Watch The Tesla Roadster Rocket To 250 MPH In This Visualization – InsideEVs

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The Tesla Model S is one of the quickest production vehicles ever produced, and it's getting quicker on a regular basis. However, it won't even touch the upcoming Tesla Roadster in terms of power and acceleration. According to Tesla, the Roadster will rocket from zero to 60 mph in just 1.9 seconds, though knowing how Tesla operates, this number may be exceeded in the production model, especially if there are really available air thrusters.

We've seen videos of the Roadster racing to 60 mph, but what might it look like if the all-electric supercar were to race from a stop all the way to its top speed of 250 mph? Apparently, it may be able to do this in a mere 20 seconds. Concept artistJordi Pauuses CGI to give us a glimpse of what's to come.

Sadly, we've been waiting for the next-gen Tesla Roadster to come to market for some time. It seems we'll be waiting much longer since Tesla just released the Model Y and is prioritizing its Semi and Cybertruck. However, the automaker has a tendency to unveil products long before they come to market.

Unlike some other companies, Tesla has working prototypes of its future vehicles and has even allowed people to ride in them at the official unveiling ceremonies. Not to mention, these vehicles like the upcoming Roadster, Cybertruck, and Semi are out on the road, traveling around the country, charging, and making special appearances from time to time.

Since we don't get to see the "real" Tesla Roadster very often, people have taken to creating simulations. In similar fashion, amateur copies of the Tesla Cybertruck, as well as all sorts of renderings and simulations have flooded the internet. Check out this recent Roadster simulation and then leave us a comment below.

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Nidec sees itself as the Tesla of electric vehicle motors – Nikkei Asian Review

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TOKYO -- Nidec, the world's largest motor maker, is aiming for a quick return to record profits as it bets on dramatic growth in electric vehicle demand in China.

For the first quarter of fiscal 2020, the Kyoto-based company reported a 1.7% rise in operating profit from a year before to 28.1 billion yen ($261.93 million), even as sales fell 6.6% to 336.8 billion yen. The company said it has redoubledefforts for cost reduction.

Sales of automotive motors during the April-June quarter fell by half, as automakers around the world shut down production amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Nidec says, however, that it is looking beyond COVID-19and is aggressively moving into new areas, as sales of traditional equipment have slumped.

"The macroeconomic environment remains challenging,"Nidec Chairman and CEO Shigenobu Nagamori said Tuesday at a newsconference."Auto production has stopped. But the trend toward electrification hasn't. More and more companies want to produce EVs."

Nagamori added that the company has weathered challenging times before. "We reported a record profit the year after the Lehman crisis," he said."We have a similar ambition in the wake of the coronavirus crisis."

Nidec recently decided to build a new research and development facility in China for EV drive motors even as many U.S. companies move investment away from China.

The Japanese company is betting that EVs will overtake gasoline vehicles in terms of cost and convenience in around five years, and is tryingto position itself for the new era.

"We are like Tesla in the automobile motor business," Nagamori said. Noting that Tesla recently overtook Toyota Motorto become the world's most valuable automaker by market capitalization, he asked rhetorically why this had happened."Because investors are anticipatinga shift to EVs. We need to prepare for a dramatic shift."

But Nagamori grumbled about Nidec's share price, which has been moving sideways in the past couple of years. Nidec is officially predicting a 2% dip in sales to1.5 trillion yen for the year ending March 2021, but stands by its ambition of reaching 2 trillion yen in the current fiscal year.

Nidec says that its drive motors for EVs have been adopted by 15 automakers worldwide, including more than 10 in China. But the company stressesthat competition remains intense.

"Cost competition will continue for a while," saidJun Seki, Nidec president and chief operating officer. "We will reduce the cost of our products by 30%, added the former Nissan executive."We will reduce costs until rivals can no longer compete with us."

The coronavirus has created new demand for its motors, Nidec said. As more people work from home, sales of laptopcomputers soared, boosting demand for the company'smotor fans to cool computer microprocessors.

Demand for micro fans also got a boost from electric face masks with built-in fans.

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Nidec sees itself as the Tesla of electric vehicle motors - Nikkei Asian Review

Teslas Earnings Are Coming. Heres What Wall Street Is Saying. – Barron’s

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Teslas earnings are due out on Wednesday, July 22 after the market closes. It will be must-see TV for Wall Street denizens.

As the date approaches, analysts are refining numbers and hitting the refresh button on their short-term stock views. Right now, the analysis centers on risk versus reward,

Citigroup analyst Itay Michaeli is still cautious. He rates shares the equivalent of Sell, but he did increase his price target from $246 to $450 a share. Thats well below where Tesla stock trades, so he qualifies as a Tesla bear.

Michaeli, in a Wednesday research report, challenged some of the bull-case tenets such as the idea that Tesla is experiencing seemingly unlimited demand thats decoupled from autos, that traditional and emerging competitors stand little chance, that [Teslas self driving] is industry leading and that Tesla should be valued versus large Tech names.

He calls the stock high risk as the big day nears.

Baird analyst Ben Kallo sounds cautious as well, suggesting investors take some profits in a Friday research note. Risk/Reward temporarily skewed negatively, wrote Kallo. He believes Tesla will produce a second-quarter profit, something no one expected weeks ago, but added if the company doesnt, it will be a negative catalyst for the stock, given the intense discussion about Teslas inclusion in the S&P 500 index lately.

A profit under generally accepted accounting principles for the second quarter would all but ensure Teslas inclusion in the S&P 500. Bulls believe that will create more stock buying and gains in the price. There is a range of opinion on how much impact the inclusion would have, and how long it will last.

We do think the stock is pricing in inclusion at current levels as funds position ahead of a rebalancing, said Kallo.

Kallo, a longtime bull, now rates shares the equivalent of Hold and has a $984 price target for the stock. He increased his target price from $700 to $984 Friday.

Credit Suisse analyst Dan Levy also increased his price target Thursday, from $700 to $1,400. He still rates Tesla at Hold despite the 100% target-price increase.

Levy feels like Kallo does. There are lots of things going right at Telsa but a material hiccup could lead to a correction, he wrote. He also pointed out that Tesla stock is the most widely bought stock in the past month on Robinhood, the retail investor trading app.

His point is that euphoria among retail investors might be driving shares too high.

Tesla shares are, indeed, high. The stock is up roughly 50% over the past month, 260% year to date, and 500% over the past year. The gains have been incredible, exceeding comparable returns of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 as well as Teslas traditional automotive peers.

These are three, relatively bearish takes on the quarter. All acknowledge recent solid business execution, while asking how much is enough for the stock. More previews will be out in coming days.

Tesla is now the worlds most valuable car company. Elon Musks companys market capitalization is now more than 10 times Henry Fords namesake Ford Motor (F).

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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Teslas Earnings Are Coming. Heres What Wall Street Is Saying. - Barron's

Auto icon Bob Lutz once predicted Tesla was headed to the graveyard 430% later, hes not so sure – MarketWatch

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Bob Lutz, the blunt-talking former vice chairman of General Motors GM, +0.53% , said almost two years ago that Tesla was headed for the graveyard. Then, earlier this year when the stock was trading at about half where it is right now, he described the rally as almost a mass psychosis.

Hes not the hater he once was, but he still has his doubts:

The rise in stock price and the fact that Tesla is worth more than Fiat Chrysler, General Motors and Ford combined is worth more than Volkswagen and Toyota has nothing to do with reality.

Thats Lutz, after years of beating up Elon Musk and Tesla TSLA, -4.54%, explaining to CNBC this week how hes warming up to the company but not without hesitation.

Tesla is not a very profitable company that creates a decent return for shareholders, he continued. It is always struggling for profitability, yet it has a huge market cap.

While Lutz did acknowledge Tesla has very good technology and Musk has done a brilliant job, he pointed out that the other car behemoths have made similar advances that stack up well.

Tesla may be giants in the electric car business but annually they [make] 300,000 cars compared to 10 million a year for Toyota, about 8 million a year for GM, he said. Fiat Chrysler, Ford and GM combined [make] about 20 million a year, so Tesla is not very big.

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Auto icon Bob Lutz once predicted Tesla was headed to the graveyard 430% later, hes not so sure - MarketWatch

Stocks making the biggest moves midday: Netflix, Nio, BlackRock, Tesla and more – CNBC

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A button for launching the Netflix application is seen on a remote control in this photo illustration in Warsaw, Poland on April 25, 2019.

Jaap Arriens | NurPhoto | Getty Images

Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading.

NetflixShares of the streaming video giant fell 6.5% after company missed earnings estimates gave guidance for subscriber growth that came in lower than Wall Street expected. The company also announced that Ted Sarandos would become co-chief executive officer.

Nio Shares of electric car maker Nio dropped more than 14% after a Goldman Sachs analyst downgraded them to sell. The analyst cited concern around Nio's valuation after the stock surged more than 60% last month. "We believe the current share price reflects over-optimism given no substantial changes to volume/profit expectations," the analyst wrote in a note.

BlackRockShares of the money manager jumped 3.3% after it beat estimates on the top and bottom lines for its second quarter. The company reported adjusted earnings per share of $7.85 on $3.65 billion of revenue, showing growth in performance fees and technology service revenue. Analysts surveyed by Refinitiv expected $6.99 in earnings per share and $3.54 billion of revenue.

Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet Alongside Netflix, the so-called FANG stocks slid, continuing technology stocks weakness this week. Facebook lost 0.5% and Alphabet dropped nearly 1%. Microsoft and Amazon lost 0.6% and 0.9%, respectively. All of the FANG stocks are headed for big weekly declines.

State StreetShares of State Street dropped 3.5% despite its better-than-expected quarterly earnings. The asset manager said it earned $1.86 per share in the latest quarter, helped by lower expenses and strong fee performance. Analysts polled by FactSet were expecting $1.58 a share.

J.B. Hunt Shares of JB Hunt Transport gained 3% after thetransportation and logistics company's second-quarter earnings beat expectations. Wall Street also grew more bullish on the company following the results. Deutsche Bank upgraded the stock to hold from sell, citing pricing benefits and a better macro backdrop. Citigroup, UBS and Morgan Stanley all raised their price targets on JB Hunt Friday.

Tesla Shares of the electric vehicle maker gained 1% after Credit Suisse doubled its target on the stock to $1,400 from $700. The firm maintained its neutral rating on the Elon Musk-led company, however. Shares of Tesla have more than tripled this year.

Carnival Corp., Norwegian Cruise, Royal Caribbean Cruises Shares of the major cruise line operators all dropped more than 1% after the CDC extended a no-sail order through the end of September. The order, which was first announced in March, was set to expire on July 24.

Regions Financial Shares of the company slid 3.2% after missing on its second quarter earnings. Third quarter net interest income guidance disappointed.

with reporting from Yun Li, Fred Imbert, Jesse Pound and Pippa Stevens.

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Stocks making the biggest moves midday: Netflix, Nio, BlackRock, Tesla and more - CNBC

Stocks making the biggest moves after hours: Netflix, Tesla, J.B. Hunt and more – CNBC

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A Tesla Model S is displayed during the London Motor and Tech Show at ExCel on May 16, 2019 in London, England.

