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We’re going back to Mars! NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover will be launching soon for its seven-month journey to the Red Planet to search for signs of ancient life. And it’s bringing along a friend: a little helicopter named Ingenuity! Ingenuity will test the first powered flight on Mars.

Join us in wishing Perseverance and Ingenuity “bon voyage” on their #CountdownToMars! https://go.nasa.gov/2CJHidq

“This is not just twice as difficult as any typical Mars mission; it’s twice squared — when you think about the complexity involved,” said Dr David Parker, the director of human and robotic exploration at the European Space Agency (Esa).

“And this satellite that Airbus will build — I like to call it ‘the first interplanetary cargo ship’, because that’s what it will be doing. It’s designed to carry cargo between Mars and Earth,” he told BBC News.

Dr Parker announced the European aerospace company’s role in the Earth Return Orbiter (ERO) at a NASA-Esa briefing with reporters just ahead of Thursday’s launch of the Perseverance robot.

More great news:

The 10th graders were working on a school project when they discovered the asteroid, which is slowly shifting its orbit and moving towards Earth.


Two Indian schoolgirls have discovered an asteroid which is slowly shifting its orbit and moving toward Earth.

Radhika Lakhani and Vaidehi Vekariya, both studying in 10th grade, were working on a school project when they discovered the asteroid, which they named HLV2514.

The girls, from the city of Surat in the western Indian state of Gujarat, were participating in a Space India and NASA project, which allows students to analyze images taken by a telescope positioned at the University of Hawaii.

As the world tries to see and photograph Comet NEOWISE (or check-out this week’s extra-bright rings of Saturn), a comet similar to Halley’s comet—last seen in 1954—has been found by astronomers using a telescope in Arizona.

They’ve calculated that comet 12P/Pons-Brooks will return to the Solar System in April 2024—which is when a total solar eclipse will next be observable from Mexico, the US and Canada.

In a study published in Nature Astronomy, an international team of researchers has presented a new, detailed look inside the “central engine” of a large solar flare accompanied by a powerful eruption first captured on Sept. 10, 2017 by the Owens Valley Solar Array (EOVSA)—a solar radio telescope facility operated by New Jersey Institute of Technology’s (NJIT) Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research (CSTR).

The new findings, based on EOVSA’s observations of the event at microwave wavelengths, offer the first measurements characterizing the magnetic fields and particles at the heart of the explosion. The results have revealed an enormous electric current “sheet” stretching more than 40,000 kilometers through the core flaring region where opposing lines approach each other, break and reconnect, generating the intense powering the .

Notably, the team’s measurements also indicate a magnetic bottle-like structure located at the top of the flare’s loop-shaped base (known as the flare arcade) at a height of nearly 20,000 kilometers above the Sun’s surface. The structure, the team suggests, is likely the primary site where the flare’s highly are trapped and accelerated to nearly the speed of light.

🔎 Part of NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover mission is to survey Mars’ geology for signs of ancient life, but what does that entail? Where will she search?

Find out in this episode of #EZScience with Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen of NASA and Dr. Ellen Stofan of the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution: https://youtu.be/McqMigM_YG8

#CountdownToMars

Interviewed by mika curtis, for the space renaissance academy mentorship programme.

We are honored and proud to publish this interview with Prof. Paul Ziolo, Psychohistorian, Senior Lecturer at the University of Liverpool, who kindly accepted to reply to some questions about his role as a Mentor of the Space Renaissance Academy. https://youtu.be/1UDJB7DS1Lo

The Space Renaissance Academy Mentorship Programme is a wide and very ambitious initiative. Our goal is to provide help to all students willing to have an active role in the incoming space settlement! We are realizing short video-recorded interviews to our Mentors: in 15 minutes, our anchorwomen are asking them about their interest for human expansion into space, their vision and how they think to motivate and inspire young generations to engage in space settlement. The SRI Volunteers team: Bharathi Sharma, Sachika Bhatia (Space Renaissance India), Corrinne Graham (Space Renaissance USA), Mika Curtis (Space Renaissance UK).

Here’s a presentation of the SR Academy Mentorship Programme. https://spacerenaissance.space/the-space-renaissance-acade…/

You are also invited, if you didn’t yet, to check our updated questionnaires about Mentorship Disciplines and Themes for Graduate Theses, indicating your preferred disciplines and themes. https://spacerenaissance.space/themes-for-graduate-works/ https://spacerenaissance.space/themes-for-graduate-works/

Don’t forget to subscribe to the SRI youtube channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7nbRtSj7Q2q_MWRtFws3gA