curiosity left off. After landing in February 2021, the rover will roam the planet for at least one Mars year, which is roughly equal to two Earth years. Its tool suite includes a novel drilling and storage mechanism to extract and cache roughly 30 rock samples. This is the rovers most critical function, according to Hubbard, because the plan is to retrieve those samples with a future fetch rover, shoot them into Martian orbit and eventually return them to Earth, where they will be analyzed for fingerprints of life. Getting those samples back to Earth has been the holy grail of Mars science for almost 50 years, Hubbard said.

Once the Martian rocks are on Earth, they will be quarantined for safety, and then subjected to a battery of tests and measurements that cannot be performed on Mars itself. With Curiosity, we are looking for habitable environments and organic molecules, said Laptre. But without bringing the samples back to Earth, it is really difficult to tell for sure if what we found was biogenic formed by something that was alive or abiogenic, meaning the organic molecules are not related in any way to life.

Its been a long road to reach this point. When the Mars Exploration Program was being revived by Hubbards team in the early 2000s after two mission failures, he believed the scientific, engineering and technology requirements of a sample return mission were too daunting to tackle. Twenty years later, the suite of missions, orbiters and rovers that came out of our re-planning effort have yielded a wealth of knowledge about the Red Planet, said Hubbard, including the ability to now select the all-important site for a sample return.

Real estate agents will tell you that the value of a property has more to do with location than anything else; a landing site is not much different. Pavone describes the process of selecting the site as finding the sweet spot on the planets surface that strikes a balance between scientific potential and risk to the rover.

This specific landing site was chosen because of its promise in terms of astrobiological potential, said Laptre. In my opinion, it was very well chosen. Whether we find evidence for ancient life or not, I am convinced that we will learn a lot about the ancient environment on Mars.

Jezero Crater was once a lake formed by an ancient river filling a meteor impact crater. It makes for a great place to look for evidence of life, said Laptre, because, like the Nile or the Mississippi, this river likely picked up sediments and any forms of life that may have existed along its course and concentrated them in one place.

The Jezero location is also older than previous rover landing sites somewhere around 3.7 billion years, which is when scientists believe Mars may have been habitable. Any life on Mars at the time would consist of simple unicellular organisms like microbes. So scientists must look for biomarkers pieces of organic molecules or chemical indicators that these living things could have left behind in the rocky surface, rather than bones or fossils.

Another advantage of this site is that it could allow scientists to test the hypothesis that ancient organisms on Mars lived in the subsurface. This crater punctured through the Martian surface to expose ancient rocks, said Janice Bishop, a senior research scientist for the SETI Institute and a Stanford alumnus. Bishop utilizes remote sensing to study rocks on the surface of the Red Planet to gain insights about Mars watery past, so this mission is of particular interest as the selected landing site features an ancient river delta. Perseverance is expected to reveal secrets about the early history of water on Mars, Bishop added.

Like Mars, Earth was devoid of large organisms for most of its history, such that its geological processes were largely unaffected by macroscopic life. However, Earths surface is constantly recycled through the continual shifting of continent-sized plates; this process is known as plate tectonics and does not occur on Mars. A lot of us are super excited about how this information could improve our understanding of Earth before there was life, said Laptre. I will definitely use the mission data in my research program, and have PhD students combine rover and orbiter data to answer questions about the geologic history of Mars.

Information gleaned from the ancient river that once emptied into Jezero crater could change how scientists think about how rivers form, and tie into global carbon cycles and climate not only on Mars but also Earth and other planets.

Perseverance will be breaking new technological ground as well on this mission. Continuing in the tradition of using each Mars mission as a technology test-bed for new future capabilities, the rover will bring along a very small, four-pound helicopter, said Hubbard. Dubbed Ingenuity, the copter will be the first flying vehicle on another planet and will have to navigate the frigid nights and dust-filled skies of Mars while operating in an atmosphere that is 100 times thinner than Earths.