John Keeble | Getty Images

Check out the companies making headlines after the bell:

Netflix Shares of the streaming service plummeted 10% in extended trading after releasing its second-quarter financial results. Netflix reported second-quarter earnings of $1.59 per share on revenues of $6.15 billion. Analysts polled by Refinitiv expected earnings of $1.81 per share on revenues of $6.08 billion. Netflix also announced that Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos will become co-CEO with current CEO Reed Hastings.

Tesla Tesla's stock fell nearly 2% in extended trading after dropping about 3% during the day. Tesla's vehicle registrationsnearly halved in California during the second quarter as the coronavirus hurt production and auto sales, according to a report released earlier Thursday.

J.B. Hunt Shares of the transportation company climbed 3% after the final bell. J.B. Hunt posted second-quarter earnings of $1.14 per share on revenues of $2.15 billion, beating analysts' expectations. Analysts polled by Refinitiv expected earnings of 80 cents per share on revenues of$2.02 billion.

PPGIndustries PPG Industries' stock jumped 4% in extended trading upon the release of its second-quarter financial results.PPG reported adjusted second-quarter earnings of 99 cents per share on revenues of $3.02 billion. Earnings went above expectations of analysts polled by FactSet, who expected earnings of 70 cents per share on revenues of $2.81 billion. PPG noted one of the strong points for the quarter came from its global architectural coatings businesses, driven by a do-it-yourself demand during the coronavirus.

Norwegian Cruise Lines, Carnival Shares of cruise lines fell after the market closed and the CDC announced it will ban U.S. cruises through September.Norwegian Cruise Lines and Carnival's stock both fell 1% after hours. The CDC's original order was set to expire July 24 but the agency cited "ongoing" coronavirus outbreaks on ships for its continued ban.

CBL& Associates The mall owner's stock dropped 2% after the market closed. The move comes after CBL adjusted its forbearance agreement on notes due in 2023 and 2026 after the company missed interest payments on the notes due in June and failed to pay within the 30-day grace period, according to an SEC filing.

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Mars Facts: Life, Water and Robots on the Red Planet | Space

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Mars is the fourth planet from the sun. Befitting the Red Planet's bloody color, the Romans named it after their god of war. In truth, the Romans copied the ancient Greeks, who also named the planet after their god of war, Ares. Other civilizations also typically gave the planet names based on its color for example, the Egyptians named it "Her Desher," meaning "the red one," while ancient Chinese astronomers dubbed it "the fire star."

The bright rust color Mars is known for is due toiron-rich mineralsin its regolith the loose dust and rock covering its surface. The soil of Earth is a kind of regolith, too, albeit one loaded with organic content. According to NASA, the iron minerals oxidize, or rust, causing the soil to look red.

Thecold, thin atmospheremeans liquid water likely cannot exist on the Martian surface for any length of time. Features called recurring slope lineae may have spurts of briny water flowing on the surface, but this evidence is disputed; some scientists argue the hydrogen spotted from orbit in this region may instead indicate briny salts. This means that although this desert planet is just half the diameter of Earth, it has the same amount of dry land.

The Red Planet is home to both the highest mountain and the deepest, longest valley in the solar system.Olympus Monsis roughly 17 miles (27 kilometers) high, about three times as tall as Mount Everest, while theValles Marineris system of valleys named after the Mariner 9 probe that discovered it in 1971 reaches as deep as 6 miles (10 km) and runs east-west for roughly 2,500 miles (4,000 km), about one-fifth of the distance around Mars and close to the width of Australia.

Scientists think the Valles Marineris formed mostly by rifting of the crust as it got stretched. Individual canyons within the system are as much as 60 miles (100 km) wide. The canyons merge in the central part of the Valles Marineris in a region as much as 370 miles (600 km) wide. Large channels emerging from the ends of some canyons and layered sediments within suggest the canyons might once have been filled with liquid water.

Mars also has the largest volcanoes in the solar system, Olympus Mons being one of them. The massive volcano, which is about 370 miles (600 km) in diameter, is wide enough to cover the state of New Mexico. Olympus Mons is a shield volcano, with slopes that rise gradually like those of Hawaiian volcanoes, and was created by eruptions of lavas that flowed for long distances before solidifying. Mars also has many other kinds of volcanic landforms, from small, steep-sided cones to enormous plains coated in hardened lava. Some minor eruptions might still occur on the planet.

Channels, valleys and gullies are found all over Mars, and suggest that liquid water might have flowed across the planet's surface in recent times. Some channels can be 60 miles (100 km) wide and 1,200 miles (2,000 km) long.Water may still lie in cracks and pores in underground rock. A study by scientists in 2018 suggested that salty water below the Martian surface could hold a considerable amount of oxygen, which would support microbial life. However, the amount of oxygen depends on temperature and pressure; temperature changes on Mars from time to time as the tilt of its rotation axis shifts.

Many regions of Mars are flat, low-lying plains. The lowest of the northern plains are among the flattest, smoothest places in the solar system, potentially created by water that once flowed across the Martian surface. The northern hemisphere mostly lies at a lower elevation than the southern hemisphere, suggesting the crust may be thinner in the north than in the south. This difference between the north and south might be due to a very large impact shortly after the birth of Mars.

The number of craters on Mars varies dramatically from place to place, depending on how old the surface is. Much of the surface of the southern hemisphere is extremely old, and so has many craters including the planet's largest, 1,400-mile-wide (2,300 km) Hellas Planitia while that of northern hemisphere is younger and so has fewer craters. Some volcanoes also have a few craters, which suggests they erupted recently, with the resulting lava covering up any old craters. Some craters have unusual-looking deposits of debris around them resembling solidified mudflows, potentially indicating that the impactor hit underground water or ice.

In 2018, the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft detected what could be a slurry of water and grains underneath icy Planum Australe. (Some reports describe it as a "lake," but it's unclear how much regolith is inside the water.) This body of water is said to be about 12.4 miles (20 km) across. Its underground location is reminiscent of similar underground lakes in Antarctica, which have been found to host microbes. Late in the year, Mars Express also spied a huge, icy zone in the Red Planet's Korolev Crater.

Vast deposits of what appear to be finely layered stacks of water ice and dust extend from the poles to latitudes of about 80 degrees in both hemispheres. These were probably deposited by the atmosphere over long spans of time. On top of much of these layered deposits in both hemispheres are caps of water ice that remain frozen year-round.

Additional seasonal caps of frost appear in the wintertime. These are made of solid carbon dioxide, also known as "dry ice," which has condensed from carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere. In the deepest part of the winter, this frost can extend from the poles to latitudes as low as 45 degrees, or halfway to the equator. Thedry ice layerappears to have a fluffy texture, like freshly fallen snow, according to a report in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets.

Mars is much colder than Earth, in large part due to its greater distance from the sun. Theaverage temperatureis about minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 60 degrees Celsius), although it can vary from minus 195 F (minus 125 C) near the poles during the winter to as much as 70 F (20 C) at midday near the equator.

The carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere of Mars is also about 100 times less dense than Earth's on average, but it is nevertheless thick enough to support weather, clouds and winds. The density of the atmosphere varies seasonally, as winter forces carbon dioxide to freeze out of the Martian air. In the ancient past, the atmosphere was likely thicker and able to support water flowing on its surface. Over time, lighter molecules in the Martian atmosphere escaped under pressure from the solar wind, which affected the atmosphere because Mars does not have a global magnetic field. This process is being studied today by NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) mission.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter found the first definitive detections ofcarbon-dioxide snow clouds, making Mars the only body in the solar system known to host such unusual winter weather. The Red Planet also causes water-ice snow to fall from the clouds.

The dust storms on Mars are the largest in the solar system, capable of blanketing the entire Red Planet and lasting for months. One theory as to why dust storms can grow so big on Mars is because the airborne dust particles absorb sunlight, warming the Martian atmosphere in their vicinity. Warm pockets of air then flow toward colder regions, generating winds. Strong winds lift more dust off the ground, which, in turn, heats the atmosphere, raising more wind and kicking up more dust.

The axis of Mars, like Earth's, is tilted with relation to the sun. This means that like Earth, the amount of sunlight falling on certain parts of the Red Planet can vary widely during the year, giving Mars seasons.

Related: How Long Does It Take to Get to Mars

However, the seasons that Mars experiences are more extreme than Earth's because the Red Planet's elliptical, oval-shaped orbit around the sun is more elongated than that of any of the other major planets. When Mars is closest to the sun, its southern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, giving it a short, very hot summer, while the northern hemisphere experiences a short, cold winter. When Mars is farthest from the sun, the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, giving it a long, mild summer, while the southern hemisphere experiences a long, cold winter.

The tilt of the Red Planet's axis swings wildly over time because it's not stabilized by a large moon, such as Earth is. This led to different climates on the Martian surface throughout its history. A 2017 study suggests that the changing tilt also influenced therelease of methaneinto Mars' atmosphere, causing temporary warming periods that allowed water to flow.

Facts about Mars' orbit:

Average distance from the sun: 141,633,260 miles (227,936,640 km). By comparison: 1.524 times that of Earth.

Perihelion (closest): 128,400,000 miles (206,600,000 km). By comparison: 1.404 times that of Earth.

Aphelion (farthest): 154,900,000 miles (249,200,000 km). By comparison: 1.638 times that of Earth.

Atmospheric composition (by volume)

According to NASA, the atmosphere of Mars is 95.32 percent carbon dioxide, 2.7 percent nitrogen, 1.6 percent argon, 0.13 percent oxygen, 0.08 percent carbon monoxide, with minor amounts of water, nitrogen oxide, neon, hydrogen-deuterium-oxygen, krypton and xenon.

Magnetic field

Mars currently has no global magnetic field, but there are regions of its crust that can be at least 10 times more strongly magnetized than anything measured on Earth, which suggests those regions are remnants of an ancient global magnetic field.

Chemical composition

Mars likely has a solid core composed of iron, nickel and sulfur. The mantle of Mars is probably similar to Earth's in that it is composed mostly of peridotite, which is made up primarily of silicon, oxygen, iron and magnesium. The crust is probably largely made of the volcanic rock basalt, which is also common in the crusts of the Earth and the moon, although some crustal rocks, especially in the northern hemisphere, may be a form of andesite, a volcanic rock that contains more silica than basalt does.

Internal structure

Scientists think that on average, the Martian core is between 1,800 and 2,400 miles in diameter (3,000 and 4,000 km), its mantle is about 900 to 1,200 miles (5,400 to 7,200 km) wide and its crust is about 30 miles (50 km) thick.

The twomoons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, were discovered by American astronomer Asaph Hall over the course of a week in 1877. Hall had almost given up his search for a moon of Mars, but his wife, Angelina, urged him on. He discovered Deimos the next night, and Phobos six days after that. He named the moons after the sons of the Greek war god Ares Phobos means "fear," while Deimos means "rout."

Both Phobos and Deimos are apparently made of carbon-rich rock mixed with ice and are covered in dust and loose rocks. They are tiny next to Earth's moon, and are irregularly shaped, since they lack enough gravity to pull themselves into a more circular form. The widestPhobosgets is about 17 miles (27 km), and the widest Deimos gets is roughly 9 miles (15 km).

Both moons are pockmarked with craters from meteor impacts. The surface of Phobos also possesses an intricate pattern of grooves, which may be cracks that formed after the impact created the moon's largest crater a hole about 6 miles (10 km) wide, or nearly half the width of Phobos. They always show the same face to Mars, just as our moon does to Earth.

