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NASA's Perseverance rover lands on Mars

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NASA's rover touched down on Mars this Thursday, February 18, after a seven-month trip through space and an even more terrifying seven-minute descent through the planet's atmosphere. Perseverance's primary goal is to search for evidence of alien life from a time when Mars resembled a young Earth - about 4 billion years ago. But the rover will also test new technology that could one day help Mars colonists terraform the planet's environment to our advantage.

NASA's Perseverance is armed with the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment or MOXIE.

The instrument will demonstrate the ability to extract oxygen from Mars's carbon dioxide (CO2) heavy atmosphere much like a tree transforms CO2 into O2.

Pulling oxygen directly from the Martian atmosphere will not only give future colonists air to breathe but can also be used to make rocket fuel.

About 96 percent of the Martian atmosphere is made up of CO2 whereas oxygen only accounts for about 0.13 percent.

READ MORE: NASA Mars rover landing: ESA shares stunning video of landing site

And according to NASA, homemade liquid oxygen production on Mars could supply three-quarters of the propellant humans would need for exploration.

Michael Hecht, Principal Investigator, said: "When we send humans to Mars, we will want them to return safely, and to do that they need a rocket to lift off the planet.

"Liquid oxygen propellant is something we could make there and not have to bring with us.

"One idea would be to bring an empty oxygen tank and fill it up on Mars."

It might take a while before humans put boots on Mars but it is looking increasingly likely humans will get there in the next 10 to 20 years.

NASA is working towards this goal through its Artemis programme, aiming first to conquer the Moon before going deeper into the Solar System.

Private ventures like SpaceX are also hell-bent on getting to Mars te extend our civilisation's reach into the stars.

But this does not mean the time of rovers and uncrewed mission is nigh.

According to Hannah Barnyard, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich in London, quite the opposite is true.

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The astronomer told Express.co.uk: "There is still a long way to go until human missions to Mars could be possible so it is likely there will be more robotic explorers before that happens.

"Rovers tell us more about the Martian environment which is essential if we are to put humans on the planet.

"Even once human missions begin, robotic explorers will be the companions of Martian astronauts scouting out areas of interest and performing tasks in potentially dangerous areas just as they do on Earth."

Perseverance is expected to spend at least one Martian year (687 days) exploring an ancient lakebed known as Jezero Crater.

Scientists are certain the site once flowed with water and that means life may have once existed there.

The Mars rover will collect and analyse rock samples but will also safely store away samples for a future retrieval mission.

Ms Barnyard said: "Perseverance will help to characterise the Martian environment, telling us more about the planet's weather patterns including its infamous dust storms.

"We will learn if Jezero Crater ever was and perhaps if it still is an ideal location for life to exist along with further details of the planet's geological history."

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Mars landing 'essential' if we want to send humans to the Red Planet 'Robotic companions' - MSN UK

Stromatolites at Shark Bay, Western Australia. Credit: UNSW Sydney/Brendan Burns

As the Mars Rover sets out to look for evidence of life on another planet, scientists back on Earth suggest viruses played a key role in creating stromatolites, our planets earliest lifeforms.

It may pain us to hear this during a deadly viral pandemic, but life as we know it on this planet may never have occurred if it werent for viruses, scientists studying billion-year-old living rocks say.

In a paper published in the March issue of Trends in Microbiology, a team of scientists from UNSW Sydney and the US looked at evidence of the worlds oldest lifeforms in fossils known as stromatolites, layered limestone rocks often found in shallow waters around the globe. They wanted to understand the mechanism that led colonies of single-celled organisms known as microbial mats to create these intriguing rock structures.

And they believe viruses may be the missing piece of the puzzle that could help explain how a soft microbial mat transitions or lithifies into the hard stromatolite features that are prevalent in such places as Shark Bay and the Pilbara, Western Australia.

Co-author on the paper, Associate Professor Brendan Burns from UNSWs Australian Centre for Astrobiology, says stromatolites are one of the oldest known microbial ecosystems, dating back some 3.7 billion years.

Stromatolites are pervasive in the fossil record and are some of our earliest examples of life on Earth, he says.

The microbial mats that created them were predominantly made up of cyanobacteria, which used photosynthesis like plants do to turn sunlight into energy, while producing so much oxygen over time they changed the early Earths atmosphere to make it habitable for complex life.

You could say we owe our very existence to these living rocks.

A shard of stromatolite rock found at Shark Bay showing layered sediments that was produced by microbial mats billions of years ago. Credit: UNSW/Brendan Burns

A/Prof. Burns and his colleagues wanted to understand the mechanism behind the microbial mats lithifying into stromatolites, not only because so little is known about the process, but because of what this could add to our knowledge about life on Earth and possibly other planets.

If we understand the mechanisms of stromatolite formation, we will have a better handle on the impact these ecosystems had on evolution of complex life, he says.

This knowledge may help us better interpret biosignatures which you could call chemical or molecular fossils that provide clues to the activities of early life, billions of years ago.

It also has the potential to help us look for life on other planets one of the jobs of the Mars 2020 mission is to look for evidence of biosignatures in Martian rock samples.

In the paper, the authors postulate that microbial mat transition from soft cells to rock is enhanced by interactions with viruses.

We propose viruses may have a direct or indirect impact on microbial metabolisms that govern the transition from microbial mat to stromatolite, he says.

In the direct impact scenario, viruses infiltrate the nucleus of the cyanobacteria and influence the host metabolism, inserting and removing genes that increase the fitness of the virus and the host at the same time.

This, in turn, increases survival of the microbial mat and selects for genes that potentially influence carbonate precipitation basically the process of microbes pouring the concrete to make their stromatolite apartment blocks, A/Prof. Burns says.

In the indirect scenario, the scientists talk about a process known as viral lysis, where viruses invade living cells and trigger the disintegration of their membranes and release of contents effectively bringing about cell death.