Sojourner was itself a technology demonstration to prove wheeled mobility on Mars, said Pavone. Who knows what well be able to do another 20 years down the road once we prove we can fly helicopters on Mars?

Nineteen high-resolution cameras on the 2020 rover should provide unprecedented images of the Martian surface, as well as the landing process. Perseverance is also equipped with an instrument called Moxie, which will test the potential of converting Mars thin atmosphere into oxygen for future human explorers.

If this were a perfect world, humans will be arriving on Mars in 2033, said Hubbard. This seems to be far in the future, but it is literally around the corner in space mission terms.

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Tag Along with Mars Rovers as They Explore the Red Planet in a New 4K Video – Colossal

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Although many of us will never step foot on the red planet, a new compilation captured by Mars rovers walks through the rocky, sandy terrain in stunning detail. Throughout the video of 4K imagery, the rovers explore the wide-open plains and candy-colored stretches of the Martian landscape. As the narrator notes, getting actual footage of Mars currently is impossible, as even the most technologically advanced rovers like Curiosity still are limited to extremely slow data-transmission speeds back to Earth. Watch the full compilation on YouTube, check outthis 1.8 billion pixel panorama taken by Curiosity. (via Twister Sifter)

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SuperCam Designed, Built And Tested At LANL Is Ready To Head To Mars With Perseverance Mission – Los Alamos Reporter

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The Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover will seek signs of ancient life and collect rock and soil samples for possible return to Earth during a mission which will last at least one Mars year which is about 687 Earth days. Photo Courtesy LANL

Roger Wiens, a Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is the principal investigator for the SuperCam project. Photo Courtesy LANL

Scientists work on the SuperCam instrument attached to the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover which launches from Cape Canaveral later this month. Photo Courtesy LANL

BY MAIRE ONEILLmaire@losalamosreporter.com

The SuperCam instrument designed, built and tested at Los Alamos National Laboratory is ready to leave Earth and travel to Mars with the Mars 2020 Perseverance Mission later this month and land there in February 2021. Roger Wiens, the principal investigator for the SuperCam project, chatted with the Los Alamos Reporter about the role Los Alamos National Laboratory is playing in the mission.

SuperCam is a follow-on to ChemCam, which is currently working on Mars and has been operated from Los Alamos every other week from since 2012, Wiens said. ChemCam, a suite of remote sensing instruments, went to Mars on the car-sized Curiosity rover that landed there on Aug. 6, 2012 to investigate the Martian climate and geology and assess whether Gale crater has ever had environmental conditions to support microbial life.

SuperCam is a significant step up from ChemCam. They look a lot alike and SuperCam carries out the same chemical analyses that ChemCam does. SuperCam also takes images like ChemCam but there was a desire by the science community to study not just the chemistry of the rocks and soils within 25 feet of the rover, but to also understand the mineralogy the mineral makeup of these rocks, Wiens said. Those are two very complementary pieces of information and so we heard them, and we added not one, but two mineralogy techniques into the instrument package and we succeeded in making SuperCam almost exactly the same size and weight as the original ChemCam.

The chemistry technique used by both ChemCam and SuperCam is laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) where the laser zaps the rocks or soil and makes a little plasma. From that little burst of light which is captured by a small telescope on the mast of the rover, spectrometers can determine the elemental composition of the sample as well as physical properties like hardness.

We are using the laser in SuperCams case in two different ways. Beyond the LIBS technique that were still using, we now have a way to change the wavelength or the color of the laser. Instead of infrared, we can use a green beam, and in that capacity, we can study the mineralogy with a technique that is called Raman spectroscopy, Wiens said. We use this Raman spectroscopy to tell us not just if the rocks have carbon but if they are actually a carbonate mineral, like limestone or dolomite for example, or if they have sulphur its not just that they have sulphur, but whether its gypsum the kind of mineral that makes up White Sands in Southern New Mexico. That tells us a lot more about how the rocks were formed and what the climate was like when the sediments were laid down and when the rocks solidified.