It remains uncertain how Phobos andDeimoswere born. They may have been asteroids captured by Mars' gravitational pull, or they may have been formed in orbit around Mars the same time the planet came into existence.Ultraviolet lightreflected from Phobos provides strong evidence that the moon is a captured asteroid ,according to astronomers at the University of Padova in Italy.

Phobos is gradually spiraling toward Mars, drawing about 6 feet (1.8 meters) closer to the Red Planet each century. Within 50 million years, Phobos will either smash into Mars or break up and form a ring of debris around the planet.

The first person to watch Mars with a telescope wasGalileo Galilei. In the century following, astronomers discovered the planet's polar ice caps. In the 19th and 20th centuries, researchers believed they saw a network of long, straight canals on Mars, that hinted at possible civilization, although later these proved to be mistaken interpretations of dark regions they saw.

A number of martian rocks have fallen to the surface of Earth over the eons, providing scientists a rare opportunity to study Martian rocks without having to leave our planet. One of the most controversial finds was Allan Hills 84001 (ALH 84001) a Martian meteorite that in 1996, was said to contain shapes reminiscent of small fossils. The find garnered a lot of media attention at the time, but subsequent studies dismissed the idea. The debate was still ongoing in 2016, the 20th anniversary of the announcement. In 2018, a separate meteorite study found that organic molecules the building blocks of life, although not necessarily life itself could have formed on Mars through battery-like chemical reactions.

Robotic spacecraft began observing Mars in the 1960s, with the United States launchingMariner 4 in 1964 and Mariners 6 and 7 in 1969. The missions revealed Mars to be a barren world, without any signs of the life or civilizations people had imagined there. In 1971,Mariner 9orbited Mars, mapping about 80 percent of the planet and discovering its volcanoes and canyons.

The Soviet Union also launched numerous spacecraft in the 1960s and early 1970s, but most of those missions failed. Mars 2 (1971) and Mars 3 (1971) operated successfully, but were unable to map the surface due to dust storms. NASA'sViking 1lander touched down on the surface of Mars in 1976, the first successful landing on the Red Planet. The lander took the first close-up pictures of the Martian surface but found no strongevidence for life.

The next two craft to successfully reach Mars were the Mars Pathfinder, a lander, andMars Global Surveyor, an orbiter, both launched in 1996. A small robot onboard Pathfinder namedSojourner the first wheeled rover to explore the surface of another planet ventured over the planet's surface analyzing rocks.

In 2001, the NASA launched theMars Odysseyprobe, which discovered vast amounts of water ice beneath the Martian surface, mostly in the upper 3 feet (1 meter). It remains uncertain whether more water lies underneath, since the probe cannot see water any deeper.

In 2003, Mars passed closer to Earth than anytime in that past 60,000 years. That same year, NASA launched two rovers, nicknamedSpiritandOpportunity, which explored different regions of the Martian surface. Both rovers found signs that water once flowed on the planet's surface.

In 2008, NASA sent another mission, Phoenix, to land in the northern plains of Mars and search for water which it succeeded in doing.

In 2011, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission sent theMars Curiosity rover, to investigate Martian rocks and determine the geologic processes that created them. Among the mission's findings was thefirst meteoriteon the surface of the Red Planet. The rover has found complex organic molecules on the surface, as well as seasonal fluctuations in methane concentrations in the atmosphere.

NASA has two other orbiters working around the planet,Mars Reconnaissance OrbiterandMAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution). The European Space Agency (ESA) also has two spacecraft orbiting the planet:Mars Expressand the Trace Gas Orbiter.

In September 2014, India'sMars Orbiter Missionalso reached the Red Planet, making it the fourth nation to successfully enter orbit around Mars.

In November 2018, NASA sent a stationary lander called Mars InSight to the surface. InSight will examine the planet's geologic activity by burrowing a probe underground.

NASA plans to launch a successor rover mission to Curiosity, called Mars 2020. This mission will search for ancient signs of life and, depending on how promising its samples look, it may "cache" the results in safe spots on the Red Planet for a future rover to pick up.

ESA is working on its own ExoMars rover that should also launch in 2020, and will include a drill to go deep into the Red Planet, collecting soil samples from about 2 meters (6.5 feet) deep.

Mars is far from an easy planet to reach. NASA, Russia, the European Space Agency, China, Japan and the Soviet Union collectively lost many spacecraft in their quest to explore the Red Planet. Notable examples include:

1992 NASA's Mars Observer

1996 Russia's Mars 96

1998 NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter, Japan's Nozomi

1999 NASA's Mars Polar Lander

2003 ESA's Beagle 2 lander

2011 Russia's Fobus-Grunt mission to Phobos with the Chinese Yinghuo-1 orbiter

2016 ESA's Schiaparelli test lander

Robots aren't the only ones getting a ticket to Mars. A workshop group of scientists from government agencies, academia and industry have determined that aNASA-led manned mission to Marsshould be possible by the 2030s. However, in late 2017, the Trump administration directed NASA to send people back to the moon before going to Mars. NASA is now more focused on a concept called the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway that would be a moon-based space station and headquarters for further space exploration.

Robotic missions to the Red Planet have seen much success in the past few decades, but it remains a considerable challenge to get people to Mars. With current rocket technology, it would take several months for people to travel to Mars, and that means they would live for several months in microgravity, which has devastating effects on the human body. Performing activities in the moderate gravity on Mars could prove extremely difficult after many months in microgravity. Research on the effects of microgravity continues on the International Space Station.

NASA isn't the only one with Martian astronaut hopefuls. Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, has outlined multiple concepts to bring people to Mars. In November 2018, Musk rebranded SpaceX's future "Big Falcon Rocket" to "Starship". Other nations, including China and Russia, have also announced their goals for sending humans to Mars.

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This article was updated on Feb. 7, 2019, by Space.com contributor Elizabeth Howell.

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Mars Facts: Life, Water and Robots on the Red Planet | Space

UAE launches "Hope" Mars orbiter to study red planet’s …

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A Mars orbiter built by the United Arab Emirates in partnership with U.S. universities shot into space atop a Japanese H-2A rocket on Sunday, kicking off a seven-month voyage to the red planet. It is the first interplanetary mission attempted by an Arab nation and the first of three Mars missions scheduled for take off in the next two weeks.

The UAE's $200 million "Hope" mission was designed with two major goals in mind: To study the martian atmosphere with three state-of-the-art instruments and to provide a "moonshot moment" for the youth of the Middle East, serving as inspiration to pursue careers in math and science.

"The objective was basically to use this mission to cause a disruptive change in the mindset of the youth, to create a research and development culture to support the creation of an innovative and creative and a competitive knowledge-based economy," said Omran Sharaf, the Hope project manager.

"So it's about the future of our economy. It's about the post-oil economy. (UAE leadership) wanted to inspire the young generation to go into STEM and use this mission as a catalyst to cause disruptive change and shifts in multiple sectors. ... That's why they went with the Mars shot. (They) wanted to create an ecosystem that basically supports the creation of an advanced science and technology sector."

Running five days late because of threatening weather, the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-2A rocket, equipped with two strap-on boosters for extra power, thundered to life at 5:58 p.m. EDT Sunday (6:58 a.m. Monday local time) and streaked away from a seaside firing stand at the picturesque Tanegashima Space Center.

The climb out of the dense lower atmosphere went smoothly and the rocket's second stage reached its planned "parking orbit" 11-and-a-half minutes after launch. A second engine firing about 50 minutes later put the Mars probe on its seven-month trajectory to the red planet.

Flight controllers at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center in Dubai had a brief scare when initial telemetry indicated one of the probe's two solar panels had not deployed, but a few minutes later they confirmed both arrays had, in fact, unfolded and subsystems were reported to be operating normally.

The mission is the first of three taking advantage of this year's planetary launch window when Earth and Mars are in favorable positions to permit relatively quick transits.

China plans to launch its Tianwen-1 mission on July 23, sending an orbiter to Mars along with a sophisticated surface rover. One week later, NASA intends to launch its $2.4 billion Perseverance Mars rover to search for signs of past or present microbial life and to collect rock and soil samples for eventual return to Earth.

The European Space Agency had planned to launch its powerful ExoMars rover during the current launch window. But ESA was forced to stand down until the next window opens in 2022, primarily because of problems with the parachutes needed to help lower the rover to the martian surface.

Hope, Tianwen-1 and Perseverance will all reach Mars in February 2021. While Hope will slip into an elliptical orbit for at least two years of atmospheric research, Perseverance will descend directly to touchdown near an ancient river delta where water once flowed and where traces of past microbial activity might be present.

The Tianwen-1 rover will remain attached to the Chinese orbiter for several months before descending to touchdown on a broad plain known as Utopia Planitia, one of two proposed landing sites.

But the UAE was first off the pad. Assuming no problems develop, Hope will carry out a half-hour-long rocket firing next February, burning half its propellant to slow down enough to slip into an elliptical orbit with a high point of about 26,700 miles and a low point of around 12,400 miles.

The mission represents an ambitious bid to join the handful of nations that have attempted interplanetary exploration. The spacecraft was built in the United States by Emirates engineers working at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, with participation by Arizona State University and the University of California at Berkeley.

Equipped with three science instruments a high-resolution camera and two sophisticated spectrometers Hope is designed to operate for at least one martian year, the equivalent of two years on Earth.

The mission has three scientific objectives: To study weather systems in the lower atmosphere, day and night through all martian seasons; to study how atmospheric oxygen and hydrogen escape into space; and to learn how processes in the lower atmosphere contribute to that escape.

The overall goal is to collect data that will complement other Mars missions, helping scientists figure out how Mars changed from a warm, wet world with an atmosphere thick enough to permit liquid water on the surface, to a dry, frigid world with an atmospheric pressure less than 1% of Earth's.

NASA's Maven orbiter has been studying the martian atmosphere for more than seven years. The Hope orbiter will collect complementary data, helping researchers fill in the blanks.

The Hope probe "was designed in order to answer questions that have been raised by previous missions," said Bruce Jakosky, Maven's principal investigator. "Our goal is to understand how the atmosphere works today and how the atmosphere has evolved through time."

But the science is just part of the UAE's message to the Middle East.

"We live in a place of turmoil, a place that is made up of 100 hundred million youth under the age of 35 that want to find opportunities to work," deputy project manager Sarah Al Amiri, UAE minister of advanced sciences and chair of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center, told CBS News in a pre-launch interview.

"And their talents at the time when we announced (Hope) were being used in the wrong groups, they were being used for terrorism and other forms of extremism by different groups in the region. And this mission was meant to provide a different way of working and a different way of forming opportunities for the region."

And that, she said, is why the spacecraft was named Al Amal, or "Hope."

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The United Arab Emirates' Hope probe will launch from Tanegashima Space Center in Japan and will reach Mars in February 2021. Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre hide caption

The United Arab Emirates' Hope probe will launch from Tanegashima Space Center in Japan and will reach Mars in February 2021.

If you're planning a trip to Mars, now is the time to go.

For a month or so, Earth and Mars line up in a way that makes it possible to go from one to the other. Miss that window, and you have to wait two years for the next opportunity. The United Arab Emirates, China and the United States all have missions scheduled for launch in July.