We think viral lysis may release material that promotes metabolism of organisms which results in mineral precipitation and eventual stromatolite formation.

Whether viruses cause the microbial mats to harden into stromatolites directly or indirectly, or a combination of both, A/Prof. Burns says more research is needed.

Were hoping to do more studies in the lab to test this.

We want to be able to identify what viruses are actually involved and see if we can then manipulate potential virus-host interaction to find out whether or not they can, in fact, change some of the metabolisms that might result in stromatolite formation, A/Prof. Burns says.

Reference: Between a Rock and a Soft Place: The Role of Viruses in Lithification of Modern Microbial Mats by Richard Allen White III, Pieter T. Visscher and Brendan P. Burns, 9 July 2020, Trends in Microbiology.DOI: 10.1016/j.tim.2020.06.004

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Stromatolites Fossils of Earliest Life on Earth May Owe Their Very Existence to Viruses - SciTechDaily

The artistic enclave at the Manship Artists Residency + Studios continues to be a fountainhead of inspiration, even duringthe global COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2020, the nonprofit, based on the historic property of an artistic family, served nearly 100 artists with a creative infusion as they worked outside on the 15 wooded acres, nestled between two quarries, in Gloucester's Lanesville neighborhood.

The idyllic setting was the home of sculptor Paul Manship (1885-1966) who may be best known for the golden Prometheus fountain at New York Citys Rockefeller Center.

The work of many of these artists is now part ofthevirtual exhibition "Outside @ Manship," which grew from the organization's response to the pandemic.

"The idea was to provide a place for artists living and working on Cape Ann and allow them to work on the beautiful grounds during the summer and fall of 2020," said Rebecca Reynolds,Manship's executive director.The artists followed the necessary protocols to ensure their safety.

"We are launching this exhibition to honor the past and the present in spite of uncertainty, to honor the constancy of the work made by artists on Cape Ann and beyond, who create memory and beauty,"Reynolds said.

The virtual exhibition features 57 of the 82 artists.

Artists in the show

Vanessa Michalak early on found creative refuge on the property. An essential worker as a nurse, she craved the opportunity to paint in such a welcoming environment.The Maine native lived in the Boston area until she moved to Gloucester in 2017.

"I've done residencies in other states but it's nice that the (Manship residencies) included artists from their own community," Michalak said. "The property is visually inspiring and it feels different even coming from downtown Gloucester. I like that quiet space and being in nature. I also love the history of the property and knowing it's been a home and an inspiration for many other artists."

Michalak's new project focusing on doing portraits of nurses and getting narratives of their experience working during the pandemic.

Another artist in the exhibition is 80-year-old Peter Herbert, a New York City lawyer who retired to Annisquam with his wife, a Gloucester native.

His experience during the pandemic became a family affair.

"I went there with my son, Ben, and it was the two of us painting 15 yards apart," said Hebert. "We had the best time, and apart from the inspiration that the space itself gives you, just being together, the two of us, was such a gift. We actually paint better when we paint together and it is a magnificent space to paint."

He explained that being a lawyer for 40 years, he was desperate to do something creative. He gave up playing piano as an outlet, and around the age of 40, began painting and took classes at the Art Students League of New York and later a found a teacher in Brooklyn.

How the residencies worked

Reflecting on the activity at the Manship Artists Residency + Studios (MARS), Reynolds noted that its board is thankful that the organization has been able to quietly continue its work.

"We are so grateful to have been able to provide a meaningful purpose during this difficult time. Despite the fact that many artist residencies and cultural organizations had to shutter themselves during the pandemic, MARS was able to remain open," she said. "We realized that we had an asset that could be utilized during COVID. If we were careful, we could provide solitude in a tranquil place to artists living and working on Cape Ann for a little while. We want to shine a special light on our local artists as they continue to provide inspiration and hope to our community in the face of all the hardship this global crisis has wrought."

The work for "Outside @ Manship" began on June 15, 2020 when four artist members of Rockport Art Association & Museum arrived at the pristine setting.

"Over the course of the summer and fall, members of Rocky Neck Artist Colony and the North Shore Arts Association also came to Manship. The artists showed up, masked, carrying in everything they needed to work. They were greeted, confirmed that they understood the program guidelines, and then left alone to spend time away from everyday concerns. Manship has been a place where artists have gathered for more than eight decades. It is a place where the past and the present are very much alive," according to Meri Jenkins, a Manship Artists advisor who suggested the idea for this program.

Initially, a morning and afternoon session with four artists were organized with ample room to be socially distant on the sprawling grounds.

"We were thrilled when registrations began to appear in late May. Based on feedback from the first two sessions in June and August, we increased the duration to a full day's visit and provided for six artists in the October session," noted Reynolds. "Additionally, there was an artist from Washington, D.C., who planned to paint in France last summer, but who found herself in Gloucester instead. Through a friend, she learned about MARS and asked to come and paint on site. She's now plans to come back to Cape Ann next summer even if she is able to travel abroad."

Prior to the pandemic, the property became a haven for those in the film industry. The locationwash a staging area in August and September of 2019 for the crew of the recent Sundance award-winning film "CODA."

"What was especially rewarding about having over 100 crew members on the Manship 'set' was having one of them express how they felt appreciated by us and how they felt that we were treating them as artists he said that this normally didn't happen. We recognize that just about everyone on a film set is an artist of some sort, whether they work on makeup, lighting, sound, videography, or acting. As a significant working-class artist community, supporting working artists is deep in our roots and heritage. And no doubt the film crew bonded and felt equally supported by our fishing community," said Jo-Ann Castano, Manship Artists Board chair.

Another initiative during the pandemicserved another 12 artist "residents," all who were local or Massachusettsartists staying in the state due to safety concerns and travel restrictions, bringing the number of artists served by MARS in 2020 to 94, noted Reynolds.