He said besides the Raman spectroscopy for mineralogy, infrared spectroscopy is used taking the sunlight that is reflected off the rock and dispersing it into the spectrum of infrared colors.

It turns out that there are some infrared absorption bands that occur when the light is reflected off the rock if there are carbonate minerals in the rock or if there are clay minerals or other water-bearing minerals, Wiens said.

Wiens noted that the projects partners at the French Space Agency wanted to put a microphone on board SuperCam but NASA didnt initially accept that proposal for it.

There has to be a really strong scientific justification for everything that goes to Mars, and we had some ideas. There was a student in France who was trying to understand the sound of the laser beam zapping the rock. We had used the zapping sound a little bit to tune the focus of our telescope that projects the laser beam. It turns out the sound can tell you if that laser beam is well in focus or not. Its much louder when its in focus and has a nicer zapping sound. It also turns out that if you have a hard rock, and you shoot it a bunch of times, its going to sound about the same every time you shoot it, but if you have a soft rock, the laser beam starts to burrow in and the sound starts to change as you create a cavity or pit from the laser beam, he said.

This means that scientists can tell without ever driving up to a rock whether its hard or soft by shooting the laser at it and listening to the change in sound.

Then we went back to NASA and said, Hey, we really think this is useful! So they accepted the idea that we would add the microphone and we did. So we will get to listen to whatever one hears on Mars, which will probably mostly be the wind and perhaps dust devils, the sounds of the rover, and that of the laser plasmas. Well find outmaybe there are other things we can listen to, Wiens said.

LANL also has a fairly significant part in one other instrument on the rover, known as SHERLOC the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals instrument which is mounted on the rovers robotic arm.

SHERLOC is a long acronym, but its a nice acronym, because you can imagine sleuthing for organic materials on Mars, which is what this instrument is going to do. Were happy to be part of that instrument as well, Wiens said.

As with other people this spring, the Mars operations teams had to find a new way to work during the Covid-19 pandemic. At this point were all operating from our houses. In fact, were sending up commands to ChemCam from home today (Wednesday, July 22).

The Los Alamos team trades off every other week with a team in France to operate ChemCam. That same arrangement will be taking place with SuperCam. Were partnering with the French Space Agency on SuperCams operations too. After the Perseverance rovers landing in February, we will probably be trading off every other week sending commands to SuperCam as well as ChemCam, so that will keep us busy. he said.

Wiens said the two rovers operate robotically because the travel time of signals to Mars is too long up to 20 minutes each way. He said instead of joy-sticking a rover as you would with a drone or some other remotely operated vehicle on earth, it has to be operated robotically.

We send it commands and let it do its thing with those commands until the next day, or sometimes longer. For example, today we are sending up commands to keep the Curiosity rover busy for five days. On Monday our French partners will give it the next set of commands, he said. Its a challenge, because you can imagine trying to drive a rover by sending it a set of commands and then expecting it to drive all on its own. And the same thing with picking targets on Mars for our laser.

Wiens said the rover actually has software that will take its own pictures of the surface of Mars, pick its own targets and then shoot them. The team uses that automatic targeting about one fourth of the time.

That helps if the rover is driven somewhere and we havent got pictures back on earth yet to target ChemCam at that new site. The rover does it for us. We can get our ChemCam data faster that way, he said.

SuperCam, which is often referred to as a Swiss Army Knife of instruments, will leave Earth with the Perseverance rover aboard an Atlas V-541 rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The sensor head which is mounted on the rovers long-necked mast weighs about 12 pounds and the electronics mounted in the rovers body weigh 10.6 pounds.

Wiens holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Minnesota and is a Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Toulouse, France and was knighted by the French government for his work in forging strong ties between the French and American scientific communities and for inspiring many young, ambitious earthlings. He is the author of Red Rover: Inside the Story of Robotic Space Exploration from Genesis to the Mars Rover Curiosity.