NASA's entry is a six-wheeled rover called Perseverance. It's aiming for Jezero crater, a spot on Mars that scientists think was once a lake where microbes could have lived. Landing is set for Feb. 18, 2021.

This map of Mars shows where NASA's Perseverance rover is scheduled to land in February 2021. Also shown are the locations where NASA's previous successful Mars missions touched down. NASA/JPL-Caltech hide caption

Kathryn Stack Morgan is the mission's deputy project scientist. Other rover missions have seen signals of carbon that could have been left behind by microbial life, but, she says, "We haven't been able to necessarily link the presence of that carbon to a particular pattern of texture that we see in the rock that we think could have been left behind by life."

Even if Perseverance detects carbon and sees a pattern in a rock that could have been left behind by life, the claim that there was once life on Mars would be extraordinary, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

"Very likely, we'll have to return those samples to Earth to make that definitive conclusion about whether these samples contain life in them," Morgan says.

Left: NASA's Perseverance rover gets prepared for encapsulation in the Atlas V rocket's payload fairing (nose cone) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 18. Right: On July 7, the payload fairing containing the rover sits atop the motorized payload transporter that will carry it to Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA/Christian Mangano; NASA/Kim Shiflett hide caption

Happily, that's just what Perseverance is designed to do. It won't actually bring back the samples, but it will collect rock samples, put them in containers and seal the containers so a future mission can bring them back to Earth.

"Our sampling system was particularly challenging in that we also had to keep it very, very clean," says Matthew Wallace, the rover's deputy project manager. "The reason we needed to do that is the science community is looking for trace signatures from billions of years ago. Trace chemical signatures. We don't want to confuse the search for those ancient signs of life [with material] we took with us to Mars and brought back."

It's going to be a while before the samples get back to Earth. If all goes well, it will happen in 2031.

At a recent news conference, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said finding signs of life on Mars would be something, "but I'll tell you the thing that has me most excited as the NASA administrator is getting ready to watch a helicopter fly on another world," he said.

Perseverance is carrying a small camera-equipped helicopter that could be useful for exploring the landing site and finding interesting features for the rover to visit. It was a late addition to the mission, and while it makes the administrator's eyes light up, mission managers like Wallace seem to be trying to lower expectations.

NASA's Mars helicopter and its cruise stage are tested at the Kennedy Space Center on March 10. The helicopter will be attached to the rover Perseverance during its mission, which is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program. NASA/Cory Huston hide caption

"We are not looking for an extensive and ambitious return from this technology," Wallace says. "We're trying to learn those first few things we need to learn."

So probably no dramatic tracking shots like in the movies.

Engineers test the solar panel deployment of the United Arab Emirates' Hope probe. At launch, the panels will be folded, and they'll deploy to charge the probe's batteries after the probe is released by the second stage of the launch platform. Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre hide caption

The United Arab Emirates has several reasons for its Mars mission, whose Hope probe will reach Mars in 2021.

"The UAE was established on Dec. 2, 1971,"says Sarah Al Amiri, deputy project manager and science lead for the Emirates Mars Mission. That makes 2021 the country's 50th birthday, so the Emirati leadership was eager to do something to celebrate.

"The purpose was not only to get to Mars by 2021 and have valid scientific data coming out of the mission that is unique in nature and no other mission has captured before," Al Amiri says. "But more importantly, it was about developing the capabilities and capacity of engineers in the country."

Al Amiri says that the Emirati leadership has been pushing the country to develop a more knowledge-based economy and that building a Mars probe provided a focus for expanding the country's technological capabilities.

Left: Sarah Al Amiri, the United Arab Emirates' minister for advanced sciences and the science lead for the Emirates Mars Mission. Right: Omran Sharaf, project director of the Emirates Mars Mission at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre. Siddharth Siva/Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre hide caption

Omran Sharaf is project director for the Mars mission. He says the UAE's engineers were building on technology that other countries had employed successfully to explore the solar system.

"The government want us to be smart about it," Sharaf says. "They said don't start from scratch start where others ended."

The Emirates Mars Mission's craft weighs around a ton and a half and is about the size of a small car. "When you have the solar panels deployed, it's going to be about 8 meters in width and about 3 meters in height," he says.

When it gets to Mars, it will go into an unusual orbit that will take it over essentially every point on Mars once a week. Science lead Al Amiri says that will give it a valuable perspective of the whole planet over time.

"It's providing us with full understanding of the changes of the weather of Mars throughout an entire Martian day and throughout all the seasons of Mars throughout an entire Martian year, which lasts roughly two Earth years," she says.

Collaborating on the mission is a team of scientists at the University of Colorado in Boulder. David Brain is the core science team lead.

He says the probe does fulfill the goal of collecting data about Mars that no other spacecraft has provided.

"The three instruments that are on the spacecraft will help us measure the atmosphere of Mars from the surface all the way to space, which hasn't really been done before with other missions," Brain says.

Details about China's Mars mission are scarce. It consists of an orbiter and a lander. The lander carries a rover that reportedly has ground-penetrating radar that can look for evidence of underground water.

The mission does have a name: Tianwen-1. According to the Xinhua News Agency, the name comes from a poem by that name meaning "heavenly questions" that was written more than 2,000 years ago by the poet Qu Yuan.

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3 Countries Are Scheduled To Send Spacecraft To Mars This Summer - NPR

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For as long as I can remember, Ive been fascinated by stories of Mars.

Over the past six decades, people have flown in rockets and set foot on the surface of the moon. Mars, which can be as close as 55 million kilometres from Earth, is the next step in humanitys conquest of space.

For many years, the fourth planet from the sun has inspired stories of a world that never was. The War of The Worlds, written by H.G. Wells in 1897, told of a Martian invasion of Earth. From the 1910s to the 1940s, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote the Barsoom series, depicting a civilization on Mars. These pulp-style stories influenced later writers.

READ ALSO: Okanagan scientist headed to Mars

READ ALSO: NASA rover finally bites the dust on Mars after 15 years

In 1951, The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury wrote about people settling on Mars. The human settlements he depicted had similarities to isolated uranium mining towns in northern Saskatchewan or oil drilling settlements in Venezuelas Maracaibo Basin from the 1940s and 50s.

Other writers in the mid-20th century also told stories of human settlement on Mars. Some stories were brilliant, while others are best forgotten.

There was an optimism to these stories. They looked forward to a time when humanity would make new discoveries and settle on an unknown world.

But the stories of Mars from the 1950s and before belong to an earlier era.

Since the mid-1960s, space exploration has taught us much about Mars. There are no canals, cities or ruins on Mars, and there are no signs an earlier civilization had ever inhabited the planet.

Instead, we now know Mars is a cold, dry planet with a thin atmosphere and dusty winds. Settling there would be extremely difficult. With this knowledge, science fiction stories had to evolve.

Those who wanted to tell stories of interplanetary conflicts or contacts with alien races needed to set their sights far beyond Mars, to distant galaxies where the hopes of new life and new civilizations had not been shattered.

The Martian, a 2014 novel by Andy Weir, tells a gripping story about Mars based on what we know today. The science is accurate based on what is known today. But the old images still linger.

Recently, someone showed me a sub-genre of science fiction, telling stories of the earlier version of Mars. These are stories by contemporary writers, working to recreate the science fiction of the 1950s and earlier.

I started to read a few of these stories, but quickly abandoned them. Knowing what we know about Mars today, it is no longer possible to accept the premises of these newer stories.

Whats more, they lacked the hope and optimism of the earlier Mars stories. Instead, they seemed to have a yearning for a world which no longer exists.

READ ALSO: VIDEO: NASA says it has landed a spacecraft on Mars

I can still enjoy the stories from the 1950s and beyond for what they are, but new works based on disproved assumptions will ring hollow.

Im wondering if there is a lesson to be learned from the contemporary Mars nostalgia stories and the yearning for a world that never was.

We are in the midst of a widespread and rapid change in our society and around the world. We will not be able to return to what we knew in 2019 and before.

The choice will be to accept and learn to live in the new world, or to sadly long for a world to which we can never again return.

John Arendt is the editor of the Summerland Review. For more news from Vancouver Island and beyond delivered daily into your inbox, please click here.

To report a typo, email:news@summerlandreview.com.

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On movie missions to Mars, getting there is the easy part. The Martians Mark Watney was fine until a dust storm left him fending for himself. Douglas Quaids jaunt to the Red Planet in Total Recall was smooth sailing until he came under fire at Martian customs and immigration.

But in real life, just getting to Mars and back will be rife with dangers that have nothing to do with extreme weather or armed gunmen.

The mission to Mars is likely going to be four to six individuals [living] together in a can the size of a Winnebago for three years, says Leticia Vega, associate chief scientist for the NASA Human Research Program in Houston. Time on the planet will be sandwiched between a six- to nine-month journey there plus the same long trip back.

Once outside of Earths protective gravitational and magnetic fields, microgravity and radiation become big worries. Microgravity allows fluid buildup in the head, which can cause vision problems, and adventurers cruising through interplanetary space will be continually pelted with high-energy charged particles that zip right through the metal belly of a spacecraft. Researchers dont know just how harmful that radiation is, but lab experiments suggest it could raise astronauts risk of cancer and other diseases.

The length of the mission brings its own dangers. The moon was like a camping trip when you think about going to Mars, says Erik Antonsen, an emergency medicine physician and aerospace engineer at NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston. Setting aside the social and psychological problems that could arise among people trapped together inside an interplanetary mobile home (SN: 11/29/14, p. 22), three years offers a lot more time and opportunity to get sick or injured than a dayslong Apollo mission. And Mars is about 600 times farther from Earth than the moon is. Even light-speed communications will take about 20 minutes to reach Earth from Mars. Phoning Houston for help in an emergency is not an option.

The reality is, when we do the first missions to Mars, theres a high likelihood that somebody may die, Antonsen says. If someone goes out and they get an abrasion on their eyeball and its not responding to whatever [is] on the vehicle, theyre coming back one-eyed Jack.

Despite those dangers, the United States, Russia, China and other nations have all voiced their intentions to send people to the Red Planet. NASA is gunning for a mission to Mars in the 2030s. With that deadline in mind, researchers are developing a suite of medical devices and medications to bring on a trip to Mars.

The items on this packing list are in the very early stages of development, and in some cases, still pretty impractical and unproven. Universal diagnostic wands are a distant dream. But researchers are devising artificial-gravity suits, anti-radiation medications and miniature medical tools that scientists hope will be ready in about a decade to keep the first travelers to Mars safe and healthy.

Scientists and journalists share a core belief in questioning, observing and verifying to reach the truth. Science News reports on crucial research and discovery across science disciplines. We need your financial support to make it happen every contribution makes a difference.

For something that looks so relaxing, floating in microgravity is surprisingly bad for you. When the body doesnt have to pull its own weight, muscles and bones weaken. This was a big problem in the early days of spaceflight. When the Soviet Soyuz 9 crew returned from a record 18 days in space in June 1970, one cosmonaut was so weak that he couldnt carry his own helmet when he stepped out of the landing capsule (SN: 6/27/70, p. 615). Today, astronauts on the International Space Station keep up their strength by exercising for a couple of hours each day. But other problems with life in microgravity remain unsolved.

In space, bodily fluids that Earths gravity normally keeps in the lower body drift toward the head, increasing intracranial pressure. If you were to sit down in a chair and put your head between your knees thats a bit what it feels like, says NASA astronaut Thomas Marshburn, who completed a five-month stint on the space station in 2013.