Two out-of-state artists who were scheduled to visit MARS and could not do so, were able to take part in a virtual residency. The first is Erika Senft Miller of Vermont, who is developing a process of inquiry and collaboration for a future multi-sensory public art project in Gloucester thanks to a grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts. The second is Marc Zegans of California who was scheduled to launch his new book of poetry with public programming while in residence. Instead, he has been working with local photographer Tsar Fedorsky. Reynolds said they are exploring ways to share the mystical photographic essay that has evolved from this innovative collaboration.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

What: Manship Artists Residency + Studios in Gloucester presentsthe newvirtual exhibition, "Outside @ Manship," featuring the work of nearly 60 artists, which can be viewed at http://www.manshipartists.org.

Related media: "Outside @ Manship Artists Salon," avirtual Zoom series, highlights Manship's support of 94 artists during the pandemic and the resulting online exhibition. The conversations featuring artists and those familiar with the Manship story will take place from 7 to 8 p.m. Thursdays in March and April. Registration required. Zoom space is limited so it is advised to sign-up in advance to secure a spot at ManshipArtists.org. The series is as follows:

March 4: The Inside Scoop: Paul Manships story

What brought him to Cape Ann? What did he createhere? Many Cape Ann locals are surprised to learn that the artist who modeled one of the most recognizable sculptures in the world New York Citys Prometheus Fountain at Rockefeller Center was sculpted by an artist whose summer residence and work studio is in Gloucester. Join Paul Manships grandson Erik Natti, Manships neighbor and local historian Pru Fish, and Manship Artists founder and American sculpture specialist Rebecca Reynolds for this conversation.

March 18: Do you see the world inside out?

A delightful happenstance of having artists come to Manship was that some chose to paint in the same place on the grounds on different days. They worked in the exact same locations where their painter friends had painted on other occasions unbeknownst to themselves. The work they each produced is remarkably different. Join Janet Sutherland, Patricia McCarthy, and John Caggiano as they talk about their time at Manship, their work, and how they developed as artists in their unique way.

April 1: Alone with words or what is Manship Artists?

Residencies provide artists uninterrupted time to reflect, dive deep into questions that may have been puzzling them, and to produce work in a supportive environmentoutside of their usual surroundings and away from the concerns of their everyday lives. Come celebrate the first day of National Poetry Month. Meet two poets who benefited from time at Manship as they share what happened while they were there. Meet Charles Coe, the author of three books of poetry and an adjunct English professor at Salve Regina University, and poet Monica Manoski, who is an artist, community organizer, Reiki practitioner, and executive director of the Essex Art Center in Lawrence. Her first book, a collection of poems and black and white film photography, is titled "sisters in this ritual."

April 22: I know what I like!

Artists give us an opportunity to see things differently, in ways that areengaging, unexpected and perplexing. Our view of the world can be turned upside down and inside out by looking at artwork of a place that we may recognize, but which is rendered in such a way as to invite us to look again. Join Outside @ Manship artistsHeidi Caswell Zander, Andrew Fish and Donna Caseldenas they talk about the way they see the world.

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100 artists find inspiration at Manship during the pandemic - Gloucester Daily Times

The challenge of building a settlement on Mars is daunting, but it's beginning to feel less alien every day. While plans to get us there have multiplied as additional nations enter Martian orbit private aerospace firms have also set their eyes on the Red Planet.

The quest to settle Mars is on, but what are the obstacles to building a Martian colony?

NASA's Artemis program will put humans on the surface of the moon for the first time in decades by 2024 with aims to establish sustainable exploration by the end of the 2020s. Much of what the agency learns from living and working on the moon will prepare it for the "next giant leap" of humanity: landing astronauts on Mars.

The Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion are crucial to NASA's aims to explore deep space beyond the moon. While there, astronauts will test novel instruments, tools, and equipment to advance human interests on Mars. It's here the agency will unfold new human habitats, technologies, and life support systems to inform the pursuit of building self-sustaining outposts far away from Earth.

Sometime in the future, NASA plans to send humans to Mars. But for now, the agency is still in the preparation stage sending robotic exploration missions like the Perseverance rover to develop the technology to sustain a human presence on the Red Planet.

CEO and Founder of SpaceX Elon Musk aims to use the Starship rocket to launch what are easily the most ambitious plans for colonizing Mars. He wants his company to mass-produce Starship which is designed to ferry up to 100 people.

"Building 100 Starships/year gets to 1,000 in 10 years or 100 megatons/year or maybe around 100k people per Earth-Mars orbital sync," tweeted Musk. And by "orbital sync," he means the period during which Earth and Mars are nearly aligned, with a minimum transit time.

In other words, Musk envisions unspeakably large fleets of Starships departing in these periods every 26 months. "Loading the Mars fleet into Earth orbit, then 1,000 ships depart over ~30 days every 26 months. Battlestar Galactica..." added Musk in another tweet. The ideal operational life for Starships would be 20 to 30 years.

The goal, of course, is to build a gigantic colony on Mars and effectively turn humanity into a multiplanet species. According to Musk, this is why he founded SpaceX in 2002, and also why he has raised unconscionable sums of money.

In 2017, Musk claimed his Starship ambitions for Mars could allow a city of one million people on Mars within the next century. A year ago, a Twitter follower of Musk's asked him: "So a million people [on the Red Planet] by 2050?"

Musk's succinct reply: "Yes."

Obviously, this is easier said than done.

However ambitious his plans for Mars, it's not irrational to question the timelines Musk has tweeted. Neither he nor NASA has developed concrete, proven plans of how to build domes on Mars under which humans could breathe and live.

While somewhere near the poles of the Red Planet is the ideal location for building a permanent settlement, SpaceX hasn't announced or possibly even developed the architecture for building a self-sustaining habitat on Mars.

Moving back a step, Starship itself has yet to be tested in outer space (though this could happen later this year), let alone on the moon or Mars. But once there, it should be able to take off without a booster rocket provided enough rocket fuel is stored on Mars (which everyone is still figuring out how to create on the Red Planet).