Over one hundred experts at Los Alamos National Laboratory were involved in developing and testing SuperCam and SHERLOC for the Perseverance rover. These people included mechanical, electrical, optical, and systems engineers and technicians; chemists, computer scientists, managers, contract specialists, budget analysts, and export specialists.

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Mars rover to carry name of teen with rare disorder and Arizona ties – KTAR.com

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(Facebook Photo/NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover)

PHOENIX The name of a teen with Arizona ties who suffers from a rare disorder is headed to Mars.

Alex Yiu, a space enthusiast who turned 15 years old this week, wanted to leave his mark on the Red Planet with some help from his teacher.

She got his name onto the Perseverance Rover and he got a boarding pass, Alexs mom, Caroline Cheung-Yiu told KTAR News 92.3 FM. So, his name will be going on the rover to Mars.

His name will be etched on a microchip and embedded on the rover.

But thats not the only unique thing about the teen.

Yiu has a rare disorder known as NEDAMSS that took more than a decade to diagnose.

NEDAMSS is an acronym for neurodevelopmental disorder with regression, abnormal movements, loss of speech and seizures. This has left him bed-bound and non-verbal.

It was a long road trying to look for a diagnosis through many institutions and hospitals, Cheung-Yiu explained. In the fall of 2018, we got a call from [Alexs] neurologist that we finally got a diagnosis that was given through TGen.

The Translational Genomics Research Institute known as TGen is a Phoenix-based, non-profit research center that helped to find Yius diagnosis through its Center for Rare Childhood Disorders. Cheung-Yiu said they visited the Valley from the familys home in San Diego specifically to help find a diagnosis.

However, space can still put a twinkle in his eyes.

I, almost every day, read to him news about NASA and space, Cheung-Yiu said. Hes very interested and tends to select news more geared towards space and astronomy.

And while the Arizona teen and a new high-tech rover may seem to be separated by light-years, Cheung-Yiu believes they share similar paths.

Its very interesting that the journey and the whole preparation of the Perseverance Rover going to Mars is so fitting, she said.

Our own journey with [Alex], the 12 years [of looking for a diagnosis], has been long but we saw through it and persevered and were able to get a diagnosis.

On Saturday, Yiu will celebrate his birthday with a pre-launch Zoom party. The new rover is set to launch between July 30 and August 15 and will reach Mars sometime in February.

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Mars rover to carry name of teen with rare disorder and Arizona ties - KTAR.com

Will we ever find life on Mars? | Australia news – The Guardian

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Nasa plans to launch its latest mission to Mars this month, which aims to place the Perseverance rover on the surface of the planet in February 2021.

It is the latest attempt to explore a planet that has loomed large in the popular imagination for centuries. As the planetary scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson, author of The Sirens of Mars,tells Rachel Humphreys, there is a long history of hopes, theories and fictional representations of life on Mars. But so far none has been discovered.

The latest mission will search for habitable conditions on the planets surface and gather rocks for a future mission to bring back to Earth. It is just one of several different Mars missions to launch this month, all with one ultimate question in mind: are we alone in the universe?

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Will we ever find life on Mars? | Australia news - The Guardian

Perseverance: the new mission to Mars | News – The Guardian

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Nasa plans to launch its latest mission to Mars this month, which aims to place the Perseverance rover on the surface of the planet in February 2021.

It is the latest attempt to explore a planet that has loomed large in the popular imagination for centuries. As the planetary scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson, author of The Sirens of Mars,tells Rachel Humphreys, there is a long history of hopes, theories and fictional representations of life on Mars. But so far none has been discovered.

The latest mission will search for habitable conditions on the planets surface and gather rocks for a future mission to bring back to Earth. It is just one of several different Mars missions to launch this month, all with one ultimate question in mind: are we alone in the universe?

Support The Guardian

The Guardian is editorially independent.And we want to keep our journalism open and accessible to all.But we increasingly need our readers to fund our work.

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Perseverance: the new mission to Mars | News - The Guardian