Researchers suspect that constant elevated pressure behind the eyes is to blame for vision problems, such as farsightedness, that about half of astronauts develop in space. I had a harder time reading the keys on the laptop, Marshburn recalls.

Weightlessness also confuses the gravity-sensing vestibular organs in the inner ear that play a role in balance and motor control. Upon returning to Earth, I could walk in a straight line pretty easily by the end of that day, but it took me a few days before I could start to walk around a corner without running into the wall, Marshburn says.

To make sure astronauts can walk straight and see what theyre doing on Mars, a spaceship could be outfitted with artificial-gravity machines. One such machine is a lower body negative pressure, or LBNP, chamber. The device applies vacuum pressure to the lower half of the body while a person is sealed in from the waist down. The vacuum re-creates the downward pull of gravity, planting the persons feet firmly on the floor of the chamber and drawing bodily fluids toward the legs.

In one experiment, 10 volunteers who already had medical devices implanted to measure intracranial pressure sealed their lower bodies inside an LBNP chamber. Participants had to lie down for the experiment to bring their intracranial pressure closer to what it would be like in space. When someone on Earth goes from standing to lying down, their intracranial pressure rises from around 0 millimeters of mercury to about 15 mmHg closer to what astronauts are thought to experience in space. As the researchers slowly increased the devices vacuum pressure, participants average intracranial pressure dropped from 15 to 9.4 mmHg, the researchers reported in 2019 in the Journal of Physiology.

We really dont know right now how much time [in LBNP] we need to protect the body from the harmful effects of fluid shifts in space, says Alan Hargens, a space physiologist at the University of California, San Diego. But in case LBNP becomes a significant part of the day, Hargens team built a prototype LBNP suit that can be worn during daily activity. The suit consists of a pair of overalls with built-in shoes and a seal around the waist. Vacuum pressure pulls the wearer down onto the shoe soles. These lower body negative pressure devices are an early form of artificial gravity, Hargens says. Such devices may be easier to send into space than alternatives being tested, such as centrifuges.

A centrifuge simulates gravity through centrifugal force the effect that keeps water in the bottom of a bucket when you swing it over your head. A centrifuge designed to help astronauts in microgravity looks sort of like a carousel, but with beds instead of ponies. The rider lies on a bed, head pointing toward the center of the carousel, which spins to exert a horizontal centrifugal force out toward the feet thats as strong as the downward pull of gravity. A room-sized centrifuge would be a lot harder to launch in a spaceship than an LBNP suit. But some researchers think the whole-body-centrifuge experience may combat microgravity issues that LBNP doesnt, such as the inner ear problems.

To investigate the effects of a centrifuge on sensorimotor control, Rachael Seidler, a motor control researcher at the University of Florida in Gainesville, and colleagues kept 24 volunteers in bed for 60 days to mimic life in microgravity. Sixteen of the participants spun in a centrifuge for a total of 30 minutes each day, while the other eight got no centrifugation. Before and after bed rest, participants were tested on their balance and were put through an obstacle course. Weve just had a very preliminary peek at the data, Seidler says, but it does look like the artificial gravity was helpful for motor control.

Life in microgravity may be a problem for a Mars crew, but at least its a familiar challenge to astronauts. Chronic exposure to deep space radiation, on the other hand, is a hazard that no space traveler has faced before.

The solar system is awash in charged particles called galactic cosmic rays that travel at nearly the speed of light. These particles tear through metal like its tissue paper and can kill cells or create mutations in the DNA within. Astronauts on the space station, like folks on Earth, are largely protected from these tiny wrecking balls by Earths magnetic field. But a Mars-bound crew will be totally exposed. En route to the Red Planet, astronauts are expected to receive almost two millisieverts of radiation daily roughly equal to getting a full-body CT scan every six days.

The only people ever fully immersed in deep space radiation were those who went to the moon, but they were exposed for less than two weeks. On a Mars mission, we really dont know exactly whats going to happen to humans when they get these types of exposures, says Emmanuel Urquieta, a space medicine researcher at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. But judging by lab animal and cell experiments, this radiation wont be giving astronauts any superpowers.

In tests on animals and in human tissue, beams of particles designed to mimic space radiation degrade heart and blood vessel tissue, suggesting a Mars crew may be at higher risk for cardiovascular diseases, according to a 2018 report in Nature Reviews Cardiology. Similarly, observations of rodents exposed to radiation suggest that space radiation impairs cognitive function, researchers reported in a review article in the May 2019 Life Sciences in Space Research.

Theres also a good amount of data on radiations ability to induce cancer in the lungs, liver and brain, says Peter Guida, a researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., who studies the biological effects of radiation.

Scary radiation effects seen in lab animals or cell cultures should be taken with a grain of salt. A mouse is not a person, and brain cells in a dish do not make a brain. Also, animals and cells typically get the entire Mars missionlevel dose of radiation in a single session or in a series of radiation exposures over weeks or months, which is not the same thing as getting constant, low-level exposure. But the warning signs from these experiments are worrying enough that researchers are testing various anti-radiation medications.

The biggest and most promising field for countermeasure development is antioxidants, Guida says. High-energy charged particles can cause damage by splintering water molecules in the body into toxic compounds called reactive oxygen species. Priming the body with antioxidants could help neutralize some of those reactive oxygen species and curb their effects. Options include vitamins A and E, as well as selenomethionine, an ingredient found in some dietary supplements. All these have shown at various levels to decrease the negative effects of radiation, he says.

Even harnessing the natural antioxidant powers of berries might help. In one experiment, rats fed food laced with freeze-dried blueberry powder for four weeks seemed to perform slightly better on a memory test after exposure to high-energy charged particles than rats fed normal chow before exposure. In the test, the rats were shown two objects: one they had seen before radiation exposure and one they had not. Blueberry-fed rats spent almost 70 percent of their time exploring the new object, as expected of animals that recognized the old object. But the other rats spent about half their time exploring each object, suggesting that theyd forgotten the object theyd seen before, researchers reported in 2017 in Life Sciences in Space Research.

Antioxidants, on their own, may not be enough protection, says Marjan Boerma, a radiation biologist at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock. Boerma and colleagues are testing whether aspirin and other anti-inflammatories, including a form of vitamin E called gamma-tocotrienol, can help reduce cell damage from high-energy particles. It may take a medley of pharmaceuticals or perhaps a carefully blended smoothie. Scientists are still far from hammering out the exact ingredients of that anti-radiation regimen, she says.

Pulling shifts in artificial gravity and swallowing antioxidants may become part of an astronauts daily routine. But Mars visitors will also have to deal with any unexpected illnesses and injuries without mission control to talk them through an emergency.

A Mars crew may include a physician. But that person could also get sick, Urquieta says, and that physician is not going to be board-certified in 10 different specialties. Ideally, the Mars spaceship would be equipped with artificial intelligence that could consider an astronauts symptoms, recommend medical tests, make diagnoses and assign treatments. But a reliable Dr. AI is nowhere close to reality.

Right now, the most sophisticated symptom checkers are tools like VisualDx, diagnostic software used by health care workers in hospitals and clinics. The user answers questions about a patient, such as symptoms and demographic features, to winnow down possible diagnoses. For skin conditions, VisualDx can also analyze photos of a patients skin; its now being expanded to help users assess ultrasound scans.

Art Papier, a dermatologist and chief executive officer at VisualDx, and colleagues designed a version of the system for use in deep space that works on a laptop without internet. The software doesnt have to account for every possible diagnosis, like infectious diseases from the tropics. Instead, the focus is on medical conditions that astronauts have a fairly high chance of developing, like rashes or kidney stones.

To help walk astronauts through first aid and medical exams, spaceflight physiologist and space medicine scientist Douglas Ebert of KBR, Inc. in Houston and colleagues are developing a tool called the Autonomous Medical Officer Support, or AMOS, system. An early version of the software uses pictures and videos to teach novices how to perform an eye exam, for example, or insert a breathing tube.

The researchers tested an AMOS prototype with about 30 nonphysicians, who learned how to perform several medical procedures. Those people came back three to nine months later to do the procedures again, using the software for guidance as necessary, to mimic how an astronaut would use AMOS for preflight training and in-the-moment support during an emergency.

Around 80 percent of participants accurately performed eye exams and ultrasounds and about 70 percent correctly inserted an IV. When it came to a tougher task inserting a breathing tube just about half pulled it off, Ebert and colleagues reported in January in Galveston, Texas, at the NASA Human Research Program Investigators Workshop. In April, astronauts on board the space station successfully used the software to perform kidney and bladder ultrasound scans without help from ground control.

When performing medical exams, astronauts wont have the starship Enterprises sick bay at their disposal. Theyll need miniature medical devices that fit on the spacecraft.

For medical imaging, space medicine researchers have their eyes on a new ultrasound device called the Butterfly iQ that replaces the variety of transducers usually needed to image different body parts with a single probe the size of an electric razor. Standard ultrasound machinery is around 15 times heavier than the Butterfly iQ, which displays images on a mobile app.

The company 1Drop Diagnostics, which is developing credit cardsized chips to detect chemical markers of different diseases in blood samples from a finger prick, is working on portable blood tests for astronauts.

The medical kit that astronauts use to patch each other up will have to be lightweight and compact. To decide what goes in a spaceship first aid kit, researchers use NASAs Integrated Medical Model, which forecasts which health problems the astronauts on a particular mission are most likely to have.

Researchers plug in mission details, like where the crew is headed and astronauts genders and preexisting conditions. The model then runs thousands of mission simulations to gauge the risks of that specific crew having anything from constipation to a heart attack so that planners can prioritize medical kit supplies.

Ebert and colleagues have already used this system to build a preliminary first aid packing list for a crewed lunar flyby mission that NASA has planned for 2022. For this three-week trip, the first aid kit is pretty simple: medication for back pain, motion sickness and the like.

Packing for Mars is going to be a whole new ball game, Ebert says. But researchers still have at least a decade to shrink their equipment down to size and figure out what mix of medical supplies will give Mars astronauts the best chance of surviving their epic voyage.

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When Jan Woerner took over the director generals chair at the European Space Agency (ESA) in late 2015, he quickly took some flack for talking about a Moon village. The term perhaps unfortunately called up images of cafes and a church, and at the time Woerner even said he had had to field questions about who might be the lord mayor.

But Woerner, who is nothing if not careful with words, also stressed that village was chosen very specifically to suggest a place where people come together with ideas, a single place but with multiple uses and multiple users. He was looking beyond the International Space Station - at that time coming to the end of its planned service life, with partner nations still discussing an extension - and his notion of a permanent human presence on the Moon was to be a focal point for any spacefaring nation, or perhaps private venture, to participate in large or small ways in the next great international collaborative project.

The idea never translated into missions, hardware or budgets and NASA, at least publicly, barely acknowledged a key allys vision. At that time, ESAs US counterpart ritually batted away talk of the Moon as a distraction from the Barack Obama White Houses instruction to aim for Mars in the 2030s. None of the big budget ESA members embraced the Moon.