In 2019, the other tech billionaire and founder of Blue Origin declared his plans to colonize space beginning with the moon.

"We're going to build a road to space," said Bezos during a press conference in Washington, D.C., according to an ABC News report. While the current Amazon CEO wasn't sure how to build them, there are "certain gates, certain precursors" to colonizing space, and Bezos wants Blue Origin to lead.

"It's time to go back to the moon, this time to stay," said Bezos during a long and imprecise monologue about space. But considering the early stage of his aerospace company, it still looks like Blue Origin is trailing behind SpaceX.

The Orbital Assembly Corporation recently announced plans to design and build a habitable "space hotel" in low-Earth orbit with at least two prototypes to simulate generating artificial gravity up to the level one would feel on Mars.

The completed project called Voyager Station will serve as a luxury space hotel, but also as a scientific orbital platform where researchers can experiment and study the effects of sub-nominal gravity on human bodies.

"We have lots of data in zero-G, we have lots of data on 1 G, but what about in between?" asked Shawna Pandya, medical advisor for OAC, rhetorically. "In a seminal 2017 paper fromNaturecalled Artificial Gravity agencies came together to analyze how the human body would react to partial-Earth gravity."

"We offer solutions to these questions in a place that's as convenient as low-Earth orbit," said Pandya.

One day the company of NASA veterans could build a similar platform in orbit of Mars and create a waypoint for weary pilgrims of the Earth-Mars transit. But it still needs to test its concept of robotic construction in space, develop a way to transfer a space station to Mars, or build one from Martian resources.

China recently put a spacecraft in orbit around Mars for the first time called Tianwen-1. The craft will detach a lander, which will attempt a landing on Mars and send a rover out onto the Martian surface.

However, the reason China's government gave for the country's interest in Mars suggests it may have bigger plans for the Red Planet: "If we do not go there now even though we can, then we will be blamed by our descendants," said Ye Peijian, senior aerospace engineer and head of China's lunar exploration program, according toThe Daily Beast. "If others go there, then they will take over, and you will not be able to go even if you want to. This is reason enough."

While China has yet to develop (or perhaps, share) concrete plans to colonize Mars, it seems the concern that other entities or nations could limit the country's ability to do so in the future serves as motivation to try.

Russia has proposed several plans to put humans on Mars from the now-defunct Soviet Union's plans to launch a six-cosmonaut crew to live on Mars for 900 days in 1975, to Russia's 2002 aim to land humans on Mars by 2015, and then another announcement in 2018 with aims for a 2019 landing on the Red Planet.

Despite these repeated announcements and delays, Roscosmos the Russian space agency maintains that Mars is the most preferable planet to colonize. "The studies of the Sun show that it is getting hotter while the temperature on Venus and Mars is growing slowly and this is one of the reasons why Mars looks, perhaps, most preferable today from the prospect of terraforming," said Roscosmos' Executive Director for Long-Term Programs and Science Alexander Bloshenko in a TASS interview.

However, Russia still needs to develop (or share) plans for traveling, landing, and living on Mars before it can think of terraforming. And while it has adamantly disagreed with ideas (like Musk's) about terraforming the Red Planet with nuclear explosions the idea of terraforming itself is still highly theoretical, and could take centuries.

The United Arab Emirates also recently put a spacecraft in orbit around Mars. Called "Hope," it's the first step in a very long-term plan for the Arab nation to recruit and send astronauts to Mars. The mission called Mars 2117 will purportedly involve both Earth-bound and interplanetary steps. But judging from the name of the mission, it will almost certainly not be the first entity to land on Mars.

There are many plans to settle Mars, from nearly every space-faring country and private entity. But the architecture to build a human colony on Mars is still in the very early stages for all of them with SpaceX the sole entity actively performing test launches on a vehicle designed to make a landing. But until a new generation of space-worthy habitats, resource infrastructure, means to generate rocket fuel, and a proven landing vehicle are concrete realities, it's difficult to say for certain when humans will be ready to colonize Mars.

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The Quest to Live on Mars: Could Humans Really Survive? - Interesting Engineering

NASAs Perseverance rover has landed safely on Mars. The spacecraft survived its journey through the Martian atmosphere and made a soft touchdown at Jezero crater.Shortly after landing, it sent back this picture from the surface using its Hazard Avoidance Cameras, which it will use when on the move. The image is partially obscured by a dust cover.

What happened: Perseverance began its descent into the Martian atmosphere Thursday afternoon, a process affectionately called the seven minutes of terror. The spacecraft survived scorching temperatures thanks to its heat shield. Its parachute deployed without a hitch, the rover was able to locate and navigate toward a safe landing spot, and the descent apparatus lowered the spacecraft down to the surface. NASA confirmed a successful touchdown at 3:55 p.m. US Eastern time. During its descent, Perseverance went from traveling at 12,000 miles per hour to just 1.7 mph in seven minutes.

Because of the distance between Earth and Mars, communication between NASA mission control and the spacecraft is delayed by 11 minutes. That means the entire landing process had to be accomplished autonomously. Onboard systems tracked the surface for hazards during descent and steered the rover away from any threats.

NASA

Whats it doing on Mars? Perseverances predecessorsSojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosityled to compelling revelations of what Mars currently looks like and what it once was. Scientists learned that the planet was once a warm planet teeming with lakes and rivers, and that its home to complex organic matter. Together, these key ingredients suggest Mars could have been habitable to microbial life in the ancient past.

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This is the first image taken by NASAs Perseverance Mars rover. Now the hunt for life begins. - MIT Technology Review

COLORADO SPRINGS Its a journey months in the making and now NASAs Mars rover Perseverance is preparing to land on the red planet, and the Space Foundations Discovery Center is celebrating the event with activities and events for all.

Perseverance rover is set to reach Mars on Feb. 18 around 2 p.m., but that will only be possible if the rover survives what NASAs dubbed the seven minutes of terror.

The last time we sent a rover like Perseverance to Mars was in 2012 when Curiosity landed, Curator for Space Foundations Discovery Center Rachel English said.

Perseverance will have virtually the same landing as Curiosity. But there is only about a 50% chance this landing will be successful. If it is, Perseverance will work to determine whether life ever existed on Mars.

Its going to be doing some incredible work in Jezero crater, where its landing, to search for signs of microbial life on Mars, English added. So itll tell us a lot about the history of Mars as a planet from a geological standpoint, from a climate standpoint, and also, you know, we might find some cool fossils.

Its novel technologies that are enabling the next leaps of exploration: landing with more precision and safely, learn how to make oxygen from CO2 out of the atmosphere and more, NASAs Associate Administrator For Science Thomas Zurbuchen explained.

Whether the mission is successful or not, the Discovery Center is celebrating all week long!

Upcoming Events:

English added, We realize that everyone is getting a little bit of screen fatigue, and we work really hard here at the discovery center to make sure that everything is clean, fun, and safe.

The great part about space exploration is that even if we fail, we still learn.

Failure is one of our greatest teachers as scientists and engineers, so no matter what happens on Thursday, were really excited, English said.

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Space Foundation Discovery Center hosts Mars Week as NASAs Perseverance rover set to land Thursday - FOX21News.com

The planet offers hope for the existence of extraterrestrial life, and a chance for countries on Earth to show off

Feb 19th 2021

MARS IS AWASH with alien technology. On February 18th NASAs Perseverance rover landed in a crater called Jezero, near the planets equator, after travelling 470m kilometres over seven months. The United Arab Emirates Hope orbiter has been circling since February 9th. Chinas Tianwen-1 entered the planets orbit a day later, and its lander and rover will attempt to touch down sometime in May or June. There were six operational satellites in orbit when Hope arrived; NASAs Curiosity rover and InSight lander, which arrived in 2012 and 2018, respectively, are also sending back information from the planets surface. Why are there so many Mars missions and what do countries that send them hope to achieve?

In the late 1800s Percival Lowell, an American astronomer, fixed a telescope on Mars and observed a network of long straight lines that he believed to be canals built by an alien civilisation. In the second half of the 20th century, orbiters circling the planet returned far more detailed data about its atmosphere and surface, putting an end to the theory that a race of Martians had existed. But subsequent missions did raise new questions about alien life. They showed that Mars was once more like Earth. Streams, river valleys, basins and deltas on the planets surface suggest there may have been water covering its northern hemisphere. Orbiters, landers and rovers have set out to explore the planets topography and probe its interior for decades in the hopes of revealing whether microbial life might have existed in the pastand whether it still exists today.

There have been roughly 50 years of Mars missions before Perseverance. NASA was the first to land a craft successfully on its surface, in 1976. The latest flurry of activity is down to two things: new opportunities to answer questions about life beyond Earth, and astropolitical grandstanding. Americas rover will study the planets rock record and look for chemical traces of ancient microbial life, whereas the UAEs Hope orbiter will help scientists to understand how gas escapes its atmospherea process that has made Mars cold and dry. Technological advances mean that samples collected by Perseverance could eventually be brought back to Earth, allowing more detailed analysis.

But space exploration is also a matter of prestige and techno-nationalism. Chinas growing space race with its neighbours, India and Japan, which have also sent probes to Mars, reflects their jostling for influence on Earth. The UAE, the space agency of which was founded only in 2014, has crowed that its Hope orbiter is the first interplanetary mission by any Arab country. This posturing is a far cry from the white-hot space rivalry between America and the Soviet Union during the cold war, and there is plenty of collaboration, too: NASA is working with the European Space Agency to retrieve samples collected by Perseverance, for example. But the number of new spacefaring countries reflects a diffusion of wealth, technology and power.

As well as the UAE, lots of other countries have founded space agencies since 2010, including Australia, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, South Africa and Turkey. For now, states have a monopoly on Mars. But billionaires want in, too. Elon Musk, the boss of SpaceX, a private rocketry firm, claims he will launch people to Mars by 2026. Jeff Bezos recently announced that he will step down as the chief executive of Amazon partly to focus on his space venture, Blue Origin. Last month the company successfully tested a rocket designed to carry passengers, although Mr Bezos prefers the idea of floating space colonies to dusty rocks like Mars. One day a trip to Mars may be more about leisure than scientific endeavour. As Perseverance scours the planets surface for clues of ancient life, new life is preparing to set foot.

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Why are there so many missions to Mars? - The Economist

This afternoon, NASAs Perseverance rover will attempt to land on Mars, making it just the fifth vehicle on a planet about half the diameter of Earth. But compared with the eons of total emptiness until 1997, when NASA landed its first Mars rover, Sojourner, the neighborhood is getting pretty crowded. In fact, Perseverance is the third spacecraft to reach Mars just this month. On Feb. 9, the UAEs Hope Probe arrived in orbit around Mars, where Chinas Tianwen-1 joined it the very next day. In May or June, Tianwen will attempt to land its own rover on the Martian surface, making China the second country to achieve that feat.

The purpose of these missions is to study the composition of Marss soil and atmosphere. The one thing theyre certain not to find is what humanity long dreamed of finding on the red planet: an intelligent species with a civilization and technology comparable to our own. For almost a century, from the 1880s to the 1960s, Martians were humanitys favorite shorthand for extraterrestrial life. Science fiction as a literary genre grew up with Martians, starting with H.G. Wellss 1898 novel The War of the Worlds, about invaders from the red planet. So did the movies, which have used Mars as a showcase for special effects since Thomas Edisons 1910 film A Trip to Mars. Martians were so popular in the early 20th century that the word itself now has a nostalgic feel, conjuring the pasts dream of a future that never came to be.