Five years later, however, the Moon is on everybodys space radar following President Donald Trumps decision to turn NASAs attention to returning US boots to the Moon. Woerner is too diplomatic to suggest he feels vindicated, but in an online FIA Connect conference session titled Why Mars: the out-of-this-world benefits of space exploration, he readily admitted to being happy that the USA is talking about a city on the Moon, and that even Elon Musk has spoken of having a Moon base Alpha.

As Woerner observes: The vision of the Moon village is gone. Its reality now. Indeed, he adds, NASAs conceptual architecture of a Gateway space station in cis-lunar space - as a jumping-off point for the surface and to host international research teams - is exactly the Moon village concept.

If remarks by other participants in the FIA webinar are any indication, there is palpable enthusiasm for missions to the Moon. Andrew Stanniland, chief executive of Thales Alenia Space UK, notes that the Apollo missions 50 years ago left lots of unfinished business on the Moon, where there remains a strong argument for technology development. And, he adds, going to and operating on the Moon is hard, and some of industry has forgotten that, some never learned.

Will Whitehorn, the former president of Virgin Galactic who now heads British trade association UKspace, agrees that the Moon is hard, and contends that as a private, public, international venture it is a glorious opportunity to learn what needs to be done to go to Mars and beyond.

UK Space Agency head Graham Turnock stresses that work on the Moon is needed to learn how to operate in deep space, for extended stays away from Earth. For example, he underscores the need to learn how to protect people from radiation, and to crack water into the hydrogen - and oxygen - that will be needed for any sustainable life-support system.

Woerner adds that the Moon remains scientifically very interesting; there is water and minerals, and an observatory on the far side could provide unparalleled views of the Universe. However, he is clear that he is not against going back to the Moon: I am strongly against it because we should not copy what was done 50 years ago, in a race in space. This time, we should go there together, on an international and also a commercial and public basis.

Therefore I always say, lets not go back to the Moon, as the Americans are saying. Lets go forward to the Moon.

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The United Arab Emirates' Hope mission, scheduled to launch to the Red Planet July 16, 2020 will conduct a detailed examination of the Martian atmosphere.

Also known as the Emirates Mars Mission, Hope is an orbiter designed to spend one Martian year (two Earth years) looking at the Red Planet's atmosphere, studying how it eroded over time until Mars no longer was able to host liquid water on the surface.

Click through this Space.com gallery to learn about why the Arab country embarked on such a bold mission, and what this will mean for the country's science, engineering and education communities.

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Mars 'Hope': UAE's 1st interplanetary probe will make historyThe boldest Mars missions of all time

Technicians are shown here working on the Hope mission at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai.

Going to Mars was meant to spur the nation's technology industry to great heights, and also to create a planetary science community in a region where there was practically none before the mission.

This is the first time any Arab nation has attempted a Red Planet mission, and the development happened quickly as UAE leaders first considered a Mars orbiter in 2014.

The UAE has decided to ramp up its own spacecraft-building technologies such as building Hope's "bus," or main structural component seen in this picture to diversify the nation's industries.

The nation is largely built on oil revenue and is looking to create other streams of income on top of this one, and it hopes that the Mars mission would help spur technological development in other sectors, such as electronics.

The nearly complete Hope Mars orbiter undergoes checks during the final launch preparations on June 6, 2020.

The team brought on international partners to help get the spacecraft ready efficiently, including the University of Colorado at Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.

The partnership benefitted from the university's expertise on the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission, which is also studying the Martian atmosphere with different science questions.

Some spacecraft engineers pose before the Hope orbiter on Feb. 18, 2020.The UAE built the spacecraft domestically, while asking for international expertise to meet their goal of performing new science at Mars with their very first mission.

Personnel quickly embedded themselves in the international community of Mars scientists to get up to speed on the latest science and to pick what aspects of the planet were best worth studying.

Hope will ride a Japanese H-2A rocket to orbit, lifting off from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan.

This booster has already sent aloft at least one interplanetary mission Japan's Akatsuki spacecraft, which studied the planet Venus. Other prominent missions launched on this rocket type include Selene (aka Kaguya) that studied the moon, the Ikaros solar-sailing spacecraft, and the Hayabusa 2 mission that plans to return a sample from the asteroid Ryugu in late 2020.

This artist's illustration shows the Hope orbiter making its way into space on top of the H-2A rocket. It will spend between seven and nine months traveling to Mars before arriving in orbit in May 2021 just in time for the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Arab Emirates.

The satellite has a total mass, with fuel, of 3,300 lbs. (1,500 kilograms), according to NASA, and is about the size and weight of a small car.

The spacecraft is expected to last for at least two Earth years in Mars' orbit, but its mission can be extended to 2025 if the spacecraft remains in good health and funding is available for the mission extension.

This illustration shows in detail all the mission steps required to get Hope into orbit around Mars.

Shortly after launch, it will unfold its solar panels to recharge its batteries for the trip to Mars. As Hope approaches the Red Planet, it will use its star trackers to navigate and to enter the correct orbit.

The final orbit will be a 55-hour-long, slightly elliptical path around Mars that measures roughly 12,500 by 26,700 miles (20,000 by 43,000 kilometers). At its widest, the orbit of Hope is 10 times the diameter of Mars.

There are three main instruments on the Hope orbiter:

The Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer (EMIRS) looks at the Martian atmosphere's dust, ice clouds, water vapor and temperature profile.

The Emirates Exploration Imager (EXI) will image the Martian atmosphere to look for dust, water ice and ozone abundance.

The Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS) is a spectrometer that will examine changes in the atmosphere and emissions of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon monoxide, among other things.

This is a closeup of the Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer (EMIRS).

In collaboration with Arizona State University, the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai designed EMIRS to measure the dust, ice clouds, water vapor and temperature profile of the Martian atmosphere. These observations will add on to other missions' work at the Red Planet and lead to a greater understanding of planetary atmospheres more generally.

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The United Arab Emirates' Hope mission to Mars in photos - Space.com

Hashtag Trending United Arab Emirates launch mission to Mars; Diversifying the C-Suite; VPN providers breach – IT World Canada

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The United Arab Emirates launched its own mission to Mars, theres a lot of chatter online about how to diversify the C-Suite, and millions of users of free VPN services may have had their information leaked in a recent data breach.

Its all the tech news thats popular right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending! Its Tuesday July 21, and Im your host, Baneet Braich.

UAE spacecraft blasts off in first ever mission to Mars from technology

The United Arab Emirates has successfully launched the Arab worlds first successful mission to Mars. The Hope probe launched from Japan for a seven-month voyage. The mission has cost $200 million dollars and it aims to provide complete photos of the Martian atmosphere for researchers to study. By further studying the weather, changes in the atmosphere, and climate, researchers will get to know the red planet just a little bit better.

The murder of George Flloyd has made the worlds chief diversity officers reevaluate internal policies around hiring and corporate culture. LinkedIn is still buzzing about the staggering imbalance in corporate leadership. Nearly 70 per cent of senior roles are held by white men, according to research from McKinsey. Not only that, but there are only four Black CEOs none of whom are Black women in the Fortune 500. What can businesses do to bring more people of colour and other underrepresented groups into the C-Suite? Hundreds of LinkedIn members shared their advice. You can read about their advice here.

Data breach of free VPN providers exposes details of millions of users from technology

And lastly, a recent data breach of free VPN providers has exposed millions of users. The breach has exposed an estimated 1 billion online records. Cybersecurity researchers from Vpn Mentor say they have found an unsecured server shared by several VPNs. In a recent report, researchers note that the server was completely open exposing private user data for everyone to see. Exposed details include email addresses, home addresses, IP addresses and other personal information. However, the VPN companies say they did not collect all the types of data the researchers say they found.

Thats all the tech news thats trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing.

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Hashtag Trending United Arab Emirates launch mission to Mars; Diversifying the C-Suite; VPN providers breach - IT World Canada

Curiosity is investigating a strangely colored rock it found on Mars – Digital Trends

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Curiosity is spending its weekend investigating an oddity at its newest drill location on Mars, called Breamish. The rover has discovered an unusual rock showing some strange colors, so scientists will use the rovers chemistry tools to learn more about this unexpected object.

Over the three-day weekend plan for the rover, it will investigate the platy rock target a type of igneous rock which is split into flat sheets. The rock in question can be seen in the image below, just above Curiositys arm. After this task, the rover will be using its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument which analyzes organic molecules and gases both from the atmosphere and from samples, and then return to Breamish and other rocks to analyze them using its ChemCam instrument, which fires a laser at targets to vaporize parts of them and analyze their composition.

Curiosity is currently on a summer road trip as it gradually ascends Mount Sharp, the enormous mountain coming out of the floor of the Gale Crater. The rover has been in an area called the clay-bearing unit, named because of the presence of clay minerals in the soil. Now it is moving on toward the sulfate-bearing unit, which, as its name suggests, has sulfates like gypsum and Epsom salts in the soil. These sulfates are of particular interest as they often form when water evaporates, so their presence could give clues to the history of water on Mars.

Scientists know that Mars once had water on its surface, and could even have provided a habitable environment for life. The possibility that there was ancient life on Mars has been the subject of intense study, with rovers working to investigate this question for decades.

Curiosity was designed to go beyond Opportunitys search for the history of water, Abigail Fraeman of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who has served as deputy project scientist for both missions, said in a statement. Were uncovering an ancient world that offered life a foothold for longer than we realized.

The search for ancient life will continue with the newest rover, Perseverance, which is set to launch in a few weeks time.

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Two new books explore Mars and what it means to be human – Science News

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Science writer Kate Greene couldnt have known that her memoir about her time on a make-believe Mars mission would be published as millions of people on Earth isolated themselves in their homes for months amid a pandemic.

But her book is one of two about Mars published this month that are oddly well-suited to the present moment. Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars and Sarah Stewart Johnsons The Sirens of Mars are both about exploration. Yet theyre also about many different types of isolation and the human yearning to not be alone.

Greene participated in a mock Mars mission, called HI-SEAS, for Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation, in 2013. She and five others lived in a dome on a rocky, barren patch atop Mauna Loa volcano for four months with no fresh food, no fresh air (all excursions were conducted in clunky spacesuits) and no instantaneous contact with the outside world.

NASA and other space agencies run such missions to figure out best practices for keeping astronauts sane and productive in isolated and stressful environments. Its well-documented that boredom can lead to mistakes or inattention. Other simulated Mars missions suggest that astronauts isolated together could develop an us-versus-them mentality that would lead the crew to stop listening to mission control, which could be dangerous on a long mission.

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With humor and sensitivity, Greene relates how her crew got along (or didnt), what she read, what she ate and the time-delayed e-mails she exchanged with loved ones back on Earth. Through the books series of essays, she uses the mission as a lens to examine everything from the ethics and economics of space travel to the nature of time, love and home.

Her descriptions of boredom and seclusion feel especially apt in a time of social distancing: the way certain aspects of your environment, daily schedule and conversations smooth over, lose their texture. Greene relates her experience to astronaut Michael Collins time orbiting in the Apollo 11 capsule alone while his crewmates walked on the moon. She connects both of those experiences to that of her brother, who spent the last year and a half of his life confined to a hospital room.

On this oasis of a planet, she writes, there are so many ways to feel isolated, each of us with the potential to sit with the terror of being alive and possibly alone in the cosmos.

The Sirens of Mars starts with a much broader view of Mars exploration. In lyrical, engaging writing, Stewart Johnson, a planetary scientist, chronicles how our perception of Mars has swung from a world teeming with life, to definitely dead and boring, and back again over and over since the invention of telescopes.