That humanity would fixate on Martians rather than Venusians or Saturnites wasnt inevitable. Before the rise of modern astronomy, writers who imagined journeys to outer space generally picked the moon as a destinationnaturally enough, since its far more conspicuous than Mars to the naked eye. The earliest such tale is the 2nd-century Greek work A True Story, in which the narrators ship is caught in a whirlwind and carried through the air for seven days and nights until it lands on the moon.

The shift to Mars as the most popular setting for space fantasy began in 1877, when the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli published a map of the planet that included features he called canali or channels. Schiaparelli didnt believe these were artificial or carried water, but when canali was translated into English as canals, it was easy for readers to assume that they must be large-scale engineering projectswhich meant that there must be Martians capable of building them.

No one did more to popularize this idea than the American astronomer Percival Lowell, who claimed to have observed even more detailed canal networks. In his 1906 book Mars and Its Canals, he argued that they were built by the inhabitants of Mars to transport water from the polar ice caps. The fact that the canals spanned the whole globe proved that Martians werent divided into warring nations, like us, but knew how to cooperate for the common good: Whether increasing common sense or increasing necessity was the spur that drove the Martians to this eminently sagacious state we cannot say, but it is certain that reached it they have, Lowell wrote.

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Were Still Dreaming of Mars and Martians - The Wall Street Journal

Building his latest documentary around impossibly big questions, a cheeky 90s cyber aesthetic and the words of visionary author Philip K. Dick, director Rodney Ascher explores the labyrinthine terrain between science fiction and reality in A Glitch in the Matrix, tackling an age-old conundrum: Are we living in a simulation?

A genre filmmaker whose natural inquisitiveness lent itself to feature documentaries including 2012s Room 237, about Stanley Kubricks The Shining, and 2015s sleep paralysis exploration The Nightmare Ascher now explores another niche corner of humankinds search for meaning and truth. But as he dove deeper into Matrix, the film took an unexpected turn.

I didnt know that it was going towards horror; I thought it was going towards science fiction, said Ascher, whose film, conceived before the pandemic and completed remotely during it, premiered at this years virtual Sundance Film Festival.

Blending sci-fi cinema and video game iconography, the academic theories of experts such as Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom and firsthand musings from eyewitnesses who are transformed on screen into otherworldly CG avatars, Matrix explores wide-ranging implications of simulation theory with imaginative, pop culture-infused flair.

In its most chilling and controversial sequence, Matrix employs photogrammetry and eerie computer animation to re-create the 2003 night when teenager Joshua Cooke, obsessed with the 1999 film The Matrix, murdered his parents. The case spawned the Matrix defense, in which a defendant claims they believed they were in a simulation of the real world. Cooke is interviewed in the film from prison, where he is serving a 40-year sentence.

Beaming in via videochat, Ascher discussed the methods and origins of the film and considered the ways it has garnered unexpected relevancy since it first began. The film is now available on VOD and in virtual cinemas.

Were in a world where there are not just disagreements about opinions, but disagreements about facts, he said. And I like to think that this project can be a good entryway into talking about that stuff maybe as a piece of self-examination, wondering, if were all living in our own Platos Caves, how accurate are the shadows that we choose to spend the most time looking at?

A Glitch in the Matrix filmmaker Rodney Ascher in Los Angeles. The film had its world premiere at the first virtual Sundance Film Festival, where audiences attended screenings through their screens due to the pandemic.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

You made this film before our new pandemic reality set in, but A Glitch in the Matrix uses language that were now all-too accustomed to in our daily lives: Subjects are interviewed over Skype, through screens, and are even presented in avatar form. How prescient does that choice feel now?

It looks like the conversation that were having right now, you and me, but we actually shot the interviews in 2019. Its a very strange coincidence that a movie that is built on these Skype calls, these webcam video calls, is getting released into a world in which were all interacting with each other through these images. In some ways having an avatar speaking to people in these interviews, people speaking in their real world environments, might seem a little bit like a satire of the first few COVID-19 projects that have hit. Or just the way that we live. A very strange coincidence, but not the only one.

Have you experienced instances of dj vu, glitches or synchronicities you cant explain?

Synchronicities, for sure. Even in the course of this film. The name that [Dick] came up with for the day that he had this big revelation in February and March of 1974, he called 2-3-7... 4. [Room 237, Aschers documentary about The Shining, is titled after a motif in the Kubrick film.] Philip K. Dick wrote extensively about Martian colonies, and [Glitch in the Matrix subject] Jesse [Orion] thinks we need to colonize Martian planets in order to get our message out to the creator. And, Elon Musk is working on a Mars colony. All three of them are thinking Mars is the place.

Are you endorsing Elon Musk as a voice of authority on the matter?

Im saying Elon Musk is a Philip K. Dick-esque character. As a globe-trotting outer space executive whos fascinated with the idea of simulation theory, the fact that he, Philip K. Dick and Jesse Orion were all speaking actively of Martian colonization, struck me as significant. His speech gave a lot of people permission, and Jesse talks about it explicitly: If somebody as rich, famous and powerful as [Musk] believes in it, maybe theres something to it.

Had you been thinking about simulation theory for a long time when you began developing Glitch in the Matrix?

One of the people I spoke to for The Nightmare believed in simulation theory. He was the first person who turned me onto the idea that it wasnt just an idea from science fiction movies it wasnt just The Matrix, eXistenZ, The 13th Floor, but that people were taking it seriously and that physicists were trying to see if they could look at the end of the universe and whether it broke down into a particular scale of pixel, and what that meant. That blew my mind. It was the beginning of a rabbit hole that I still havent been able to crawl out of.

A Glitch in the Matrix uses computer animation to visualize the musings and personal stories of its interview subjects.

(Magnolia Pictures)

After making this film do you, in fact, believe that we are in a simulation?

I have no idea. I think I understand Nick Bostroms three-part simulation hypothesis better than I did going in, although I dont necessarily understand whether all three branches are equally weighted. And I dont necessarily understand the bleeding edge of quantum physics and where science comes down on simulation theory, although I do know that people smarter than me, like Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Elon Musk, think of it as plausible.

What I take away from it is more simulation theory as a creation story, as an article of faith: that countless traditions and cultures have stories that explain how we got here, where the universe comes from, and in many ways this could be just another one of them. I was surprised going into this and talking to people, how quickly it became a religious question not just, Is the creator some fifth-grader cramming for their exam over the weekend on another planet or in the future? but, If this is a simulation, what does that mean about our relationship to other people?

Because the first fork in the road is, are we playing Pac-Man where youre the only player and everybody else is a phantom ghost or is this Fortnite, where every character is tethered to a real human being? Where you come in on that fork, whether other people are real too, has extraordinary ramifications for how you live. I see it in the people who mistreat service workers because theyre an obstacle along the way of getting what they want. How that phrase NPC [non-player character] has terrifying connotations of thinking of people that way, and that rippling out, was one of the surprises of this project.

The Joshua Cooke sequence marks a turning point in the film, when hypotheticals collide with real world consequences and go to a very real, horrifying place. How did you measure how much of his story to include, and how to go about it?

In the early days I had a big whiteboard with every idea I could think of related to simulation theory. One of the early ones was the Matrix defense, the fact that people had used simulation theory as part of a criminal defense to explain an insanity defense that they werent liable for their actions because they didnt realize the real world implications; they thought they were living in a simulated reality. I wanted to get something about the Matrix defense into the film, and there was really only one person who used it. [Cookes lawyers at the time considered using the defense; he ultimately pleaded guilty.]

[Producers] Rebecca Evans and Colin Frederick found Joshua, and Joshuas at a place in his life where hes just written a self-published book on Amazon and hes trying to reach kids to try to help prevent them from repeating his mistakes, trying to learn from what he went through and be a better person, work on himself and reach out to kids who are in a similar space. So he was anxious to retell the story. I spoke to him a few times on the phone from an administrators office, but ultimately the recording thats used in the film came from a pay phone in the common area, so you sometimes hear other people in the room a little fight breaks out, you can hear some shouting echoing off the metal walls from time to time.

A scene from A Glitch in the Matrix.

(Magnolia Pictures)

How careful did you decide you should be with that depiction?

Some people have taken exception to that storys inclusion in the film. I get it. Its a pretty troubling sequence in a lot of ways. As I was working on the film, it seemed more and more important to go from abstract speculation to nuts-and-bolts reality, and to especially drill down into some of the real-world consequences of this kind of thinking and the dangers of it. I still find it perfectly fun sometimes to bat simulation theory around and think about some of its implications, but there can be a real danger in disassociating and becoming alienated from reality, and not necessarily believing in the world around you or the people around you... you look around where we are today; people building up false ideas about reality has dangerous consequences all around us, in a thousand different ways.

When it came time to talk about the murder itself and what that was going to look like, I didnt want there to be animated cartoon characters in it in a way that would make it silly. That would be wildly inappropriate even by my standards, which might be looser than other peoples.

The idea of it was not looking at the night through his eyes as he moves through the house as he describes it but more of him 15 years later remembering it and that its a memory thats starting to fray around the edges. Hes narrating it in a very specific, blow-by-blow kind of way, and I think back to The Shining. What frightened me as a kid when I snuck into a screening when I was 13 was the Steadicam that even though this was a bad place, the camera dragged you into it and it almost felt like the floor was so well polished that even if you planted your feet, you would be dragged forward against your will.

The momentum of [animation director] Lorenzo [Fonda]s ghostly camera moving through the rooms, even if you want to put on the brakes, has that kind of eerie, terrifying feeling. And it is a terrifying story. The terror is about making a horrible mistake. Its not about danger happening to you, its about you doing something that you cant undo.

You mention the dangers of people living in false realities today. How have you seen the films themes ripple out into real world events, even after finishing the film?

Clearly the last couple years have shown us the dangers of people creating worlds that, however much theyre at odds with reality, theyre certainly at odds with other peoples realities. Were in a world where there are not just disagreements about opinions, but disagreements about facts. And I like to think that this project can be a good entryway into talking about that stuff maybe as a piece of self-examination, wondering, if were all living in our own Platos Caves, how accurate are the shadows that we choose to spend the most time looking at? Assuming theyre telling us the truth about the world around us. How carefully are we vetting where theyre coming from, or whether they were created in good faith, by journalists working their asses off communicating to us what they find out there, or cynically by folks who are trying to manipulate us to other ends?

There are specific political controversies that that talks about today. But Im perfectly happy for them not to be directly in the film, so that as time goes on you can substitute the next three or four horrifying things that are waiting for us.

An interesting thing about these projects is youre working on them a year, two years, three years before they come out, said Ascher, and you dont know what the worlds going to look like, or how relevant things are going to be.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

When you set out to find interview subjects for this film, you put out a call online. What kind of responses did you get?

There were maybe 75 or 100 people who wrote us, and I probably talked to 15 or 20 of them at a similar length to the ones who appeared in the film. Its been noted that all four of them are white men, and thats certainly something I noticed in the course of making it. That was also who dominated the replies. I think its fair to ask: Is there something about simulation theory that appeals more to white men?

Its certainly a conversation thats worth continuing to have. Again, its a pretty small sample group so Im not sure if its statistically significant or just the way that it broke in our experience. If the tech world is dominated by white guys, maybe theres something reassuring to them that the creator of the world is more like them. During the [Sundance] Q&A, Paul [Gude] suggested that as a white guy because hes coming from a place of privilege maybe he feels more comfortable sharing this idiosyncratic part of himself than other folks might feel. There might be something to that.

Your film is framed by a Philip K. Dick lecture from 1977 in which he speaks to an audience about his belief in simulation theory. Why was that an important piece of the puzzle for you?