Stewart Johnson brings together a cast of characters to tell this history, from Galileo to the present-day team working on the Curiosity rover. Those characters include astronomer Carl Sagan, whose Cosmos TV series Stewart Johnson watched as a child. Sagan was almost ridiculed out of science for his obsession with exobiology.

She also introduces less famous but equally important people, like Sagans colleague Wolf Vishniac, whose Wolf Trap life-detection experiment was cut from NASAs life-hunting Viking landers in the 1970s. To get over his disappointment, Vishniac went searching for microbes in Antarctica and died in an accident there before the Viking missions launched (SN: 12/22/73).

In this sweeping history of human fascination with the Red Planet, Stewart Johnson also tells a personal story of finding her place in the world, from an inquisitive child to an unrooted adventurer to a wife and mother and member of a scientific team.

She makes a clear case that the search for life on Mars is an effort to not be alone. In one of the most poignant scenes in her book, she is hiking on Mauna Kea the next volcano over from Greenes Mars habitat and finds a fern growing amid the volcanic desolation.

It was then, on that trip, that the idea of looking for life in the universe began to make sense to me, she writes. I suddenly saw something I might haunt the stratosphere for, something for which Id fall into the sea. a chance to discover the smallest breath in the deepest night and, in so doing, vanquish the void that lurked between human existence and all else in the cosmos.

Click the book titles or covers to buy from Amazon.com. Science Newsis a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. Please see ourFAQfor more details.

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The Future Of The Face Mask – Bluetooth, In-built Cooling, Nanotech Filters In The Mask As People Are Learning To Live With Covid-19 – Inventiva

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Before going to the future, lets think about why is it essential to wear a face mask during this time? How effective is it to wear a face mask? In the recent tweet by Rich Davis, Director of microbiology at the Providence Secret heart medical center in Washington, he demonstrated the difference between wearing a mask and not wearing a mask. He sneezed, talked, sang, and cough while wearing a mask towards an agar cultural plate, he did the same exercise without wearing a mask. This experiment tells what the mask does. It blocks the respiratory droplets coming through the mouth and throat or virtually stops the bacteria colonies to spread in the air. To prove his experiment, the tweet was accompanied by some photographs of cultural plates.

With the increase in several coronavirus cases worldwide hit the barrier of 14 million today. It is certain that Covid-19 is going to stay for a longer bit till the time an effective vaccine is found. Until then, what stays between the people in the face mask. Recent updates by WHO also claimed that coronavirus can be airborne which makes it more essential.

Now when everyone is trying to deal with Covid-19, How will the face mask adapts to the human needs? How will it affect human expressions and communication?

Wearing a mask is the new normal. So what transformations will they need to undergo to become lifestyle essential?

The phenomenon of face masks comes into a vogue whenever there is an epidemic or disease outbreak. The current pandemic has already seen a global death toll crossing 578,000 deaths. Even earlier, almost nine million people die every year owing to air pollution. Post-pandemic, people will become more comfortable living with face masks, as pollution is going to continue because the way we live is not going to change any soon.

Therefore, designers are looking to create customized masks depending on the people and age groups. Technologies will be used to create smarter masks. These types of masks include functions like Smart-voice assistant, Bluetooth, cooling techniques, and help people to talk freely through masks. This is just the beginning, an exciting evolution awaits. More innovative features can be done like bone-conduction headphones paired with masks, a transparent design- not only protect a user but also able to see their expressions and rechargeable batteries for masks.

What is the need of Nanotech filters in the masks?

The main purpose of the face masks is the protection, the quality of the fabric is the one that protects. Its the capability to filter and the material used is the one to be kept in mind. There are several types of masks from normal used for air pollution to surgical masks used by doctors to protect them against large airborne particles. But what would work perfectly for coronavirus?

According to the research, the particles of Covid-19 is approximately 0.125 micron or 125 nanometers in diameter. To keep out something this small, the masks need finer techniques of nanotech and nanofibres. The masks like HEPA or N95 only filters down to 0.3 microns only if you are wearing them correctly. On the other hand, the mask cannot fight the 120-nanometer problem with the 300-nanometer solution. Therefore, for better filtration, Clean air solution company Nirvana Being introduced anti-viral and anti-pollution masks which use a unique nanotech filter. Similarly, Korea Advanced Insitute of Science and Technology (KAIST), South Korea, developed a washable nano-filtered mask, which can be cleaned and disinfected, or reusable.

The face masks of the future do not need to only be the right fit, but also technologically safe and economically sound.

As we talk about such advanced features in masks, it will come with some specific price to buy. While rich and middle-class individuals will be somehow able to take advantage of this technology. But what about others, Will the poor be able to pay such price?

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The Future Of The Face Mask - Bluetooth, In-built Cooling, Nanotech Filters In The Mask As People Are Learning To Live With Covid-19 - Inventiva

The face mask of the future – Livemint

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With the total number of confirmed cases worldwide crossing the 13 million barrier, one thing is certain: Covid-19 is here to stay till an effective medical intervention, in the form of a life-saving vaccine, is found. Until then, what is also here to stay is the face mask. Recent reports of the virus being airborne in certain indoor settings only reaffirm this.

But as we learn to live with covid-19, how will the face mask evolve and adapt to human needs? What sort of transformation will it undergo to become a lifestyle essential? More importantly, how will it affect human expression and communication?

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We may get some answers from the masks journey over the centuries. Writing in a recent post for The MaskArrayed, a project that explores the material, technological and cultural aspects of the face mask, Jan Henning, a historianof technology and medicine at the University of Toronto, notes that masks are some of the earliest human artefacts. One of the oldest recorded cave paintings, for instance, depicts a man wearing a deer mask," he writes. Henning goes on to describe the history of the mask through a spectrum of examples: how theater masks were central to Ancient Roman and Greek plays" and how their use in mining demonstrates how perceptions of risk and safety changed over time". Death masks facilitated the deceaseds smooth transition into the afterlife". Beak masks were used by a small fraction of plague doctors in 17th century Europe and were stuffed with aromatic substances such as myrrh and mint, transforming foul smells into fresh scents. The idea of stuffing the masks with aromatic substances wasnt purely ornamental. It was thought to protect doctors from inhaling pestilential miasma", or disease-ridden air. As Henning explains, The transformative meaning of masks is closely related to their protective function."

Anuj Prasad, founder and CEO, Desmania Design, a studio based in Manesar, Haryana, says face masks have always come into vogue during an epidemic or disease outbreak. I think the phenomena of masks is the template around it: which is protection from the pandemic. But the phenomena of face masks as an accessory, a wearable, is something which might continue. The new normal is to own a set of masks, using them as and when the need arises."

The ongoing pandemic has seen the global death toll crossing 578,000. Even earlier, though, 92% of the worlds population was exposed to dangerously polluted air, according to UN data. Every year, almost nine million people die prematurely owing to air pollution. And as people become more comfortable with face masks, says Prasad, protection from pollution will be an important offshoot. Pollution is going to continue because the way we live is not going to change very soon.... The usage (of masks) will become larger but the function may not remain the same."

Designers are moving beyond the endless debate on which mask works best. And, no, they are not looking at gold- or diamond-studded masks. But masks will be customized for people and age groupsa mask that works for the elderly might not for millennials. Technology will be used to make smarter" masks: This may involve the integration of smart voice assistants (imagine an Alexa-enabled smart mask), Bluetooth, cooling techniques and innovations enabling people to talk freely through a mask.

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The need for a lifestyle product could see technologies like bone-conduction headphones paired with masks. Transparent designs could also be in vogue, with masks that not only protect a user but also project their smile. From interchangeable colour skins to rechargeable batteries that power a mask, exciting evolution awaits.

All these technologies are like a palette for designers. We want to see what can be included (in masks) to improve the quality of life for people," says Prasad, adding that accessorizing and segmenting them for different users will be key in the coming years. Masks will not be purely functional. If you have to make it a part of lifestyle, then one has to think of the aesthetics and ergonomics. When running shoes were made a little more than 50 years back, they didnt have style, but they have evolved into what you see today. A similar evolution will happen with masks as a wearable," says Prasad.

The need for nanotech

A mask may give you an added sense of protection apart from the surface area it covers, however, what actually protects you is the quality of the fabric: the material used and its filtration capabilities. Surgical masks, for example, protect against some large airborne particles. Others, like N94 or N95 masks, filter out up to 94-95% of fine particles and dust. But what would work with the coronavirus?

Research shows that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes covid-19, is approximately 0.125 micron (125 nanometres) in diameter. To put this in perspective, an average strand of human hair is 60-120 microns thick. PM 2.5 particles, a common measure of air pollution, are less than 2.5 microns in diameter.

To keep out something this small, novel mask concepts are turning to finer techniques: nanotech and nano-fibres. Look at where we are moving towards," says Jai Dhar Gupta, an environmentalist and CEO of the clean air solutions company Nirvana Being. In theory, we are moving towards cleaner fuel but that also means the emissions will become smaller. Your HEPA or N95 mask only filters down to 0.3 microns, that too if you are wearing your mask correctly. You cant fight a 120 nanometre problem with a 300 nanometre solution. My prediction is that our emissions, viruses, bacteria, pollutants will continue to get smaller. Thats why I believe that the now and the future is nanotechnology."

Not only do you get better filtration, you also get lower (air) resistance, which is very important," says Gupta, whose company recently introduced an antiviral and anti-pollution mask which uses a unique nanotech filter. From a covid-19 perspective (two things are important in a mask), viral filtration efficiency and breathing resistance. Theres no point in having a mask if you are not going to be able to keep it on your face for more than 5 minutes."

This use of nanotechis a growing trend around the world. Earlier this year, a team of researchers at KAIST, formerly known as the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, in Daejeon, South Korea, developed a nano-filtered face mask that can be washed and disinfected.

Similarly, newer materials and coatings are emerging. A recent article in the Scientific American magazine explained how researchers at the Indiana Center for Regenerative Medicine and Engineering at Indiana University have developed an electroceutical fabric" that can zap the coronavirus and render it ineffective on masks and other pieces of clothing made from it. Some smart masks can even be plugged into a charger and disinfected with the help of UV technology.

Gupta points out yet another important factor as we move towards a future where masks will be essential: the throwaway consumer culture, especially for life-saving items. Multiple mask brands today promise a reusability span of up to almost 30 washes and hundreds of breathing hours. That, however, hasnt prevented the creation of a biomedical waste problem, which will only grow as the demand for protective equipment, including masks, increases.

Gupta says future designs will have to maintain a fine balance between science and sustainability. Masks will not only have to be reused, they will also need to be designed with materials that have a low impact on the environment. One of the worst things to come out of this pandemic is going to be the amount of microplastic that is going to go into our air, food and water. All PPE (personal protective equipment), except perhaps for your latex gloves, are disposable microplastics," he says. The reason you are having to put on a mask is because theres an environmental problem: whether its pollution or a virus. If you still ignore this and use disposable masks, it doesnt make sense. You cant solve one environmental problem by creating a bigger one."

The face masks of the future will have to be about more than just the right fit; they will have to be technologically safe and sustainably sound.

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BONE-CONDUCTION TECH MEETS FACE MASK

This concept design by two New York-based industrial designers draws inspiration from bone-conduction headphones and sunglasses

One of the biggest concerns with face masks is the effect on human interaction. When you cover your face, communication is bound to take a hit. This prompted two industrial designers in New York to come up with a unique concept. I thought of ways to incorporate sound or music while not impairing the users hearing since they will need to listen to their surroundings or even other people, because masks are needed in social settings. This made me immediately think of bone conduction since its ideal for this application," says Zachary Massos, who designed the concept with his friend and co-worker, Eitan Adika.

Massos, who is the lead industrial designer for Jetson Electric, a leading hoverboard and scooter company based in Brooklyn, New York, says the idea of this bone-conduction headphone mask" was also inspired by simple lifestyle products like sunglasses. I largely wanted the product to feel lightweight on the user, so I used sunglasses as a reference for the form and how the user would wear the devicesince they are a product that people wear for long periods with minimal to no irritation," he says on email.

He envisions the product as functioning very much like a standard bone-conduction or regular Bluetooth headphone. Instead of the eardrums, bone-conduction headphones send vibrations to the inner ear through the skull. This not only transmits sound but also leaves a users ears free to hear ambient noises. A filter would be encased in the mask, and it would include a built-in microphone, battery indicator and power and volume buttons. While Massos and Adika are not planning production in the near future, the former says he would love to seea major audio company come out with a similar product. It is definitely something I would invest in and use myself."

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THIS SUSTAINABLE SMART MASK IS SMILE-FRIENDLY

CLIUs see-through face design allows users to express themselves

In a recent article for The New York Times, journalist Jacey Fortin posed an interesting question. As many of us step out wearing face masks, we are all missing a small but important social lubricant: the smile". In anxious times, we may want to put neighbours, mail carriers, store clerks and others at ease with a casual smile. But if smiles cant be seen, how do you greet people? How do you reassure them?" Fortin asks.

A team of engineers and creative professionals in Milan, Italy, has come up with a solution. Their design, CLIU, is a face mask designed with a transparent face opening, keeping in mind a new form of normalcy". CLIU team member Fabrizio Lipani explains on email how the lockdown period spurred the entire team to design the safest, most innovative, and most beautiful mask ever. Covid-19 represented the first reason to imagine a mask but CLIU will also protect (users) from the pollution. It will always be useful."

Apart from a magnetic frame and anti-fog film system for the transparent opening, CLIU is also a smart" mask that can be synced with a smartphone app. CLIU offers the hi-tech version with integrated Bluetooth, microphone and GPS. Thanks to the dedicated app, you can check your CLIU to ensure it is functioning correctly. Additionally, you can check the filters consumption status and access real-time information on your health, such as heart beats and breathing quality," adds Lipani, who says there will be two versions of the mask: a basic model and a pro, more hi-tech one. CLIU also uses a system of interchangeable activated carbon filters to protect users from pollen and viruses. The most striking feature is its value to the environment. It is designed using materials that can be recycled easily. We should be ready to deliver the first mask in November but I think we will be faster," says Lipani. The production will start as (soon as) we reach the goal of 100,000 (around 84 lakh) on the crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo," he adds. The mask can be pre-ordered on the platform, at a discounted price, for 29 (basic model).

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A FUTURISTIC FACEWEAR SOLUTION

The A Air Atmos, with a transparent design that will allow people to see your face, defies the conventional notion of a tight-fit mask

One of the most eye-catching pieces of tech at CES 2020, the annual technology trade show held in Las Vegas every January, was A Airs facewear solution, the Atms. This futuristic-looking face mask defies the conventional notion of a tight-fit mask. It relies on PositivAir" technologyyet to be patentedthat uses small fans and pre-filters to create a positive pressure clean air environment inside the mask. According to its website, this system allows clean, cool air to escape the mask around the face, creating a continuous, one-way outflow that keeps the ambient air out. The company has also teamed up with BreezoMeter, a provider of real-time and street-level air quality data, to keep users informed of the air pollution around them.

The pre-filters remove big particulates before an active nano-filter takes care of pollen and dust. But will it offer protection against a virus? According to the FAQ section: The Atms will protect against some bacteria and some viruses, however it has been designed for protection against particulate matter and not for protection against viruses and bacteria. The Atms is not 100% effective against airborne pathogens."

Powered by a rechargeable Li-ion battery, the mask can also be connected to an app to access more information on its status, filters, battery and respiratory data. It stands out owing to a transparent design that not only sits on the bridge of the nose but allows people to see your face. It remains to be seen how the Atms adapts to the complexities of covid-19. As of now, it is available for pre-order on its official website for $350 (around 26,000).

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A SMART PURIFIER THAT STOPS HARMFUL PARTICLES

This mask uses an air filtration system that relies on industrial grade, replaceable filters

Its dubbed the worlds most compact air purification system, one that can block harmful chemicals too, but what makes the ATMOBLUE different from your average face mask? By using replaceable H13 HEPA filters, this smart purifier is capable of blocking 99.97% of particulates. This includes bacteria, viruses, pollen, pollutants, smoke, micro-dust and odour.

ATMOBLUE was originally envisioned for PM 2.5 particles. Now, it comes with in-built mask controls, app support and centrifugal fans to create positive air pressure inside the mask. Excess air or positive air" is produced and constantly pushed into the mask and then out through its vents. There are multiple airflow settings that can be toggled by users.

Depending on usage and fan speed, ATMOBLUE can function for 3-5 hours at a time. Fortunately, its rechargeable through USB. With the ATMOBLUE app, users can keep an eye on information like filter life, personalize airflow settings and even check the air quality index in their area.

In terms of design and aesthetics, ATMOBLUE, which starts at $149 (around 11,200) on Indiegogo, relies on interchangeable skins for customization features. The product currently comes in smoke, pearl, cement grey and light pink colour configurations and weighs just 190g. A patented head strap ensures the weight doesnt put too much pressure on the neck, allowing for a greater degree of comfort and flexibility.

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These are 8 of the most fashionable face masks you can buy – from Nanotech to Reebok and Etsy – West Sussex County Times

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Are you in the market for some face masks? (Photo: Shutterstock)

Across the UK, the rules around wearing face masks in public have changed since the virus first swept across the country.

In Scotland, masks are mandatory both on public transport and in shops. In England, masks are currently mandatory on public transport and will be made mandatory in shops on 24 July.

With wearing face masks becoming mandatory and now much more normalised in the UK, people have been sizing up their options for stylish face coverings.

So whether youre looking for something plain black, with a funky design, or designer branded, here are some of the most fashionable face masks on the market.

It is worth noting that none of the masks included in this round-up are categorised as medical grade masks or PPE, but they can help stop the spread of the virus via droplets in the air.

Reebok Face Cover12.95 for 3

Reebok is selling its own branded face mask on its website. The mask is a simple black design with the Reebok logo in white on the right hand side of the mask.

The website states: Help stop the spread. Made with soft, breathable fabric, the Reebok Face Cover is comfortable, washable and reusable for practicing health habits every day.

The masks are available in a pack of three in either large or small size for 12.95, and shipping costs an extra 3.99.

The website explains that 2 from every pack of face coverings sold goes to Save The Childrens Global Coronavirus Response Fund.

Waylife Star Wars Darth Vader FaceEtsy, 7.90

The clothes we wear are an expression of who we are, and the same thinking can be applied to face coverings.

This best selling face mask on Etsy comes with the design of Darth Vader's mask on the front, and a pocket in the back that allows for a replaceable filter to be changed out for each usage.

The mask itself costs 7.90, but shipping will cost extra depending where youre located.

Etsy offers a huge variety of face masks in different designs, patterns and colours, meaning you can find one that suits your personality - even if youre not a Star Wars fan.

Adidas Face Cover12.95 for 3

Adidas is selling its own face covering as well, which is similar to Reebok in the sense that it is a plain black mask with the Adidas name and logo in white on the right hand side.

The masks are also sold in packs of three in either large or small for 12.95.

2 from each mask sold is also donated to the Save The Childrens Global Coronavirus Response Fund.

The Adidas face masks are sold out at the moment, but you can enter your email address to be alerted when theyre back in stock.

Nike Strike Snood16.95

While Nike doesnt specifically sell a face covering, it does sell a snood, which offers the same coverage as other face masks on the market, as none of these face masks are medical grade or PPE quality.

The snood, featuring the Nike tick, covers your nose, mouth and neck with soft fleece, and it locks over your ears for full coverage.

Its available in black or brown in S/M or L/XL sizes for 16.95.

Great British Designer Face Coverings15

Great British Designer Face Coverings: Reusable, for People and Planet is a joint campaign between the British Fashion Council and Bags of Ethics.

The campaign aims to manufacture and sell face masks that are sustainable and reusable.

The masks have been designed in London by six British designers: Halpern, Julien Macdonald, Liam Hodges, Mulberry, RAEBURN and RIXO.

The aim is to raise 1 million with 100 per cent of sale profits being split between NHS Charities Together Covid-19 Urgent Appeal, British Fashion Council Foundation Fashion Fund and Wings of Hope Childrens Charity.

The face masks come in loads of different designs and patterns and are available for 15 for a pack of three which also includes two protective pouches.

Nanotech face mask11

This Nanotech face mask from Scientific Labs has a water resilient layer that prevents droplets filtrating both in and outside the mask.

Reusable and washable, its made in the UK using sustainable materials.

The mask itself is plain black with no logos or branding, and is available in one size for 11.

Bespoke Face Coverings from Alice Cox Creative10 - 15

If youre looking for a face mask thats unique rather than choosing from pre-made designs, Alice Cox Creative is the place for you.

With more than 30 different fabrics to choose from, you can have a specially made bespoke mask that youre not going to see someone else with.

They are sold for 10 each, potentially 15 depending on the fabric you want.

Features include a pocket for filters and non-elastic straps that wont irritate your ears.

Contrado Custom Face Masks20 for 4

Contrado is the perfect brand for creatives who want to design their own masks. However, you can also shop pre-made designs as well.

Masks are available in small, medium, large or extra large and in packs of four for 20.

Read more:

These are 8 of the most fashionable face masks you can buy - from Nanotech to Reebok and Etsy - West Sussex County Times

Global Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Market Innovative Report Growth impact over the forecast year 2020 to 2027 – 3rd Watch News

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Arc DischargeCVD

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Chapter 1. Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Market Report Overview

Chapter 2. Global Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Market Growth Trends

Chapter 3. Market Share by Key Players

Chapter 4. Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Market Breakdown Data by Type and Application

Chapter 5. Market by End Users/Application

Chapter 6. COVID-19 Outbreak: Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Industry Impact

Chapter 7. Opportunity Analysis in Covid-19 Crisis

Chapter 9. Market Driving Force

Continue for TOC

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What will be the Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Market growth rate and value in 2020?

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Global Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Market summary

Economic Impact on the Industry

Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Market Competition in terms of Manufacturers

Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Market Analysis by Application

Marketing Strategy comprehension, Distributors and Traders

Study on Market Research Factors

Table of Content & Report Detail @ https://www.reportspedia.com/report/chemicals-and-materials/2015-2027-global-single-walled-carbon-nanotubes-industry-market-research-report,-segment-by-player,-type,-application,-marketing-channel,-and-region/59611#table_of_contents

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Global Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Market Innovative Report Growth impact over the forecast year 2020 to 2027 - 3rd Watch News