A five-minute version of it that I found on YouTube made me want to include it as a speech thats a milestone in the mainstreaming of simulation theory, and it made me want to find out what else he said. Watching the entire thing, which was 40 or 50 minutes long, was kind of a revelation. I had to watch it two or three times to get my head around it because some of it is pretty complicated, and a little gnarled.

The thing I love about the speech and [why I] included it in the film is that movies based on Philip K. Dick stories even though The Matrix is not one, in many ways it shows his influence helped people understand the idea of simulation theory. Probably Total Recall, more than many of the others. Its been said that the two ideas that he focused on in book to book to book were, What is real? and What is human? Which is also the question of [non-player characters], artificial intelligence and how far away are we from a robot or a computer program that deserves human rights?

And what if... we are those robots?

Exactly. So he was a great figure to consider, as well as the fact that in many ways the audience doesnt seem especially captivated by his speech. They were probably expecting him to talk about his books. But if those ideas sounded kind of crazy in 1977, he was suffering the anxieties of a rising authoritative police state and of loss of privacy and of information out of control, and the idea that we may be in a false world. He seems to have been suffering from neuroses and fears that are so much more common today like he was patient zero of the 21st century existential crisis.

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'Glitch in the Matrix' director on simulation theory - Los Angeles Times

A robotic exploration mission sent by NASA will attempt to land on the Martian surface later today (tune in to watch starting at 2:15 US eastern time), catching up to two probes sent by China and the United Arab Emirates that arrived last week.

The US has been here before, and its rover is equipped, for the first time, with a small helicopter that will attempt to explore Mars in flight. Chinas first trip to Mars will also attempt the difficult task of landing sometime in May or June. The UAEs mission will orbit the planet, carefully mapping it with remote sensors.

The arrival of all three probes at the Red planet was driven by its relative proximity to earth last year when the missions launched, but also presents a symbolic lineup: The reigning space power and its main competitor, along with a third nation outlining a new model of national space investment.

Its really important that NASA and the US continue to lead in space exploration, continue to do these civilization-first type missions, says Steve Jurczyk, a veteran NASA executive currently serving as the agencys interim head until president Joe Biden nominates a permanent replacement.

But what does leading in space mean in a world where space technology is increasingly easy to access? The old model of the Apollo program, which signaled technological superiority to the rest of the world, is now outmoded.

The US has been slow to catch on, to be frank, because it misunderstands some of the fundamentals of the new race, says Peter Garretson, a retired US Air Force officer who is now a senior fellow focused on space strategy at the conservative-leaning American Foreign Policy Council. For newly arrived space powers, repeating old tricks and doing new first-of-a-kind tricks still commands attention. But what really matters is who is establishing a long-term industrial and logistical base from which they can command long-term economic power.

Garretson and Namrata Goswami, an independent space policy analyst, have written a book called Scramble for the Skiesthat outlines their expectation that space power will be built around exploiting the economic potential beyond earth. In particular, they fear China will outstrip other powers because of its long-term focus on development.

Today, the context of space is much more about the economic returns, Goswami told Quartz in an email. A service like GPS or BeiDou offers the possibility of billions of dollars in return on investments. Countries like China are investing in space technologies like 3D printing, advanced robotics, and AI given their rationale of trillions of dollars of resources waiting on the Moon and asteroids to be harvested. The idea is not just showcasing space technology for its own sake, but towards a long-term strategic purpose.

US goals in space are not even one-thousandth as ambitious as what the Chinese have articulated, Garretson says, citing Beijings detailed plans to outstrip the US as a space power by 2045with a new space station, a moon colony, and the development of technology to capture solar power in orbit.

In comparison, American experience with space success during the Apollo program has led to a culture that favors symbolic moonshot projects over long-term, cumulative investment. But under recent presidents the growing role of public-private partnerships and policy directives prioritizing the economic development of space has bent policy toward this vision.

The Artemis program, launched under Trump to return US astronauts to the moon, provides a case study. The initial goal of laying the groundwork for sustainable long-term presence there fits with this new vision of space power, but the push to strip away the more complex parts of the program in order to meet an arbitrary 2024 deadline made less sense. Garretson says that delaying the 2024 date to build more useful lunar infrastructure makes sense. Any part of the architecture that is expendable and is not able to be used by the private sector for their own purposes is a missed opportunity, he adds.

As the US warily eyes China (and Russia) as rivals in space, it will also find itself working more with partners, both traditional and newly arrived.

In some cases, the UAE has an advantagethey havent got a history, they dont have these processes and procedure, Jurczyk says, comparing the young space program with its private-sector start-ups. In some ways they can be more innovative and lean forward in exploiting cube sats and small spacecraft. Were supporting them with lessons learned engineering very complex systems and help them with enabling their innovation.

For NASAs rover Perseverance, a key part of its mission will be setting aside samples of Martian geology to return to earth. The return mission, launching in 2026, relies on a rover built by the European Space Agency to snatch the samples.

For the countries with new programs, space power isnt just about achieving scientific milestones. It is about economic development, as in India, which began its space program just weeks after the Apollo 11 landing to enable weather forecasting, climate monitoring, and other development goals, Namrata says. And the message of exploration isnt just for other countries but also for a domestic audience, allowing unelected governments in Abu Dhabi or Beijing to gain prestige in front of their people.

But small, wealthy countries like the UAE and Luxembourg, itself a satellite pioneer, see a chance to win more than just prestige. Garretson argues that these countries are well positioned to be mediators and craft a new global consensus on space activity, enabling access to other technologies and attracting financial activity, as well as bigger role in global affairs.

Any nation that seeks to carry the banner of leadership in the world symbolically must also carry it in space, he says.

A version of this story originally appeared in Quartzs Space Business newsletter.

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The geopolitics of NASA's Perseverance mission to Mars - Quartz